Category: News

If you’re having trouble with your Google Authorship, you can see Net66’s how-to on adding Google authorship to you page. You can also use this handy infographic from Search Engine Land:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

As with most things concerning Google, no matter how good it’s service is, there are always some bugs and people who notice them. One thing however that doesn’t seem to be a bug, but Google still gets criticised for, is it’s auto complete feature.

It’s been getting a lot of criticism at high levels with even the UN running a campaign for women’s rights using the feature. The reason Google has been used is not only down to the fact that it’s the biggest search engine out there. But more to do with the fact that Google aggregates data to come up with its instant suggestions.

Here’s the advert that is causing so much of a stir:

So how have these results come about? Google stores every single search made on their search engine. They measure the words used and the position in the sentence used. They then count the words, they count the sentences, then they will count the first two words used, then the first second and third words used and so on and so forth.

Then they’ll begin to examine how many times each word positioned second, is used after the first word in the sentence. Then after word one, in our example “women”, the word “shouldn’t” will then be suggested.

Now the complaints being levied are two fold on this account. People are blaming Google for suggesting such things as “Women shouldn’t vote”, but at the same time, it’s us users who are making those searches. An argument also exists that Google is in effect finishing our sentences, and people who wouldn’t usually search for something like that, will indeed search for it as they have their curiosity aroused.

Do you think Google should be doing more about this? Or so you think that it’s down to users to change this?

Not long ago the internet was alive with Google’s Authorship Program believing that it could revolutionise the already revolutionary exponential growth of Content Marketing.

The argument was that there was going to be an “Authorship rank”. And that this would be directly related to how often each author wrote, how many websites they wrote on and of course, relevant to how much quality was in the content.

These three factors would then be combined to give a rough estimate of the Rank of an Author. So if you have an author write a blog post on your website who is associated with only one other website and whilst they do write consistently, the quality isn’t great and it doesn’t get that much traffic, this might not be a big bonus to your website.

However if you get quite a few different authors who all publish great content on a couple of popular sites in your industry, and you get them to write for you, their Author Rank will pass onto your site, boosting your SEO.

Sadly, no one knows if this is the case or not. And now it looks like all that speculation was for naught. Google Authorship is set to be changing as we know it. The main reason for this seems to be participation, or rather, the lack of it. Not enough top quality authors are in the Authorship programme so to use authorship and author rank as ranking indicators could cause some pretty large and well known blogs to lose rankings because of it.

The good news however, is that Authorship markup still increases click through rates from the SERPs and the markup is here to stay. So if you STILL haven’t added Google Authorship to your blog, you need to.

Blog Post by Greg McVey

You may have heard the news doing the circuit on the SEO blogs that Google Analytics will no longer be providing keyword data. That is, of course, unless you’re willing to forego all your previous SEO work and switch to Paid Adverts a la Google Adwords. Failing that if you have a spare £90,000 per year lying around, you could easily afford Google Analytics Premium. Where “user privacy” – the reason Google are switching to (not provided) keywords – appears to be easily bought.

But we’re not here to gripe about who appears to be taking advantage of a monopoly position, we’re here to discuss what can be done to regain some useful data back from Google. See our top tips below:

Take Advantage of your Landing Pages

As we all know, one of the main keys in SEO is relevance. You want to optimise a specific page for each individual keyword. So now that you’ve done that, you’ll be able to look at which pages are the most relevant for each keyword. Through Google Analytics (It is still quite useful after all) if you navigate to Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages. This shows you a a list of your most popular landing pages and also just exactly how many hits you’re getting directly to them. Adding an advanced search to this will also help you narrow it down. If you add the secondary dimension as source and then search this for “Google”, it will show only the Google traffic to your landing pages.

Analysing the statistics from this section you’ll be able to discern which pages are performing better than others. For example our SEO services has more hits to it this month than our website design page. So from that it’s indicative we’re getting found more for SEO related keywords than web design keyword. Apply the same principle to your own clients’ analytics and you’ll be able to privide them with more accurate data.

Using Google Webmasters Tools

Google also offer a range of Webmasters Tools which help you produce a website worth of Google’s listings. In this set of tools you’ll find such things as the links Google have discovered to your site, which can prove an excellent link analysis tool. Especially when you consider that if you are ever to receive a link warning from them, they almost always refer to the links contained within webmaster.

But what we’re after here is the “keywords” section of Google Webmasters Tools. You can access it by clicking Search Engine > Search Queries. This will provide you with a list of your most popular queries and how many impressions you’ve made. You’ll also be able to see just how many clicks you’re getting from your impressions as well. This will give you some great data such as which pages appear for that search term the most as well as their average ranking positions in the search engines.

