Sunday 27 January 2013

Universal SEO Tips for Google


As you are all well aware of the fact that Google changes its policies after every few months and after that you are able to see a number of changes in the website page rankings. The people who have done black SEO have to go down in the rankings and the White hat SEO websites stay on the top. But if you check the policies you will come to know that although every policy changes but some of the things about SEO remain the same. So here are those Universal SEO Tips for Google that remain the same every time there are changes in the policy.

Unique Content for the article:

While writing the article for your website you have to assure that you are writing a unique article. It must not be copied from any other website otherwise Google will consider it a black hat SEO and will probably lower down the page rank of your website. Other than that you have to assure that the content must be of high quality.
 

Keep updating the website:

The next thing is the daily updating of your website. It is very necessary that you write 2 to 3 articles daily for your website so that it keeps on indexing the pages in the Google and the other search engines and the page rank of your website is increased.

Keyword:

While writing the article makes sure that you focus on 1 keyword on 1 page. More than 1 keyword will make a fuss in the content and will also be considered as a black hat SEO.

User Friendly Content:

While writing the content it is very necessary that it is user-friendly. The reader who is reading the content must understand it easily and must contain the latest updates in it. it should meet the modern standard of the development so that the reader gets attracted towards it.

Page titles:

The page titles and the Meta description should be catchy and must contain the keyword in it so that the readers get attracted towards it and want to read inside story of the article.

URL of the website:

While you are selecting the name of the website you have to make sure that you use the main keyword of your website it. If the website is about technology the domain name must contain the technology word in it.
So these were the few SEO tips that never changes whatever the policies are of Google and other search engines.

Sitemap:

Using sitemaps has many benefits, not only easier navigation and better visibility by search engines. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site.

GOOGLE PENGUIN – Dose your site penalized?


After each update came from Google and especially Google Panda and Penguin, we can say that SEO will die, on the contrary, trying to find reasons why a website was penalized once and all solutions. We are aware that some webmasters make their site spam but this update Penguin, made many mistakes. From my point of view, it is impossible for things to stay that way in a very short time will be another update of Penguin and I think things will return to normal unfairly affected sites.

Many of the organic results these days is completely wrong, there are sites that really do not SPAM and down again, this shows that Google Penguin is not yet finished properly. Anyone can tell a poor website, especially if the area of activity. Should know that the SEO, a website is still a solid and people trying to manipulate the search engines will be affected by the disappearance of the organic results. The penguin is hoping that Google will be updated soon and major faults are resolved, we can not only say “wait”, continue to add content and do not force Google’s hand, still do not know exactly what will be and Penguin algorithm still works.

Also, try changing titles and page descriptions are unique and if they do not use a high density on key phrases. What we appear to favor a website in the organic results for keywords or phrases promoted:


Site validation XHTML, HTML5 and CSS
Attribute using the “other” image
Structure of links between pages and articles
Adding fresh content and relevance
Use social networks – Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
If you make a web directory submission, using different titles and descriptions
If you use platform WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.., Or any site with the possibility of adding tags, do not abuse.
Try adding descriptions and unique titles in categories (if you have the possibility, if not, better do not you allow search engines to index these categories)
No matter how much your company has been affected because of this new algorithm, we need to assess the damage and find solutions out of this impasse. Google will make changes all the time, do not we know what to expect in the near future. I read somewhere that Google reported in 2010, over 500 changes in algorithms, it is clear that this happens all the time. Panda version 3.5, has more than a year since it was launched version “child”, Panda and always existed sites in the Google Dance. The problem is that Google Penguin was made ax, unfinished and put on destruction.

Google Panda Update vs. Google Penguin Updates


The SEO community has been a buzz this past week with the latest update from Google, named Penguin. Penguin came down the pipeline last week, right on the tail of the latest Panda update. Since most of the big updates in the past year have been focused on Panda, many site owners are left wondering what the real differences between Panda and Penguin are. Here is a breakdown:

Google Panda Update Overview:

According to Google’s official blog post when Panda launched,
This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
Basically, Panda updates are designed to target pages that aren’t necessarily spam but aren’t great quality. This was the first ever penalty that went after “thin content,” and the sites that were hit hardest by the first Panda update were content farms (hence why it was originally called the Farmer update), where users could publish dozens of low-quality, keyword stuffed articles that offered little to no real value for the reader. Many publishers would submit the same article to a bunch of these content farms just to get extra links.



Panda is a site wide penalty, which means that if “enough” (no specific number) pages of your site were flagged for having thin content, your entire site could be penalized. Panda was also intended to stop scrappers (sites that would republish other company’s content) from outranking the original author’s content.

