Net66 News: Net66 Launch Their New Website

Much more than a few design tweaks here and there, we’ve completely redesigned our whole website with lots of new features and information available.

For instance, you can now view our website History. Look at all the old Net66 faces of the past and pick your favourite. You can see how much has changed in web design from the very first blue (I know) website, to the beautiful red delight you see before you now.

There’s also plenty of information on How Google Works. We take an in depth look at the Algorithms, Links and other factors that Google looks into when deciding how to rank your website so you can see how it all works for yourself.

We’ve also updated our portfolio and just our web portfolio either. You can now see our SEO, Web Design and Ecommerce portfolios accompanied by our new Case Studies section. Take a look at our clients who have earned large contracts or developed their business exponentially with our help. Such as Winton Flooring, who got a large contract from the Olympics to lay the flooring down the “Fast Walk” event at the London 2012 Olympics.

I’ll let you finish reading now, I know you’re eager to poke around our site, but for our website at a glance take a look at the screenshots below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: Link Building Techniques to Avoid Post Penguin

Even Pre Penguin there was a large buzz on the internet about what will work, what wont work, what you should remove, what you should add. But now that the dust has (seemingly) settled, it’s becoming apparent that certain ways to build links are not only ineffective, but will actively hurt your site’s performance in the SERPs. Here’s some things NOT to do when you’re link building now:

Quantity over Quality

Sure, having a link profile with hundreds linking root domains might look good, but it’s not all that effective if the hundreds of domains that are on there are low quality sites with little relevance to your own. I’ve often said this and will continue to say it, relevance is key! I would take one relevant, good quality website than one hundred links from irrelevant, poor quality websites. A whole afternoon’s work can be classified as a success even if you get 1 good link. If your boss get’s on your case for so few links, educate them.

Ignoring Your Own Site

People get hung up on guest posting and will reserve the best content to give to other blogs as this increases the likelihood of the other blog accepting and publishing your content, providing you with a link from a relevant blog. But why? I know you get a great link from it, but what about the links the content attracts for the blog where it’s published. If the content is that good, it’ll be worth linking to and will benefit that blog. You’ll get some secondary link juice from this, but not a lot. So why not publish that content on your own site, and receive all the organic links to it yourself?

Anchor Text Angst

OCATD. Obsessive Compulsive Anchor Text Disorder. People would spend so much time searching for that one link they could get where they could insert their own anchor text and manipulate this to boost rankings. With the advent of Panda, this is no longer going to work. It’s going to work against you in some cases, especially if your Link Profile is skewed so much that it has over 50% keyword anchor text. Think about it, if people were organically linking to your site would they choose to link to you with a keyword? And if so, what are the chances that you have a whole bunch of people all miraculously choosing the same phrase. Strikes me, and now Google thanks to Penguin, as a little odd.

No News is Good News

People publishing monthly/bimonthly press releases are either gifted with an incredibly high amount of foresight, or they’re actually fabricating “News” to release. The bottom line with this one is, if you have no news to report, you have nothing to report. You shouldn’t seek out the tiniest little thing and publish a press release, Google will get wise to this as press releases are usually reserved for Product launches, Re-branding and other such large projects. Not the fact that you’ve added a new page to your website.

There are so many other habits that people are finding hard to kick but as it stands these top the pile on my most seen poor link building practice podium so far.

What are yours?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Disavow Tool can help with Penguin According to Matt Cutts

This has been one of the most talked about topics since the birth of Penguin 2.0 and that is, do we have to be afraid of the Disavow Tool or can it be trusted to recover penalised sites? Well Google’s own Matt Cutts (Head of the Web Spam team) came out and answered publicly on Twitter to a question, stating that the Disavow Tool can help with a Penguin impact.

This has been a big relief to many webmasters out there who have been impacted and can now safely use the tool without hesitating. The only problem is that we still do not know for sure how long it would take for a website to recover from a penalisation after using the disavow tool. My personal option would be to use the disavow tool to remove low quality and irrelevant links pointing to your website and then submit a reconsideration request to webmaster or selecting the fetch as Google option and pinging to get your website read as quick as possible.

If the disavow Tool works according to Matt Cutts then this cannot be ignored and using the tool effectively could be the difference between a successful recovery or a further penalisation by the panda update which is now a rolling update. It will also benefit your website in the long run, as Google could come out and roll out the Penguin update at any time and this time if you have removed the links which are harming your site in theory you shouldn’t be affected.

