Matt Cutts himself confirmed the latest Penguin update will roll out soon

What is Penguin 2.0?

Technically, the latest instalment of Penguin is the fourth confirmed update, which is why some websites are calling it “Penguin 4”; however the internal team at Google are calling it Penguin 2.0 due to the sheer size of the update compared to the ones that have preceded it. For the sake of simplicity we will also call it Penguin 2.0.

In short, the new update will go deeper and will have more of an impact than Penguin 1.0. Google have progressed the data they were working with, so could now hit websites who, for example, build links from adult websites or other “bad neighbourhoods” or who ‘over-optimise’ their anchor text.

What does Penguin 2.0 mean for you?

We know that Google still places a lot of importance on backlinks to your website, so it is important to continue to attract and build these links. However, once this update rolls out you may want to look at cleaning up the older links that may be harming your site. As such, it is possible to get a better understanding of your current link profile by using tools such as LinkRisk so you’ll know exactly what action to take; you wouldn’t want to remove links that actually help your website to rank in Google.

Once you have removed high risk links you should look at replacing these with newer links. Even though there will always be a certain element of risk with link building as algorithm updates are constantly updating what they deem as ‘bad’, the majority of them still hold a lot of importance. Google sometimes changes their mind on the value it places on certain links, but to get your website ranking for the key phrases that are important to you, these volume links can still provide you with an SEO benefit.

When you consider that many of your competitors will still be building links to retain their own visibility in the search engines, it makes it even more vital to remain competitive in your link building activities. It is important to be aware of these new algorithm updates though as you may want to amend your practices slightly to focus on a different method of link building, for example, securing guest posts on a site within your niche that has a high domain authority. Another idea is widening the set of keywords you use to include more brand terms, as well as commonly linked phrases that would be in a natural link profile such as “click here” or other similar words.

We’d be happy to speak to you more about how we can help you to remain competitive even after Penguin 2.0. You can contact us here.

Manual Link Building will join Majestic SEO as headline sponsors for the awards, which is the inaugural event to be held in the US following the success of the UK and European Search Awards.

Taking place at Las Vegas’ famous Treasure Island hotel and casino, the awards will feature 22 different categories designed to recognise the hard-work by organisations, agencies and individuals in the US search and digital marketing industry.

Entries for all award categories opened this week by using the form on the US Search Awards website

The event, which is being run by Don’t Panic Projects will be judged by some high-profile industry experts, including Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, US brand ambassador for Majestic SEO Mel Carson (both pictured right), SEMPO chairman Chris Boggs, MD of Latitude Richard Gregory, as well as co-founder of SEO Chicks Julie Joyce.

If you are running short of ideas, one solution is to conduct a customer survey. You can use the results of a survey to come up with many types of original content, and here are some of the best.

1. Press Releases

A press release is the simplest and most obvious type of content that you can create using the results of your survey. The best press releases point out something interesting or previously unknown, so try to frame your survey in such a way that it generates more interesting results, and this can help to boost the amount of publicity you receive.

2. Videos

Take advantage of video content as well as written content. For example, you could interview the CEO to get his or her opinion of the results, which will show customers that their opinions really do count as well as making for an interesting feature. You can then post the video on your website as well as to video sharing sites like YouTube.

3. Case Studies 

If you find some particularly interesting results, you may want to ask some of the participants of the survey if they would like to feature in a case study. You can then interview them further using the information they provided in the survey to flesh out a really compelling case study that could help to bring your services to life and win you more clients.

4. Guest Posts

Guest posting is a fantastic way to improve your brand visibility and build links pointing back to your website. Blogs and websites are always looking for unique content, and you will be able to provide them with exactly that using the results of your survey. After all, you have unique information that is not available elsewhere, along with real-life facts and figures, which is perfect material for guest posting.

Write a few different articles based on various results from your survey and find homes for them on a variety of leading industry blogs, and you can generate some powerful links this way.

5. Infographics

Infographics remain a popular form of content, so use the results from your survey to create one of your own. Pick out the most interesting points and hire a designer to illustrate them, and you could find that this proves to be an excellent source of link bait.

6. White Papers

If you manage to generate some interest from your other forms of content, it is a good idea to make a detailed white paper available. Anyone who is interested can then download this white paper from your website, or read it on a document sharing site like Scribd, and get full access to the in-depth results along with graphs and illustrations.