Here is a breakdown of all the Panda updates and their release dates. If your site’s traffic took a major hit around one of these times there is a good chance it was flagged by Panda
1. Panda 1.0 (aka the Farmer Update) on February 24th 2011
2. Panda 2.0 on April 11th 2011. (Panda impacts all English speaking countries)
3. Panda 2.1 on May 9th 2011 or so
4. Panda 2.2 on June 18th 2011 or so.
5. Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd 2011.
6. Panda 2.4 in August 2011(Panda goes international)
7. Panda 2.5 on September 28th 2011
8. Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th 2011
9. Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th 2011
10. Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th 2011
11. Panda 3.1 on November 18th 2011
12. Panda 3.2 on about January 15th 2012
13. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th 2012
14. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012
15. Panda 3.5 on April 19th 2012
16. Panda 3.6 on April 27th 2012
17. Panda 3.7 on June 8th 2012
18. Panda 3.8 on June 25th 2012
19. Panda 3.9 on July 24th 2012
20. Panda 3.9.1 on August 20th 2012
21. Panda 3.9.2 on September 18th 2012
22. Panda Update #20 on September 27 2012 (overlapped the EMD Update)
23. Panda #21 on November 5th 2012
24. Panda #22 on December 4th 2012
25. Panda #23 on December 21st 2012
26. Panda #24 on Jan. 22nd 2013

Search Engine Land recently created this great Google Panda update infographic to help walk site owners through the many versions of the Google Panda updates.
Many site owners complained that even after they made changes to their sites in order to be more “Panda friendly,” their sites didn’t automatically recover. Panda updates do not happen at regular intervals, and Google doesn’t re-index every site each time, so some site owners were forced to deal with low traffic for several months until Google got around to re-crawling their website and taking note of any positive changes.

Google Penguin Update Overview:

The Google Penguin Update launched on April 24. According to the Google blog, Penguin is an “important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.” Google mentions that typical black hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing (long considered webspam) would get a site in trouble, but less obvious tactics (link incorporating irrelevant outgoing links into a page of content) would also cause Penguin to flag your site. Says Google,
Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.
Site owners should be sure to check their Google Webmaster accounts for any messages from Google warning about your past spam activity and a potential penalty. Google says that Penguin has impacted about 3.1% of queries (compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%). If you saw major traffic losses between April 24th and April 25th, chances are Penguin is the culprit, even though Panda 3.5 came out around the same time.
Unfortunately, Google has yet to outline exactly what signals Penguin is picking up on, so many site owners that were negatively impacted are in the dark as to where they want wrong with their onsite SEO. Many in the SEO community have speculated that some contributing factors to Penguin might be things like:
1. Aggressive exact-match anchor text

2. Overuse of exact-match domains
3. Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
4. Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links

It’s important to remember that Panda is an algorithm update, not a manual penalty. A reconsideration request to Google won’t make much a difference–you’ll have to repair your site and wait for a refresh before your site will recover.  As always do not panic if you are seeing a down turn in traffic, in the past when there is a major Google update like this things often rebound.  If you do think you have some sort of SEO penalty as a result of either the Google Panda or Google Penguin updates, please contact your SEO service provider to help or start trouble shooting.
Google has so far rolled out the following Penguin updates:
1. Initial Penguin Update, April 24th 2012
2. Penguin 1.1, May 25th 2012
3. Penguin #3, October 9th 2012

Optimizing Your Video: Search And Content Strategy


Video is going to be huge. It is already pretty large, with YouTube getting over 72 hours of video uploaded every minute. While words are still the currency of the web, nearly every business is going to need a video strategy in 2013 and beyond.
With that said, hardly anyone seems to know how to optimize their video for search, as well as viewer value. Here are some pointers on getting your videos found, and making them appealing for as many viewers as possible.

Let’s Start With Search

For the sake of discussion, when we discuss video, we will be referring to YouTube. As the largest video sharing site, and second largest search engine, YouTube dominates the video space. Regardless, these tips should work for any video sharing site.

1) Title, Tags and Description

To start, optimizing the page for a video is the same as the page for a regular website. You want your keywords to be naturally found in the title, the description, and the tags you use.
The benefit on YouTube is that the description can be much longer and content rich. Take the time to write a lengthy description, or even provide a transcript of your video. This will help your video to be found for more long tail keywords in search.

