Working with the Google algorithm so closely, as we have done all these years, we find ourselves looking back as if on a particularly stormy relationship. Oh the highs and lows of the last decade, the squabbles, the makeups, the constant intimation that the great days are just around the corner. Winning on Google was always the greatest goal, the thing which was going to make the biggest difference to revenue, the ultimate kudos within the industry. So when did all that change? When did we realize that, not only was getting to number one on Google harder than ever, it really wasn’t that great when we got there! We’re realizing now, sooner than some, later than others, that the truly elegant and refined SEO strategy is one in which Google plays only a small part. My God, it’s a relief. Here’s why:

(a) Without PPC data, it’s impossible to know if number one is even worth going for.

Google’s own data is notoriously unreliable. Keywords with a projected traffic of 300 per day may yield less than 20 when you gain the number one spot. Others yield even less, meaning that, in some cases, its been an abject waste of time. Even when the traffic is there, the cost to get there makes it more than often than not a success that isn’t worth it. Google promises a five course dinner and, more often than not, delivers a greasy bag of fries. Our advice, eat elsewhere.

(b) Number one today, number one hundred tomorrow

As all SEO’ers know, Google is about as reliable as a bucking bronco. Tailor your entire site for today’s algorithm, then tomorrow they’ve changed it and you’re on page 10. Is that fair? Is that a good strategy for stable revenue? No, on both counts. Ranking on Google, increasingly, is becoming a matter of which way the wind is blowing. Pages geared to specific keywords rarely win, it’s the ones aiming for keyword clusters, or general subject matter niches which offer a greater chance of hitting the target. So move back from specifics, and focus on building your brand. The days where a specific phrase matched with a landing page could yield gold are fading fast.

(c) Earn your living from Google, don’t sleep at night

How can any business base its revenues on a company so changeable, so quick to penalize, without any customer service to speak of, and who are currently facing charges from European anti trust regulators because they have been so aggressively promoting their own concerns over any others. This is not a level playing field, people, therefore don’t expect a game where you have a fair chance of winning. Google wants you to beg, scrape, and bow for them to rank you, crank out the content of a small republic, network like the Great Gatsby, and only then will it deem you worthy of ranking. Well, take our advice, you’re better than this. Reclaim all those hours of your life spent writing meaningless content which no one is going to read and focus on reliable traffic sources outside Google. Focus on running your business, doing the thing which makes you better than others, and avoid the Google black-hole.

(d) Do everything right and you still may not rank

There are sites on Google (the Daily Mail springs to mind) who don’t run a tidy ship. Their page layouts are all over the place, they make few concessions to on page SEO, their link profile breaks numerous rules, and yet they still rank. Why? Well, it’s the power of big branding. Google has no real choice but to rank the Daily Mail, given the power of this huge global enterprise. What can we learn from this? If you’re a big fish, you rank by dint of factors beyond the algorithm. If you’re a small fish you can try in vain to keep the algorithm happy and still fail. Another signal that this is a fight you can’t win.

(e) Get a Penalty, your site is finished

Google send out letters of penalization with an ever increasing frequency. They sent a load to Interflora recently and another to the BBC. In the case of those two brands, their sheer size renders them inured from such things. Interflora made a spectacular comeback after flouting just about every rule in the book, just a few weeks after the ban hammer came down. For a normal sized company though this sort of recovery is just not possible. If a competitor spams you, if someone adds your RSS feed to their site, if some happy go lucky blogger adds a huge run of site link to their blog roll, your site could well be going down. Not your fault? – Google couldn’t care less. Write a letter of appeal? There are incidents of people recovering but they are very much the exceptions rather than the rule. Yes people it is flat out bizarre that a company of the size of Google should have so much power and no customer service of any kind. Can you imagine buying a pair of shoes which you take home, then realise there are no soles. You go back to the shop and it is deserted, there are no staff, only a sealed mailbox. You are without recourse to any solution. Such is the experience offered by Google.

Where to get your traffic from outside Google.

Bing – The good people at Bing are winning hearts and minds right now with their good old fashioned customer service, actual people you can talk to on the telephone, and good PPC alternative to G. Their search engine is not quite as evolved but it’s a pleasure to use nevertheless.

