Pure Spam: What Are Google Penalties & What to Do to Recover
Manual spam penalties of any type are difficult to recover from – especially if they are severe. These suggestions will give you places you can start to look, and things to do, to help lift 10 possible manual actions applied by Google.
Google Fixes Links Report In Webmaster Tools
About nine days ago Webmasters started noticing an issue with the link report within Google Webmaster Tools. Then the issue grew and more and more webmasters noticed a bug in Webmaster Tools where the link count dropped significantly from what Google …
Google Gets Summer Solstice 2013 Right But First Day of Winter Wrong
Today may be the first day of summer and/or winter depending on where you are. But one thing for sure, if you are in Australia…
Google, Am I That Ugly? Google Drops My Face From Authorship
I know I am not the prettiest guy in the world or even in the SEO space – probably very far from it – but why would Google drop my authorship image for this site…
Google Links Reconsideration Request FAQs
Two of my favorite Google Search Quality folks, Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz…
Google Advice On When To Submit Reconsideration Request & How To Clean Your Link Profile
Google posted a new article today answering common questions about submitting reconsideration requests and managing your backlink profile. Google Search Quality representatives, Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, co-authored the article, going through the …
3 Principles Of Future-Focused, No-Surprise Link Building
Link building doesn’t really fit the mold with the rest of the online marketing world. It’s unique and always changing. Even after trying to understand it, most marketers still don’t get it, and many SEO agencies don’t even want to touch it. That’s because link building is a moving target…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Makes A Splash With Christoph Niemann Illustration To Mark The First Day Of Summer
Today’s Google Doodle by Christoph Niemann marks the summer solstice for searchers in the Northern Hemisphere with an animated illustration of five swimmers in Google-logo colored swimming caps, bobbing along on a wave that splashes back and forth. Google users in the Southern Hemisphere get…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
AdWords Flexible Bid Strategies: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
The idea of flexible bid strategies is interesting on paper and has potentially useful implications in the long term. For now it is simply a perplexing addition in the midst of Google AdWords’ massive upheaval with enhanced campaigns.
Bringing Together Paid, Owned, and Earned Media
Without clear strategies internally, it’s really hard for any brand to know what’s actually working across all areas of paid, earned, and owned media. Here’s how to intertwine paid, owned and earned media to create an integrated marketing approach.
Local Carousel Ranking = Maps Ranking = Location Prominence
As Dave Rodecker pointed out the other day in his comments on the roll-out of the Local Carousel, the ranking algo that Google is using is the same location prominence algo used in the current/old Google Maps. There does not appear to be any blended/organic influences in the results that I have looked at so […]
Think Tank mini-conference on ‘Influencer Marketing’
Content marketing software company Linkdex is organising a free to attend event next week, Thursday 27 June, as part of their series of Think Tank mini-conferences. The upcoming event will focus on ‘influencer marketing’, and features a range of high profile industry speakers such as Stephen Pavlovich from Wish.co.uk, 10Yeti’s Andy Barr, and Pete Wailes read more »
Post from Barry Adams on State of Search
Think Tank mini-conference on ‘Influencer Marketing’
10 interesting digital marketing stats we’ve seen this week
Mobile optimisation
- Almost three quarters (72%) of companies are planning to increase their spending on mobile channels this year, according to the Econsultancy / IBM Tealeaf Reducing Customer Struggle report.
- Three-quarters of organisations surveyed say that mobile is ‘important’ (42%) or ‘critical’ (32%) to their business objectives. Just 6% of respondents don’t consider mobile important.
- More than a quarter (27%) of responding organisations say their customers rate their brand’s mobile user experience as ‘good’ (23%) or ‘excellent’ (4%), up from a fifth in 2012.
What do you think are the most serious issues your customers encounter when they interact with your brand via a mobile device?
Google and ‘domain clustering’
- According to a study by Stickyeyes, Google has been looking to show more diverse results in the wake of Penguin 2.0.
- There are now, on average, 34.7 unique domains per 100 results as opposed to 19.3 before the uodate, meaning a number of terms weren’t fully impacted.
- 1,323 sites lost all their results. Only nine of these started with 10 or more results and 121 with three or more, possibly a combined blow along with the Penguin 2.0 update.
- 451 sites lost more than 50% of their results.
- 52% of the current index is occupied by new domains with 8,892 domains that didn’t rank now displaying.
Multi-platform news consumption
- According to the Reuters Digital News Survey, summed up nicely here, 29% of respondents (11,000 were surveyed) use a smartphone at least once a week for news.
- That figure rises to more than 40% for under 45s.
- 30% of 25 – 34 year olads say their smartphone is thei main method of consuming news.
Top 100 digital agencies
- The Top 100 Digital Agencies Report, sponsored by Sitecore, found that total fee income reported by the top 100 agencies this year is £1.18bn, up 23% from the £962m that these agencies earned last year.
- The research also found that creative activities drive the largest share of average agency fee income; it accounted for 17% of fees (or almost £203m). This was followed by technical development (14% / £168m), and marketing (12% / £148m).
- This year’s top 10 agencies were:
- SapientNitro
- LBi
- AKQA
- Engine
- BAE Systems Detica
- Salmon
- Deloitte Digital
- iProspect
- RAPP
- Wunderman Network UK
Most popular UK mobile commerce sites
- Stats from IMRG and Experian Hitwise show that Amazon is the most popular mobile retail site in the UK.
- The Amazon UK and Amazon.com sites accounted for over 10% of mobile visits to retail sites in April 2013, with Argos receiving 2.3% of visits.
- Mobile now accounts for 20% of the UK online retail market, up from less than 1% in 2010.
- Mobile visits to online retail sites now account for almost one in three ecommerce site visits in the UK.
The data iceberg
- Our newly released State of Integrated Marketing Report found that many organizations are still in the process of building foundational capabilities around data.
- The chart below tracks the responses of companies with marketing budgets over $5MM, and looks at whether they have a current or planned capability across several data skill sets.
Percentage of traffic by Google search position
- According to a study by Chikita, the number one spot in Google’s organic results bags 33% of the clicks.
Mobile email optimisation
- According to dotmailer’s Hitting The Mark study, two thirds of the UK’s top online retailers are failing to optimise email marketing for mobile.
Online retail sales
- According to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, the online retail market grew by 16% year-on-year in May and by 5% on April 2013.
- Conversion rates rose to 4.9% (excluding travel) in May, up 20% compared to the same month in 2012 and 2011.
- However, average basket values were lower, at £77 from January to May 2013, down from £83 and £86 for the same period in 2012 and 2011 respectively.
Mobile flight searches
- Greenlight stats show that were 3.2m online searches for flights last month, and more than 17% of these were made on mobiles.
- Cheap flights’ was the most popular term searched for on Google UK, accounting for 17% of all flight searches, and 20% of all searches made on mobile.
Bing Boards: New Search Experiment Highlights ‘Inspiring Content’
With Bing Boards, which resembles a sort of inline image slide show, Bing is experimenting with putting Pinterest-like boutique content front-and-center in search results, or at least complementing them from a sidebar next to search results.
Backlinks and reconsideration requests
Webmaster level: advanced
When talking to site owners on Google Webmaster Forums we come across questions on reconsideration requests and how to handle backlink-related issues. Here are some common questions, along with our recommendations.
When should I file a reconsideration request?
If your site violates our Google Quality Guidelines or did in the past, a manual spam action may be applied to your site to prevent spam in our search results. You may learn about this violation from a notification in Google Webmaster Tools, or perhaps from someone else such as a previous owner or SEO of the site. To get this manual action revoked, first make sure that your site no longer violates the quality guidelines. After you’ve done that, it’s time to file a reconsideration request.
Should I file a reconsideration request if I think my site is affected by an algorithmic change?
Reconsideration requests are intended for sites with manual spam actions. If your site’s visibility has been solely affected by an algorithmic change, there’s no manual action to be revoked, and therefore no need to file a reconsideration request. If you’re unsure if it’s an algorithmic change or a manual action, and have found issues that you have resolved, then submitting a reconsideration request is fine.