Although some people do not believe what Matt says most of the time, it is clear in what the message is he is trying to get across to webmasters which is; Google rewards high quality websites and penalises websites to be considered as spam. Hence why Google released this tool to help us recover and realise what we have done wrong.

Blog Post by Jordan Whitehead

Ranking on Google – So Whats Different?

Well as I’m sure you all know by now Google has yet again been making big algorithm changes to the way they rank the websites, or should I say YOUR website.

The most recent being the penguin update. In short (risking over simplifying it) the manual checking, where people were hired to view websites, had finally come to an end. Google finally was able to take that information which they had gathered form this manual reviewers and put it into a computer program; now all websites can be automatically “critiqued” without a human eye even glancing over your page. I’m sure there are still some manual reviewers, but they have been cut down by a large amount, so once again the algorithm rules the roost!

So whats new?, how have these big penguin and panda processes now being put into the algorithm itself changed things?

Well if we go back 18 months to 2 years ago the internet was full of all kinds of rubbish, or spam you might call it. People were throwing out “Auto-blogs” which automatically “scraped” the internet looking for content which suited a keyword they were programmed to search for, then it gets posted automatically to their website, it worked very well for some people aswell!

However the panda update put an end to that. To sum up the goal of the panda it was created for the main purpose of cutting out any pages or posts which offered no value. This meant no duplicate content, no “thin” pages or websites. Basically, if what you was submitted wasn’t yours, or wasn’t benefiting the user then you’re “outta there!”.

There theres the Penguin update. Once again to sum up the objective of this algorithm change, Google went after backlinks. By now Im sure they are fully aware what natural looking backlink profiles look like. Im sure every niche and every market has its own little quirks, but Google probably has the information which all websites must adhere to.

If your not behaving in a proper manner in terms of how you market your website, this means collecting backlinks “genuinely, or if your not backlicking to any other websites with any weight or relevance, than you to risk being “slapped or penalised. Pengiun wanted ot make it harder for the average person to buy a backlinking tool and throw out hundres if not thoussands of backlinks to their website, (getting nearer the end of grey hat and black hat ways) and they have certainly succeeded!

The Algorithmic Conclusion

So you may think, game over! We can never rank for anything now, the bar has been raised to high!

You know what I say?? Good rid-dense! We have just come across a time in Googles existence where I see opportunity. Chances are the competitors who you would be competing against have either slipped down the rankings or have dissapeared completely. So to capitalise on this, all you really need to do is follow the rules. Don’t try and con Google, itll never work, write for the user and let Net66 worry about getting you ranked…That my friends will give you the best possible chance of succeeding whatever market your in.

Net66 News: New Algorithm Update “Over Multiple Weeks”

Google’s Matt Cutts has given us an update on the latest Algorithm Changes. In a tweet responding to an SEO company that had highlighted what appeared to be unnatural linking practices, Matt Cutts stated:

On the face of it that’s a pretty big update. But thinking even deeper, this algorithm has to be pretty big considering they’re having to roll this out over several weeks. This doesn’t really surprise me to be honest. There’s been a lot of talk in the SEO community about strange changes and fluctuations in Rankings and Traffic. One of the strangest claims to be rankings moving up in the SERPs but traffic reducing, which defies logic.

So what do you think these new updates are for? Is this the new Soft Panda algorithm update? Have they released another anti spam update?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 News: Google Maps Reaching New Heights

Today Google maps has reached a definite highlight in it’s service. It has now, not only taken street view for it’s first Skyscraper, it has chosen the tallest Skyscraper in the world. Check it out below:

View Larger Map

Clicking and dragging the street view man on the left hand side of the map to view the maps closer in.

You can view various different floors on the building as well gaining a beautiful vista of the city of Dubai.

Net66 SEO: Happy Summer Solstice

As Britons we love the sun. Being on the British Isles however it seems we rarely see it but today we see the sun for longer than any other day in the year with today being the summer Solstice. Every year the tilt of the Earth’s axis thrusts us closer to the sun and now we’ve reached as far as we can go. We now proceed with every day the sun sticks around for less and less time. Minuscule amounts of time to be fair, but soon enough it’ll be Christmas.

Google celebrated this glorious day by putting up a lovely Google Doodle of people in a swimming pool adorned with Google coloured hats.

Einstein states that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction and in this case it’s true. As the Northern Hemisphere enjoys the most sun, the Southern Hemisphere has it’s day with the shortest amount of daylight. Google also celebrated this date with another Google Doodle. This time depicting a pair of hands knitting a scarf.

