Showing posts with label SEO tool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO tool. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Google Latest Updates - Is SEO Died?

That’s just stupid, honestly. I’ve seen so many “Is SEO Dead” threads and articles popping up everywhere telling people that all hope is lost, and that’s just ridiculous. SEO will NEVER die, period!

You simply need to adjust your strategy a bit, write high-quality content and stick to white-hat SEO techniques if you’re doing any form of link building. That’s it, that’s all you need to do to “conquer” any update Google throws at you.

If you write something on your website, ask yourself the following question: “Is this what I want to see on Google’s first page if this is what I searched for?” If you can answer honestly and it’s “yes”, then you should be fine. It’s all about relevancy and user experience. If Google feels you’re REALLY contributing to the WWW then they won’t touch your rankings. But if you’re doing anything sneaky to try and fool Google or just try to make a quick buck without providing sufficient value to your readers, whatever good rankings you have now certainly won’t last long. People who says SEO is dead have no idea what they’re talking about, they’re quitters, wannabes or most likely, -both.
  • Here’s a breakdown of the 2 algorithm changes made by Google that you can use to inspect, fix and master to avoid ever getting slapped again.
Farmer/Panda Updates: As stated before, the Panda update was implemented to remove article directories and thin-content sites (like minisites) from the SERPS. The de-indexing of many article directories lead to a lot of sites losing backlinks on a major scale, which is what caused some sites’ rankings to drop dramatically. More recent updates (Dec 2011 – Apr 2012) targeted private blog networks like SEO Link Vine (this one hit in Dec 2011 judging from personal experience), Build My Rank and High PR Society just to name a few. Panda was also said to target web 2.0 sites, but this varies depending on the amount and quality of content posted on these sites.
  • How to Fix your Site that was Hit by Google Panda?
Easy, focus your link building efforts on social networks and don’t spam the living hell out of the internet with every flashy SEO tool you can get your hands on. Stick to white hat SEO and you’re good to go.

The Dreaded Penguin Updates: The Penguin update focused more on the on-page SEO of sites, penalizing sites that had too many stuffed keywords in every post or page. Sure, it also targeted anchor text backlinks and obvious footprints from backlinking, but is more focused towards your on-page content itself and not so much the off-page factors.
  • How to Fix your Site after being Penguin Slapped?
This is what I did, and it worked. Since I myself has been found guilty of a bit of keyword stuffing here and there (especially the older posts), I’ve had some keywords drop from page 1 into oblivion overnight. Here’s what I did to fix my site after being hit by the Penguin updates.
Google Panda vs Penguin - How to Beat Google Penguin Updates
I edited each and every one of my posts that made me money and removed many duplicate keywords to get a keyword density of between 0.8% and 1.2%. My rankings are coming back in a big way, here’s a screenshot of my Google Webmaster Tools account (on the left) to show you the proof that this is the way to “beat Google Penguin”. These rankings have disappeared but are making a big comeback after I’ve edited my posts.

Another thing that triggers a visit from the wrath of the Penguin, is linking to unrelated sites. So delete any links pointing to outbound sites that are unrelated, because that will get you slapped faster than you can say “Penguin”.

That’s it, that’s all you need to do! I also suggest following Matt Cutts on Google Plus and keep a close eye in what he has to say. Know that it will take some time to get your rankings back, but if you follow my advice it’s sure to come back sooner rather than later. Know that SEO is NOT dead and it will never die, so ignore anyone telling you otherwise.

You now have everything you need to know to recover from both Panda and Penguin updates, so get to work and focus on producing great content mixed with relevant, white hat link building techniques.

Monday, 5 November 2012

Watch Out for Duplicate Content Errors


The search engines do not like to see duplicate content. In the eyes of the search engine spiders, duplicate content is an attempt to get more links to rank on a SERP (search engine results page) for specific keywords. Thanks to the Panda update, we know that we shouldn’t publish duplicate content across the web and the focus is now on original content when submitting to article submission and industry sites. But what about on your own website? Duplicate content there is also a big “no no” and in most cases a website owner might not even realize that they have a duplicate content issue. Check your website to make sure that these issues don’t apply:
/index.html version of homepage
This is a common error that happens to many websites. In addition to the homepage “http://www.yourwebsite.com” , there is also a “http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.html” version that may appear when you click back to the homepage. It doesn’t hurt much from a user perspective, since the content is the same, but it’s bad for SEO. Essentially, both of these pages can be indexed. Not only do you have a duplicate content issue, but you may also be splitting the link authority. To remedy this issue, it’s necessary to remove the “/index” version and re-direct it to the main homepage.
Slash and non slash
Take a look at the interior pages of your site. On some sites an interior page may look like this: “http://www.yourwebsite.com/interior-page” and like this, “http://www.yourwebsite.com/interior-page/”. Note the slash at the end. If you have both versions of this page, it’s being indexed twice and causes a duplicate content issue.
In both of these instances, these are issues that occur during the development of the website. If you are making changes to your website like undergoing a redesign or changing the architecture of a site, it can change the coding of the site. This is why it’s important to have someone with SEO knowledge involved in the process.
A duplicate content error can often go undetected by a website owner, because from a user standpoint everything looks OK. As a website owner, it’s important to keep an eye on Webmaster tools to watch for important messages from Google. Paying to use an SEO tool that tracks website errors is also recommended.