Freshness Update and You

How has everyone’s blogs been performing?

Most of my larger, authority sites are doing pretty well.  They are seeing a lot of results when posting daily.  And, I am trying to get the posts in the 1,200+ word area with 3 or 4 images at least.  Often times I link or embed a video as well, off like youtube or vimeo.  Try to make sure that you are writing detailed posts that are broken up by images and also quotes or other breaks for easy reading.  Most online readers are looking for titles, headlines, lists, and bullet points.

Freshness Update:

• 35% of keyword results have been affected
• Terms need latest or recent content
• Update your blog at least once per week
• May give a bit more power to authority sites that can consistently produce big, quality content

Those are some of the tips, take it for what you will.  I highly recommend that bloggers try to create something original every few days, this will help keep you in Google’s radar and give you better chance at improving your rankings quickly.

Baidu and Yandex

For those of you who are looking to accomplish some extra research on search engine algorithms and companies, you’ve got to go check out Baidu and Yandex search engines.  Baidu is currently the primary Chinese search engine, from what many can tell there algorithm responds very similarly to Google and shows results that are a match or within a few rankings difference.  Does this mean they are exploiting Google results for their own?  Probably, its tough to say whether you’ll need new SEO tactics to rank well or just to incorporate the usual Google strategies and make sure your site can be read in Chinese.

Yandex is the leading Russian search engine and also is very similar to Google at this time.   Russian language must be incoprporate on your HTML or CSS data to rank well, but the signals look similar to what we seen from Google regularly.

So if you have some free time, check out these engines and see what they are all about.  Never know when you’ll be selling internationally!

Latest Google Algorithm Updates

There has been some new information released by Matt Cutts that a panda algorithm was just applied a few days ago.  basically over the weekend, but it affected huge amounts of search engine results throughout the web and a lot of people are upset.  Honestly most of my sites improved as they have strong unique content and domain age, but I did see one of my clients sites drop pretty hard. This was because they have very low content per page, primarily pages that just have products and short data.

You’ve got to boost your content, Google wants authority and branded sites dominating the results.  Giving results that have a lot of usefulness and worthwhile content/media for a visitor to learn from and be satisfied.  Not shallow pages trying to sell a quick item.

So if your site has seen some negative effects following this latest panda update, go ahead and make sure that you pump some extra unique content into your pages.  You should see your rankings start coming back over the next few weeks as you add more and more content.

More Updates and New Google Plus Features Unleashed

So everyone can have a Google Plus now, get one if you have not.. They are awesome.  With cool circles that setup and organize your networking with others, friends, family and more choices.  One of the best features is the fact that you can have large group rooms of video chat.  Its just like a fast, digital board room where you can really get some business done and collaborate well.

But one of the most important updates that is just around the corner are business pages.  Google Plus is going to be the number one platform for business and personal networking that deals with professional matters.  There network and authority goes beyond all others and Facebook is holding and dominating the personal game.  Perfect place for digital freaks to market and gab it up with each other over multi-video chats and lame web messaging.  Either way, you’ll want to be putting some strong information and network connections to get into Google.

Sign up today and use the best social media + search website!

Gooogle and Link Farms

Since the Panda updates, “farmer updates”, Google has placed a lot of emphasis on devaluing and removing link farms from their search results.  But, a problem I see commonly with my clients is that their websites have old, well established, link farm backlinks.  These inbound links come from all different sources and activities, maybe an old SEO company that was hired and scammed you by providing no work and little results, except to spam free directory sites.  Or maybe one of your employees tried to help out and put your site into a bunch of free link sites or who knows what.

The problem is, are they hurting your current rankings?  Should they be removed?

Its really hard to say if they are hurting your current rankings or if Google has lowered them to make them worth very little.  Often times the website is aged past a few years and the links have been around forever, Google is well aware that these links are of little to no value and treat them as such.  Some of my clients have had positive reactions to removing these links from those sites if possible, but often times webmasters and old admins don’t respond as the site is very little used anymore.