Which Doodle do you prefer?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: Small Search Engines see Boost after PRISM

You’ve probably heard of PRISM by now and if you haven’t, you’ve either had your head in the sand or you don’t actually have an internet connection and you aren’t reading these words as I type. But the vast majority of people will have heard of this. PRISM is a scheme that’s been granted access to a lot of information, unwarranted in some peoples eyes, about individuals on the internet.

Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have all admitted passing user data to this PRISM program but have also started that whilst they do comply with official access requests, they don’t grant open access to their servers. With people panicking in the wake of this “Google is spying on us” hysteria (they probably aren’t to be fair), smaller search engines have benefited from this.

DuckDuckGo are just one of the few who’ve seen a boost. The particular reasoning behind this is that DuckDuckGo say they operate a “Do Not Track” policy and don’t record your data. As opposed to Google who record every search string you enter. People worried about their privacy have flocked (pardon the pun) to DuckDuckGo (DDG) to avoid being tracked. Some stats to give you an idea are that DDG has been breaking it’s record of searches per day almost on a daily basis this week.

Indeed, last Tuesday they passed the 2 million searches in one day mark. And then only a few days later they passed the 3 million searches in one day milestone. A great achievement for such a relatively small company who’s only comparison is the behemoth of Google.

The migration from Google however does seem to be short lived. People leave Google to an inferior search engine, get frustrated with the results and return with tail between legs.

So have you left Google in the wake of PRISM?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 News: Google Officially Changes Advice on how to Boost Rankings

For a while now Google’s official advice on how to improve your rankings has been stated as the following:

Ranking

Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These factors are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our Webmaster Guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

However, these have changed recently to put the onus on creating a quality site and user experience, rather than building links. The new text has been edited to read:

Ranking

Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on hundreds of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These factors are explained in more detail athttp://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend visiting Webmaster Academy which outlines core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

They’ve also changed the link offering advice on how to maintain and improve your visibility in search engines from their Webmaster Guidelines to their new Webmaster Academy.

Change is a natural part of Google but what is different about this change is that Google kept it relatively quiet. Usually there’s a buzz around the latest updates from Google but this time it’s as if they have stolen in in the midst of the night and quickly changed a few words. The sly lot.

What do you think to the new changes?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 News: Facebook Gets a new Facelift – News Feed Redesign

In the midst of my usual ritual of getting into work, making a coffee, eyeing a few emails and checking social media, I logged on to Facebook and was met with the screenshot below:

Bookmarks, Ticker and Chat

As you can see it’s a pretty radical change from the news feed we know and are used to. The most obvious changes are to the lateral areas of the page. On the left hand side where you were presented with your favourites, pages, apps and a nice big link to your profile, these have all now changed into what Facebook are calling Bookmarks. They’re presented in a smaller format looking more like App Tiles you get on your phone than links you’re presented with on a desktop platform. The “Ticker” and chat options on the right hand side are functioning the same but, as with the new bookmarks, the background colour has changed from the traditional Facebook light blue/white to the darker colour more associated with the mobile app. A stark change then.

You can still access the breakdown into favourites, pages, apps etc when you go to the very bottom of the Bookmarks list and click the icon with the three dots on it. This opens a little pop-out page which will seem more familiar to you.

News Feed and Options

What next jumped out at me was the size of the actual stories in the news feed. They’re huge and now definitely seem to be the main Feature of the site. Looking back at the previous news feed design, it seems so cramped and busy and I’m instantly warming to the new news feed.

As you scroll down your stories as well, the boxes on the right hand side of the page remain absolute and follow you down the page. I’m presuming this is so that Facebook can still serve advertisements to you, but as the news feed stories are now so large, you won’t begrudge them the space.

You also have much more control over what appears in your news feed with the use of the box in the top right hand corner. You can choose from your regular News Feed (usually customised), all friends, most recent stories, following, groups and even the latest photos, games, music and your custom lists. This makes it so much easier to switch between your different feeds as the previous Facebook only had the option to change between Most Recent and Top Stories.

Toolbar

The toolbar has also been given a nice little revamp. See below for a closer look:

Rather than the flat single colour of the previous toolbar, a gradient has been added. Whilst this is hardly the most taxing of changes, it does add a certain depth to the new toolbar. Especially considering that the background for the search box is now a dark blue colour as opposed to its previous white. The old Facebook logo that was in the top left that redirected you back to the home page has been changed to a simplistic tile, again like the bookmarks option, minimalising options on page.