Facebook –  Depending on your niche, Facebook is still well worth focussing on. Their advertising offers an incredibly targeted way to find new business and, with careful management, converts nicely. Not dead yet.

Pinterest – With it’s largely female demographic, high click through rate, and passionate group of Pinners, this trendy visually inspired marketplace can really deliver. If you’re in an eCommerce brand, selling something women might be interested in, you should be pinning right now!

LinkedIn - Reliable, largely unspammed LinkedIn offers a high quality place to find business contacts of a quality available no where else. Spend time on LinkedIn  network as you would at a conference, and you will be pleased you made the effort. The business you will get from LinkedIn is generally of the first quality, and according to their stats of an enviably high average net worth.

Stumbleupon – This popular bookmarking site can offer great traffic returns and, again depending on your niche, a reasonable return on time spent. Check out the article on Kissmetrics about just this here

Twitter - What about a company where you can see exactly what your competitor is up to, who they’re targeting, and which people are interested in their goods and services. Twitter’s transparency and excellent geo-targeting opportunities make it a fantastic place to build brands, increase influence, and even make some sales. It’s soft marketing, and doesn’t work well if try to sell directly, but it’s still one of the best ways to get your name out there. And with tools like Hootsuite, it needn’t take up all your time either.

Youtube – The world’s most popular website keeps on growing. SEO’ers working on You Tube are making a killing. See the Seomoz article on how to get started on Youtube here

Guest posting on niche blogs - This is like preaching to the choir. If you do research well, you’re tapping into an audience who already has a hunger for what you’ve got to say. Click throughs can be fantastic on a high traffic blog and, with the added bonus, you’re building relationships with fellow bloggers, with is the kind of old fashioned networking that pays off in the search engine rankings too.

Forums – The web provides numerous places which, in the real world, would resemble the Masons. These tight knit communities have their own rules and regulations, their own pecking orders, their own traffic sources, their own following. Find a forum which represents your niche – whatever that may be – and get involved. Build a profile which you can be proud of. Interact with other community members. Most forums allow profile links after you’ve proved yourself a bona fide member and so, each time you leave a comment on another member’s post, you’ve put down another way for someone to find your site. Highly effective.

 Yahoo Answers - one of the best knowledge sharing communities on the web, Yahoo Answers remains a thriving community of passionate knowledge sharers. Spend some time engaging with the questions at hand, build up your own profile, and then start commenting on relevant Q & A’s. Most of these rank well and can deliver traffic month after month.

Directories - Concentrate on the ones closely related to your business niche or, as in the case of Dmoz, of a sufficient standing to bring in traffic regardless. Dmoz remains a nice source of traffic, but getting in remains something of a lottery. Be persistent, though – we tried for several years, until a kind moderator finally gave us the green light. It still sends traffic monthly…

Email marketing – Building a targeted list should be a natural byproduct of all the other traffic sourcing options we’ve already listed. Email spamming is one of the great plagues of the modern web so be very clear we’re not advocating this. We’re talking about encouraging people to sign up via incentives, whether they be competitions, information, a newsletter etc. Then you have your own list of interested parties you can market directly too.

For now, you can’t ignore Google entirely. They have approximately 67 percent of the market share, according to this data here. But the chances are you can begin to move your dependency away from it. Do it NOW, and do yourself the biggest favour of your life…

If you know anything about computing technology you know there are more devices than ever before that allow people to view web content. With electronic tablets and smart phones becoming primary sources for website viewing for a growing number of people, websites have had a difficult time keeping up with this technology. Many websites simply don’t show up properly on mobile devices. Even with dedicated mobile applications, websites don’t often translate very well to different size screens that mobile devices offer. For that reason, Responsive Web Design was introduced.

What is responsive web design?

In essence, this type of web design uses valuable media queries in order to determine what type of device and what size screen the website is being displayed on. Once the website determines the device and the size of the screen, it fits itself to that screen so that the end user can view the website on a smart phone just as he or she would if they were viewing it on their home PC.

Why is this option so popular?

