Tag Archive for: SEO

Webmasters and SEOs Receive Widespread Extortion Email, Should You Be Worried?

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ransomLast week, many webmasters and SEO’s received a scare in the form of extortion emails from a supposed SEO threatening to plague a site with negative SEO if they do not pay a ransom of$1,500.

It seems the emails concerned even the most prominent members of the SEO community such as Dan Petrovic and Steve Webb. Even more interesting, despite assurances from Google that they would investigate the threats, a fair portion of the community appears to be at least moderately troubled by the threats. This gives an indication of just how easy people perceive negative SEO to be.

The email cuts straight to the point opening with, “This is an extortion email.” It then goes on to explain exactly how the individual(s) will enact specific tactics which can hurt a site’s performance in Google and potentially cause a site to be deindexed by the search engine.

The full text of the emails is as follows:

Hello,

Read this email very carefully.

This is an extortion email.

We will do NEGATIVE SEO to your website by giving it 20,000 XRumer forum profile backlinks (permanent & mostly dofollow) pointing directly to your website and hence your website will get penalised & knocked off the Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) forever, if you do not pay us $1,500.00 (payable by Western Union).

This is no false claim or a hoax, download the following Notepad file containing 20,000 XRumer forum profile backlinks pointing to http://www.negativeseo.cn.pn/ (this is our website and go and see on this website, you will find our email address [email protected] from which this email right now is being sent to you) :

http://www.mediafire.com/download/eizjwnpq2rsrncu/20000-XRumer-Forum-Profile-Backlinks-Dofollow.txt

Just reply to this email to let us know if you will pay just $1,500.00 or not for us to refrain or not from ruining your precious website & business permanently. Also if you ignore this email and do not reply to this email within the next 24-48 hours, then we will go ahead and build 20,000 XRumer forum profile backlinks pointing directly to your website.

We are awaiting your wise decision.

RS

Thankfully, it appears the entire situation has been nothing more than empty threats. Despite several credible SEO figures reporting the extortion emails, no one has reported paying the extortion amount and there are no signs that negative SEO is being put into action against these sites.

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How Did The Experts Get Their Best Backlinks?

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Now that we’ve all hopefully gotten over the “links are dead” hysteria, SEOs and webmasters are beginning to worry about their backlink profiles again. In the past it was easy. You could buy links or make enact one of the many now-banned tactics to try to artificially inflate your backlink profile and it seemed like no one was the wiser.

Of course things have changed quite drastically, as you should know by now. Backlinks need to be earned, and they need to be quality. As many analysts will tell you, building backlinks these days is more about relationship building than it is about farming as many links as possible. But how are you supposed to earn these prized high quality links?

SEOChat asked a long list of SEO experts where their most valuable links came from, and each gives an example of how you can earn links yourself by simply providing a service to your users and important figures related to your industry.

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Everything You Want to Know About Google Analytics After The iOS App Release

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iOS MobileA few weeks ago Google finally got around to releasing the iOS version of Google Analytics. The app had been available for Android for quite some time, but the release to iOS makes website data available to webmasters at any time and it is fair to assume some business owners and webmasters may be trying to use Google Analytics for their first time.

While Analytics is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools for analyzing your website and how others are accessing it, it can also be a bit overwhelming for those who aren’t familiar with the layout and aren’t well versed in the terminology.

To help familiarize new and inexperienced webmasters with Google Analytics, Emma Barnes, who offers training on Google Analytics from Branded3, reviewed many of the most common questions she receieves and the terminology you can expect to run into when using Analytics.

Once those questions are out of the way, you may find yourself tasked with another question: “just what am I supposed to do with all this information?” For that, you may want to browse the recent article titled “11 Things You Should Be Doing With Google Analytics” from Search Engine Journal.

If you want to be in control of your website, you need all the information possible to make the right choices. Google Analytics can give you the numbers you want, but these resources will help you know what to do with it.

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Do Google’s Algorithms Work The Same Around The World?

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As a business owner with an eye on your company’s online marketing success, you have likely heard about Google’s search engine algorithms. You may even have a general idea of how they function and effect your business’s online presence and marketing strategies.

But, unless you spend your free time reading all the SEO blogs, you probably have some questions about some aspects of how these algorithms work. If your business does international business, one of those questions is very likely if Google’s algorithms work the same around the world.

While the algorithms largely tackle the same issues, the short answer is that they do not all work the same on an international scale.

As Barry Schwartz recently highlighted, you can find specific examples of when algorithms vary across borders by looking at the Google Panda algorithm. The algorithm was initially launched for English language Google engines in February 2011, but the rest of the globe didn’t see the algorithm roll out for quite some time. Notably, it took 17 months for Google to release Panda in Korea and Japan to target Asian languages.

However, the Google Penguin algorithm didn’t have nearly the same delay. Penguin rolled out globally and impacted sites in any language.

What’s the reason for the difference? It all boils down to purpose. The Panda algorithm focused on language and content, and those algorithms have to be customized and focused based on the wide variety of languages found around the world. Meanwhile, algorithms like Penguin target off-page technical factors like links, which raises less of an issue customization.

