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How can I recover from a Google penalty?
Aug 26th
SEO is one of the fastest growing and changing IT industries, with the techniques that bring SEO success constantly evolving. SEO techniques considered effective and a great way to do SEO may not be as effective a month later, and could result in adverse effects for your site and its SEO campaign. Therefore, focus on white hat SEO techniques and keep up with the goings on and changes that bring success when it comes to SEO. As a general rule, this ought to prevent you from obtaining a Google penalty. However, Google penalties do happen, but recovery from such a penalty is possible.
The biggest downside of a penalty from Google is the loss of rankings, and removal from search results. One of the most talked about examples of Google penalty being imposed on a business is that of J.C. Penney. This was a case a while back where J.C. Penney used link building strategies that violated Google webmaster rules. When discovered and written about by The New York Times, Google’s response was to issue a penalty that removed the site from search results.
Fast forward two months, and J.C. Penney is now starting to return to the Google search results, showing it is possible to recover from a Google penalty should it occur.
Accept that the problem has occurred and take steps to fix it
First of all, accept the reality that the Google penalty occurred, and focus on making things right. Determine what caused the penalty and take corrective action to fix it. Depending on what the issue was the fix may be a lengthy process, but this is the first step to take when it comes to resolving the issue that incurred the penalty.
Once resolved, submit a reconsideration request to Google
Once you feel that the problem has been resolved, submit a reconsideration request to Google. This will ask Google to visit your site and assess its suitability to be added (or re-added, in this instance) to Google search results.
If successful, don’t expect results to be what they once were right away. Chances are your site will be quite low in search results, and you have to build up trust with Google that your site should be higher up. Rebuilding is a process that takes time, just like an SEO campaign does in its early days.
Utilise SEO techniques that are within Google guidelines
When re-building your SEO strategy, consider the techniques you wish to use. Google is tough on what it considers black hat techniques, so ensure any strategies you wish to carry out abide by its guidelines. If a link building strategy is planned, ensure that links are obtained from good quality sites. These can be from sites that are an authority or leader in the industry, or otherwise are relevant to your business. Don’t buy links from sites, these are now showing to have no benefit due to the fact that anyone can obtain them, and offer very little value when it comes to your own website.
On Your Own SEO: 6 Web Marketing Activities You Can Do Today
Jun 19th
Every good SEO company (ourselves included!) is very happy to give customers a full-service option – sit back, relax, and watch your rankings go up. However, there are plenty of people out there that are eager to get things going and want to be closely involved in their SEO – this can also be a fantastic business strategy. If you’re eager to burst off the starting blocks with your SEO campaign, here are some activities you can do yourself. More >
Australian Small Businesses; It’s time to get online!
Mar 7th
It’s no surprise the number of people who use the Yellow Pages print directory less than once a month, or don’t use it at all, has increased by 61% between 2002 and 2009. (Source: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia)
Clearly there is a strong trend towards online search when it comes to consumers sourcing goods and services.
What’s shocking is a 2009 MYOB survey that found 60 per cent of Australian small businesses do not have an online presence. If you are a small business owner in Australia and don’t have an online presence take action TODAY!
A simple, low cost, easy to execute first step is to add your business to all the major Australian online business directories.
An online Australian website directory offers exposure to millions of consumers each month, listings are easy to setup and manage. You may view this is an elementary suggestion, but the data speaks for itself. Sixty per cent of Australian small businesses haven’t done this!
10 Website Administration Tactics That Encourage Link Building
Aug 16th
The modern, average citizen’s Holy Grail is now ‘passive income’ … getting paid for doing nothing. Except for SEO experts and webmasters, that is – passive linkbuilding is their Holy Grail! Today we’re going to show you how a few simple tactical, procedural and policy changes in how you handle your website can help build the number of ‘passive’ links you get … taking all that tiresome legwork out of SEO.
1. Create authority posts as linkbait
In a discussion of building links passively, linkbaiting should always be the first tactic. The easiest way for most companies to do this is to create ‘authority posts’. These are blog posts or articles that aim to be the ultimate authority on a subject. They assume no prior knowledge, and are very comprehensive. They take a while to write, but are well worth it in SEO terms!
2. Add a Share button
People will be able to instantly Digg your content, or post it to their Facebook profile.
3. Be responsive
This is a tactical strategy for SEO success – it seems a little indirect, but it works on the principle that every person you annoy is another person that won’t link to you! Make it a policy to always respond to emails promptly, and to respond to blog comments regularly.
4. Publish great content on weekdays
More people are on the net on weekdays; make sure that is when your content is fresh and showing up at the top of time-ordered Google and Technorati searches for best SEO effect.
5. Cut the fluff
There’s a lot of fluff on the net. People aren’t as dense as they sometimes look! You don’t need to explain everything twice, and if you do, they’ll just read something else.
6. Edit and spellcheck your content
Content that looks professional is MUCH more likely to get search engine optimisation love in the form of links.
7. Write for beginners
The net is a big place, and most of the people that stumble across your articles will be beginners. Write for these guys, or you’ll be ignoring your biggest potential linking audience.