To the right of the search box and logo you can also see the redesigned Home and Post options along with the notifications for friend requests, messages, notifications and a brilliant little “settings” tab. The reason I prefer this settings tab is that the first option you’re greeted with on clicking it, is to quickly switch between the identities of the Facebook pages you manage and your profile.

A good thing is having the “Post” button on the toolbar now so you can post anytime. I also have to say that this new toolbar looks eerily similar to Twitter’s toolbar.

I’ve uploaded more screenshots of the new Facebook below, feel free to check them out:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: Screensaver Fun – Google Trends Visualisation

I was researching trends today and stumbled across this cool little screensaver. It’s what is currently “Hot” on Google, or in layman’s terms, what phrases are getting searched a lot. The panels swipe from side to side and up and down with the text appearing to be typed on there, before being wiped and replaced by another hot phrase. See the interface below:

A static image doesn’t really do it justice as the effects really are quite nice. They’re sharp and clean and a great example of web design, loading dynamic content and displaying it in an attractive fashion. It work’s great if you have a large display in your office, like a TV or screen and beats a bog standard clock or motivational poster any day.

You can also choose how much or how little you see. In the top left hand corner is a little box that, when you hover over it, expands and you can choose to display any way you want as long as it’s within the maximum of the 5×5 grid.

You can also choose to view where the trends you’re looking at come from. Naturally I selected the UK but you can see what’s trending in the US, Russia, India, Hong Kong, many more and all at once if you so wish.

What do you do with spare screens around your office?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey.

Net66 SEO: George W Bush. Back to Ranking as a Miserable Failure (Google Bomb)

A Google Bomb has recently resurfaced prompting mild chuckles across offices up and down the country. In 2004 George W. Bush was Google Bombed and became the top ranked listing when you searched [miserable failure] on Google.

This works because Google has a lot to do with anchor text links and in 2004 the use of personal websites was high enough so that people could manipulate this. People opposed to George W. Bush started linking their websites to his with the anchor text of [miserable failure]. Google read all these links, looked at where they were pointing and decided to make that web page relevant for the search term. With the rule back then of the more people linking to something, the higher it ranks, Bush soon became the number one listing for [miserable failure].

Google eventually deemed enough was enough and decided to “fix” this Google Bomb by removing Bush from the search results. But now it seems he’s reappeared. See the screenshot below or Google it yourself:

With the rise of the Knowledge Graph – Google’s attempt to discern meaning from ambiguous searches – it seems poor old George has been once again placed in the category of miserable failures.

So will Google once again fix this issue? Or will they leave this one be?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: Google Confirming Panda Update Runs Monthly

A while back we told you that Google would now no longer be confirming Panda Update. But now we’ve heard from Google that Panda updates will now run on a month by month basis.

The interesting thing is that for the latest update, the gap between that one and the previous update will be closer to 6 weeks. That’s not the interesting part. Google have also stated that they’re working on the Panda Algorithm to “soften” the effect of it. They’re looking for more signals from websites that, although definitely affected, have only been affected to a degree. Webmasters who have no idea why they’ve been hit will sound off a sigh of relief as Matt Cutts has stated they’re looking for “Extra Signals” that help indicate the quality of a website.

Good news then if you’re in this grey area of sites affected marginally by the Panda Update.

So, when Google updates the Panda and releases it, it’s meant to take around 10 days for the algorithm to finish updated its results. Meaning, that if the Algorithm is rolled out on the 1st of July, it won’t finish updating itself until the 10th.

This could spark a whole new type of fluctuation in rankings for the first 10 days of every month. Are you one of the websites who might benefit from this Panda Flux?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: Google to help more with Bad Links

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Google often gets criticised by people on the webmaster forums for not giving enough information out when it hands our a Link Spam Penalty.

An example of the warning you get from these sites can be seen below:

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

As you can see, Google hardly gives you fair warning on what to look for with the only advice being to read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and ensure your website is within them. There are a lot of Guidelines Google has and this can be particularly baffling if you’ve been keeping within them to the best of your knowledge.

There was a raft of these warnings before the impending Penguin 2.0 update which certainly gave a lot of people and SEOs a sleepless night.

But today Google have made a promise to be more transparent with their warnings and include examples of the links that Google deems bad/inorganic/unnatural etc. The best thing is that Google say that the links won’t be generic sample links, but an actual link to your website that Google sees as unnatural.

