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You Can’t Outrun a Google Penalty By Changing URLs

There is no escaping a Google penalty without following the rules and doing the hard work to clear your name. It is old news that if you have suffered a penalty on your site and you moveto a new domain and redirect the URLs to that new domain, the penalty stays around thanks to the redirects.

However, some SEO’s may attempt to escape the penalty by moving their site to a new domain without redirecting the URLs. That way, theoretically Google can’t follow you and put the penalty on your moved site too. Unfortunately, Google’s John Mueller has quashed the notion pretty thoroughly.

In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout, Mueller explained that even if you move the site and don’t redirect, Google may still find you and apply the penalty again. Roughly 23 minutes into the video below, John answers Barry Schwartz’s question on the topic by explaining that if you just copy and paste the pages onto a new site without many changes, Google may still be able to pick up on the site move. Even if you do not set up 301 redirects or use the change address tool in Google Webmaster Tools, Google could potentially still know you moved domains and pass along the penalty.

John does explicitly explain in the video that Google doesn’t rely on their signals alone to pass along the penalty. But, if they receive signs that you are trying to hide the same site elsewhere under a new URL without fixing the core issues with your site, they will investigate and likely apply the penalty.

In the end, you will have to do the hard work you are avoiding to ever get rid of the penalty completely. It may sometimes be better to completely tear down a site and start from scratch to fix the issues that earned you the penalty to begin with, but you can’t just run away from it forever.

You can view the video below or here.

February 27, 2014/0 Comments

Bing Adds New Timeline Feature For Half a Million Celebrities

General, Marketing, News, SEO

Bing is quickly expanding their new timeline feature for celebrities and historical figures. Just a few weeks after premiering the feature for athletes participating in the Sochi Olympics, Bing has added the feature to searches for about half a million famous people.

If you haven’t seen the timeline feature, it is similar to Google’s Knowledge Graph, as both highlight important information on figures in a concise column. For example, the column includes standard information such as height, spouse, children, and parents. But, with the timeline feature, Bing also includes a chronological list of important events or dates in the life of the figure you searched for.

The timeline includes footnotes for all the major events, as well as listing the year they occurred. But, don’t expect to get those results for every celebrity. Bing says that in some cases where “you would be more interested in another type of information” about the celebrity, the timeline information won’t be shown in favor of more relevant data.

Search Engine Watch points out that this is most true for actors and singers. When you search for Prince, you won’t be shown a timeline. Instead, you will be shown information about his most popular sings, albums, and even romantic interests.

If you use Bing and haven’t run into one of these timelines yet, just keep searching for celebrities or historically important people. Bing has made it clear the half a million celebrities with timeline featured are just the start of an even more robust search result system.

The biggest question this raises is whether the timeline will always be exclusive to celebrities, or whether Bing’s relationship with Klout may indicate an intention to expand their Klout-verified snapshots with features similar to timeline. Would you want searchers to be able to automatically see a timeline for you in a search engine?

February 26, 2014/0 Comments

Does Grammar Hurt Your Rankings? Revisited

Blog, Google, Marketing, News, SEO

Pretty much anything Google’s most popular engineer Matt Cutts says makes headlines in the SEO community, but often his Webmaster Chat videos and advice aren’t mind-blowing by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, we recently covered a video where Cutts explained that bad grammar in the comment section most likely won’t hurt your ranking (unless you allow spam to run rampant).

For content creators, it was a legitimate concern that poorly written contents might negate the hard work putting into writing legible and well-constructed content. However, many used this to run headlines that Google doesn’t care about grammar, which is not even close to being confirmed.

As Search Engine Land points out, way back in 2011, Cutts publicly stated that there is a correlation between spelling and PageRank, but Google does not use grammar as a “direct signal.” But, in his latest statement on the issue Cutts specifies that you don’t need to worry about the grammar in your comments “as long as the grammar on your own page is fine.” This suggests Google does in fact care about the level of writing you are publishing.

It is unclear exactly where the line is for Google at the moment, as they imply that grammar within your content does matter, but they have never stated it is a ranking signal. Chances are a typo or two won’t hurt you, but it is likely Google may punish pages with rampant errors and legibility issues.

On the other hand, Bing has recently made it pretty clear that they do care about technical quality in content as part of their ranking factors. Duane Forrester shared a blog post on the Bing Webmaster Blog which states, “just as you’re judging others’ writing, so the engines judge yours.”

Duane continues, “if you [as a human] struggle to get past typos, why would an engine show a page of content with errors higher in the rankings when other pages of error free content exist to serve the searcher?”

In the end, it all comes down to search engines trying to provide the best quality content they can. The search engines don’t want to direct users to content that will be hard to make sense of, and technical errors can severely impact a well thought-out argument.