8. Be friendly!
This actually goes hand in hand with ‘Being responsive’ above. Friends are actually pretty easy to make on the net, where you have a pool of a couple of billion people to talk to. Go the extra mile with people … the more friends you have, the better your SEO campaigns will work.
9. Look for feedback
Add options to leave feedback to various pages around your site, and run a pop-up survey every so often. Make it short … don’t make people regret helping you! It will give you lots of clues as to what directions would benefit your SEO strategy most.
10. Answer questions
There are thousands of people who need information on Yahoo Answers, Googel Groups, Wikianswers, etc. Some of them will be asking questions in your field. Give a thorough answer to questions in your niche, but also leave your link in case they want more info, and to help your SEO team.
Ignoring SEO Information
Aug 15th
There is a massive amount of information on the net about SEO and web marketing. That is because everybody involved in the industry knows that fresh content is a must for good rankings, and so will blog and write articles often. Unfortunately, the ‘not so good’ SEO practitioners write just as many articles as the true experts.
So how can you tell the difference – how do you know whose SEO advice to listen to? Here is a quick checklist to help you sort the wheat from the chaff.
Do they walk the talk?
Is the SEO company you’re getting advice from listed in the top 10 results for one of their core keywords? If not, they probably aren’t using the right strategies … and won’t be able to give you the right ones either!
Ask in person
If its appropriate, ask a question about SEO in person. You can do this via phone, but a better way to do this is at industry events and conferences. Information on a blog can be a bit one-sided; the process of conversation will help you work towards a better understanding of SEO, quicker.
Check their references
Most SEO companies list their major clients. Check on Google how the clients rank for some keywords you would expect to be important to them – if they don’t show up in the top thirty, there’s a chance their SEO might not be so hot!
Search engines aren’t always the best people to ask
Many companies refer to Matt Cutts (of Google’s) blog. It seems like inside information – but in reality, Google has its own agenda. It wants the best quality and most relevant sites to rank at the top for a search … and they won’t necessarily feel that’s your site. Their company goals are not the same as yours.
Listen to your test results
With your webmaster’s help, listen mostly to the results of tests set up to check on your SEO health. When something improves, pay attention … listen!
Linkbaiting Campaigns for SEO – How to Choose Your Bait
Aug 14th
Viral content is the new king of the net … but unlike real viruses, it is surprisingly hard to ‘catch’ the idea of how to create it! Once you understand the idea of viral ‘hooks’, though, you’ve created a nice fertile breeding ground for that viral content to multiply within your mind. Then it will ultimately be published on your blogs, earning you lots of links and SEO success. Today we explain the hooks that all viral content has, to help you re-create them for your own SEO work.
There are 7 main hooks that are used in linkbaiting content for SEO:
- A news hook
- A resource hook
- A humour hook
- A contrary hook
- An attack hook
- An ego hook
- An incentive hook
If you’ve spent much time reading blogs, you’ll probably be able to think of a few examples of each that you’ve read. Here are a couple of notes on creating each, for your own SEO purposes.
A news hook
MUST be very fresh. If you aren’t constantly on the net, looking out for breaking and trending stories, and if you aren’t able to add a fresh perspective to a story, you shouldn’t try to publish this sort of linkbaiting content. You’ll also need a decent readership to make use of these stories for SEO.
A resource hook
These are the easiest type for most businesses to create, and the great thing about resource-based linkbait content is that as long as you follow a few basic best-pratcices when you create it, the amount of exposure you get will be almost directly proportional to the amount of work you put in. Create a better resource, get more links and SEO-love. Your resource can be an authority list, a tool, a walk-through or a guide.
A humour hook
These can be difficult for corporate sites to pull off. Humour inevitably offends some people … unless there are pets or children involved! Keep these posts relevant to your business, and run them past everybody at the company for a negative reaction. If you find a single one, keep looking.
A contrary hook
Disagree with a popular opinion, or one popular person’s opinion on something. However, you’ll need to be tactful – otherwise you’ll gain SEO success, but lose respect.
An attack hook
Also known as ‘being controversial’. This works well for some, but be aware that people will constantly be wondering when you’ll attack them, if you make it a habit.
An ego hook
Stroke the ego of somebody you want a link from, by asking them for an interview, or giving them an award. A great way to get those single, valuable authority links.
An incentive hook
Offer samples or prizes in exchange for links, or run a content with an awesome prize to encourage links to flow naturally – great for SEO.
5 Important Questions About Link Building Answered
Aug 11th
Much like building a house, when you are trying to build a link popularity profile for SEO purposes, speed isn’t the only determinant of success. A house that goes up fast, but falls down around the owner’s ears is obviously pretty useless! So today we’re shelving the ‘more and faster is better’ approach, and looking at the ‘other’ things you need to know about link building best practices.
