How Much Blether does Google want to read ?

Before I go any further, I want to say what a great job Google Search Engine is doing in difficult circumstances

Judging by the amount of emails I get from our SEO colleagues in the far east, and thinking about the UK SEO community, worldwide there must be hundreds of thousands of SEO’ers spending millions of hours trying to promote various websites for various phrases.

Has Google crumbled, not a bit of it. But what they have done is fall into a trap of unintended consequences ( in my humble opinion)

Quite rightly, the boffins at Google HQ are always trying to be one or two steps ahead of us SEO workers, and that is how it should be, but I think the last Penguin update wilhave a curious effect.

I can imagine the guys at Google HQ having brilliant idea.
“Lets favour those sites that generate a bit of interest, those sites that start of slowly, and because real people like them, they get visitors and comments and blog posts and links from multiple social media accounts”
What could possibly go wrong?

On the face of it, it is probably what we all would have done

SEO practitioners worldwide, out number Google by at least 1 million to one, (maybe more) and nearly all of those have now created at least one blog, 3 social media accounts and submitted paragraphs of text to another 5 directory s for each of their many clients, and are now adding keyword rich relevant content to all of those accounts on a regular basis.

Multiply that by the number of clients we all have, and the numbers of erroneous and completely made up articles that are being published every week and the amount of words to be read by the ever vigilant googlebot can only be measured in light year numbers

It is a common “well known fact” that there is now more data being stored right now, than the whole of the human race has amassed in in our entire chequered history.
Most of this data is probably backups of backups, multiple photos of drunk friends on Social Media sites and stored emails that were never read in the first place.

Now this data mountain will added to by millions and millions of articles. Written daily by SEO bods around the world, all trying to emulate the gradual organic growth of genuinely interesting sites on websites about “left handed widgets” and the like
There is a need for “left handed widgets” and there is a need, as and when we need them, for all of us to be able to find them. I think that task will now become harder and harder for search engines as the “needle in a haystack” effect gets more intense

Google has now got to read all of these and try and make sense of them all, so good luck to them, and although it will not happen anytime soon, they are going to have to find an easier way of doing things.

Being an old codger myself, I think we should go back to the simple times when “meta tags” were king

Neil McVey

How to choose an SEO reliable and cost effective practitioner

SEO is one of those things that all websites need, and that a lot of website owners do not fully understand the complexities of, and where there are an awful lot of company who are selling “SEO” and providing a poor and sometimes non existent service.

There are a many many companies doing an absolutely great service and are being tarnished by the bad practice ehics from the Black Hat SEO companies.

So if I run a website, and I am not an SEO Technician, how can tell the good stuff from the bad stuff ?

First of all remember that old phrase that all consumer programs and magazines keep repeating, “If it seems to good to be true, it is to good to be true”

A reputable SEO company will be honest and up front that it cannot guarantee that it can make Google do anything.
Google is a massive and hugely clever organisation, so no matter how insistent anyone may be, they cannot make a call to Google HQ and say “Put this website on page 1 for this phrase”

Good companies will ask more questions than give you the hard sell.
What is it you want to achieve, what are your products, what is your market, what is your budget, what is your area for expansion.
Unless an SEO company can get a handle on your business and ambitions for your website, it cannot tailor the service to the best results

Talk to your chosen company, you will get an idea of are they just trying to “Close an order” or are they genuinely trying to help you

Call me biased and prejudiced, but I would recommend Net66, we are an SEO company based in Manchester City Centre, and I here you thinking “He would say that wouldn’t he”

We want to understand how your business and your website work together
How your customers come to your website
What they are looking for and why they should buy your product or service rather than your competitors

then we can give you the Biggest Bang for your Buck
Ring us on 0161 820 5471

Neil McVey

Net66 SEO: The Best Web Design Tips for SEO

Website Navigation

Navigation is one of the most important factors that needs to be considered when building a new website. Your menu bar opens the whole of your website up to your visitors so needs to be as clear, concise and easy to use as it can be. When Designing your menu bar you need to make sure that it is both search-engine and user friendly. This way the structure of your menu will help boost your rankings, and when visitors arrive on your website, your menu can make your user’s visit a pleasant experience. The user will be richer for the experience and be more likely to visit you again to purchase an item or service.

URLs

Your root domain and all subsequent pages are highly important to your website’s performance in the Search Engines as well as User experience. For example, which URL would you be more likely to click on:

https://netsixtysix.co.uk/internet-marketing/ or https://netsixtysix.co.uk/?pageid=188 ??

You’d click on the link you understand, of course you would. Page Id 188 holds no meaning for you so you may not wish to click it as it could be misleading.

Images

Images do matter in SEO and humans need to be swayed by good looking images. Here are the main points in optimising images:

Alt Tag everything. Traditional spiders have eight eyes, Google’s spider has none. So you need to describe your images to Google otherwise it wont know what it’s looking at or even if it’s relevant to your site or keywords.
Optimise for speed. Everyone do loves quality these days but having a 300 dpi images thousands of pixels wide on your site is going to take a long time to load. Users get bored easily these days so a quicker load time = more engagement. Google know’s this and is likely to give you a boost if you have a quicker site.

Follow these tips and you should have a great website to work with from the off of your SEO Campaign.

Greg McVey

Hats off to Google

Firstly , lets say “Hats off to Google “ They have to be one of the cleverest companies in the world. Look at what they have achieved,

Google the Search Engine is a huge , no huge does not even come close, humongeous is nearer the mark, achievement.
The statistics are astounding, billions of web pages read, inspected, indexed and sorted every month

Google Earth
They have a picture of my house, my street, my neibourhood and I can “virtually” drve up and down my street and go around town. I can visit Buckinham Palace, The Sidney Opera House, The Whitehouse, and more amazeingly if I were to put and address of almost anywhere in the world I could visit there. Millions if not billions of images all linked seamlessly together

Google Books
They are in the process of copying and putting online all the books in the world, yes ALL the books in the world. From Ancient manuscripts that may have been written when at the time the Pyramids were built, to todays bestsellers and all of the books that have ever been published

You Tube, Google Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and there achievments go on and on.

So if you have got a website, and want to try and hoodwink Google into listing it above where it merits, you will have to , as my Grannie used to say, ‘Have to get up very early in the morning’

So if you have a website, and want potential customers to find your website and become real life customers, give us a call at www.net66.co.uk

Blog Post by Neil McVey

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