As always, the best way to approach the issue is to simply write content for your readers. If your content can communicate clearly to your audience, the search engines shouldn’t have any problems with it. But, if a real person has trouble understanding you, the search engines aren’t going to do you any favors.

February 21, 2014/0 Comments

Bing Warns Against Keyword Stuffing in Their Webmaster Guidelines

News, SEO

Google isn’t the only search engine waging a war on black hat or manipulative SEO. Every major search engine has been adapting their services to fight against those trying to cheat their way to the top of the rankings. This week, Bing made their latest move against devious optimizers by amending their Webmaster Guidelines to include a stern warning against using keyword stuffing to try to rank highly.

The warning cuts the cheating SEOs no slack, cautioning that Bing may demote or entirely delist sites caught using keyword stuffing. The change wasn’t officially announced, but Barry Schwartz says it appeared in the guidelines sometimes yesterday.

The new section on keyword stuffing reads:

When creating content, make sure to create your content for real users and readers, not to entice search engines to rank your content better. Stuffing your content with specific keywords with the sole intent of artificially inflating the probability of ranking for specific search terms is in violation of our guidelines and can lead to demotion or even the delisting of your website from our search results.

February 20, 2014/0 Comments

Can Bad Grammar In The Comments Section Hurt Your Rankings? Matt Cutts Says No

Google, News, SEO

Internet commenters aren’t quite known for their excellent grammar or insightful conversation. While there are plenty who contribute and expand on content with helpful information in the comments, there are also more than a few who struggle with language or actively try to troll other users with garbled borderline nonsense.

For most users, these types of commenters are a simple annoyance at most. But, for those who spend long hours crafting grammatically correct and easily-readable content, the less readable comments can cause some worry. While quality content is most important for users, content creators also aim for high legibility because it can affect rankings.

It is no secret that nonsensical or poorly written content doesn’t tend to perform well on search engines, but what about those comments that aren’t so carefully put together? Can comments with bad grammar or readability hurt your content’s rankings? According to Matt Cutts, Google’s most popular spokesperson, the answer is not really.

“I wouldn’t worry about the grammar in your comments. As long as the grammar on your own page is fine … there are people on the Internet and they write things and it doesn’t always make sense,” Cutts said in a recent Webmaster Chat video. “You can see nonsense comments on YouTube and other large properties and that doesn’t mean that YouTube video will be able to rank.”

The primary exception to this rule is spam comments. While nonsense comments or poorly written comments aren’t much of a problem for you, spam comments should still be removed to protect your SEO and generally improve user experience and site quality.

“Just make sure that your own content is high-quality. You might want to make sure that people aren’t leaving spam comments, if you’ve got a bot, then they might leave bad grammar,” Cutts said. “But if it’s a real person and they are leaving a comment and the grammar is not slightly perfect, that usually reflects more on them than it does on your sites, so I wouldn’t stress out about that.”

So breathe easy content creators of the internet; so long as you keep putting effort into making great content, you should be safe from any trouble with Google.

February 17, 2014/0 Comments

Google Gives Music Videos More Prominence On the Results Page

General, Google, News, SEO, Video, YouTube

Looking for your favorite music video? Since MTV hasn’t shown music videos for the past 20 years, you will probably turn to Google. Now, Google is making it easier to find the videos your searching for by giving more prominence to the top playable music video result. So, if you’re searching for “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk, it will be hard to miss the official version of the video at the top of the page.

The thumbnail images for the videos look like they would be playable on the page, but in actuality they link back to the page for the video. It’s possible they play icon on the image might hint towards future usability for YouTube videos, or it might just be a little misleading.

Of course, the tool isn’t perfect, and you shouldn’t expect to get the “official” video or a video from the artist’s official account every time. For example, Search Engine Watch highlights a case where searching for “Let Me Ride” by Dr. Dre doesn’t pull up a video from the DrDreVEVO account, because that video hasn’t been uploaded to the official account.

Similarly, searching for “I Need a Doctor” by Dr. Dre doesn’t trigger the new large YouTube thumbnails, even though there is an official video uploaded to the account.

“This was already available in September 2013 when you searched for an artist and then clicked on a song – you’d see a preview of the music video if it was available to display,” said a Google spokesperson. “Yesterday we made it easier to get to – you can now just search for a song directly and see the video screenshot right away.”

