On May 5, 2012, the different social media sites burned because of the extensive discussion regarding the latest page rank update conducted by Google, of course a lot of website owners were very happy because of the fact that their page ranking increased and some even jumped two page ranks up. Some were felt the opposite because of the simple fact that their rankings went down. This roller coaster emotions by SEO companies and SEO consultants is because of the changes in the page ranking of their target website.

What is Page Rank?

In order to understand why many SEO companies and SEO consultants are worrying about their websites page ranking we have to understand what page ranking is. Page Rank basically is patented by Google, it is a ranking set in order to indicate the authority of the website. The ranking will start from a low zero to a high of page rank 10. The increase in page rank can be attributed with the link building SEO strategy where link page rank is passed on if it originated from a website with a high page rank. This is because of the fact that links from one website to another is considered as a “vote” to the recipient website which means that the more websites with high page rank linking the higher the page rank of the recipient website.

Page Rank and Panda or Penguin

Many would wonder if Penguin and Panda interplays with the Page rank. One of Panda and Penguins main focus is to track poor and spinned content making it reduce the ranking of the website in SERP. The main question therefore is does content now play a role in determining the page rank?

The Answer

Content nowadays play a significant role in determining the page rank of the website, this is because Google utilises the flesch-kincaid method where it tracks word spelling and sentence grammar and checks whether they are correct. Of course content is only one of the determining factors as links are still key players in determining the page rank of a website.

Conclusion

This just proves what we have always been saying on this blog time and again. In order for you to gain ranking either in the search engine results page or in the page ranking you have to incorporate quality not only in your link building efforts but most of all in your content development.

Ok so maybe we have been talking a lot about Google penguin these past days, why not? It is the hottest news in the field of Search engine optimisation. Many SEO companies and SEO consultants have been talking about this latest algorithm update by Google this is because of the fact that there are a lot of losers in terms of search engine results page ranking upon the roll out of the Google Penguin algorithm. Of course according to Google the Penguin algorithm is used to combat web spam and although Google has enumerated quite a few web spam techniques there are still some SEO companies and SEO consultants that may be in the dark so to speak with regards to what can be considered as web spam or not.

What Is Web Spam?

The definition of a web spam is very simple, it is the strategies used in order to manipulate or trick the search engines in order to increase your websites’ search engine ranking. These strategies include all those that are considered to be black hat strategies. These include keyword stuffing, duplicate contents, link schemes among others.

How to Recover From Penguin Update

Of course we know that in every Google algorithm update there are always those websites that will take the hit. Depending on the algorithm’s “flavor” specific websites will take the fall and be de-ranked or banned by Google. If your site is among the three percent (3%) hit by the Google Penguin update then it is important that you retrace your SEO steps from content development to link building where you could do the following:

1. Identify Duplicate Content in Your Website – you might have used some contents that were just copied from another site, previously or many moons ago this practice escapes the eye of the search engines but not today, so if you have some duplicate contents that may still be in your website it is time for you to delete them.

2. Identify Low Quality Links – to put it into proper context low quality links here pertains to those links that were from link farms or from bad neighbourhood sites, these types of links are easy to acquire however it is potentially dangerous to your websites’ ranking.

3. Plead Your Case – one of the features included in the Penguin update is the fact that you can plead your case with Google. You can plead your case through the Google Webmaster Tools. Here you can specify or inform Google about reconsidering your sites ranking especially if you think that Google has mistakenly de-ranked your website.

Conclusion

As always Google will continue to update their algorithm and it is essential that SEO Companies and SEO Consultants are always updated on such changes. If their site is hit by such algorithm change it is also very important to know what to do to remedy the situation, proper knowledge is needed and to acquire such knowledge research and being always on the lookout for relevant information would be very beneficial.

Google announced through their blog that they will be rolling out a new algorithm update which will impact three percent of the total website population. This latest in the Google algorithm update is focused on targeting those websites that are benefitting from webspam, which means that search engine optimisation campaigns should also adapt to this change.

What are Considered as Web Spam?

According to Google web spam practices are those that are implemented in order to manipulate the search engine rankings. It does not really promote useful content for the users instead the contents are generated for the search engine crawlers. With Google’s advocacy or goal of giving search engine users the most relevant results based on the keywords entered, there is definitely no place for those who spam the search engine results page.

Is This the First Time for Google to Combat Web Spam?

The answer of course is no, Google have always wanted to deliver quality search engine results to search engine users thus Google have already started updating their algorithm to return quality results to the users ever since its inception. What Google has incorporated in their algorithm update is a more comprehensive way of tracking web spam, it is an augmentation or improvement to their current anti-web spam algorithm.

Google has identified the main types of web spam that this algorithm will be targeting and these are:

1. Duplicate Content – as an improvement to their Panda Algorithm, duplicate contents especially those that were spinned will now be easily detected by Google. Poorly written contents will now be dislodged from rankings.