Think Up Your Own Survey

If you are lacking ideas for your web content, a survey is a surefire way to generate interesting content ideas for weeks or months to come. And remember, the above is only the start. You can also use the survey results to create an email autoresponder series, social media posts, presentations that you can post to SlideShare, podcasts, webinars and more. So think up your own survey today and get inspired to produce some compelling content!

Although this did initially cause some problems for certain sites, it’s hard to disagree that this update was anything but good for the longevity of SEO. Any natural-looking profile (i.e. one that has had no ‘link building’ work done on it) would have mainly brand anchors, links that are just to ‘www.yoursite.com’ , or maybe even on a ‘click here’ thrown in for good measure.

What is a natural anchor-text blend?

The thing is, even though every SEO ‘expert’ will tell you that you need to have a natural looking link profile, it seems that nobody REALLY knows what the ideal percentages are to make this happen.

It’s fair to say however that while most sites will already have a small proportion of naturally-acquired branded links, if they have done any SEO work then their anchor-text phrases are potentially outweighing what would appear in a natural profile. It’s in these situations where sites have seen drops in their rankings, and maybe even required a programme of link removal to help them recover.

It varies by industry

One of the best places to start; if you are looking to make your backlink profile appear more natural then you should check what your competitors are doing. If you have seen any drop in rankings yet one of your main competitors is still sitting pretty for similar target keywords, then running a backlink checker on them using one of the many tools available will allow you to analyse what kind of activity they have been doing to remain so successful.

As with many factors in SEO, all industries are different and you’re likely to see a different percentage of targeted anchors being effective in finance sectors than those in the travel industry for example.

It varies by type of page you want to rank

There have been numerous studies into anchor-text distribution, but one on SEO Moz relatively recently suggested that it can vary depending on what type of page on the site is undergoing link building work.

While overall a fairly successful blend was around 1/3rd targeted anchors (SEO keywords in exact match and phrases) and 2/3rds natural (i.e. brand and everything else ) on a large business site, it also found that for category pages this was only around one-quarter targeted anchors compared to three-quarters natural terms. Furthermore, product pages had significantly higher anchor-text to be effective, with an almost half-half split working here.

What should you do next?

If you are concerned about the performance of your website and are worried about your anchor text being over-optimised, then Manual Link Building can run an audit of your site to help determine whether you need to clean up your backlink profile.

If we find that this is required, we offer services such as link removal – to get rid of the offending links, to branded link building to help neutralise your site’s profile and help it appear more natural to those all-important search engines.

Contact us here for more information on how we can help you.

When considering how to tackle a large blogger outreach campaign you need to simplify the process and break it down into short, yet vital stages. This ensures you establish a platform on which to move forward for further success.

With scalable blogger outreach you should keep three core elements in mind – the content, prospecting and the outreach itself. Get all of these integral components right and you will be networking with a variety of websites in your niche or industry that could benefit your website for months, perhaps years into the future.

Content

Of course, blogger outreach wouldn’t work without creating content. With this form of link building now considered a mainstream tactic, bloggers are becoming savvier when it comes to the type of content that they accept for their websites. With this in mind, you’ll need to ensure your writers are getting the basics right – spelling and grammar are important – though you’ll also want to generate an appeal for both your customers and a wider potential audience.

You’ll want to generate some interesting content that contains relevant information not only for your customers, but for visitors to the type of sites that you are going to be targeting. Gone are the days when you can just add a piece of uninformative content with a link back to your own site and expect it to boost your rankings.

Content doesn’t necessarily need to be self-promotional – in fact you may develop a stronger relationship with a blogger if you provide something interesting and tangible from your industry that is also going to benefit their users. And, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in a word format – videos and image-based information can also achieve the desired effect.

Prospecting

Once you are happy with your content you’ll then need to find somewhere to place it – this is where having a good marketing knowledge can pay dividends. You’ll ideally want to find a relevant audience for your content, and in SEO link building terms this means looking for other prospective sites which you believe would be beneficial to build a relationship with.

There are a number of outreach tools that can help you with this process, though it’s also beneficial to use Google search. Build a list of sites by searching for keywords that relate to your industry – add in variants such as ‘guest post’ to your search query and use tools such as SEO Moz if you are looking for sites that achieve certain link statistics such as domain authority and number of external links.

Outreach

Once you’ve shortlisted the sites you’re interested in appearing on, it’s time to tackle the blogger outreach. There are many different theories in the best way to approach a blogger when it comes to outreach, though it’s fair to say that every situation will require a different tactic.