One of the reasons why this type of web design becomes so popular is because there are a growing number of people that use electronic tablet smart phones as the only way they view Internet content. With the features that these smart phones and tablets come with, many on the go individuals simply don’t use any other computing device to go online. With the growing number of people using these types of devices, it was necessary to have the technology that could translate websites to those screens much better than they have in the past.

How does responsive web design benefit my website?

One of the benefits of this type of web design is that it keeps people engaged in your website. If a tablet or smartphone user has an issue with viewing your website properly, the chances are quite good that they simply won’t return to your website while using a mobile device. What’s more, if someone is looking for an immediate service, restaurant, need, etc. then he or she may simply visit your competitor’s website because they can’t view yours the way that they need to.

If you are looking for a way that your website can translate to not just a home PC but to smart phones and tablets, then responsive web design is something you should consider. This type of web design is being offered more and more within the web design community and many feel that this type of web design will be the standard for websites both for existing and for future websites as well.

Nice Mashable Article here.

Up until 2012, the biggest wins in search engine optimization came from what you could automate. As Google began to come down harder on unnatural links, however, the rules of the game changed. Though plenty has changed, there are still plenty of things that you can do to improve the reach of your sites in just a few minutes at a time. Take these 50 SE0 TIPS and use them whenever you have a small amount of time free that you want to put to work on creating a stronger site.

1. Spend a few minutes brainstorming.

2. Schedule a meeting where you can bring in other people to help brainstorm who may be able to offer a different prospective.

3. Pick a site associated with your niche, and let yourself wander a little to find new things that you can associate with it.

4. Find aspects of your target niche that are open to discussion. You don’t need to be extreme about this. Anything on the Internet that is a matter of opinion has the potential to generate a lot of discussion and interaction.

5. Identify the key bloggers in your region.

6. Take your list of bloggers and identify how your niche relates to their interests and focus.

7. Look for opportunities to meet with these people at local meetups and conferences where you can network and show them how your content would be of interest to their readers.

8. Make a note to maintain these relationships over time. Put an alert in your calendar if you must to trigger reminders that you should be reaching out.

9. Reach out to customers to ask them for testimonials and reviews.

10. Follow up with other key contacts in any way that makes sense.

11. Think about ways to reward loyal readers and fans.

12. Think about ways you can reward people for helping to promote your brand, such as asking them to give your links to family members or posting their own reviews.

13. Talk to your own close friends and family and ask them to mention your services or products on their own personal sites.

14. Create a discount promotion. People love to share deals with their friends!

15. Put up an amusing error page for 404 errors.

16. Identify experts within your niche and make a list.

17. Pick a name off of your list and contact the person about doing an interview that you can publish. Most people are so flattered to be considered to be an expert that they will happily agree, and then you get content to publish while they will almost certainly be eager to link back to your post.

18. Find sites where people discuss your industry and answer questions that others are asking.

19. Start your own threads to share your thoughts and network within your niche.

20. Set a goal to find one new blog within your niche that is worth following.

21. Contribute content back to the community. Photographs released under the Creative Commons license can be particularly effective because people will be free to use them so long as they supply attribution.

22. Set up Google alerts for topics of great interest to you. That will allow you to find out when they are mentioned on blogs and have a chance to share your comments with a link back to your site.

23. Take something you haven’t published yet, and spend a few extra minutes on polishing it and making it great.

24. Go back to your existing content and provide meaningful replies to comments that people have posted.

25. Check on sites like Google Local to ensure that your company information is correct.

26. Look at who has been reviewing a lot of your competition, and see if you can convince them to give your products or services a chance.

27. Design new business cards that encourage people to post reviews on sites like Yelp.

28. Create a discount program to reward reviewers on their next visit.

29. Take new photographs of your facility or office to share and use them to improve your profiles.

30. Identify and hire writers who work within your niche. It’s not just about getting the writing, it’s also about having a chance to take advantage of their contacts.

31. Share free samples and products with people in return for reviews. Just make sure that they disclose that you gave them something free so that you don’t accidentally violate government rules.