2) Links

This is simple. Get as many links as you can to your videos. YouTube has a high domain authority as measured by SEOmoz. It is not uncommon for videos to rank very highly in search results with just a few links of suspect quality.
While not a recommendation, it would not be fair to skip the fact that many people rank their videos highly with the type of link spam gigs found on Fiverr. This is a personal decision, but link spam always comes with risk, so decide for yourself if you can tolerate this risk.

3) Syndication

Look for chances to get your video seen on other sites. Allow for embedding, place your channel’s RSS feed in different aggregators like Feedage and allow it to be placed on other sharing sites with a link back to the original YouTube listing.
This is all that is required for most videos to rank well. Of course, a bit of strategy in implementing each of these will yield better results, but video SEO is much easier and less complex than optimizing a company website or personal blog.

Content Strategy

Video content is much like written content. It needs to answer a question, provide breaking information, be funny, or somehow otherwise be compelling. The only difference is that a video can be shot quickly, while taking the time to write a piece of content that satisfies all, or at least some of these is time consuming.
Videos should be kept relatively brief (five minutes or less in most cases), the sound should be clear, and the picture should be steady. Promotion is fine, but it should not be the sole purpose of your videos.
A great example of high quality videos that are extremely basic are the No Board SEO videos from evolvingSEO. The lighting is fine, the sound is passable, the background is usually just a wall, but the content is outstanding.
For most videos, the set up and execution has to be good enough to get people to click play. From there, it is a matter of whether the message within the content is good enough to keep people around for the entire time.

Conclusion

Video SEO and content strategy are both fairly easy to optimize. The key to both lies in getting the fundamentals taken care of.

Building Customer Loyalty with a Reputable eCommerce Platform


If you are running an online eCommerce shop it is imperative to understand how important it is to build customer loyalty. Every business should aim to have people returning to their website time and time again; as this will increase overall profits and even the amount of customers you reach. If loyal customers are kind enough they will recommend you to their friends and family.
Customer loyalty is the best reward that any business can receive and demonstrates that you really do have a market that is worth working on. If people like it and keep coming back then that’s definitely telling you something.
With an eCommerce platform, there are several things that you can do to help retain customer loyalty. For example ask yourself; what is your approach with new customers? Try some of the tips below to help gain some loyal customers:
1) Maintain regular contact with your customers but not to the extent where it appears to be spam as this is extremely off-putting for anyone. Sending special offers to them via email for example is just one of the great things you can do to keep the customer interested in your business.
2) If a customer contacts you, then contact them back as soon as possible. Speed is essential with online businesses and if you’re too late in getting back to them, they may already have found something elsewhere, meaning that you have just lost a customer.
3) Keep everything relevant within your eCommerce shop. Avoid creating extra pages and content that is completely pointless and has no relevance to your business and / or product(s).
4) Allow for your customer to connect and share with each other. This can easily be done by integrating social media in to your website such as Facebook and Twitter. Doing this is straightforward and usually only consists of embedding some code from the social media site to your website.
5) Ensure that your eCommerce shop has a feeling of security. Because more and more people are shopping online these days, it’s essential that they have peace of mind before going ahead with any transactions. Anti-fraud and secure payments are some factors that should be focused on.
So there you have some top tips to help you build customer loyalty. Remember, your business relies on good people who will come back and recommend you to their friends and family; take every effort you possibly can in order to achieve this. Any digital marketing agency will advise you to treat every customer as a friend; the better they rate your customer service the higher the chance of a sale.

Managing Post In An E-Commerce Business


If you’re managing an E-Commerce business, chances are, you are dealing with a lot of incoming and outgoing mail every day. The larger your business is, the higher the number of mail that you have to manage. Have you ever thought about how this affects your day-to-day office function? You might not notice it but you might be spending too much time just going through your mail. Here are a few ways to manage both your incoming and outgoing mail.

Incoming

If you’re using a franking machine, some models have an incoming mail date stamping feature. This can help you organize your mail and open the ones that come in first.  Separate mail according to date and importance and place them into individual bins. If you have a small office, everyone can easily get their mail as they arrive. The problem comes if you have a staff of 10 or more. Pigeon holes are a great idea. Label each hole with your employees’ names. Assign someone to sort or deliver the mail to the corresponding recipient.
You can also have your local post office sort your mail for you. Inquire if they have a service where they can open, sort and then seal the mail again and deliver it to you. This saves you a lot of time. If you have a high security facility, you can also have your mail scanned before delivering it to you. Ask your local postal office about their services.
Incoming mail is not really a big deal. What an E-Commerce business shouldbe wary about is outgoing mail.