It is notable that the huge thumbnail appears to be exclusive to YouTube. When Google pulls from other sources like Dailymotion, it shows the smaller thumbnail and link layout. For example, the video for “Simply Beautiful” by Queen Latifah looks like this:

February 10, 2014/0 Comments

Bing Says Seattle Seahawks Beat Denver Broncos 33-17

cool, General, News, SEO

No one is calling a clear winner for the Big Game Sunday Night. As numerous sports analysts have pointed out, it is rare that both of the best teams from the past season actually make it to the Super Bowl, but this year the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos match-up should make for a truly exciting game.

While the game will likely be close, Bing says the Seahawks have already been dominating the Broncos online. Bing examined U.S. search volume for both NFL teams, and the Seattle team has taken the lead in 33 states.

Obviously, the Seattle Seahawks absolutely dominated searches from The Evergreen State (95 percent), but they also have a clear lead in Oregon (82 percent), Idaho (79 percent), Alaska (78 percent), Hawaii (73 percent), and California (64 percent).

Of the 17 states where the Broncos held the most search volume, they had a less significant lead. Their home state of Colorado had the most significant difference with 85 percent of searches, while neighboring Wyoming had (77 percent). South Dakota and Indiana brought up the lead with 66 and 64 percent respectively.

In total, Bing users searched for the Seahawks 26 percent more often than the Broncos.
Of course, outside factors could explain the differences in search volume.

As Search Engine Watch points out, searches for the Seahawks spiked across the nation immediately following Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman’s infamous post-game interview. The controversy and excitement surrounding the over-the-top interview made the Seahawks’ search volume jump over 80 percent.

http://youtu.be/PPD_Lgq7IyI

The Broncos have had their own moment of viral fame, with tons of clips compiling Peyton Manning yelling “Omaha”, but the larger focus after the Championship games two weeks ago was easily favoring Sherman. Without his spectacular outburst, search volume would likely have been more even across the country.

http://youtu.be/hBqwWe0S8jw

What are you thoughts? Who are you favoring in Super Bowl 48?

January 31, 2014/0 Comments

5 Recent Google Search Changes That Have Slipped Under The Radar

General, Google, News, SEO

With Google’s constant updates, it is easy to miss some of the new features they roll out with less publicity than their biggest products receive. However, even the smaller revisions to Google Search make a huge affect on how we search and use the internet in general. Jessica Lee recently rounded up some of the less talked about changes Google has been making so you can be sure you haven’t missed anything lately.

1) Date Selector in Hotel Carousel Search Results

The Carousel results box at the top of localized searches for hotels and restaurants has only been around for a few months now, and Google is already making regular updates to the function. While most of the work has gone into normalizing what queries get carousel results.

But, they’ve also implemented some new, interesting features such as a date selector for hotel searches. Now, you can easily weed out hotels that aren’t available on the days you will need lodging.

In a statement to Search Engine Land, Google said:

We’re always adding features to search to help people find what they need and get things done faster — you can now more easily research hotels when planning a trip and filter by user ratings and hotel class, as well as select specific dates.

2) Cards for Local Results

“Answer Cards” have slowly been spreading across Google’s platform for a while, but they were largely reserved for specific questions or brands. You needed a specific and targeted search to wind up with the convenient card at the top of the search results. But, lately the cards have begun to deliver more detailed answers such as the address of a nearby retailer. Mike Blumenthal highlighted the change with an example of searching for a brand name + location (Dress Barn locations Amherst):

But, queries with multiple results still get the traditional pack results:

3) Answers to Complex Questions

The answer cards have also gotten better at providing answers for trickier questions in general. The people running the Google Operating System spent a good amount of time trying to stump Google’s answer feature, but they’ve found the task has gotten much harder as the feature has been improved.

In their words:

Google used to only answer simple questions like “who’s the prime minister of Canada?” or “what’s the population of China?” Thanks to the Knowledge Graph project, Google can answer more complicated questions like “who played Batman?”, “what’s the latest album of Celine Dion?”, “what are the main attractions in Spain?”.

To test this out, one of the authors asked Google a question without a definitive answer: what is the “distance to Mars”.

Google can even tell you why the sky is blue.

4) Distance Results

Google is able to tell the distance from most locations other than planets. In fact, Google announced on Google+ that users can now get the distance from any two locations on earth, no matter how far apart they are. The example Google offered was the “distance between Siberia and Hawaii.”

5) Streamlined Search Options

The Google Operating System blog explained how they have updated search options to be more responsive to your individual search query:

Google removed a few specialized search options that were usually displayed in the “more” drop-down: recipes, patents, discussions, blogs, places. The list of links to services like Maps, Images, News, Flights, Shopping is reordered based on your query. This isn’t a new idea, it was implemented a long time ago by Google, but now it’s used more often.

January 31, 2014/0 Comments

How Does Modern Web Design Affect SEO?