2. Unusual link Patterns – according to Google the unusual link patterns refers to the use of keywords as links in a totally unrelated content. An example is the use of the word “financial” as a link within a content that talks about health, where the keyword is totally unrelated and used out of context within the sentence, paragraph or the entire content for that matter.

3. Link Schemes – this is not the first time that Google will be punishing link schemes their previous update was intended to do just that, however, as web spammers becomes creative in link scheming Google sees the need to update their algorithm once more.

4. Keyword Stuffing – again this will not be the first time that Google will be tracking down websites using keyword stuffing, this is an improvement to such algorithm where it will be able to detect websites that surreptitiously incorporated keywords even out of context.

The Importance of Content Writing and Content Writers

We believe that the main reason why some SEO companies and SEO consultants are resorting to spinning content as well as to duplicating content is because of the sheer fact that content development takes time, effort, education and the ability to write using the correct grammar and spelling. With the coming Google algorithm update the role of content writers, blog writers and article writers have become even more important. Delivering quality and relevant content is what Google would like to see in websites and not thinly written contents that are just copied and spinned.

Conclusion

Algorithm updates from Google is not new to every SEO Company and SEO consultant, steps should be taken into improve their target websites in order to ensure the survival of the website in its ranking in the search engine results page. What is being emphasised therefore is that your website should be a considered as a high quality site by having high quality content and high quality links.

A month or so ago Google has announced that they will be incorporating in their algorithm a process which will detect and will penalise websites that are over optimised. This is relative to Google’s goal of bringing relevant search results to their users, through the search engine results page. Unfortunately, many SEO companies and SEO consultants may have resorted to over optimisation and it may be affected negatively after Google has launched the algorithm update. Another disadvantage on the part of the SEO Companies and SEO consultants is the fact that although announcements were made with regards to penalising over optimised website, there were not hints on what are going to be considered by Google as over optimised websites.

Indicators of Over Optimised Websites

Although there are no direct announcements or indications on what could be considered by Google as over optimised websites, SEO companies and SEO consultants have contemplated that the following may be considered as indicators of over optimisation:

1. Internal Links Indicating Search Engine Manipulation – there are sites that have utilised internal linking to different web pages within the website that are purposely done in order to manipulate search engine ranking. Although there is no prohibition as to this type of link building structure it should be remembered by SEO companies implementing this type of strategy that the linking should be relevant and within the context of the content. Otherwise, the link may just invite the attention of the search engine algorithm as something that is spammy or is intended for search engine manipulation.

2. Spammy Link Building Strategies – of course spammy link building strategies have always been penalised by Google however there might be some link building strategies that may be fine for now but might be considered by Google as something spammy after the algorithm update. Among those link building strategies that might be considered as spammy by Google are link building through comments especially those that were automated, private link networks and even article directories that accepts poorly written content.

3. Excessive Use of Keywords in the Title Tag – using the keywords in the site’s title tag may be an indicator of over optimisation because such title content does not mean anything. It would be best if you write your title in such a manner where you could indicate a short description of your page or website rather than stuffing the title element of your website with keywords.

Conclusion

What we should first remember is that these are just speculations that is borne out of an extensive observation. It is not an absolute list of what Google will consider as indicators of over optimisation for a website. However, those that were mentioned reduces user experience something that Google wants to increase. Therefore, it would be best to develop your SEO Campaign with the user in mind rather than having the search engine as your primary focus.

The basic requirement for an SEO campaign to commence is to have a strong keyword to focus the search engine optimisation strategies. This is for the reason that keywords are used by users whenever they search for information via the internet or the search engines in particular. Since the idea of search engine optimisation came about keywords were already targeted and considered as an essential part of search engine optimisation campaign. For several years also the strategies on how keywords are handled in SEO Campaigns and by the search engines have always been the same, up until Google announced that they will be changing or updating their algorithm with a semantic search feature.

Overview on Semantic Search?

We have explained semantic search in our previous blog posts however for the purpose of this tutorial it would be best to revisit what really semantic search is. Semantic search is focused on discerning the “meaning” of every keywords entered by the user in the search engine query box. We all know that a word may have several meaning depending on the context on how it was utilised. The role of semantic search will be to determine the actual meaning of the keyword being entered and will then result to a more accurate output from the search engine results page, where accuracy is based on the fact that the returned results will be in accordance with the context that the user is looking for.

Impact of Semantic Search to SEO

If the semantic search algorithm would finally be implemented there would really be an impact with regards to every search engine optimisation campaigns. Ultimately your SEO campaign must adapt to the change that Google will be implementing, this means a change in your link building and article writing or content development strategies. The main impact of this update is change, a change that will help websites conform to the standards set by the search engines particularly Google in this case.