Outgoing

Every day, an E-Commerce business receives several orders. The task of wrapping the item, packing it then shipping it is easy if the orders are 10 or less each day. The problem begins when there are 20 or more and the items require some special wrapping and packing. If you have only a handful of people, you might be sacrificing precious time in fulfilling orders. Instead of selling or promoting your business, you end up preparing order after order. Sure that’s great but there is an easier way of doing things that will give you more time to acquire more business. The best thing to do is have an order fulfilment system in place. An order fulfilment is the process from buying to shipping. When a customer inquires about the product and decides to buy it, the process starts. You and your staff should have a clear picture on how to fulfil an order. They must know exactly what to do in each step. You can automate some of the processes but there is only so much that you can do. If you’re doing this in-house, make sure that you have equipment to make things run faster and smoother. You need a franking machine, a printer, a computer and a computer program to manage your orders.
The next best thing is availing a professional order fulfilment service. Check your local post office if they offer this service. They can store your products for you so you don’t need to worry about renting a warehouse if you have a big inventory. You can integrate your website with their technology and all your clients’ orders will go to them. They will then prepare and ship the order for you. You get a monthly bill and all you have to do is pay it. How easy is that? A lot of popular logistics providers now offer order fulfilment. Even E-Commerce sites such as Amazon have their own order fulfilment service.
Different providers offer different packages. Some can handle customer service, re-order stocks from suppliers and accounts reporting.  Some are flexible enough to fit your budget. If you think that order fulfilment should be done in-house to avoid extra costs, think again. The time you spend preparing packages is already hurting your business. Aside from that, you need to invest in a lot of equipment. Add to that the cost of labels, ink, boxes, bubble wrap, etc. Then there’s the issue of manpower. You need to hire more employees as your orders double or triple. You need to pay them salaries and give them benefits. There are also the overhead costs like electricity, warehouse rental, etc. Add these all up and you will realize how much an in-house order fulfilment system is costing you.
In-house is good for start up companies but as you grow bigger, you need to start thinking about outsourcing your order fulfilment. Ask you provider if they can customize the best one for your E-Commerce postal needs.

Building Social Links Can Improve Search Engine Rankings


One of the latest strategies to optimizing your ranking in the search engines is with social links. Social links are Facebook likes, Facebook Shares, Tweets, and Google Plus shares from social media users that create a public link between their followers and the content of a web page.
Social links can help to improve the ranking of articles, blog posts, and websites.  Fortunately, this is actually a strategy that is not that hard for most people to implement. Gaining new quality social links is certainly going to be easier than the text link building part of your SEO strategy. You’ll want to start with the big 3 social networks:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
While the above are the biggest social media networks, keep an eye open for smaller more focused social networks that might work well for your niche when it comes to social links. More links are usually better, but you have to make sure that you are not spending all of your time (or money) getting social links from social media accounts that have few or low quality followers. Social Links from bot, fake or junk social media accounts are worthless, while social links from authority social media users are pure gold.

Quality is Important

On Twitter and other social sites, you often hear people or companies brag about how many followers or friends they have. The real question should be whether those followers are real people who read posts and could one day become a customer, client, or advocate. Having a million followers does no good if none of them intends to buy from you or at least re-share your content.
However, having just a thousand followers can be great if they are active social media users and can possibly turn into customers or forward your social links on to their followers. Always look for social media links from Facebook, Twitter, and Google plus members with quality followers or friends.

Start Implementing the Strategy

The first step is to create compelling content that people want to share on their favorite social media networks. Then you need to make it is easy for your visitors to share your content with their friends and followers. The best way to do this is by adding social media icons or buttons to each of your posts. Your visitors will simply click on the Share button, the Facebook button, or whichever social media service they prefer, and it goes out to all of the people in their audience. If enough of the right people share your content it will mean more quality social links, improved rankings, and more traffic for your website.

A Fun Way to Build a Better Rank

Most people are already using social networking in their daily lives, so it makes sense to start using it for your business as well. Social media allows you to connect with many more people than your site alone would be able to reach.
Utilizing social networking offers more than just social links and a better ranking. It offers social connections. Connecting with people who are active on social networking sites is a great way to build loyalty with current and future customers.
SocialLinkMart.com is John Lessnau’s latest web traffic and ranking service. After seeing this market flooded by shady dealers selling massive amounts of social links from bot, fake or junk social media accounts, John saw a need for a honest service that only sold quality social links that actually work. Social Link Mart makes social link building easier for SEOs and website owners by only allowing social link sales from authority social media users. SocialLinkMart offers Facebook Likes and Shares, Google Plus Shares, and Twitter Tweets.