32. Look for signs of existing over-optimization in your own anchor text that you can fix.

33. Look at the backlinks to your site and eliminate any that are off-topic or use unnatural anchor text.

34. Go back and eliminate any obviously paid links you might have out there.

35. Identify and repair broken links within your site.

36. Identify the content on your site that attracts the most traffic.

37. Think of new angles you could use on those same topics.

38. Test your site on a mobile device to see if it is really easy to use.

39. Make changes to become more mobile-friendly.

40. Arrange a meeting and invite local bloggers related to your niche.

41. Look for local events, like small races, to sponsor.

42. Visit local events and cover them on your site.

43. Look at the day’s news for specific events you can write about.

44. Spend a few minutes looking at the trends in your industry.

45. Write a fresh pitch email for potential content partners.

46. Write a guest blog entry.

47. Check in with your development team and see how things are going.

48. Organize your notes on what you need to do so that you always have ideas ready when there is a spare moment.

49. Write a press release to encourage journalists to cover you.

50. Search for your photos on Google and ask for credit where it hasn’t been given.

Build long term relationships

There are a variety of strategies that can help a site to rise higher in the search rankings. Many site owners fall to the temptation of grabbing onto the easiest way to generate attention in the short term, without thinking very much about what their long term results are going to look like. If you get caught up in this trap, however, you can easily find yourself constantly chasing results while only benefiting from any particular effort for a short period of time. If you want to really maximize your results, you need to think about how to engage in link building for the long term.

The old days are gone

For a long time, one of the basic truths of search engine optimization was that no link could hurt you. Whether you paid for a link, got it through an exchange, or opened dozens of your own sites to create links among them, the worst that could happen would be that they would end up being of little value to you. In 2012, however, Google made a major change to its philosophy about how to handle this situation. For the first time, they began making changes to the search algorithms that would actually penalize sites for bad links.

Google is not personal

The first thing that you need to understand is that Google is not really looking at what you did to get more backlinks. They can not see the actual techniques that were involved. They are a company that relies heavily on algorithms in order to operate, and this means that they look for the type of patterns that a computer can detect as they try to draw a distinction between what arises naturally and what is of low value and only being put out on the Internet for the sake of gaming the system.

Google loves natural popularity

Starting from an understanding of Google’s motivations can make a big difference in how effectively you work. When you realize that they are trying to put more value on the organic and natural links, and to eliminate those that occur along a predictable pattern, you can do a much better job of making decisions that will result in a final product that the search engine will value. The most important characteristic often turns out to be the anchor text that was used to lead back to a particular page within your site.

Anchor text still matters

Anchor text is a key factor in how the search engine views pages. It has been designed to assume that the anchor text that is frequently used to lead to a particular page probably has a relationship to what search terms might indicate that a person might want to be led to that same information. This led many people who were working on SEO to go too far in optimizing the anchor text they used, turning it into something strange-sounding like “dog walker Minneapolis.” Then, they would take this exact phrase and use it as the link text that would appear on hundreds of different sites. Ultimately, Google concluded that this was a strong indicator that links are unnatural.

What you need to do, if you want to benefit from this situation, is to create links that are as natural as possible. You can still use all of the techniques that have paid off in the past, but you need to make sure that they do not follow highly predictable patterns. Varying your anchor text is a good place to start, even if you have to use automated tools to do it.

Even better, though, is to start putting more links out there that really are created naturally. For example, if you have been sending out requests that people share a particular page with their readers and telling them exactly how you want the anchor text to appear, you are going to end up with a result that looks like a suspicious pattern. On the other hand, if you just give people the URL of a valuable resource and ask them to share it with their audience, many of them will dos o. More importantly, they will do it using text that feels natural to them and uses real English. The result will be the type of links that do not alarm Google’s systems and will continue to generate value for you over the long haul.

It can be tempting to just generate as many back-links as possible using an automated system in order to get a lot of attention flowing toward a site fast. If you want sustainable success, however, you need to focus your work on what is still going to be generating value several years from now. Your focus should be on achieving successful Link-building which will last.

Resources

What is Link Building by SEOMoz is here

Let’s be honest, the amount of information on the Internet is overwhelming. Sometimes even the hardiest child of the digital age gets competely frazzled and just calls time out. This where curation comes in – it’s a means of managing all this stuff to make your life easier.  Social media curation is filtering, selecting, reviewing and repositioning quality content on the web for a specific audience or topic.