Benefits of Semantic Search

Although a lot of people hates change since it entails a lot of work to be done just to change it again after sometime. In SEO however change is inevitable because search engine algorithms are dynamic. With this change comes its benefits, and since change inevitable it is best that we focus on the benefits that SEO Companies and SEO consultants can get from this change like the following:

1. Recognition from Search engines – if your website content contains a semantic search targeted keywords search engines may give you a high score in terms of determining the quality of your content. However, you should not forget that your content should be informative, relevant and written in correct grammar to be considered as absolutely a content of high quality.

2. Increased click throughs – since the keywords are semantic search compatible an accurate result will be returned to the search engine results page, therefore users will be confident in clicking the link which they think is most relevant to their search. After which even if the user will be directed to a landing page they would still be confident in clicking on the link to the website since they believe that they have been directed to a website that is within their context of search.

Conclusion on Semantic Search

Google’s move to update their algorithm is to improve search results that are being delivered to their millions of users, thus the change in the search engine algorithm is inevitable thus should not be taken negatively instead changes must also be implemented in every SEO campaign in order to make sure that your target websites will rank accordingly.

If you go through different SEO forums you will see contrasting opinions coming from SEO companies and SEO consultants about the importance of Google’s page ranking. Some would say that page rank is important and every website should attain such rank while others would say that page rank is not as important as gaining a high search engine results page ranking (SERP) since it is traffic that you want and not mostly focusing on attaining a page ranking.

What is Page Rank? SERP?

Page rank is a ranking method set by Google in order to determine the reliability of a website. Page rank could be set from zero to ten where ten is said to be the highest page ranking. While SERP ranking is the ranking of a website in the search results of a search engine, considered as the output of an extensive SEO campaign.

Importance of Page Rank

We will not be looking at nor will we be siding either party having contrasting opinions regarding the importance of page rank, instead the importance of having a page rank will be discussed:

1. Page Rank is synonymous to Reliability – according to Google, page ranking is their way of determining the websites’ reliability due to the fact that page ranking is achieved from the links that the website has gained. If a website gained links from websites with higher page ranking then it means that the website link is reliable, thus in link building creating quality links is paramount to building lots of links.

2. Content reliability – with the recent Panda algorithm incorporated in the search engine algorithm of Google, having a high page rank would mean that the website has reliable and non-duplicated content. This is because page ranking will be affected and greatly reduced if such website will contain poorly written and unreliable as well as duplicated content.

Conclusion:

Gaining a considerable page rank is one way to display the reliability of your website, the debate between page rank and search engine results page ranking may continue but one thing should be certain, that is page ranking do have factors that makes it important.

With the introduction of the Google Freshness and with strengthening of such Google algorithm, website update has become necessary. Google’s purpose in incorporating the Freshness algorithm is perhaps the search engine giants’ way to make sure that every website will not remain to be just an online brochure with stagnant and boring content. Freshness aims to rank websites that have continuous content in their website, this is why a lot of websites even e-commerce websites are incorporating blog pages in their website. This is because of the fact that blogs is an avenue to incorporate fresh contents to the website. Aside from incorporating blogs in a website there are other ways for SEO companies and SEO consultants on how one could indicate that the website is within the requirements of the freshness algorithm.

Ways you Can Ensure Website Update

1. Audit Your Links – check your onsite links and verify whether your links are broken or not. This may be a tedious task but it is a must because of the fact that links are gateways for web crawlers and an invalid or broken link would mean and error in the crawling of your website.

2. Regularly Post a Blog – as mentioned every website has already incorporated blog pages in order to include fresh content to the website entirely, however if the blog page is not regularly updated the search engines may not interpret the page as containing fresh content, this is why it is important to regularly update your blog posts it may be a daily, weekly, or monthly update as long as such is followed regularly.

3. Arrange Your Blog Post Per Category – for easy crawling of your website and blog writings as well as for easy search for particular blog posts it is important that you arrange every blog post in specific categories. The categories will ensure that search engine crawlers will also easily locate your posts and easily identify the relevance of each post.

Conclusion:

The release of the March Update in Google’s search quality highlights includes the update on Google freshness algorithm, stating that freshness will already be affecting all websites and not only the news groups where it was initially implemented. This is why it is important for every website to incorporate fresh content in order to make sure that Google will be able to tag the website as containing fresh contents and thus will “hopefully” rank the website better that those similar sites without any fresh content.

Apart from de-indexing websites that are within private blog networks where its sole purpose is to build links rather that to provide quality contents, Google is also said to be targeting websites that are considered to be over-optimised. According to Google it would be a good idea to chase after users or site visitors rather than chasing after search engine algorithms. This statement from Google may be one of its motivation in de-ranking and penalising websites that are overly optimised, for obvious reasons that over optimisation is an indication that the SEO company or SEO consultant is chasing after search engine algorithms rather than providing quality information or content for its site visitors.