This can be a tough situation fro your SEO company and the best thing to do is focus on increasing the skew of link weight toward high quality and high PR backlinks.  Lower the percentage of your linking profile that is pointing towards junk and spam sources.

SEO Top 5 Tips for Beginners

I’m gonna list some of the top 5 tips for search engine optimization for 2011. Since a lot has happened since the Panda update, the focus has been changed for SEO a bit and these top picks will reflect that.

Top 5 SEO Tips:

1. Content is King – unique, well-written content will climb the rankings over time and cement a top position for you
2. Keyword research for targeted content writing – HUGE post-panda.  If your content is not written specifically for the keywords you need to be ranking on, then you won’t see results quickly
3. Link building must be relevant and unique, stay away from links below PR 1 and with a lot of outbound links on the page/post
4. On-page factors are not as important, focus more on adding more content and multimedia
5. Build Social Media from the start, integrating strong social signals and building relationships from the beginning of website creation will payoff

Webmaster Tools: Bing and Yahoo

Not sure how many of you have heard the news, but from everything we’re seeing it looks like Yahoo will be merging with Bing by the end of the year.  This is a crucial move since many people have slowly drifted away from Yahoo over the past 5 years, although still a major player, they are struggling to compete in searches.

With Yahoo moving to Bing, we’ll see a convergence of their webmaster tools into one unit.  This will be much stronger than either one alone, helping combine they <10% of majority searches that they currently provide.  Bing has been building a much larger following with quality advertising and big budgets, we’ll see how much of Google’s world they can tap into.  At this point no one is really sure how much use Bing will get out of this convergence, but I feel there will be a lot more utility for webmasters.

Now there will be more reason to SEO for Yahoo and Bing, instead of the small individual portions they have control of before.

What do all you guys think about the merger and the future of SEO?

Article Directories and How to do Post-Panda?

I think a lot of people are being confused and partially damaging their SEO campaigns with article marketing in the post-panda environment of Google. This is not the place you want to be creating thousands of links with SPUN/DUPED content, you will get hurt for this and the results may be a lot more difficult to get rid of and clear-up.

1. Google hates duplicate content
2. Spinning is useless, UNLESS, you are staring with 100% unique content
3. Poor quality article sites are not good for main site blasting, good for buffer sites though
4. AMR is still a good tool, don’t be stupid, diversify your footprints and be smart

My basic recommendations for anyone writing articles for article marketing is to do-it-yourself.  Make sure to correct all grammar and spelling errors, try and use very heavy spinning inside of sentences.  It’s even better to write multiple sentences inside of 1 spin syntax, changing up the paragraph structures and such every post.  That will help you receive more weight per each backlink your going to be building.

Article Submission Basics:

• 500+ words
• Unique content is best
• Spin heavily
• Use poor/low quality sites as backlinks to buffer, NOT main site.

Rookie Insights

Wanted to write some basic tips for all the rookies out here, and brought in an old post I had made for NOOBS!

When building backlinks

Diversify Your Links:
It’s important to be building many different types of links. Nofollow, ********, blog comments, profiles, homepage backlinks, sitewide links, social bookmarks, article directories, news articles, guest blog posts, web 2.0 sites etc. Make sure to get a good mix of everything in. You may get away with
building just one type of link to your site in non-competitive niches, but if you’re in a competitive niche and building mostly just one type of link then your site is going to eventually get slapped. This rule applies even when building trusted links like homepage links from trusted sites. I had focused solely on homepage backlinks for one site as a test in a competitive niche and I ranked for a short time then got sent into oblivion (more then a google dance). Since then I added in links from different areas and the site settled back down to ranking again. Although, I am sure the homepage backlinks have been devalued a bit and would be a lot stronger if I would have just diversified from the start. This may seem like basic information you have heard before, but don’t take it lightly, it’s very important for competitive niches. If you’re building your own links be sure to vary where you’re getting them from, if on the other hand you are paying for services, be sure to vary up the types of links you’re buying. Buying only blog comments or only profile backlinks for example will not be nearly as powerful as buying multiple different types of links.