Put simply, contact your link prospects in whatever way you deem appropriate, whether that be through building a relationship across social media, or going in head-first with a telephone call or email. Whilst emails are considered the most scalable technique, phone calls are good if you want to be more personable and have a guaranteed answer in a quick turnaround time.

Generating a Buzz

Once you’ve successfully secured a guest post on the site you want, why stop there? Generate some buzz about the post through social media – for example; promote it on Google+ and Twitter. Even old-school tactics such as social bookmarking the post will help to pass some extra authority to it, which in turn will pass through to your own site.

Guest blogging can be highly successful, yet it’s a very time-consuming SEO tactic. Manual Link Building can run your blogger outreach campaign, including the creation of interesting & relevant content, as well as the prospecting and outreach to sites within your niche. We can also boost the performance of your guest posts with a variety of social media, including Google Plus One votes, Twitter retweets and Facebook likes. For more information contact us here.

Below is my presentation – Enjoy

The talk when down well and there was lots of positive feedback from the audience – I just hope they fully understood it!!

Feel free to give some social love

Singhal recently spoke in-depth with The Observer newspaper about its semantic search future, its revolutionary Knowledge Graph and about just how much information Google needs to fulfil a search.

Speaking into his smartphone to provide an example, Singhal asks Google for the height of teen-pop sensation Justin Bieber. Google dutifully replies with the answer – 1.7m tall, through the phone’s speaker.

How Does This Kind of Google Search Work?

Singhal explains that to answer such a question, Google needs to comprehend numerous queries; it needs to understand that Justin Beiber is a person, understand what ‘tallness’ is, determine which metric to use and where to find a trustworthy source for the answer. Rather than listing pages that simply mention words or phrases used in the search query, Google is learning to gather information by recognising the way people really think.

Unfortunately for Google however, the better their search algorithm is, the harder the job gets. As the search engine gets smarter, the more passive the web user becomes which in turns leads to far less detailed search queries being used.

Google currently puts each search through more than 570 million filters, paying attention to 18 billion factual influences. The behind-the-scenes process will only continue to become more complex as the search engine strives to provide even more user-friendly results.

Google Knowledge Graph

In May 2012, Knowledge Graph was launched with the aim of providing more accurate responses to searches. Google’s vision is to reduce any friction points between users, their thoughts and the information they need.

What this means for SEO isn’t certain just yet, but, though as we have seen with Panda, this may yet be another step towards having less of a reliance on keyword searches, and instead a greater focus on developing content that is of high quality and provides tangible information for visitors to our websites.

What would happen if your content was lost in the sea of information on the World Wide Web? No one would be able to find out what you’re offering, where your place of work is or even your contact number. The higher up the search results you appear, the more customers will visit your website. If SEO is done well, it has the power to boost your sales sky-high. But if it’s done badly, it has the potential to hurt your brand and damage your credibility with potential customers.

SEO has become so advanced, technical and competitive now that it often requires its own dedicated department. Often business owners don’t have the time or resources to implement an effective SEO strategy. It takes skill, experience and expertise to achieve the desired results, and many companies don’t have the people required in-house to conduct SEO strategy successfully.

In many cases, it is a wise investment to outsource your SEO campaign to an SEO firm like us at Manual Link Building.

Read on for three prime benefits of outsourcing your SEO:

1 – It is cost-effective

It can be costly to maintain an in-house SEO specialist, let alone an entire department dedicated to SEO. However, by paying a fixed rate to a good SEO company, you can rest assured knowing that an experienced team are devoted solely to your SEO strategy and you won’t have to pay out for extra manpower or constant training courses.

It also makes it easier to evaluate your return on investment (ROI). The cost of hiring an SEO company will easily be outweighed by the returns as a result of better SEO, and the time you’ve saved and dedicated to another aspect of your business.

2 – Use specialist expertise

SEO is a science, not an art, and it won’t work successfully if you try and do it yourself with only limited knowledge on the subject. External SEO specialists not only have the necessary expertise in their field, but they also work with the latest and most effective marketing tools so that they stay up to date in a constantly evolving industry.

SEO done incorrectly isn’t just ineffective; it could have a damaging effect on your brand.

3 – It will be more efficient

Researching and developing an SEO strategy can take time, extra resources and energy that you’d probably rather focus elsewhere. However, a good SEO firm will comprise experts that work proficiently, accurately and quickly. They have all the necessary skills, expertise and experience required to engage with your target market. Their tools will give you the added confidence that your SEO activities – link-building, content development, coding and reporting – are being performed properly and successfully.

What does this mean for your business?

