Tag Archive for: SEO

The Myths and Misunderstandings of Mobile SEO

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It is shocking to me how many people write off mobile SEO as being unimportant or overhyped. Just taking a quick look at the rising rates of people searching with mobile devices makes it pretty clear how much of the market is dominated by mobile devices.

Sure, there are still more people using desktops on the internet, but every year we see a greater percentage of that traffic coming from smartphones and tablets. The trend isn’t going away. More people have tablets and phones every day as more affordable options become available.

So, why then is mobile SEO on quite a few lists of things people hope we stop talking about next year? It is because many people in the SEO industry don’t really understand what mobile SEO is, or how it works.

Bryson Meunier also had a problem with how many people seem to be writing off mobile SEO right now, and he compiled a list of the misconceptions and myths as well as explaining how they’re wrong.

 

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The Future of SEO [Infographic]

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As the year draws to a close, everyone of course looks to what the past year indicates for the one coming up. I’ve already covered one article of year end analysis, and now Search Engine Watch and Mavenlink have made an infographic covering what SEO professionals are saying about the state of SEO in 2012.

What is notable about both of these year-end opinions is that they are both extremely optimistic about the future of SEO. As the internet becomes somehow even more pervasive in our every day life, more and more opportunities for SEO to grow become apparent, and there is no sign of it slowing down.

Budgets are growing, companies are paying more attention, and SEO teams are getting bigger. SEO is finally even beginning to be seen as an entity seperate from regular marketing. Before long, SEO might be really known outside of the marketing community.

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How To Improve Your SEO Audits and Link Evaluation

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If you are doing a ton of SEO audits, or just doing audits on sites with lots of big data, you probably have been itching to find any way to make your process more efficient without impacting the quality of your work.

Alan Bleiweiss, writer for Search Engine Journal, had that problem. With Google fighting unnatural links, we all have felt a heightened need to be examining inbound link profiles. These two things combined have caused Bleiweiss to bring together a set of techniques he uses to speed up his audits.

No one wants to spend their entire life doing audits, but theres no need to lower your bar for quality just to save some speed.

 

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How Does Google Handle Linkspam Abroad?

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Have you ever wondered how Google handles web spam in other languages or other countries? According to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team,  they have people placed on the ground across the globe to handle markets for their native countries.

Cutts, was responding to a question asked online, when he said, “If an algorithm misses something, they are there to find the spam. They know the lay of the land, they know who the big players are, and they’re really quite expert. So if there’s some really unique kind of link spam going on in Poland, for example, there’s a person there.”

The video is below. The question was poorly phrased (Europe is smaller than the US? Really?), but it helps illustrate just how international of a company Google is trying to be. I’ve heard European countries use Google less than the US, but clearly Google is still trying to offer the same experience across the globe.

 

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Content Marketing is Becoming Important Offline Too

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Content creation has long been at the top of SEO, but it is leaking from the internet into the real world. One of the front runners of this change in real-life marketing is Red Bull, who has begun publishing their own magazine, The Red Bulletin, which paints a picture of a world where there are no limits.

This isn’t an isolated case. According to a recent survey, 90% of marketers believe that content marketing will only become more essential in the next year. Ronn Torossian has predictions and other instances of how companies are using content creation to reach out to their customers directly, all at Search Engine Journal.

 

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Are Companies Abusing Google’s “Pirate Update”?

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While people have been fretting about Google penalizing innocent site holders, it appears outside groups have been abusing Google’s DMCA algorithm to try to get legal content about films taken offline.

For those who aren’t familiar with the DMCA related algorithm, known commonly as Google’s Pirate Update, it basically referenced valid DMCA takedown requests as part of a sites rankings. If a site has been frequently hit with valid takedown requests, its ranking is penalized.

However, TorrentFreak has uncovered that a company who has been issuing DMCA requests on behalf of multiple movie companies has been issuing requests for the removal of legal content such as listings for legal copies of the movie on Amazon and iTunes, as well as Wikipedia pages about several movies and television shows.

Most of these requests were ignored by Google, but it is a worrisome matter that these companies are clearly using DMCA requests without discretion, and these invalid  requests could plausibly be missed by algorithms sorting out the mess.

Search Engine Land posits that the motivation of the mysterious organization, known as “Yes It Is – No Piracy” could be to bump up their own pages of content for specific listings while lowering legitimate sites, but for now, the motive is unclear.

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Is Google Panda Really All That Bad?

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Not a Google Panda

Look at the most recent SEO article you can find about Google Panda. You can even look at some I’ve written. In general, the mood among those articles is not positive. Whatever positive changes for users that Panda offered, it drastically changed how SEO is run, and well, people don’t tend to react well to change.

However, in all the hubbub about the negative impact Google’s changes may have had on smaller businesses, we forgot that Google Panda did make some very important changes that made their search engine perform markedly better.

Ruth Burr, head of SEO at SEOMoz, didn’t forget this because she is a constant user of Google search. I won’t repeat her anecdote here, but she does recall a time when using Google could easily lead you to vapid, not useful websites trying to hide that their “articles” were really just ads for their own business.

The biggest point she raises is very true. Google’s goals are not to “foster small or local business growth in the U.S. and abroad.” While there are ways for local or small businesses to take advantage of search engines, Google’s main aim is to simply provide the best search engine performance possible. There’s little denying Panda wasn’t a step in the right direction in that regard.

If you aren’t convinced of Panda’s positive features, or just want to see more pictures of cute pandas, check out Burr’s article. She makes some strong points.

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How Do You Decide Which Potential Clients To Accept

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Anyone starting an SEO from the ground up knows how difficult it can be to choose your clients. Many will just accept anyone that is willing to pay them for work. Many can’t afford not to.

But once you have established yourself, you can begin to be a little more choosey with your clients. You are not forced to work for clients that do not appreciate your work, or try to get a ton out of you without compensating you equally.

Nick Stamoulis has gone through these stages, and collected a set of reasons why you may decide to decline a client. The reasons are varied, but the main point is while you want to work with anyone that comes to you for business, sometimes it is better to let one prospect pass so that you can catch a better one a little later.

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You See Up To A Dozen Experiments Every Time You Use Google

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Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, spoke during a Google Tech Talk on October 22, 2012, and he shared some interesting information about what you see every time you use Google, as Barry Schwartz reported for Search Engine Land.

“Any time you access Google, you probably are in a dozen or more experiments.” Google is always working to improve and refine how they record data. Google releases about 500 updates to search per year, and about another 500 on the ad side. To establish what changes are needed and what works best, they run these experiments, which come to about 5,000 different experiments in a year,

The video of the entire talk is below, and the relevant information starts around the 26 minute mark.

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Mobile Search You Never Thought Of: In-App Search Engines

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When we talk about mobile search engines, there are really only two names in the conversation: Google and Bing. But did you know there are quite a few other options, and you probably already have them available on your phone?

Many apps offer built-in search engines, and they may be able to direct good amounts of traffic to your site, depending on your market. For example, YouTube is actually the second most popular search engine being used. Yes, YouTube gets used for searching more than Bing.

Sherwood Stranieri analyzed these in-app search engines, and has a helpful breakdown of what less recognized mobile search engines are best for your industry.

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