Make it Look Viral:
Whenever I buy a large backlink package or start really being aggressive with my link building in a short amount of time or am starting with a new domain, I make sure to make it look like my site is going viral. You want to give Google a reason as to why all these new links are coming in. To do this I usually do some or all of the following. Go to Fiverr and buy gigs for tweets, facebook likes, stumbleupons and diggs. Find a large bookmark service with 500-1000 bookmarks from unique sites. You should be able to find a provider here on bhw. Get a couple high quality press releases written and submit them to a service that is indexed into Google news. It’s important that the article gets indexed into Google news since Google is the one we
are trying to convince our site is going viral. You can also have a bunch of bit.ly links made pointing to your site. Often times when something goes viral, many bit.ly links are made of the url, so Google is used to this happening when a site goes viral. There are other things you can do as well, but this is a great start and will be all that’s needed for Google to give your site the green light when seeing all the new incoming links. This is really important, because without doing this type of social marketing Google will probably devalue most of the links you’re building on an aggressive campaign.

When building your site -

Link to Authority Sites
Part of Google’s rating for your site depends on the sites you are linking to. Google determines this based off the trust value the sites you are linking to have. For this reason it is a good idea to link to a couple authority sites in your niche on your homepage. From my testing, this surprisingly helps out rankings quite a bit. It might go against what you have been taught, but even though you may be giving away a little bit of your homepage PR juice, you are gaining a lot of trust in Google’s eyes and this trust gain is more than worth it. As a side note, I wouldn’t link to an authority site with a page ranking for the keyword you are targeting. This would make it really hard for you to outrank the site. Pick authority sites not ranking for your target keywords. Try it out and see what happens. I think you will be surprised at the results.

Oh and don’t make the link nofollow or hide it in an attempt to savePR or keep people from clicking on the link. Leave it as a ******** visible link. Google hates hidden links and it is not going to give your site the added trust value if you make the link nofollow.

Bounce Rates and Avg. Time on Site Matters
If you’re in a competitive niche, make your site useful. This may sound obvious, but think about it, as marketers a lot of times we just focus on pushing the aff product or adsense or however we are monetizing. It is important to make the site useful and appealing to the visitor. Bounce rate and avg. time on site matters. Google knows these numbers and this is figured into your rankings. If you’re in a competitive niche on the front page with high bounce rates and low time on site (relative to niche averages and competitor sites), your site is going to get bumped off. Googles number one job is serving up useful results, so try and add some pages to your site that are truly useful and get people to spend more time on your site. Your sales might go down a touch (this usually just applies to adsense sites as the sites converting the best with adsense are the ones not giving the visitor the info they are looking for), but it will really help with you keeping and improving your rankings over the long haul. If your bounce rates are high, then you need to change up the design of your site or check your sites loading time. A slow loading time will have high bounce rates and Google also factors in the loading time for rankings.

If you keep ranking your site in the top ten only to see it get bumped off a few days or a week later, try improving the bounce rates and average time on site. Google may be kicking your site off because of other reasons then your seo.

Invest in a Good Domain
If you are building a site you plan on spending a good amount of time and or money on, take some time to research a good domain and spend some money on it. If you’re not going after a specific keyword then look for a short memorable domain name that will be easy to brand in your niche.

If you’re looking to go after some competitive keywords then just because the exact match domains are already bought doesn’t mean the owner isn’t willing to sell. Most of the time the exact match domains are just sitting around collecting dust. You would be surprised at how cheap you can get these for if you just ask. Even if you have to spend a good chunk of money, an exact match domain on your target keyword is like a X3 for your seo. It makes it so much easier to rank.