Firstly, if you or any company acting on your behalf has ever engaged in slightly shady SEO or web content practices, then where you rank in search engines might be affected. This includes everything from thin, stolen or duplicate content, as-well as keyword stuffing, cloaking and unnatural links. Google has cracked down anything which comes under ‘black hat’ SEO practices, which is why content farms came under fire.

Secondly, and most importantly, it has restored content to the throne. Understanding that content is king is now essential to implementing marketing and credible web practices which will actually benefit your business. “Content” sounds like a marketing term, but this is nothing new. As soon as humans learned to express themselves on cave walls we created a means to communicate which transcends the face to face encounter. We have been on a constant journey to share and learn from one another, and since the first Gutenberg press, technology has been a willing partner in that journey. From cave walls to Facebook walls content has been a vehicle for our thoughts.

In the early days of the internet companies hoped they could dethrone content with poor quality web copy, shady SEO tactics, and anything else they could use which would make a website look more prominent in search engines. Google has put a stop to this.

Content is once again king. In practice this means your web copy would benefit from being of a high standard. Your website should have a steady supply of engaging content being published through its blog and social media channels. Not only will this benefit SEO tactics, but it will make you a thought leader in your sector, and give you a valuable inbound marketing tool.

Research by Econsultancy, and online services provider Outbrain, found that 75% of “digital marketers believe businesses are turning into publishers. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of them think that content marketing is set to play an even more important role over the next 12 months and 88% are convinced that it is more effective than advertising as far as sales go.”

People share things they read, watch online, and think others will like as-well.

We all share. How many times did your last blog post get shared? If you even had the time to write one.

Which is what it really comes down to. Time. Most business owners don’t have the time to write content which gets published and shared to any great extent. WordPress is a very versatile platform, but it doesn’t endow the user with the ability to write a bestselling novel.

Employing a company which can provide SEO copywriting services will give you numerous advantages. You will have a constant supply of high quality content, you will be able to adapt more easily to the new Google Dance, and your social media marketing efforts will start to generate much needed results. Ultimately the Google Panda and Penguin updates are designed to enforce the law of King Content. Now is the time to start taking your content marketing strategy seriously.

This guest post has been written by Benjamin Kerry – the owner of Precise English and has more than 10 years of experience in content development and search engine optimisation. He’s also a director of Desk Pop and can help you with anything relating to the online world, especially SEO Copywriting Services. Currently writes for several blogs and would love to write for more!

Connect with author via: Email | Google+ | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Anyway, I’ve got a confession to make. I’m the SEO manager at Appliances Online and I’m not very good at SEO.

Don’t get me wrong, we do ok. We measure our monthly traffic in Wembley Stadiums (a single Wembley seats 90,000) and if you believe Greenlight, we’re the second most visible site in our sector.

But who wants to be number two?

We need someone to take our onsite optimisation to the next level and it could be you.

Are you someone who can fix our duplication issues? Can you get our rich snippets to work? How about improving site architecture? And what would you do about our AJAX powered faceted navigation?

We’re hiring an SEO. If you’re interested, email me.

FAQ –

Is this a new role? No. Our previous SEO decided to jump ship and start up his own agency.

What’s the salary? Negotiable. Tell me what you’re worth.

What technical skills do I need? We’ve got an IT department to do the actual coding (they’re also hiring) but you’re going to need to be able to write the technical briefs.

Is there room for progression? Yes. If you want details ask in the interview.

What about link building? Link building skills are a bonus but we’ve got a team who already do things like cake baking competitions (41 LRDs) and environmentally friendly surveys (29 LRDs).

What’s the company like? We’re a great company to work for.

Want to get in touch? You can find us on Twitter and Facebook or just get in touch with me via email.

The build-up to Mini #SAScon has started with the event being held at The Hive on 7th December.

ManualLinkBuilding are offering the opportunity for one lucky person to join the MLB table at the upcoming Search Awards on November 1st, being held at The Emirates Stadium.

How to Enter

In true MLB style we like to do things a little bit differently. So, we would like people to be creative with the letters M, L and B.

Entrants are asked to upload a picture to Instagram using the hashtags #MLBgoldenticket and #SearchAwards and send to @Manlinkbuilding

Disclaimer: This is for the ticket only, no hotel or travel will be provided.

UK Search Awards

This is the second year that the event has been held run by the awesome Don’t Panic Events. With some really strong entries this year, we expect the event to be an amazing night, celebrating the best talent in the industry.