News, SEO, Web Design

Keeping your website design fresh and modern is an important part of your brand, but it is also essential for SEO success. Search engines tend to favor sites which are regularly refining their site to offer new features and better user experience, as Matt Cutts recently confirmed in one of his Webmaster Chat videos.

But, there is a lot to consider before redesigning or modifying your website. A good website should be able to feel modern for at least a couple of years before needing another serious overhaul, and you are investing considerable resources into having the site designed in a way that communicates your brand well while keeping up with modern design styles.

There are also several factors behind the scenes you need to consider. Great usability and style are important, but several modern design practices seemingly go against some of the biggest search engines suggested practices. If you aren’t careful, you may do some damage to your SEO while trying to improve your site.

Kannav Chaudhary recently broke down how some of the most popular web design practices of the moment can affect your SEO. Usability and keeping your brand modern are important, but finding the right style for your brand also means choosing the paradigm which won’t hurt your other efforts.

Parallax Design

Parallax design recently became popular with web designers for it’s unique way of restructuring a site in a visually exciting way. You build your entire website onto one page, but with responsive scrolling which delivers the content in impressive style. Sites with parallax design are incredibly easy for most users to navigate, as they simply have to scroll through the page, but it raises some issues with optimization.

Simply put, most modern SEO practices rely on creating a lot of content over numerous pages so increase the impact of keywords. You show off your skill and reputation through your content, while showing search engines you are relevant for these keywords. When all of your content is on one page, it can dilute the impact of those keywords, and Google can be unsure about how to view your site.

The key is really understanding when to use parallax design. It is great for product or contest pages, because there isn’t much content on those types of sites in the first place. Parallax design can showcase a product and rank for a few key phrases, but it will struggle with presenting a full website to the search engines.

Infinite Scrolling

If you are pumping out a lot of content on a regular basis, but want it to be easily available from a single page, infinite scrolling can be the perfect solution Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter popularized the design practice, but it can be found all over the web these days, especially on blogs.

If you use the wrong method of implementation for infinite scrolling, you may run into some SEO issues, but the current practices avoid the lion’s share of drawbacks. Most web designers use frameworks such as Backbone or Bootstrap with crawlable AJAX so you can present your information on one page, while avoiding the problems of parallax design. Best of all, it loads quickly, so everyone will be happy.

Fixed Width Navigation

Navigation will always be an important part of web design, and lately many designers have been using fixed width navigation to keep their menus in place while users move down the page. This way, you can always jump to another part of the site you want to find, even when you’re at the bottom of an article.

Thankfully, this design practice has very little effect on SEO. Your content will still be spread over plenty of pages, but you’ll want to make sure your navigation widget is indexable so that Google can also explore your site.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, you’ll always want to fully understand the new design trends before implementing them for your brand. Most of the time their SEO drawbacks can be mitigated with careful practice, but occasionally you will find one that just isn’t right for your site. As long as you keep user experience as the highest priority, you’ll be able to manage any of the SEO problems that pop up along the way.

January 28, 2014/0 Comments

Matt Cutts Says Social Media Signals Don’t Affect Your Ranking

Facebook, News, SEO, Social Media Marketing

As social media has grown there has been a consistent debate as to whether Google considered social signals when ranking websites. There have been several studies suggesting a correlation between strong social media presences and high rankings on the search engine, but there are many reasons they could be related. Well, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, may have finally put the question to rest with his recent Webmaster Chat video.

According to Cutts, Google doesn’t give any special treatment to websites based on social information. In fact, sites like Facebook and Twitter are treated the same as any other website. The search engine doesn’t do anything special such as indexing the number of likes or shares a page has.

Cutts explains that Google did at one point attempt to index social information. Barry Schwartz suggests Matt is referring to Google’s real time search deal expiring with Twitter. There was a lot of effort and engineering put into the deal before it was completely blocked and nothing useful came to fruition. Simply put, Google doesn’t want to invest more time and money into it only to be blocked again.

Google is also worried about crawling identity information only to have that information change long before Google is able to update it again. Social media pages can be incredibly active and they may not be able to keep up with the information. Outdated information can be harmful to people and user experience.

But, you shouldn’t count social media out of your SEO plan just because it isn’t directly included in ranking signals. Online marketers have known about the other numerous benefits of social media for a long time, and it is still a powerful you can use to boost your online presence and visibility.

A strong social media presence opens up many channels of engagement with your audience that can make or break your reputation. It can also drive huge amounts of traffic directly to your site and your content. By reaching out and interacting with your audience, you make people trust and value your brand, while also encouraging them to explore your site and the content you offer. Google notices all this traffic and activity on your site and rewards you for it as well.

You can see the video below:

January 23, 2014/0 Comments