What are your thoughts on this matter? Will this make it easier for Black Hat spammers to gain insight into what Google considers bad, or will it genuinely help Webmasters get better at their SEO?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 SEO: How to Simplify your Blogging Process

With the phrases “Content is King” still reverberating around the SEO sphere, blogging has taken centre stage in the push for fresh, relevant and most importantly of all, quality content. But with this extra focus on blogging, companies are at risk of piling too much pressure and expectation on their teams. Here’s some handy tips to help you with streamlining the SEO process.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

In business it can be too easily assumed the larger team has the better chance of producing better content. This can be the case if managed properly, but your blogging team needs to focus on content creation and not wasting time debating blog titles with their supervisors who might have different views on what needs to be targeted. I don’t quite agree with this and believe whilst guidance should be given to your content creators, highest quality content comes from creativity, which the team should be free to use. So if you do have a lot of supervisors managing your content creation team, ask them to ease up a little and allow more freedom in the role.

Endless Editing

Having an editor can be a great thing. Someone who can double check the content you’ve created after you’ve spent a lot of time staring at the lines of text on screen, after all two heads are better than one. The problem with this, is if you have a team of editors who all need to sign your blog off. Blog writing isn’t the same as writing content for web pages, it’s much more casual and is actually better when personality and individualism shines through. Web page content is what needs to be edited to the nth degree as this forms the corporate face of your website. The last thing you want as a blog writer is to have several editors all offering differing opinions on certain points you’ve made and pointing out grammatical errors in the most pedantic of ways. So make time just for someone to check over it, fix any glaringly obvious typos and publish it.

Manage Expectations

Content is subjective. You can’t escape that fact and especially with the personal nature of blogging, people can flat out refuse to like and share your content if they don’t like it. A quick 5 minute blog post about a new test you’ll be running soon could garner many more shares than an in depth look at a test you’ve previously ran and are now dissecting the results of. Reason being, the 5 minute preview of a test could spark peoples enthusiasm a lot more. You can’t expect every blog post to go viral and just because you spend more time on post, doesn’t mean it’s going to be better than any other posts. So be realistic, don’t apply any unnecessary pressure on your team and offer encouragement instead.

Have you had any experience with these issues before? Let us know in the comments below:

Blog Post by:Greg McVey

The Evolution Of Google

If you were asked to describe to someone what Google actually does you would probably describe a search engine that we all know to be the most popular and overall, the best.

Many others have tried to copy Google over the years, and many have failed along the way. There are more than we could possibly mention but the likes of Lycos, AOL, Snap, Magellan may jog your memory.

The Latest example would be Bing (rumoured to be Because It’s Not Google). Even though Bill Gates may never publicly use those exact words, he would loved to have started Google; or even have half their market share!

So, what Has Google got that nobody else has?

What Google posses as an organisation is an understanding of its user. Google sets itself out to provide the best possible user experience. Most of Google’s competitors are aspiring to be Google. This gives Google a huge advantage because while most of its competitors are second guessing their methods, they are busy developing new products and diversifying their products and services.

Google is rumoured to be on the verge of overtaking Apple in the number of application downloads. That is now small feat as Apple has dominated that marketplace and has a very big and very loyal following.

As well as Google Play App Store we are seeing many more weird & wonderful developments from Google, not least the very controversial Google Glass.

So, do Google have competitors? You could probably make a case for both sides in all honesty because Google is so diverse in 2013 it really is hard to liken a company with the same ambition for development as Google.

The financial Times recently claimed Googles closest comparison would have been with General Electricity in the 19^th Century as there domination was multifaceted and at a time where there was an age of electrification. You could argue that the age of computerisation was pretty much initiated by Microsoft, but are they in the same ball park as Google, I, and many others would think not!

The conclusion we can draw from this is Google are not to be underestimated. OK, so there is Google+, that has not yet covered Google in glory but how many times have you thought “that’ll never work” Exactly!

Is it feasible that in years to come we could all be walking around wearing Google Glasses and using the internet remotely via pair of Glasses! If Google think there is a chance we could then there is!

The great thing for us is we get to work with Google’s diverse product range on a daily basis and much like many clever will tell you:

“The more you learn, the less you know!”

Which could quite easily be the motto of Net66 because our team have a thirst for knowledge and a passion for new technologies and strategies. But are realistic enough to admit there is a lot we have to improve on.