It is very important that a social media curator know their audience. Who are they trying to reach? Are they trying to reach stay at home mums? Teachers? Artists? Writers? Dads? Doctors? Lawyers? How old are they? Do they watch movies? What kind? Do they listen to Rhapsody or Spotify? Do they have a college education? Are they like a friend or family member?

Once the target audience is known a social media curator can create a blog that will attract that audience. They can sell them products and services. More importantly, once a relationship is established between the curator and their audience sharing becomes a two way street. That is what social media is all about – SHARING.

1. Branding – Social media curator must be familiar with their brand. A curator shares all kinds of information. They might share information about writers, books, health, science, or business. Whatever it is, it must appeal to their audience. Their audience must see them as a leader – someone they can trust to give them useful information on a consistent basis. As long as they can depend on this, they will be loyal and they will share the information they find. They must be able to trust the curator. If they discover they cannot, they will find another. For instance, if the target audience is environmentalists, it wouldn’t be wise to tweet about the benefits of nuclear energy.

2. Use different kinds of content – People are attracted to different things; some people like to read, some like to watch videos. It is important that the curator use various kinds of content. They should update their Facebook page with blog posts, videos, photos, and podcasts. It is more than likely that other curators share the same interests and audiences. When one is found, it is important that to share their information – curator to curator and audience to audience. When someone shares a curator’s content, that curator should return the favor. As long as the same values and interests are shared then everyone is content.

3. Have a strategy – A social curator must have a goal. Do they want to increase their visibility? Do they want to sell more of a product or service? Do you want more media attention? It’s fun to share information on social media sites, but why do it? What is the goal? Think about this with every “like” on Facebook and with every tweet and update sent. Be certain that there is progress toward a successful end.

4. Be different – unique! – People like to be inspired. When looking for inspiration they look for something unique. A social curator can use their bio, profile picture, and their personality to help an audience connect to them. Everyone has something about themselves that is different. Curators can use that difference and their unique content to help an audience connect to them. It is important to keep up with what others are doing and make certain to keep up with social media trends. Social media technology changes so often. Everyone has something that makes them special. A curator must use that to set themselves apart. It will be that one thing that an audience sees and is attracted to.

5. Use social media curation tools – In any task it is important to use the right tools.

Social media curation tools:

• Storify- Builds a story layer above social networks.
• The Tweeted Times- Create a personalized newspaper from a Twitter feed.
• TweetMag – Uses Twitter feed to create a simple magazine.
• News.me – Read news from Twitter and Facebook.
• Scoop.it – allows the curator to publish the material in an attractive web-magazine by topic
• retickr – A Mac app that streams Facebook, Twitter, RSS to your desktop.
• iFlow- Discover, curate, and share information in real-time.
• Curated.by – Collection of topics and interests curated by everyone.

Inspiration is the key to blogging on a regular basis. There are many ways to get inspired. Social media curation supports all of them and makes content production a more efficient process.

It takes a little work to set up the right tools, but it is worth it. It makes curating much easier when the most important information is being brought to the curator automatically.

Curation can make social media part of a daily routine without overloading the curator with information. The right tools help curators create better content in less time. They cannot afford to be without the right tools.

Perhaps more amazing even than Interflora incurring the wrath of Google a few weeks ago has been the speed of their recovery.  Within a fortnight or so of being dropped from every major result due to an aggressive paid link and semi black hat web campaign, the floral giants are back in business, with just a blip in their analytics graph to show for it. So what did they do, and could such tactics of recovery be able to normal sites?

Most of this is conjecture because, obviously Interflora haven’t been releasing screen shots of their webmaster tools and Analytics accounts but a huge amount of industry pundits have been thinking and writing about this because of the implications it has for the rest of the industry. In going after a huge corporation like Interflora Google showed that they have no fear of taking down the biggest site if they feel it contravenes their guidelines on search ethics. Most people with their head out of the sand were well aware of that already but a little shock and awe has certainly reinforced that message this month!

Why did Interflora get banned?

• Mass Advertorials on Local Papers
• Link wheels or spammy tiered link building
• Lack of powerful or high trust links
• Paid blog posts on abandoned sites
• Links on sites with Pagerank penalties
• Low quality directory links
• Use of blog networks or links on sites owned by same individual

How did they recover?

