Google Announcement: Algorithm Update

Google announced 40 changes in the ranking algorithm. The most important changes were another Panda update and changes in the way Google evaluates links. How do these changes affect the rankings of your web pages?



Google's Panda 3.3 update

Google announced the following:

"Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web."

This sounds similar to the Panda update that Google released in January. That update was described as a 'data refresh'. That means that Google probably didn't add new ranking signals.

New backlink evaluation

Google's announcement about the new backlink evaluation leaves much room for speculation:

"Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable."

Google does not go into more detail and it's hard to tell what the exact method of link analysis that they used for several years is. It's likely that they probably turned off a method that is abused by many spammers.

Many more changes

In addition to the changes above, Google announced many more changes: more coverage for related searches, a tweak to the categorizer for expanded sitelinks, less duplication in expanded sitelinks, more accurate detection of official pages, improved local results and more.

What does this mean to the rankings of your web pages?

Google is working hard on eliminating spam from the result pages. If you use spammy techniques to promote your website, chances are that your rankings will drop.

The backlink evaluation change indicates that Google found a way to deal with manipulated backlinks. If you participate in automated linking schemes, your website might get into trouble.

If you want to get lasting results on Google, you have to use ethical search engine optimization methods that play by the rules. Do not use automated link building systems but try to get high quality backlinks to your website.

How to gain your website visitors trust?

Before people purchase something on your website, they have to trust you. If your website does not look trustworthy, then you won't get many sales no matter how many visitors your website has.

There are four things that you should do to show your website visitors that your company can be trusted:

1. Show that your website represents a real company
It's amazing how many Internet businesses don't list their postal addresses. Do these businesses have something to hide? If your customers don't know who you are and where you live they might refrain from doing business with you.

What you should do on your own website:
If you're serious about your business show your visitors that you have nothing to hide. List your full contact information on your website.

2. Show your website visitors why your company is better
Why should someone buy from you and not from your competitors? Is there anything that distinguishes you from the rest?

What you should do on your own website:
Show your website visitors how you're different and why they should use your products or services instead of the ones of your competitors.

3. Show your visitors that other people tested it before
If other people have tested your products and services then it's less risky for new customers to buy from you. Your website visitors want to be reassured that you're a serious business. If your company or your product has received awards then show them to your visitors. If your current customers have something positive to say about your products or services, list these testimonials on your website.

What you should do on your own website:
Show your visitors how other people benefited from your products and services and what other people say about you.

4. Offer your website visitors guarantees
Web surfers don't like risks. That's why guarantees will help you to sell more.

What you should do on your own website:
Show your website visitors that you're 100% sure that your product or service really delivers. Give strong guarantees so that your website visitors can only win if they try your products.

It's important to have a trustworthy website if you want to sell something on the Internet. Show your visitors that your business is real and that they can trust you by using the tips above.

Build your website SEO friendly with our Website Building Services and convert your maximum visitors into customers.

source - ibp

How to create a natural backlink profile?

How to create a natural backlink profile:

Unnatural backlink profiles can have a negative impact on the positions of your web pages in Google's search results. If you want to get high rankings that last, your website must have a backlink profile that confirms that your website can be trusted.

There are four things that you can do to make sure that your website gets a natural backlink profile:

Step 1: create a linkworthy website

Other people won't link to your website if it is just a collection of affiliate links. Try to create a website that has interesting content.

For example, people like to link to tutorials, top 10 lists and controversial statements. The more interesting your web pages are, the more likely it is that other websites will link to your site.

Step 2: solve other people's problems

If your website offers the solution to a specific problem, contact related websites and point them to the solution on your site.

Contact the webmasters of the sites that are related to the topic of your website and bloggers who have written about that topic. Inform these people about your article. Chances are that these websites will link to your site. You can find related websites and blogs with the link building tool in IBP.

Step 3: get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts

Some websites get the most links to the home page. Other websites get many links to specific pages. The definition of a "natural" backlink structure depends on the topic of the website.

In general, it is advisable that the backlinks to your website point to the page that has the best content for the linked text. The linked texts that are used to link to your website should vary. If all web pages use exactly the same text to link to your site, this will look unnatural.

Step 4: avoid automated backlink systems

Some websites offer "secret backlink systems" or fully automated solutions that deliver links from web pages with a high PageRank for little money.

Avoid these systems if you don't want to risk the Google rankings of your website. Just use common sense: if you can find that automated linking system, Google can find it too. Do not try to trick Google if you want to get lasting results.

A natural linkbuilding services/backlink profile is important if you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines. To get lasting results, create interesting and linkworthy web pages and optimize the content of these pages for search engines.

When you are sure that your web pages are user-friendly and interesting, get the right kind of links to your website and your rankings will increase.

Source

Google's authorship rich snippet author image

Google is placing the authorship rich snippet author image all over the search results these days. Heck, if you are an SEO and do SEO related searches, you probably see your mug shot all over Google. If you are not the prettiest person to look at, this may lead to a lower click through rate on your stories compared to someone like Sarah Perez.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one webmaster claiming that when he added the authorship markup, it actually lead to a lower click through rate from the Google search results. So what he did was change the picture and his click through rate spiked!