Speed of link acquisition
One very important caveat to the advice you’ll read about gaining links is that faster is not better … in fact, gaining links too fast can get you kicked off the search engines, and destroy your search engine optimisation campaign thus far. Your links should be built:
- Slowly at first – perhaps 2-3 links per day in the first month
- Faster as the site ages
- Faster as your Pagerank increases
Mirroring external with internal growth
It is also important to mirror any link popularity growth you make externally with internal linking for the health of your SEO campaign. There are several options for creating a platform for constantly updated, fresh content:
- Having an on-site blog, where you can cross-link both to pages of the main site and to earlier blog posts
- Having a News or Press section of the website
- Create a Local Events section if appropriate to your niche
- Create a ‘What’s New’ page; especially useful for e-commerce sites.
This internal growth helps re-assure the search engines that your outside link popularity growth is natural, and also provides a greater variety of content that people may want to link to without any encouragement … doing your SEO work for you!
Choose your anchor text carefully
The anchor text for your links was at one stage a couple of years ago, the major factor in Google’s site ranking algorithm. It has since been downgraded – but it is still very important for your search engine optimisation to control your anchor text to reflect your most important keywords – those with the best mix of high popularity and low competition.
Balance between one-way and reciprocal links
When you link to a site, then they link to you, that link has less weighting in the Google algorithm than if the link was one-way. However, one of the major link building strategies in a long term campaign is to link out to other pages … so how do you reconcile this dilemma? The same way you do every other difficult decision … with compromise. Dammit! Link out – but be selective about it. Don’t bother linking to Wikipedia all the time, they won’t link back – select other sites and bloggers that are likely to notice and return the linking favour.
Link building can actually be a little tricky … but there are always SEO experts around to help you!
10 Link Building Tools You Would Never Have Thought Of!
Jul 27th
Today we collect ten of the most original ideas for building links on the net. You may not be able to integrate all of them into your SEO campaign, but even a couple will give your link popularity score a lot of momentum.
1 . Offer free samples of your product in exchange for reviews
If you have a truly awesome product or service, this will get you a lot of love in the web community. Offer people free samples of your product or service (if appropriate), and ask them to leave a review on a site of your choice. Some might not bother – but plenty will. Choose a site that follows its review links for best search engine optimisation effect!
2 . Create ‘real’ relationships that could turn into linking relationships
Go to industry conferences and mingle with the people you’d like to get links from. You’ll be much more memorable and linkable if you meet them in person, instead of just as an email signature.
3 . Become a sponsor
A way to feel good about getting links! If you donate to a school, you may be able to get some authority .edu links to really bolster your SEO long-term.
4 . Buy an old authority site
Google likes older domains better – buy a site that already has a good link profile, and start building links on it to your site as an SEO side project.
5 . Make sure you are W3C complaint
Government sites are more likely to link to standards compliant sites, and you can also get a link from the directories of W3C compliant websites.
6 . Leave testimonials
When your business finds a great product, send a testimonial off to the site owner. Ask if they’d mind linking to you, if they end up using it on the site. For best SEO effect, choose a website that doesn’t already have an enormous testimonial list.
7 . Make people feel important
One survey by a salary-oriented site looked at how underpaid mothers were, and gained a veritable flood of links from across the web! In SEO, you definitely catch more flies with honey.
8 . Put photos on your site
Sites that have pictures of the owners often seem more trustworthy, people are more inclined to link to them, and your search engine optimisation strategy benefits. Personally, I prefer the author photographs that aren’t too polished and perfect, but show people in a ‘real’ light.
9 . Interview somebody
People LOVE to read interviews … and they love to link to interviews from their pages, because they are information ‘straight from the horse’s
mouth’. For the time they take to do, interviews are great SEO value.
10 .Offer tools in your industry
Many mortgage brokers offer their own mortgage calculators. Finance oriented sites offer their own currency converters. Project Managers use Gantt Chart templates for project management with Excel. Check out Apple’s list of Dashboard widgets for inspiration for an idea you could have built for your own SEO campaign.
PPC VS SEO part 1
Jul 7th
There has been very intense disagreements between which of Pay Per Click(PPC) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more effective for a company.
PPC offers many advantages such as near instantaneous flow of traffic, pay on performance, precise keyword targeting, budget control and time control just listing a few. Since results are instantaneous, most SEO companies tend to keep using PPC. Since there are more people using PPC, costs have risen considerably as there are more competitors bidding for the same keyword.
SEO requires more planning and if conducted well, minimizes cost significantly. SEO can be a timely process and may cost a significant initial cost, usually in the form of link buying. SEO can also improve your websites value. A good example is imagining your website as a property such as your house. With an SEO targeted approach, you would purchase land or other houses around it out expand your existing business. On the other hand, PPC could mean renting the land around you.
By 2013, a CNN report suggests, internet advertising will grow from USD$9.1 billion in 2007 to USD$21 billion. Surprisingly, out for the billions spent on advertising, only 11% is from SEO and 87% from PPC.
In determining which approach suits best depends on your business or the product you’re trying to sell. For example, if it’s a seasonal item, and the popularity is only during this period of time, you would want instant results, thus PPC would be the better option.
The image bellow shows the distribution of clicks by internet users in the US. You can see that most people click on the organic search section compared to the Paid, ‘sponsored’ area. 
You decide which is better? Or you can consult an Internet Marketing expert regards to whether SEO or PPC is right for you.