The UK Search Awards compromises the following award categories:

Good luck to everyone entering and this is what you could be looking forward to!

Discovering Information Using Google

Google Trends was primarily used as a discovery tool offering users the opportunity to see what was trending at a particular moment. The new Trends tools will also incorporate a range of other beneficial additions and has been optimised into a single mobile tool. If you go hunting for Insights for Search then you will find your way to the new incarnation of the Google Trends for Mobile tool.

Hot Searches Expansion

Another tool that has enjoyed an update is the Hot Searches tool. Hot Searches is a shortened version of the Insights tool that shows you the most popular news story or topic to have hit the Internet, according to search term. By default it shows US results, primarily because this was the only country that was offered as part of this tool until this latest change. Now, the Hot Searches function has spread to include India, Japan, and Singapore.

The Trends Service

By clicking on the single result displayed on the Trends homepage, users can visit an extended version of the page. Here, you will see a longer list of the most popular search terms for the day. You can change destination and you can scroll through to view a list of the latest content that is relevant to the given keywords.

Same Service, Now Mobile

The Trends tool still offers the same charts highlighting the top search terms and those that are rising the quickest. Enter a keyword or search term and Google will find the 10 most popular searches that include that keyword for you and present you with an ordered list as well as a world map that shows which areas search for that term the most frequently; a useful tool for content writers, journalists, and website curators alike.

Site Navigation

Navigation is essential to a good website. Check your navigation menus work and ensure that you do not have any broken links on your pages. You should also ensure that all of your pages are accessible and can be reached by following text links that are found on your pages. An effective sitemap, linked from your homepage, should be considered essential.

Indexing and Crawlability

Check that all of your pages are being indexed by the search engines. You should know how many pages your website has and you can compare this to Google’s own results using the “site:” command. Simply enter “site:yourdomain.com” in Google and it will list all the pages that Google has indexed for your domain. There are free online tools that check this information for you, but the site: command is the quickest and simplest method.

Rel=Canonical

Some websites may find that they have multiple home pages being indexed by Google. The most common example is that of “yourdomain.com” and “www.yourdomain.com”. One of the problems with this is if you have links to both pages then you are not receiving the full benefit of those links. Essentially, your efforts are halved. This problem is known as canonicalization and can be resolved with the use of the canonical tag in the header of unwanted page domains.

Correct use of Error Pages

Error pages are another potential problem and not only should you ensure that the likes of 404 pages are set up but that status codes for these pages are also set up properly. One of the biggest problems with this particular error is that it can be difficult to notice unless you have a site audit or technical SEO analysis completed.

If you need any advice on how you can solve any of the technical SEO issues mentioned above,please contact us for further information

ThinkVis – 1^st September – Leeds

Next week, we will be at the awesome marketing conference that is ThinkVis over in Leeds.  This will  be the 3^rd ThinkVis we have been a sponsor for and if you haven’t been yet then it is well recommended – tickets still available here http://register.thinkvisibility.com/ (Dom loves people paying in the final week !!!)

File Sharing Websites

File sharing websites often share copyrighted content and enable users to illegally download and watch films, listen to music, and enjoy other premium content without having to pay for it. There are those that believe the practice should remain legitimate as well as those that believe the sites in question are not responsible. Google itself believes that their search results are not the problem, because they only share links to other websites and are not responsible for the actions that take place on those sites.

However, not all parties agree with these stances. The British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) is just one group that believes Google should do more to prevent copyright infringements from taking place. The BPI said that users were being encouraged to illegal download sites via the search engines and, at least to a degree, the government listened.

As a result, it seems that Google is taking action although they are attempting to put a positive spin on what is effectively a turnaround in their own stance. If Google receives a legitimate copyright infringement notice then this will count against a website and its search listing will be pushed further down the results pages. If Google receives a legitimate removal notice from the rights owner then they may remove the page from their index altogether.

Copyright removal notices

Copyright removal notices can be filed by anybody and because this could be open to abuse by competitor sites attempting to climb their way to the top of the results pages it will be possible to file counter notices if a website believes it has been wrongly penalised. The changes are due to come into effect pretty much immediately.

Obviously we have seen updates such as Panda and Penguin go through with the aim of making the SERPs a better user experience and trying to ensure that sites ‘deserve’ to be there.

We want to see examples of SERPs that you have come across that really promote discussion – exact match domain dominated SERPs or irrelevant results appearing in competitive niches.