At first this actually seemed to hurt clickthrough. Apparently people didn't feel that my mug shot was relevant to their searches.

So I changed my profile pic to an image that's relevant to the content of my main site, in particular to a seasonal topic that's important. I saw an immediate, significant boost in clickthrough, mostly on the SERPs that are directly relevant to the pic but also somewhat on more generic SERPs as well.

What really impressed me is that the change in profile pic took effect instantly. I changed the pic, and the SERPs changed right away - so it's pulling the pic directly from my profile.

This opens up a whole new realm of image-based clickthrough enhancement. I'll have to experiment with different images to find out what will work best for the whole site.

Soon enough we are going to have to worry about pornography in these authorship tags. We guess that is why Google released a report rich snippet spam tool.

Source

Backlinks for backlinks

A WebmasterWorld thread has a nice discussion around the link building strategy of building up the pages that link to you.

When link building, you have the option to build links from 3rd party sites to your pages directly. Or you can build links to pages that are linking to you, in order to boost the power of the links that are already pointing to you.

This is a strategy some link builders use when it might be easier to get a webmaster to link to a 3rd party site versus directly linking to your site.

The pros are that it might be easier, you can use your link power to other sites and not just yours, you will benefit from the link building, plus it isn't a direct link so if Google catches it, it might not directly hurt you.

The cons are that the link building you do to a page you don't own can back fire. Competitors can get links on those pages, the webmaster can eventually drop the link or the page completely, or Google can figure out the pattern and penalize you. Finally, focusing on your own site is easier than focusing on all the 3rd party sites linking to you.

PlanetSEO at WebmasterWorld said if you are going to go about it this way, then "look for a page / site that has great content, links to you naturally, and where it looks like the webmaster of that site has never heard the term SEO."

Avoid Automated Backlinks! avoid Google Sandbox!

Backlinks are still Google's most important ranking signal. That's why many businesses buy links to artificially improve the rankings of their websites. This can be very risky because Google doesn't like paid links at all.

If you use paid links to promote your website, you put your rankings at risk. Google has several ways to detect paid links:

1. Your competitors can send spam reports
On its information page about paid links, Google encourages webmasters to report the paid links of other sites:

"If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."

2. Google's manual spam fighters can find the links
Google employs people who do nothing else than judging the quality of Google's search results. They also employ people who look for spam and paid links.

3. Google's algorithm can detect the links
Based on the paid links report, Google could develop algorithms that can detect paid links automatically:

"We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."

Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, said in several of his blog posts that Google's algorithms had been able to detect paid links before they were reported in a manual spam report.

It is difficult and time-consuming to get good backlinks to your website. That's why backlinks play such an important role in Google's ranking algorithm. Avoid fully automated link building systems. These link building systems have been created to game Google's algorithm and that's why Google will down rank your website as soon as they find out that your website participates in such a link system. Get Quality link building with elegacy's Quality Link building Services India.

The backlink tool in IBP can help you to streamline the link building process so that you get good backlinks as efficiently as possible.

checklist to grow your online traffic and sales

Here is a simple checklist to guage your online marketing strategy & to tell if you've... Got Marketing!

To find out, here's your online marketing checklist:
--> Are you sending emails to targeted opt-in subscribers to generate sales in a highly cost-effective manner?
--> Is your site listed in search engine friendly web directories to increase the amount of links pointing to your site?
--> Do you have a blog and are you getting all the benefits that blog marketing has to offer?
--> Do you have content articles written about your business and also virally promoted in article directories?
--> Are you doing social advertising on Twitter? Every business needs social advertising as part of their marketing strategy.
--> Is your site listed where the consumers are, in online shopping sites and other consumer & content driven web sites?
--> Are you driving targeted redirected web domain traffic direct to your site?

These are just some of the many different techniques that are available to help you get more visitors and sales from your website. Take advantage of all of them... they are available for your success!

Check off this list and watch your online traffic and sales grow! Happy Marketing.

Onpage and offpage factors?

If you want to succeed with an activity, you have to find the perfect balance of the factors that are involved in that activity. It's the same with search engine optimization. If you want to get high rankings on Google or Bing, you have to find the right balance between on-site factors and off-site factors.

If you want to succeed with an activity, you have to find the perfect balance of the factors that are involved in that activity. It's the same with search engine optimization. If you want to get high rankings on Google or Bing, you have to find the right balance between on-site factors and off-site factors.

What are on-site and offsite factors?

1. On-site optimization refers to the factors that you can control on your web site:

--> The text on your web page.
--> The number of web pages on your website.
--> The number of keywords and related keywords on your web pages.
--> The links on your web pages to other pages of your site.
--> The links on your web pages to other websites.
--> The structure of your website.
--> The robots.txt of your site.
--> The HTML code of your web pages.

2. Off-site optimization refers to the ranking factors that are usually out of your control. The most important off-site factor are the links to your web site:

--> The number of backlinks that point to your website.
--> The quality of the backlinks that point to your website.
--> How often your website is mentioned on social media sites.

Search engines determine the position of your website in the search results based on the on-site and the off-site factors of your website.

Get your website optimized best and rank better with our SEO Services India.

Source - IBP