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Why Is Duplicate Content a Problem?

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Duplicate content has been an important topic for webmasters for years. It should be absolutely no secret by now that duplicate content is generally dangerous to a site and usually offers no value, but there are occasional reasons for duplicate content to exist.

Of course, there are very real risks with hosting a significant amount of duplicate content, but often the fear is larger than the actual risk of penalties – so long as you aren’t taking advantage and purposely posting excessive duplicate content.

Google’s John Mueller puts the risk of using duplicate content in the best context,. According to John, there are two real issues with duplicate content.

The first issue is that Google’s algorithms typically automatically choose one URL to show for specific content in search, and sometimes you don’t get to choose. The only way you can effectively let Google know your preference is by using redirects or canonical tags, and that isn’t foolproof.

Secondly, if you are hosted a ton of duplicate content it can actually make the process of crawling to overwhelming for the server, which will slow new content from being noticed as quickly as it should be.

Still, John said that in most cases, “reasonable amounts of duplication […] with a strong server” is not a huge problem, as “most users won’t notice the choice of URL and crawling can still be sufficient.”

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Yelp’s Study Says Yelp is the Most Influential Local Review Site

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Earlier this week we reported on a recent study highlighting the growing influence of online reviews, and there is no service as closely associated with online reviews as Yelp. Of course, Yelp agrees and they’ve commissioned a new study from Nielsen survey data to show it is the most frequently used, most trusted, and even the highest quality local reviews site. But, many are skeptical of their findings.

The study used a sample of just over 1,000 US users of review sites, including competitors such as Angie’s List, Citysearch, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, YP, and Zagat. The survey consisted of 22 questions in all and the sample was weighted for age and gender to be representative of Nielsen’s NetView audience. In a blow to the credibility of the survey however, it seems only a few of the results were released – presumably the results which favored Yelp.

Out of what was released, the survey showed that 78 percent of consumers use review sites to find local businesses and help make purchase decisions, with Yelp taking the lead in several categories such as “most influential,” “most trustworthy,” and “best quality reviews.”

Another source of apprehension for this study was the decision not to include Google or Facebook. When asked, Yelp told Greg Sterling:

Our findings specifically around review sites came after we included Google and Facebook in a question on what sites people use to find local businesses, but those sites aren’t solely focused on local business discovery. We dug deeper into those sites that are.

That led Sterling to the conclusion that Google and Facebook likely exceed Yelp as a source for local business information, but it isn’t dishonest to exclude them from a study focusing specifically on “local business discovery” because both platforms have such broad usage.

The study isn’t completely invalid because of these inconsistencies. It goes without question that Yelp is at the forefront of local business discovery and reviewing and several other studies show that Yelp is in fact influential in local purchasing decisions. This study reinforces the fact that Yelp is a major player in these categories, but obviously it should be taken with some skepticism.

You can see the graphic displaying Yelp’s findings below:

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Consumers Trust Online Reviews More Than Ever

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Reviews have always been important for reaching and maintaining success as a business, but since the rise of Yelp reviews have become essential. With the increased popularity of rating platforms and our rising reliance on them for online purchases, it is clear we are also beginning to put more trust in online reviews as well.

That is the finding of a new study from BrightLocal which highlights how consumers respond to reviews. This report makes the 4th year BrightLocal has conducted a study on consumer usage and attitudes toward online reviews and the findings overwhelmingly show that we trust online reviews now more than ever.

Myles Anderson shared the findings from the study on Search Engine Land, but the biggest highlight is the finding that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. This is great news for businesses with primarily positive reviews, but that means negative reviews have more weight as well.

In the end, the findings just confirm what we’ve all suspected for quite some time. Finding ways to stimulate positive reviews is essential to increasing your online presence and driving new business. Otherwise, you might wind up with poor reviews and dwindling business.

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Everything Local Businesses Need to Know About SEO and Online Marketing

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Smaller local businesses are overwhelmingly lagging behind the rest of the market when it comes to getting online and increasing visibility and audience outreach through optimization and search engine marketing. Unfortunately the longer these companies wait to expand their business online, the further they fall behind the curve. Thankfully, Trond Lyngbø created a comprehensive article exploring the most important information anyone running a smaller local business needs to know about SEO and online marketing.

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2014’s Most Important Paid Search Changes You Should Know About

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My SEM writing tends to focus on optimization and organic outreach, but with organic reach shrinking across the web, paid search advertising is becoming an increasingly important part to growing your brand and attracting new customers. Paid search has changed just as much as SEO over the past few months of 2014, and Ginny Marvin from Search Engine Land recently compiled the 10 most important developments. Her list is a handy way to catch up on all the Bing Ads and Google AdWords advancements you need to know about.

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Boring Companies Can Still Be Exciting On Social Media

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Social media is typically thought of as where all the cool kids hang out. Fast food, clothing, and entertainment all have it easy when it comes to making friends and getting retweets, but businesses in seemingly boring industries frequently settle for mediocrity out of the belief they can’t keep up with the “cooler” industries. But, Uri Bar-Joseph showed us five companies that shrug off the assumption that “boring” businesses can’t be exciting online.

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