Well, let’s be honest, the fact that they’re the biggest flower business in the world probably helped. Their Google Adwords spend, probably in the tens of thousands per week, might go a little further to endearing them to the good people at G. More than this, however, evidence points to them making a substantial effort to clean up their act once the likelihood of a penalty was felt – perhaps even before their rankings drop. Huge numbers of bloggers were contacted to ask them to remove their links.

None of this, however, really factors in the speed of Interflora’s recovery. Even were they using the Google disavow tool like madmen, a normal recrawl would have taken a significant amount of time before all of the negatively impacting links were discounted. No, the evidence here points to the fact that, while Google wanted to make an example of the naughty children in class they didn’t want to expel them, given their parents are such a massive deal. So this was a token gesture.

What does this mean for normal businesses without the power of a super brand behind them?

A serious Google penalty is very rarely recovered from. This story has indicated, once again, the importance of safe and ‘acceptable’ linkbuilding, and the obvious penalties for failure. If you’re unsure of how you’re doing, check our the Link Detox tool here which is useful.

Our biggest tip of all is to focus not on your links but your brand. The bigger company you are, the more well known, the closer to being a figurehead in your industry, the more you will rank regardless of all the minutiae of the SEO world.

Some important things to take from Mr Cutts’s video on spam and penalties.

• Spot checks are now a regular factor in most niches to check for quality
• Sites in the grey zone are discussed by the Google team to reach concensus before a ban
• Google does not ban sites merely for being critical of Google
• Webmaster Guidelines are a basis: anything which is against the ‘spirit’ of the Webmaster Guidelines may invoke manual penalty

In a time where major businesses like Interflora are seeing their rankings and revenue literally obliterated overnight by Google’s manual review team, it’s interesting to see this response. Matt Cutts is the clean cut face of Google spam but, don’t be fooled, behind this exterior lurks a ruthless team. SEO, as an institution, is basically antithetical to these guys so don’t do anything which could risk your business.

Write good content and Google will thank you for it!

SEO, Search Engine Optimization helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found and indexed. SEO Content is one of the most important factors in determining who finds you and what their response is when they do. So Content is king. Any website will never rank well enough if this aspect of SEO is missing at any point. There are various ways through which you can make sure that SEO content can really do favors and wonders to the website. The content should be organized in such a manner that it becomes search engine friendly and at the same time visitors also find it interesting and informative to read. SEO contentwill only carry quality if it fulfill both the requirements; being friendly to the search engines and the readers both.

Keywords

Keywords play a very important role in a website’s content.  Headers, titles, and descriptions about various contentshould also contain keywords in the right manner. The keywords should go well with the rest of the content and the readers should not feel at any point that your content is purely for online marketing and business and not for providing them with quality information. Focusing on Content will make sure that the SEO content is of top quality. Without good content, the site is just a bunch of images and code.  Content is going to be relevant to the user experience and the spiders attempt to retrieve the most relevant content data to their search.  Content is often abused by spammers, but relevant, quality content is the basis of the search engines thinking. Content written should be of proper quality – check with your SEO agency to make sure they are checking your site in Copyscape.

Quality

Quality means that the content should be well written and be free from those embarrassing typos that make visitors wonder if your website really knows what it’s talking about. This means that content should be rich in keywords, informative and interesting, so that the visitor feels they’ve learned something. Such is the power of Quality content. Quantity, on the other hand, means that your website should be updated regularly with new content added. A visitor may return to an informational article once, or even two or three times, but if your website’s content never changes, eventually, there will be no reason for him to return. Content is therefore at the heart of all SEO plans.

Content is King

“Content is king” is a phrase that gets used a lot by website developers, but what does it mean and how important is content actually when it comes to search engine optimization. Search engines like Google and Bing use complex algorithms that scan your website for key points including keywords, keyword density, Meta data and image names to establish a content quality rating. Other factors such as incoming links from other relevant websites are also important. However, although Google keeps its algorithms secret, it is likely that content quality is the key to success. Use Quality Content on your website, and first-time visitors will become regular visitors. Thus we can say that Content truly is king on the Internet.