We have a number of tickets to give away for the awesome BrightonSEO and Manual Link Building even have a surprise for the attendees, as those of you who know us, we are not your average conference sponsor (we like to be that bit different !!)

So how to enter

Tweet the @manlinkbuilding account with an example of what you think is a SERP that really shouldn’t be like it and @search_magician will judge the best entries. A screenshot would be perfect and don’t forget to hashtag #worstSERP

Example

@manlinkbuilding here is my example of #worstSERP to win a #brightonSEO ticket yfrog.com/5gh819j

Terms and conditions

• Winner gets a ticket to BrightonSEO only
• Travel and accomodation not included
• one entry per person
• @search_magician’s decision is final.

Intensive Searching for Gmail users

This development has arisen to give Google’s existing Gmail users the fastest access to the most relevant results. Google released the news, as ever, on its own blog, stating that “sometimes the best answer to your question isn’t available on the public web – it may be contained somewhere else, such as in your email.” They added “we think you shouldn’t have to be your own mini-search engine to find the most useful information – it should just work. A search is a search, and we want our results to be truly universal.”

It is believed that the new technology will work in a similar way to the functionality included in mobile devices which allow users to search within the device memory for relevant data.
When discussing the move, Google used the example of a user planning a cycling trip. In this case, the standard search results would appear in the left hand side of the screen, whilst any relevant emails, such as messages from friends containing trails, hotels, and places to eat, would appear in a column on the right hand side.

The innovation is currently under trial for English language users with a gmail.com address and Google has yet to confirm how long this trial is expected to last or which territories it is available in.

Further Google Developments

In further news from Google, they have also expanded their Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph was launched in May 2012 for users in the US but will now provide all English speaking users to the technology which allows Google to provide their users with suggestions when their searches might have more than one meaning.

Obviously I have a busy job, but still want to be able to watch as many events as possible and more importantly not miss events such as 100m Final or Men’s 400m hurdles (my old event). So I took to searching Google for an athletics schedule – my search term “Olympic athletics schedule” and noticed the use nicely laid out search results, with embedded functionality on the 26th July, the night before the opening ceremony.

overly impressed with the layout of the SERPs for “Olympic athletics schedule” google.co.uk/#hl=en&gs_nf=1…

— Dan Bell (@danbellj) July 26, 2012

As much as this functionality in effect takes up nearly all of the screen ‘above the fold’, it definitely adds value from a user perspective, allowing for the ability to easily navigate through the different events. As you click through on each event, you are presented with a set of results that opens up to other websites and not just a Google dominated set of results, whilst still continuing to use the Knowledge Graph to present schedule, record and further useful information on the right handside from Google. (400m hurdles screenshot) In response to a tweet from Will Reynolds, who obviously noticed what I had seen, a conversation between myself, Dan Barker, Will & Gaz Copeland started regarding what the possibilities and implications of this functionality. Dan pointed out the lack of Paid adverts which from a Google perspective is huge for an event that is sure to be driving a significant amount of traffic through the search engines.

@wilreynolds & – of course – they’re foregoing paid ads on most of those terms. big, interesting experiment. @danbellj @StokedSEO — dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

He then went on to speculate as to what Google’s intentions could be related to with a bold statement referring to Google paid shopping, one that makes an awful lot of sense when you think about it.

@StokedSEO if enough sign up for paid inclusion shopping, they can use that & the content is the ads @wilreynolds @danbellj

— dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

@StokedSEO eg. swap ‘swimming’ for ‘digital slr’ & the medal table for ‘brands’… @wilreynolds @danbellj — dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

So, having had the conversation on Sunday evening, I woke up on Monday morning to read Danny Sullivan’s post comparing the way in which Google, Bing and Yahoo are all reacting to the Olympics and how it is beneficial to the user.
We have talked a lot about how Google is dominating their results with the embedded functionality, but what can we see from the other search engines. I thought with the athletics starting this week and even more importantly, the “blue ribbon” event of the Olympics being the 100m final, what better to be a good comparison than “100m final” and “when is the 100m final” as search terms.

So first up is Google, who we know have already nailed it with their embedded functionality. Clearly showing me for “100m final” the times of the events (including heats, semi finals) along with the additional information that we previously discussed such as world records etc on the right hand side, whilst also giving results for the official London2012 website and then News results related to the swimming.

Next up is Bing, who present me with News results related to the swimming finals from last night, so points scored for relevance, but then I get YouTube videos from 2006 and 2000 in my organic listings, with only the related searches providing me with the option to search for results based on “2012 100m final”.