So although we might not be getting the best and most accurate data from Google Analytics anymore, there’s no need to panic massively as there’s still a lot you can do. Such as the above tips.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Oscar Wilde once said “Everything in Moderation is the key, including moderation”. Matt Cutts is no Oscar Wilde but he has come out with his own views on what should be carried out in moderation this week, which is Guest Blogging.

The reason for this is that he was asked how Google can distinguish between genuine guest blogs and paid links. And he went on to explain pretty much how the distinctions are made. Firstly, if there is a spam review, then a member of the webspam team will take a look at it. And as they’re a human they’ll be able to judge it correctly.

Anchor Text. A good indicator of a paid link is keyword rich anchor text. It might seem obvious now but people are still paying for keyword rich anchor text, especially if it’s a dofollow. If you’re writing a genuine guest post then you aren’t doing it for the anchor text, you’re writing it as you’re an expert on the subject and have a genuine passion for it. Due to this you’re much more likely to make links contextual.

Relevance. Identifying a genuine guest blog post is also helped by how relevant the post is to the rest of the website. If you’re a website looking for a guest post, you’re likely looking for an expert relevant in your industry. If you’re simply paying to get a blog post on that site, then in theory you’re only looking for the links you’ll be adding to your post and won’t care much about relevance. Indicating paid links.

Authorship. As a content writer you take pride in your work and want to receive the kudos, well deserved of course, that your writing inspires. As such, you’ll be wanting to write a bit about yourself at the end of any guest posts you do. You’ll probably also include a Google+ link and a link to your personal blog. If you were doing this for the links, a jot would not be given as long as the submitted article contained keyword rich anchor text. Again, indicative of paid links over genuine guest post.

So if you’re approached to write a guest post, keep this tips in mind when you’re writing. Otherwise you might get on the wrong end of Googles paid link detector. You an see Matt Cutts answer in full on the webmaster video below:

Blog Post by Greg McVey

On Friday Google confirmed, via their perennial knight of webspam Matt Cutts, that they have released a new version of their Penguin Update. This update runs in tandem with Google’s new algorithm, Hummingbird, with their other significant update, Panda, also being integrated into the algorithm.

Now there is something to be cleared up here with a lot of people referring to Penguin 5, whilst others refer to it as Penguin 2.1. The reason being is that Google have released 5 Penguin updates, however, the fourth update was deemed too different from the third. So, Google decided to name it Penguin 2.0 as it was a pretty revolutionary and new update that was a cut above the previous Penguins.

But now we have Penguin 2.1. So what does this entail? Well the official release didn’t really give two much away. It was confirmed by Matt on his Twitter page with the tweet reading that Google have released the update and that it will affect around 1% of search queries. See the Tweet below:

Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. More info on Penguin: http://t.co/4YSh4sfZQj

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 4, 2013

The thing to notice here is the text “to a noticeable degree”. With Hummingbirds release it affected around 90% of searches on Google. But with that, the SEO industry only noted a slight change here or there and there were no mass scale fallouts of rankings for people. But this time, with the 1% being to a noticeable degree, that’s more likely to mean that there will be a higher degree of page one listings changing. Much more likely to draw attention from the SEO industry.

Penguin 2.1 does seem to have hit a lot of sites that have so far seemed to escape punishment by Google. After all, that’s the point of Penguin 2.1, to root out websites that are manipulating the search algorithm, specifically though bad link building practices.

It seems to have taken hold already with a lot of fluctuations in traffic and rankings being noted throughout the SEO industry, especially on the Webmaster World forums. Have you noticed any ups or downs in your traffic or rankings?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

There have been a lot of big updates form Google recently. Not least of which is the completely new algorithm they’ve introduced called Hummingbird. This Algorithm pays closer attention to sentences as a whole rather than noting which keywords are used and bringing up relevant results for them. This helps Google answer questions better when asked.

Another big update is the integration of two of Google’s most advanced search features. Their personalised search service Google Now and the Knowledge Graph. Personally I love Google Now, it practically second guesses me. I pull out my phone wondering when my next meeting is, and it’s first on the display of “Cards”.

But now Google are making this and even bigger feature as you can get Updates from people who have the Knowledge Graph Card. I.e. when you search for someone on Google and it brings up a little bio on the right hand side of the page, that’s the knowledge graph guessing at what you want and bringing up a snapshot of the information you’re after.

But if you’re running a search on a device with Google Now on it, then you get something extra. You get a little “Keep Me Updated” box that you can tick. So say you’re looking up Matt Cutts on a device that you have Google Now on, then you can tick a box to make sure next time he updates his blog, you’re notified. Perfect for the SEO on the go. See the below image:

So, do you use Google Now? Who have you signed up with?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Image Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable