Matt Cutts Head of Spam at Google has just released new video about guest blogging. In the video Matt explains when guest blogging can be perceived as spammy and what to avoid when guest blogging. He advises to use it in moderation and always to approach it with “how I can add value by sharing my knowledge” and also embark on creating actual relationship with blog masters rather than using it just for the link building.
Here is the video
Hi SEO’s, short but strong reply from Head of Spam at Google Matt Cutts regarding how Google improves it’s algorithm to fight spam. Enjoy watching.
We all ask this burning question – how will future of SEO look like?. In the wake of Google Penguin 2.0 and 2.1 killing backlinks,Google Humingbird algorithm update and sudden growth of “not provided” data triggered by Google defaulting to SSL search, just like any other SEO I’ve been trying to systemise and answer my own questions and doubts caused by all the changes we’ve recently experienced.
Some of my recent thoughts and questions worth crunching on;
• Discovering user intent using keyword data
• Predictions based on location, search history, circles and type of the device
• Google Hummingbird, Knowledge Graph, Voice Search and Google Now
• Matt Cutts search experience optimisation is the future of SEO – more info in the video here
• What experience do we want a visitor to have on our site?
• What are touch points, key actions and conversion points SEO and CRO.
• Technical SEO will prevail
• From links to answers
• Search engines want to “understand” more using structured data / microdata – I recommend you study schema markups at http://schema.org if you haven’t already
• Schema as technical language creating identifiers or entities that Google is very and will increasingly be interested in. That is how together with Knowledge Graph Hummingbird will be “connecting dots”.
• Google is rapidly adopting semantic search technologies
• Schema as technical language creating identifiers or entities
• Entity search, knowledge graph helping bots to better understand, match and create better response to a query
Use of semantic search coupled with semantic markup allows will be sharply increasing as Google needs more information and quickly for its Knowledge Graph. That is how Hummingbird will be able to increasingly provide better answers to user queries on various devices – wow, that is nearly like intelligent & learning algorithm. I therefore recommend to focus on technical SEO and definitely embracing semantic markup.
To conclude this space is definitely worth watching…….
Google has launched last week second Top Contributors Summit after testing the idea for the first time in 2011.
If you don’t know who the Top Contributor is let me explain; Top Contributors are highly experienced individuals helping (for free) to resolve various problems or sharing useful tips on how to get more out of Google range of products. They’ve have been a vital line of help in resolving many Google related products issues for the growing range of official Google product forums; https://support.google.com.
According to Google Top Contributor volunteers contribute across 250 product communities in as much as 26 languages.
During summit Top Contributors were also able to test latest Google products and technologies including Google Glass. It’s really nice to see that Google utilises and appreciates advocacy of such individuals.
My own experience with Top Contributors has always been a positive one, particularly for Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics support forums.
So thank you all, job well done for being there and helping us all when it seems as Google itself is not able or willing to help.
You may find more details on the event in the original blog here – http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/saying-thank-you-to-our-google-top.html
Google Expert has now officially acquired rights to brag about being the toughest and muddiest Google Expert.
Team effort has resulted in nice amount being collected for The Mustard Tree – http://www.mustardtree.org.uk/ – a fantastic organisation that looks after the homeless and those marginalised by society.
Thank you all for your generous donations: http://www.justgiving.com/tough-muppets
Google’s is seriously busy this month. We all still try to get our heads around the recent new Google “engine” Hummingbird and now we get confirmed update to this new algorithm already.
If you are not familiar with what Hummingbird algorithm is, I encourage you to read my previous post – http://www.googlexpert.co.uk/google_hummingbird_algorithm
Head of webspam Mutt Cutts has confirmed launch of the new update on the 4th of October and indicated that roughly 1% of searches will be affected.
Penguin 2.1 is another evolution of Penguin 2.0 which has caused major shift in the whole SEO industry by targeting spammy backlink profiles including paid links and black hat SEO tactics.
If you have already been hit by Penguin 2.0 and taken actions to remove and disavow part of your backlink profile this week make sure you’ll pay close attention to your rankings. You may either see improvements or further drops driven by this recent update.
Here you can find more information on what the Penguin update is – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
Google page rank is something we SEOs used to pay substantial attention to. If you remember Google Toolbar used to display values from 0 to 10 which would indicate how much authority page had in Google eyes. It was truly helpful tool for quick competitive comparison of different websites from the same sector or great indicator of site’s quality when scouting for links.
Over the last couple of years we’ve seen Google substantially limiting its support for the PageRank and now Chrome doesn’t support it anymore and Google Toolbar for Firefox has been suspended too.
This year we had only one PageRank update around February. Additionally head of Google webspam team Matt Cutts has recently indicated that it’s highly unlikely for Google to update is in the reminder of 2014.
Soo, it looks like Google Page Rank is dead…
If you are still unsure what the PageRank is I recommend following article -http://searchengineland.com/what-is-google-pagerank-a-guide-for-searchers-webmasters-11068
According to the New York Times, Google has released another algorithmic update on Thursday 3rd of October .
Don’t worry, it’s not another Penguin or Panda ready to roam free, it’s a manual fix in the algorithm designed to stop websites featuring mugshot pictures from ranking highly in Google.
If you don’t know what the mugshot site is than let me explain. It’s a website which makes money by obtaining and publicising mugshot pictures and extorting money from the affected individuals to get them removed. This is the story that apparently triggered head of search spam Mat Cutts to take action – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot-online.html
I think as it’s high time for such action as apparently FBI has received thousands of complaints related to such practices. Mugshot sites can charge anywhere between $70 to $1400 USD for the removal of the mugshot picture, often for the picture to re-emerge on another site of this type later.
Time will show how effective the algorithmic update will be.
SEOs and webmasters brace yourselves! Google is now defaulting to the https:// (encrypted) pages even when users are not signed in, with the impact of this being that soon 100% of organic keyword data from Google will be displayed as (not provided). The whole thing has been well illustrated by this graph from http://www.notprovidedcount.com/.
Be aware that no tracking solutions are immune to this change and moving forward, it’s important to devise new reporting logic and methodology in order to keep on top of your SEO campaigns.
One of the solutions you can try is cross reference brand / non-brand data from both Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Webmaster Tools search query report can provide you with understanding of how people are searching for and arriving on your site via Google, whilst the Bing / Yahoo / Ask keyword data from Google Analytics will provide an accurate representation of how non-Google users are organically arriving on your site.
Obviously such a solution is far from ideal as Google Webmaster Tools is rounded but at least such a process can be replicated on a monthly basis. Still, by combining the two data sets, and also looking into Bing data, you will gain good understanding of how searches are being made across all search engines, and allows us to accurately apportion brand and non-brand visits.
So dear friends – good luck in the new 100% not provided soon age.
Busy, busy time for all SEOs . So far we’ve been fire fighting increase in not provided data sets, algorithmic updates and “penguins” (Penguin 2.0) running havoc across whole SEO industry.
But that’s not all…, Google has broken the news on 26th of September about completely new Google Hummingbird Algorithm. And yes, it’s not another algorithmic update but completely new shining algorithm. More interestingly new algorithm has been in place for a month now and no one has noticed!
Google claims results coming from use of new algorithm are to be faster and more precise hence name Hummingbird.
New algorithm is designed to provide better answers to searchers’ questions utilising Google’s Knowledge Graph in much more advanced way then before.
More information on how Google evolves in use of the Knowledge Graph and addresses multi-device usage I encourage to have a look at following post- http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fifteen-years-onand-were-just-getting.html
A couple of facts to digest:
• Google has quietly changed algorithm around a month ago and announced it only on 26th of September
• It’s supposed to be faster and more precise
• New algorithm is more “intelligent” looking into not only keyword matching but also intent behind search query
• New algoritm takes integration with knowledge graph to new level
• New algorithm is supposed to better handle complex long tail queries
• Social signal even more important than before
• New engine still uses learning’s from all Google updates like Venice, Panda and Penguin series.
I recommend following Article from Search Engine Land which provides nice Google Hummingbird FAQs – http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816
Google Webmaster Tools search query reports delayed
After recent Google Encrypted Search roll out which shook the whole SEO industry eyes of all SEO’s and webmasters has inevitably shifted to Google Webmaster Tools data and its search query reports specifically.
However, as it has been reported search query data in GWT has been suffering from a “bug” causing query reports to be delayed right now.
As per Search Engine Land article – http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-blocks-keywords-173153 – tool stopped showing data on September 23rd. Google claim the issue will be resolved shortly.