Finally Yahoo, who again provide me with a YouTube video as the first result, followed by a DailyMail article related to the swimming last night.

So from a user perspective, we have seen that Google appear to be giving me the results that potentially I am looking for, whilst also giving me alternative swimming results in a prominent position. But what I wanted to see and maybe to give Bing and Yahoo the opportunity to present me with the results that I am looking for, I made the search term into a question and also a lot longer tail.

“When is the 100m final”

Starting with Bing, I am still getting the YouTube result at position 1, then the Daily Mail swimming article again, followed by a BBC article on Usain Bolt breaking the world record. For me, not really the results that I would be expecting for the search term that I have entered.


Over to Yahoo to do the same search and get the same 3 results as Bing, with no mention of a schedule or what I would deem as relevant results, this YouTube video is of the 100m final from Athens 2004, uploaded in 2006 – cant see the exact relevance to my search query.

To finish where we started, I use enter the same search term on Google and I am presented with the exact information that I am looking for in the right hand of the screen, clearly telling me the date and time of the event (granted that 2006 YouTube video is still there ☺).

What I also really like about this box is that they are presenting you with the option to visit the official website, but also by clicking “watch online”, you are presented with 3 options to watch the events online.

Whilst in Danny’s post he rates Yahoo ahead of Google, I believe there is only one clear winner here and that is Google. I am regularly trawling SERPs and see some examples of horrendous results pages, but really have to take my hat off to Google for what is a gold medal performance in terms of the results being provided.

Enjoy the rest of the Olympics and if you are feeling generous then feel free to donate to myself and Nichola’s fundraising efforts in the Great North Run in September.
http://www.mycharitypage.com/danbellj

picture via @AndrewBloch

There has been a lot of press about the London Olympics including both good and bad publicity for the games. In what is being billed as the biggest event in the UK that the current generation has seen, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Olympics Committee would welcome a bit of free advertising and social media sharing but, according to the terms and conditions on their website, the opposite is true.

London 2012 Negative Press

London 2012 has been plagued by a series of news stories regarding security, costs, and even the selection of who will represent Team GB on their home soil. They are certainly no strangers to the idea of publicity whether it be good or bad press that they receive. Even (most of) the public are beginning to get a little excited about the prospects of a worldwide phenomenon happening in their own backyard.

The LOCOG Stance

However, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games has provided some arguably vague guidelines regarding whether or not people are allowed to post links that direct to the pages of their official website. While the wording is vague, the general feeling of the message is that you can’t post anything remotely negative about the games and then link to their website.

Online Censorship

Online censorship is a topic that is close to the hearts of many people. It is no longer news organisations and media groups that are the sole group that need to concern themselves with such things. Tweeting, posting updates on Facebook, and managing your own blog could land you in trouble if you post the wrong thing. Recently, a number of organisations have put up guidelines restricting what can and cannot be linked to their websites and this move by LOCOG is an attempt to prevent negative press being circulated about them.

Reputation Management Or Reputation Mismanagement?

Unfortunately, the attempt to avoid negative press has led to negative press itself. The photographed billboard appears just outside the Olympic village in Greenwich and it will almost certainly cause a stir. What’s more, the linking policy on their own website is also making headlines and not in a positive manner either.

Would LOCOG have been better leaving anybody to post whatever link they like or are they right to try and censor negative press in this way?

Source: The Next Web.

How to Improve Off Site SEO

The best way to increase your ranking with off-site SEO is to use Blogger Outreach with a back link to your website. Positioning well-written and informative text on relevant websites is a critical need when search engines scrutinise your online reputation. The ranking and reputation of the website on which your blog is located, is as important as your own ranking. Many article directories lost their credibility when Google released its ‘Penguin’ and ‘Panda’ updates. Any credibility previously gained because of back links from ‘article farms’ was lost over night. Good off site SEO is achieved by linking from quality posts on high-ranking websites. There is no effective way to boost your online status that comes close blogger outreach or guest blogging.

Specialist Content Creation and Posting

Quality content is always in demand by websites owners and paying professionals writers can be expensive. We have a large list of considerable new media contacts with high page rank (PR) websites who appreciate the talents of our skilled writers. Finding the correct locations for your back links is time consuming and there is no guarantee of success. We have considerable knowledge and experience of back linking that puts us in a unique and enviable position. We know what is required to secure the best links from the most desired web properties.

Increased Results in Record Time

Thanks to our extensive research studying the traffic, geo-relevancy and page rank/reputation of our target websites, we fast track our client’s search engine domination. We nurture valuable relationships with suitable web properties and only post on sites that guarantee maximum results.