So don’t cheap out on a $9 domain name. Don’t build your castle in the sand… Spend some money and get a good domain name. It will make all your work from then on so much easier. This is one of the main reasons I am able to jump into a competitive niche and start ranking fast.

My Trick to Get Domains Google Treats As Exact Match Domains
This is something you can try when the exact match domain for the keyword you’re targeting isn’t available and if your domain fits these circumstances. If the keyword you’re going for uses an abbreviation, try checking the full term.

So for example, if cure ed is taken, try cure erectile dysfunction. In my experience google treats cureed.com the same as cureerectiledysfunction.com. Notice for example when you type into google, “cure ed”, the first result is “cure erectile dysfunction” and the whole term is in blue highlight as google usually does for highlighting the terms you searched, which means google is treating “ed” and erectile dysfunction” as the same. Now this seems obvious for this keyword, but for others you would be surprised at how many exact matches for the unabreviated term are available even in competitive high exact search result niches. For example I just bought “satellitetelevisionforpc.com” and am pretty sure it is going to rank just as well as the emd “satellitetvforpc.com”, which is a very expensive domain name registered a long time ago in a competitive niche with high exact match searches. Yet I can still grab television which google sees as the same thing as TV(feel free to grab the .net or .org). You could probably even unabreviate “PC” to personal computer and it would work. Other things that work are switching out one of your keywords for a similar word, like phone and telephone, certified and certificate, training and trained etc. (the last two examples I am still testing and am unsure, but the words show up
in blue highlight when searching, so it seems google is treating them as exact match). I have used this to get some great exact matches in very competitive niches and the domains rank very well. I know it works from testing it out on my own.

Domain Registration
This applies when going after competitive keywords/niches. You want to register your domain name for longer then a year. Five years is a good amount of time, but anything longer then a year will do. Google knows people who have their domains registered for longer then a year are serious about the site and it helps increase site trust when Google sees you have registered the domain for longer then a year. If possible grab up the other extensions for your domain name (.org, .net and .info) and then 301 redirect them to your main domain (works even better if you put some content on these domains, get them indexed and then redirect). Buying up the other Tlds goes along with the registering for longer then a year theory because it is another step you are taking to show you are serious about this website. Don’t use a whois guard. Whois guards are used by people that have something to hide. It’s not a
negative against you if you use a whois guard, but it is a positive for your trust value if you don’t. If you really want to stay anonymous then just use made up information when filling out the domain registrar information.

Google’s Related Searches:
Ever notice the Google related searches at the bottom for keywords you search? Use these. Take the main keyword you are targeting, look at the keywords Google suggests and make pages for those keywords on your site. You can even copy the linking structure Google has. For example if you built a page on your site for “six pack abs”, you could put the following at the bottom.

Related Articles:
six pack abs workout routine
six pack abs workout
six pack abs diet
six pack abs fast
the truth about six pack abs
mens health
cardio six pack abs
ab exercises

These are the related searches for “six pack abs” pulled from Google search. Make a page for each of the keywords on your site and an article targeted to the keyword. Now Google is going to see that structure and your onpage score is going to go through the roof. I would also then link from these subpages back to the original “six pack abs” page with “six pack abs” as the anchor text and another link with whatever the google related keyword was for that page. I would build this type of link structure for each of the main keywords in the niche you really want to rank for. This will really help
your on page seo. Plus you should start ranking for some of these google suggest keywords and pull in some traffic from keywords you may not have thought of targeting.

Other –

Make a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter Page for Your Site:
A lot of weight is being given to social sites right now on search engines. You definitely want t have a fan page and a twitter page for your site.
spend some money on fiver or here on BHW and fill your pages with some followers/fans to give them a bit of authority. Then make a tweet/post
every once in awhile linking to your site and authority sites in your niche. Lately this has been really powerful for ranking.