Qualifying Over-Optimisation

What is over optimisation? There are several factors that may indicate that a website is over optimised among them are:

1. Keyword Stuffing – this technique is considered to be within the realms of black hat technique and it is already popularly known as a violation to search engine algorithms. However, prior to the new algorithm a lot of websites were able to get away with keyword stuffing. With the new algorithm however, Google is said to have an increased awareness on the different keyword stuffing techniques and thus would consider it not only as a cause for penalty but also a ground for considering the site to be conducting over optimisation techniques.

2. Low Quality Links – creating links from different websites using profile links, private blog networks and other low quality link building techniques is considered by Google as over optimisation. This is why it is important to build your links from high quality websites and thus the link produced would be a high quality link.

3. Site Network – some SEO companies and SEO consultants have managed to create their own network of websites which are interlinked with each other. These types of links are considered interconnected links where the content may be related and are poorly written.

4. Unnatural Link Building and Content Development – it would also fall within the definition of over-optimisation when you build your links and develop your content at an unbelievable rate. Automating your websites link building and content development efforts could hurt your SEO campaign rather than benefit from it.

Concluding on Over-Optimisation

Of course apart from those three over optimisation techniques that were presented there might be other strategies that Google may deem to be an over optimisation technique thus it would be best to build your links naturally, and should be of high quality, this also goes the same with that of developing website content.

Ever since Google was subject of protests due to the publics’ clamor for transparency in their algorithm updates the search engine giant started informing the public through their search quality highlights. For the month of March of 2012 Google was able to incorporate fifty (50) search engine algorithm updates. According to Google these regular or constant update in their search engine algorithm are necessary in order to attain the best search engine results page for the users of their search engine, trying to deliver a more accurate and relevant to their users.

Highlights in the Search Quality Highlights

The fifty algorithm updates or changes for the month of March may be too much for us to discuss in this post, what we need to understand is the fact that some of the changes are just minor tweaks to their existing algorithm feature some however, are significant changes in the search engine algorithm. The following are the highlights of the search quality highlights and those that will be discussed are what we believe to be having a large impact in the world of search engine optimisation, an information that may be very valuable for SEO Companies and SEO consultants.

1. Improvement in Determining Site Quality – according to Google among the changes in their search engine algorithm is the improvement in the process of detecting the quality of a website. The search engine giant revealed that their long time process for detecting site quality is now improved, although Google did not elaborate on what specific changes were incorporated in their algorithm that determines site quality.

2. Improvement to Google Freshness algorithm – last year Google launched the Google Freshness algorithm which focuses on detecting fresh content in a website and using such as a ranking factor. The initial focus of Google freshness was on news related topics however last March Google already rolled out the freshness algorithm for all types of queries.

3. Updated Panda Algorithm Data – this updated data for the Google Panda algorithm is focused on determining high quality and low quality websites, this was the algorithm update that affected all private blog networks and it is because of this several private blog networks offering their services have been de-indexed causing them to close down their website and discontinue offering their services.

The Search Quality Highlights Conclusion

The transparency of Google in the release of their algorithm changes through the search quality highlights would indeed give SEO companies and SEO consultants an insight on what should their SEO campaign direction should be. Such insights would indeed show how Google is trying to improve their search quality.

From the very beginning Google and Facebook have been on separate leagues from each other, recent events however have shown that the two internet giants have been steadily and slowly going into each other’s realm. With the success of Facebook in the world of Social media it was able to gather millions of users prompting a lot of online marketers to utilise such social media platforms to use such platforms to conduct online marketing and advertising processes. The viability of the social media platform in advertising and online marketing has influenced many to shift their online marketing strategies in order to capture a larger audience base.

Google’s Actions

Google, having seen the viability of having a social media platform, launched their social media platform dubbed as Google+. The features of Google+ are almost the same as that of Facebook, however, several months after its launch it still has to gain its own users base. With this move from Google, they have diverted from their own realm and have stepped into the realm that Facebook is currently dominating. For now we still have to see if Google+, its social media platform, will be able to surpass the current social media giant, Facebook.

Facebook’s Actions

Recently, Facebook has announced that they will improve their search engine functionality within the social media platform, in order to help users locate anything they want over the internet through the social media network. This project prompted the deployment of Facebook engineers in order to put the plan into a reality with a former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen at the helm. This, move from Facebook is also a move to divert from their own realm going to the realm of Google which is the search engine.

Conclusion

Based from the ventures of Google and Facebook it is clear that they are diverting or going on separate ways where the end line would be a meeting within their own realms. Facebook going into the realm of Google while Google going into the realm of Facebook. This is something for every SEO companies or SEO consultants to think about.