Return on investment is important to our clients and repeat business is important to us. We are confident that our blogger outreach campaign will result in a long-term relationship.

Test drive our services and we are sure you will come back for more – Click here to buy guest blog posts

The Importance Of Links

Links have, historically, been used as a major ranking factor by the likes of Google. Their belief is that if other websites are linking to your pages then you must prove real quality and offer access to information that is deemed as highly valuable to visitors. As such, those pages that have amassed large numbers of high quality links have tended to be those pages that have outperformed the competition in search engine results.

The Apparent Devaluing Of Links

However, Google has made a lot of noise regarding the efficacy and value of buying links and artificially generating links. They have argued that such practices do not show the true value of a web page. They have also devalued some links as a result. With the Panda update and subsequent Penguin update reportedly devaluing virtually all types of links, webmasters, marketers, and others with a vested interest proclaimed that links were dead.

Social Signals

Another school of thought ascertained that social signals were replacing links. Followers of this particular school noted that social profile links, likes, and shares were proving to be as valuable, if not more so, than links from other websites and blogs. While it is certainly true that social signals are proving to be effective in building your search engine ranking, this is an extension of link building rather than a replacement.

Google’s View

Senior engineer at Google, Matt Cutts, has become something of a spearhead figure when it comes to talk of SEO, links, and quality. In recent interviews and talks he himself has said that social signals have not replaced links and that while some forms of links may be devalued in the future, he indicated that this has certainly not happened yet. It looks likely that high quality links will, for the foreseeable future at least, have an important part to play in the ranking of web pages.

In 140 characters we would like you to tell us why you should be able to sit on our table along with a number of other select guests.

It is bound to be an amazing evening, organised by the wonderful Don’t Panic team and being held at the NH Barbizon Palace, Amsterdam.

Closing Date is Thursday 28th June at 5pm, with Gareth judging what he determines to be the best entry.

How to enter

 
tweet including #mlbgoldenticket telling us why you should go

Terms and conditions

The winning ticket is for the awards ticket only, accommodation and flights are not included.

We will however ensure you do not go thirsty

Fresh Content

The company blog can include information such as news related to the company itself or industry news. It could offer tips and guides, product reviews, and even interviews from leading names within your industry. One of the big benefits of having a blog on your business website is that it makes the addition of fresh and valuable content to your website considerably easier.

Additional Keywords

Adding new pages of content, or new blog posts, enables you to add new keyword optimised content. You can reinforce some of the keywords that you have implemented on other sites or you can use the opportunity to try and rank for a broader range of keywords and search phrases. Alternatively, you can continue to use your business blog as a means of communicating with your clients and potential customers.

Longtail Keywords

Writing naturally will inevitably mean that you include several longtail keywords in your posts. These keywords do not, individually, offer you much in the way of traffic. However, when you add the visitor numbers and the total sales for each longtail keyword together you will find that it makes a good fraction of your site traffic. What’s more, because it is so highly targeted it means that you enjoy highly targeted and motivated visitors on the pages of your site.

Crowdsourcing Content

A blog also enables you to open a line of communication with your existing or prospective clients. You can open up comments so that your website readers can join in a discussion and you can even choose to accept guest posts. These are beneficial methods of crowdsourcing the content that will help your website grow and develop.

1 – Links

Once upon a time, it was necessary to submit your site to the search engines or, at the very least, submit to a particular online directory to ensure you were picked up and listed by Google. The modern search engine, though, is a considerably more complex beast and a simple links from another, listed website should prove enough to get your own site added to the search engine index.

2 – Crawl Rate

Once a link to your site is placed on another site it is only a matter of time before you appear in the index. Obviously, the quicker your link is spotted, the quicker it will happen. Search engines crawl websites as often as those sites tend to add new content. Blogs updated every day will usually be crawled every day while sites that add little or no extra content will take considerably longer to get you indexed.

3 – Webmaster Tools

Another alternative to generating links is to take advance of Google’s Webmaster Tools. You can create an XML sitemap and then submit it via the Webmaster Tools suite. Your site will be crawled and indexed by Google and you can use the time it take to start building links anyway.

Getting Your Website Indexed

Sitemap submissions are a viable means of getting your website indexed but you will need to develop links for your pages anyway, so this can prove as effective if not more so. Not only will your site become listed in the index of search engines like Google and Bing but you will also start to improve search engine results by helping improve your link profile.