Sandbox Trick:
If your sites rankings have dropped and it is nowhere to be found, try this trick (your site could just be dancing, so this is for sites that have dropped for a week or longer, after a week you can figure it is probably more then the usual google dance).First, take your homepage title (H1 header) and change it completely with a new keyword in a completely different
niche.Then you will want to have a bunch of new bit.ly links made pointing to your homepage. If you don’t
know how to change your IP for making each new bit.ly link, then I would recommend using
http://microworkers.com and setting up a job for people to create a bit.ly link to your site. I would get 25-50 of these made. Or you can ask on Fiverr in the suggestions box for someone who can do this task
for you.

Now wait 24 hours to give Google time to visit and re-evaluate your site. After the wait go ahead and change everything back. I would make the title a bit different then your old one but still have your target keyword.This works because the bit.ly links send a ton of spiders to your site. These spiders then see the offtopic title and think the content of your site has had a big change. This causes Google to re-evaluateyour site.

If after a couple days your site is still dropped, then your site has some larger issues. I would make some major changes to the content and layout (also if you arn’t linking to some authority sites like I mentioned before, add them in, this will help increase the trust factor of your site), then just keep backlinking until your site comes back.

News Traffic
Press release sites that get indexed as news in search engines are a really good source of traffic that I don’t see many people taking advantage of. There are sites that allow unlimited submissions which is what I like to use so I can submit all my articles and not be paying for each one. Recently Google has cracked down on many of the unlimited submission news sites indexed into their news system as they were getting heavily spammed, but there still are some left. I don’t want to point out specific sites to use as that would likely just result in the sites getting spammed, so find them on your own. It’s a paid service, but these sites are way more powerful then your typical article directory and you can take all of your articles and start submitting them through.

There are a lot of free press release sites as well. Some of them still get indexed into yahoo and bing
news. One of the best ones is http://prlog.org.

Getting traffic from submitting to news sites can be really powerful, I recommend trying it out for your
sites.

Flip Your Sites
This is my opinion, but I think the best business model is to flip your sites once they are ranking and have a good 1-2 months profit to show. I think this is especially true for adsense and affiliate sites as they are very easy to flip and I know a lot of people who have woke up to find their adsense income gone because of Google making some arbitrary review. Same goes for waking up to find your rankings gone. I personally just think there is too much risk in holding onto the sites, plus flipping the sites is going to give you a bunch of upfront cash which gives you money to re-invest into making more sites.

On the forum I see a lot of people whining about how they are only making $1-5 a day on the adsense site they made and I can’t help but think, that’s great, now just flip it for 350-1200 and use that money to make a bunch more sites. Personally I just see this as the best way to go for a lot of reasons, but I would say you should at least be flipping some of your sites. This is especially true for people just starting out with
not much cash to work with, I would flip anything that made money because the upfront cash will allow you to re-invest and start building a real business.

Useful Site For Ideas and Finding Exact Match Domains
A cool site I will use sometimes to find exact match domains available in a niche. Click the checkbox for “include google keyword suggestions” type in some keywords in your niche and hit search. It will search out what domains are still available and even show the average exact monthly searches to the right of the domain.

How to make AdWords banners and ads?

The most difficult part of running an AdWords campaign for your business is getting the “ad titles/descriptions” right.  People don’t want to click some junky spam ad that looks like, “CLICK HERE -BUY NOW”..  They want something that calls to their needs and offers them a valuable asset.

That asset can be a product, service, or information.

Ad titles I’ve had success with,,

“Fast, Easy, Online Pay-Day Loans”

Description: “FDIC Insured 24/7 loan company, US Based.”

The description gives them credibility and trust right away, your company is federally insured.. use it!!

So next time your creating AdWords ads, make sure to try and think about what your consumer will be thinking/wondering when searching for your services/products/information. Good luck, and be careful with your bidding, don’t lose it all too fast.  Work your way up til you find a margin/ROI that works.