Blog Promotion Tips

Google Instant will make SEO a thing of the Past

The new Google search feature called Instant tends to favor big brands. This isn’t really surprising, as it is these brands that are more likely to be searched for most often. After all, they’re big because people know them.

iCrossing has a list of brands that come up when you enter each letter of the alphabet (not all are brands, but many are). A is for Amazon (not Apple), B is for Bank of America, M is for Mapquest (not Microsoft), N is for Netflix, P is for Pandora, V is for Verizon, and Y is for Yahoo.

You must keep in mind, however, that the instant results are personalized. Google takes into account things like your location and your surfing habits when providing you results.

Google Instant doesn’t necessarily make things any easier on small businesses, but it’s showing big brands in cases where Google probably would’ve suggested big brands anyway. If users do a lot of local searches, it’s possible that Google could show more local results (including small businesses) for those users, I’m speculating.

Steve Rubel says that Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. “Here’s what this means,” he says. “No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors.”

He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not sure that makes SEO irrelevant. Google has been showing different results to different users for quite a while now. This is really just an extension of that.

Businesses might want to try (and have other people try) doing searches for keywords that they would expect people to use to find their site. See what comes up (keep in mind the personalization) and work from there. Easier said than done no doubt, but it’s something to consider. Think about what kinds of people will be interested in your products and what other kind of searches they might be doing. It’s not a science, but again, perhaps something worth considering. It might mean getting to know your customers better, which can’ t be a bad thing anyway. Maybe it means asking them to take surveys. Maybe it doesn’t.

The whole thing doesn’t help organic SEO’s case in the old SEO vs PPC debate. I’ll give Rubel that.

Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. “It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels,” says Google’s Dan Friedman. “However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.”

Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team says that Analytics users might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. “For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward,” he says.

He says, however that over time, it could change SEO. “The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time,” says Cutts. “For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”

Google Instant will likely become increasingly important to search marketing, because not only will it roll out to more countries (it’s starting in the U.S. and a select few others), but it will soon come to mobile and browser search boxes. Each of these factors will greatly increase how often Instant results are displayed.

The mobile factor actually has implications for Google retaining a substantial amount of mobile searches in general. The better (and quicker) Google can give results on any kind of query, the less reason users have to go to different apps to acquire certain information.

Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant, but it will change the way people search. It will affect their search behavior, and that is what search marketers are going to have to think about more than ever. You should also consider that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.

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Mayday Google Algorithm Update

Get comfy – this post is one of my longer ones.  But it’s full of very important current information about some Google changes.

The Mayday Update

Have you been hearing all the talk about the Mayday update and all the fallout?  I’m going to break it all down and tell you what it means and what you need to do.  Let me just start with a quick overview for beginners.

If you own a website, you want top rankings.  With more than 8 out of 10 people using search engines to find what they need online, you are missing out if your site isn’t ranked well in the engines.

We can all agree on that!  So, how do you get those coveted top rankings?

While I wish the answer was “magic fairy dust” but it’s not that simple (which is too bad because I happen to have a fresh supply of fairy dust – my niece shared it with me!).

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your site for the engines.  Don’t know what SEO is?  Then likely your site isn’t optimized and missing out on traffic.

Already had your site optimized in the past? That’s great and it’s a start but SEO requires on-going efforts on your site to gain and increase rankings.

Why?

Because the engines frequently make changes to their algorithms (the formula used to determine how to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]).  We’ve heard rumors that Google changes their crawling/indexing or ranking algorithm as often as once a day.  Sometimes these tweaks are minor and other times they are bigger and the impact is widely felt by webmasters and site owners.

Here is an explanation of what’s going on from Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox:

“Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A,  ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).

What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has faired during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget.

From the discussion at the Google I/O session, this is likely a long-term change so if your site has been impacted by it, you’ll likely want to do some creative thinking around how you can make these types of pages more valuable (which should increase user engagement and conversion as well).”

More notes that Fox got from Matt Cutts at Google.  This update:

•    has nothing to do with the “Caffeine” update (an infrastructure change that is not yet fully rolled out).
•    is entirely algorithmic (and isn’t, for instance, a manual flag on individual sites).
•    impacts long tail queries more than other types
•    was fully tested and is not temporary

More good advice from Fox:

“Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.”
(Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054)

The Take Away Here?

This isn’t the end of “long tail” – which is something people are spouting on Blogs and ezines the past few weeks (someone is always declaring the death of something SEO related.  SEO has more lives than a cat because it’s outlived many proclaimed deaths!)

Optimization is important to get top rankings – but optimization does not mean manipulating the current “hot button” or “hot topic item” that everyone is speculating about with the algorithm.

Consistent site updates, high quality relevant content and good on-page optimization and clean code, as well as earning links because your site is a good site (and not because you play a link exchange game or belong to a link network) are the way to get top rankings.

Rankings aren’t constant and you do need to maintain them and weather some storms but the sites that don’t fall for the latest rankings ploys are the ones that do better long term.

These days most site owners realize they can’t just rely on Google alone for traffic and they are looking to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to help boost their exposure online.

So your action plan?

•    Check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the Mayday update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases).
•    Check out your linking practices and make sure you haven’t done any shady linking lately.
•    Look at your link strategy and make sure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.
•    Bulk up your internal pages with unique content and quality info (other than just manufacturer supplied product info)
•    Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page/Business Page
•    Get going on Twitter
•    Contact me for a no obligation consultation or SEO and Social Media proposal if you aren’t where you need to be!

One final thought: while it’s important to stay current and be aware of changes, it’s just as important not to freak out and start making too many changes.  If you are using a strong and stable SEO strategy that covers the fundamentals, then you will be just fine for the long haul.

