Posts tagged SEO
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.
The Keys to Freedom: When Will Google Remove My SEO Penalty?
Mar 18th
Google SEO penalties are more common than you might realise. They also happen to well-meaning website owners more often than you might realise! Google’s algorithms are designed to catch actions, not intentions, and so there are many honest webmasters out there currently serving time behind Google bars. It can be frustrating not knowing when your sentence will end, though – today we explore Matt Cutts of Google’s advice about how and when SEO penalties are removed. More >
5 SEO Myths Conspiring to Kill Your Rankings
Mar 10th
Well-structured, expert SEO help is essential to the success of just about every site on our big, blue internet nowadays! Yet, there are still so many myths and misunderstanding that we encounter regarding SEO … sometimes these misunderstandings cost rankings, sometimes they cost money, sometimes they cost entire businesses. At least make sure that you understand these five things about SEO … More >
5 Ways to Ensure Duplicate Content Doesn’t Dupe Your SEO
Mar 4th
You can’t dupe the duplicate content filter! However, you can have a fairly serious impact on your SEO by having too much duplicate content on your site, even if it is properly credited and legally allowed. There is ongoing confusion over the best way to deal with duplicate content on your site; here we check out the main methods.
SEO by Stealth – 3 Tips for Writing SEO Content That Sounds Natural
Nov 22nd
We often hear people say “Oh, I don’t want to ruin my website with SEO! That sort of content sounds horrible!”.
SEO doesn’t ruin websites … however, poorly conceived attempts at creating optimised copy can quite easily do so! Ever encountered a website like this?
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What does Google Instant mean to SEO and your Business?
Sep 22nd
Following the introduction of personalised search results at the turn of the year comes Google’s latest offering – Google Instant. If your business relies on your online presence then this affects you.
What is Google Instant?
For a while now Google has been serving up suggestions for results as you type through ‘Google Suggest’, helping you hit submit quicker to see the results. Google Instant is the next step on from this – delivering the results as you type. As you continue typing, the results displayed will also change accordingly.
The Way Your Customers Search Will Change
Google want to deliver the results to Users as quickly as possible so they continue to use the search engine. As users begin to spend less time formulating their query it is also more likely they will click on the first few results they see. Being on Page 1 and in the top SEO results will be more important than ever. More >
Successful Web Marketing
Aug 23rd
Success.
Everyone wants to get associated with this word. What has web marketing in store for your online business? In selling products and services inside the Internet, there is a procedure that is utilized in order to advance the brands and names for one purpose: to sell. Selling in the Web is different because a website must give concentration on ways to get the attention of users and how they can be baited. Therefore, there are devices that have been formulated to take advantage of the number that gets inside the Internet.
Considering the large population of Internet users, it would be fairly easy to catch them and point them to a certain site. However, these people cannot be manipulated that easy unless there is a common ground for all of them. What is that common ground? The search engines, a tool so widely used and an authority when talking of information gathering. Certainly, the individuals who make use of search engines are scattered all over the globe. Hence, this venue has been considered very viable to give information on your products. SEO is a process in Web marketing that allows your business to be included in the search results. More >
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!
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.
Good Tutorial about the basic concepts of SEO
Jul 6th
This is a very good youtube video outlining the main concepts of SEO. It really shows you the jist of what search engine optimization is all about.