How can I assess the quality of a site’s backlinks?
The links to your site section of Google Webmaster Tools is a great starting point for an investigation as it shows a significant amount of your site’s inbound links. If you know that you ran an SEO campaign during a particular period of time, downloading the latest links can come handy in slicing links created at that time. Using the links found in Google Webmaster Tools, we recommend looking for patterns that point to general issues that are worth resolving. For example, spammy blog comments, auto generated forum posts or text advertisements with links that pass PageRank are likely to be seen as unnatural links and would violate Google’s quality guidelines. For individual examples and hands-on advice we recommend getting help of peers and expert webmasters on the Google Webmaster Forum.
How do I clean a bad backlink profile?
Make sure to identify poor links first, then make a strong effort to get them either removed or nofollowed. Then use the Disavow Links Tool to deal with remaining unnatural backlinks. We recommend using domain-wide operator for sites with a complicated URL structure, very obvious spam sites, such as gibberish content sites or low quality sites with content that shows no editorial value. See our video on common mistakes when using the disavow tool for more information.
How much information do I need to provide?
Detailed documentation submitted along with a reconsideration request can contribute to its success, as it demonstrates the efforts made by the webmaster and helps Googlers with their investigation. If you are including a link to a shared document, make sure that it’s accessible to anyone with the link.
How long does it take to process reconsideration requests?
Reconsideration requests for sites affected by a manual spam action are investigated by a Googler. We strive to respond in a timely manner, normally within just a few days. However, the volume of incoming reconsideration requests can vary considerably, hence we don’t provide a guaranteed turnaround time.
What are the possible outcomes of a reconsideration request?
Upon submitting a reconsideration request, you will first receive an automated confirmation in Google Webmaster Tools. After your request is processed, we’ll send you another message to let you know the outcome of the request. In most cases, this message will either inform you that the manual action has been revoked or that your site still violates our quality guidelines.
Where can I get more guidance?
For more information on reconsideration requests, please visit our Help Center. And as always, the Google Webmaster Forum is a great place for further discussions as well as seeking more advice from experienced webmasters and Google guides.
Written by Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, Search Quality Team
Mea Culpa on a bad update + lessons learned
Last night I pushed out an update to our WordPress SEO plugin, version 1.4.8. It included a ton of changes including support for the new author stuff Facebook announced yesterday. We had been testing all the other changes in that release for a while already and all seemed fine, so I was baffled when I…
Mea Culpa on a bad update + lessons learned is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast – Tweaking Websites.
A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
The State of Digital for SMBs
Everything is moving more and more towards digital. Which is no surprise. But still there is room for improvement.
Post from Bas van den Beld on State of Search
The State of Digital for SMBs
Twitter Buys Spindle, Targeting Local Businesses
Twitter has bought local discovery app Spindle. Spindle, available on iOS in the U.S., describes itself as a “news feed for your neighborhood”, collating Twitter and Facebook posts from local businesses into a stream of local events and offers.
Lessons in Group Dynamics for Internet Marketers
Regardless of whether you are a churn-and-burn “black hat” marketer chasing affiliate leads or a major brand building a massive online customer community, you are a member in a very select group. Actually, you are a member of multiple groups. The psychology of groups has been studied in many ways for decades and marketing science draws extensively upon research that deals with group behaviors. According to Bruce Tuckman’s modified model, groups typically pass through five stages in their life cycles: The Formative Stage, in which members initially identify with the group and bond with each other The Conflict Stage, in which points of view are compared, evaluated, and prioritized The Normative Stage, in which consensus on group needs, priorities, and utilities is achieved The Performing Stage, in which things happen and the group achieves the majority of its successes The Dissolution Stage, in which harmony breaks down and members leave the group This model is often designated as the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing(, Adjourning) model for a group life cycle. Alternate life cycle models have been proposed but I will use this one. Every community goes through these stages. Some communities may pass through multiple life cycles. Some communities may […]