Author of this Article is Jennifer Horowitz

She is also the director of Marketing on Twitter

www.ecombuffet.com

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Blog Promotion for the Confused

I have neglected this site for months, because I was analyzing googles new page ranking/keyword ranking tactics. After months of analyzing what is going on with google I have come to the conclusion that I am still analyzing. I know that sounds crazy but I have so many websites that I own that are great for dissecting what is going on with google’s page ranking system for specific keywords I am targeting. If this sounds like jibberish to you , then you are probaly a beginner blogger and this post is not for you.

I own blogs that are 6 years old and were on page 1 for the keyword I have targeted and they have fallen to page 5 or 6  since December 2009. Now this is something that happened overnight and when I noticed it I also noticed my competitors blogs and websites falling as well. I also noticed that some abandoned blogs , that have not had a new post in years have moved to page one. This blog blogpromotiontips has not had a new post since Feb 2010 and it has moved back to page 1 on google for multiple keywords. This goes against the old blog promotion tip , that your site is rewarded for new content by google.

This is not true anymore, you can let your site sit and not post anything for months and it might climb in the page rankings if it had proper SEO to begin with. Some blogs that get massive traffic are on page 1 for there specific keywords and other blogs that have massive traffic are barely indexed by google, this is maddness and it also points out the fact that no matter how much traffic you get google might not reward you for that.

Keyword Bully

I am going to start posting on this blog regularly now as I know there are many bloggers that need my help to achieve blog success. Your only alternative is the regurgitated same old crap site problogger. Years ago they had good blog promotion tricks and tips , but now they have grown rich,fat and lazy and there is nothing useful on the site for the blogger who wants to carve his own path to super blogdom. My last tip for the day is do not under any circumstance pay anyone that says they can guarantee you page 1 results in google. This is a blatant lie, and it can be done but it cannot be guaranteed. Any Seo company who wants to prove me wrong comment me or email me and I will glady give you keywords you cannot touch the 5th page on let alone the 1st page.

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Got Blog Promotion ?

We took 2 months off  with this site as we were working on other sites that pay our bills. This site is a interesting experiment for blog promotion. We are currently being penalized by Google for exposing some blog promotion tricks that were not of the norm. The Google fairy that flys around the web and touch’s sites with there magic wand has touched this site with its wand and knocked us off every search term for google. In the photo you will see a tool I use that is very good for checking the position in search engines for a specific keyword.

The search terms are in italics, you notice nothing comes up in google for the search terms I entered. Blogpromotiontips was on the front page for all these terms 2 months ago when we began our 2 month no content experiment. The google fairy has touched our site and we are not coming up for the name of our website keyword search term.

This is definitely us being penalized by the google fairy. This site is number 1 and 2 in Yahoo for the same search’s so its obvious we are penalized. Why would we be penalized you ask ? Well it is one of 3 things we have been penalized for cloak and dagger type of SEO tricks , nah thats not it. We don’t do cloak and dagger type of Seo. We are publishing loads of duplicate content that was on another site word for word. Let me think no thats not it, I would never use or listen to someone on another blog promotion site as I dont need them I am a SEO expert and have many sites to prove it. Maybe I have published to weblogs or one of those other blog carnivals that steals your back links. Hmmm I have done this as a experiment for a new site, on sites that already established with a PR 5 rank or above it will not effect them, but if you are less than a PR 5 you have made a mistake publishing your stories anywhere except your blog, you might get traffic from where you published your article but guess what your story and backlink and your page position have been stolen by the more powerful site. We have done this with this site but that is not it either as we knew the outcome and it was a tactic that I have to go into great detail to explain and I dont feel like it now. Anyways It is a very puzzling situation over here at blogpromotiontips.com that when we have time we mean to get to the bottom of. We however will start publishing some new content at least once a week. Daily content is not necessary and really there is not that much SEO or blog promotion in the world that could be published daily. Some of the blog promotion sites that do publish everyday are just giving you regurgitated worthless blog promotion techniques over and over again. We will not do that,because there is something new on the horizon that is going to change everything in the coming months. It is called google caffeine and it has been talked about for a year but it is being implemented as this post is being made. Watch out your old SEO and blog promotion page ranking tips will be obsolete. Don’t worry we will be posting the new ways to promote your blog in the coming weeks.

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Does Your Blog Suck

He’re’s a little secret, I’ve slowly and steadily been unsubscribing from SEO blogs for the past few months, and last week the total number of marketing blogs I read dropped below 10, and I think the time has come for an intervention. For a lot of you the time has come to ask yourselves does your blog suck … and what are you doing to change it?

What are your metrics for success? Is it traffic, page views, user engagement, links, comments, rss subscribers? It’s ok if one or two of them flatlines or drops, but if most of them have turned south, you have a problem.

What are you writing about? Are you writing about topics that are of interest to your community and staying on topic?

Are you engaging the community? Are you interacting with other people in comments? Are you engaging people on twitter, not just looking for retweets?

Are you being helpful? Are you writing tutorials teaching people how to do something? Are you taking questions from your community and paying it forward?

Are you publishing regularly? You don’t have to publish daily but you do have to publish often enough that people don’t forget you exist. Are you publishing at the right time of day when most of your community is in front of their computers to read it, or are you publishing today’s news at 9PM Pacific Standard time, when most of your community is long gone. That’s not news that’s ancient history.

Are you stepping outside of your comfort zone? Are you challenging the authorities in your space who are you think are wrong? Are you willing to take responsibility for those actions, realizing not everyone will agree with you?

Are you visually interesting? Are you using pictures? Not just for the sake of meeting a visual quota but good images that make a post better.

Free Photo Hosting

Are you Innovating? Are you evolving and improving how you do business, and are you trying new methods and techniques?

To put a fine point on it what are you doing to be interesting and worth reading?

Original Post on www.wolf-howl.com

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