The Three Pillars Of SEO In 2013: Content, Links, And Social Media

A good SEO strategy is the difference between your business easily being found online and getting lost in the noise of thousands of other businesses trying to stand out. With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, it can be difficult to know what’s effective here and now.

In 2013, success in SEO hinges on businesses putting together a robust combination strategy that brings together an integrated web of great content, credible links, and social signals. Each of these pieces supports the other, providing tremendous value to readers, building your authority and brand value, and distributing your content across new channels. Here are the highlights of what to think about in terms of each of the three pillars of great SEO.
 

Content (Pillar #1): Make The Most of What’s On Your Pages
The first pillar of an effective SEO strategy is your onsite content and structure. From the way you organize your site to how you optimize your content, there are five key aspects that will ensure that your content is doing its job. A strong on-site SEO plan includes keyword research, content optimization, user experience, site design, and the presence of a blog with great content that’s updated frequently. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Keyword research: The foundation of your SEO strategy is keyword research. The concept is simple: you can only optimize your site once you know how your target market searches for the products/services you have to offer. Google’s Keyword Tool is designed to help advertisers in the Adwords Program target effective keywords for their paid advertisements. But it’s a free, robust tool that can be used by website owners that want to better understand the range of keywords people are using to get to their site. Try these three strategies to get started:

1. Brainstorm a list of phrases related to your business, brand, products, industry, location, and customers. Once you’ve developed that list, enter each of these words into the Google Keyword Tool to see what related terms are recommended by Google. Google’s suggestions will greatly expand your keyword list. Pay attention to long-tail keywords (e.g. “apartments in West Hollywood near beach” vs. “Hollywood”). They’re easier to rank for and just as important as your major keywords.
2. Enter your site URL into the website box in the Google Keyword Tool. It will scan your site, and come back with a list of recommended terms that you are currently ranking for or could target. Many of these suggested terms are will be great keywords for your site.
3. Create a list of competitor sites and enter each of those URLs into the Keyword Tool. Your competitors may be ranking well for specific terms that you hadn’t thought about. While you never want to directly copy a competitors’ keyword strategy, it can often inform your approach and round out options you hadn’t thought of yet.

Keyword structure: Once you’ve developed a list of keywords, take the time to organize them. One simple way to do this is by taking a look at your website structure and mapping keywords to the major sections. For example, if you’re an SEO firm serving customers in New York and New Jersey, you might have pages with different options for travel rates for in-person meetings and other details by location. That way, when individuals are searching for “SEO Firm Manhattan” they’re likely to find your site. Knowing what sections of your site are targeting specific keywords and gearing your content optimization toward those goals will move your SEO efforts forward more quickly.

Content optimization: Once you’ve researched your keywords, you’ll need to optimize your content for those terms. Content optimization is not about stuffing keywords into every available opportunity or even meeting a specific formula of “keywords must appear X times per 500 words”. Instead, just remember to include your primary keyword is included in your article title and meta tags. Remember that each page (or unique URL) represents an individual piece of content that can be optimized for different, specific phrases and conversion goals.

User experience (UX): User experience is simply a way of encapsulating the question: when people visit your site, are they able to quickly and efficiently do what they want? For example, if they’re trying to make a purchase or find specific information, is it easy to locate the menu or complete the task? If the answer is no, it may be hurting your search rankings.

One easy way to figure out if your user experience needs to be improved is to look at your bounce rate on Google Analytics. A bounce is a visitor that leaves your site without visiting more than a single page. If a high percentage of people are bouncing from your site, you may be ranking for irrelevant terms or your site design may be too complicated. Ask yourself what people are trying to accomplish, and look at ways you can make that easier.

Initial things to look at are making sure your navigation is easy to use, that your site design is as clean and uncluttered as possible, and that big actions are highlighted in clear and effective ways. Consider hiring a professional UX designer to help you evaluate your site if you’re having trouble breaking through on this point. It’s possible to design your site in such a way that you not only achieve optimal SEO, but also optimal conversion rates.
Site design: Is your site design clean and professional? There’s an assumption, by both search engines and visitors, that a site that looks spammy is spammy. If you’re trying to build an authority site but are working on a highly out of date design, consider upgrading to a simple website on WordPress. WordPress is an easy to use content management system with many excellent designs (called templates) available for free. Premium templates range anywhere from $20 to a few hundred dollars, and allow you to specifically customize your site. Some of the best templates can compete with world-class designs.

Regularly updated blog: Since Google’s Freshness Update, there’s a ranking premium for sites that are regularly getting new content. The easiest way to do this is through the addition of a blog. By regularly adding articles that are valuable for your readers – from timely pieces that comment on trends and news to evergreen pieces like how-to’s or product reviews – you’ll build your authority and improve your search rankings.

Another benefit of regularly blogging is that it quickly builds the amount of content that you can rank for in the search engines. A well-developed strategy can help you target many of your keywords through ongoing blog development. Think of each blog post as another raffle ticket you throw in the hat for being listed in search engine results pages.

Inbound Links (Pillar #2): The Infrastructure of Connections

Links give Google one very important signal: another site or reader found material on your webpage valuable and relevant enough for them to link to it. The more links you get, the more valuable your content is deemed to be by search engines. More likes also builds trust and authority, causing your pages to rank higher, driving more traffic.

In the past, link building was a numbers game. Links came from simple tactics that included listing your site in a bunch of directories, linking to your site from comments on blogs, and other transactions that focused more on having someone dedicate the time to “link building” than actually focusing on creating value for readers.

Today, link building is still critically important, but there’s more pressure to build high quality links. Sites that you’re linking from need to be reputable and relevant to your industry. Here are some strategies to build links that also build your brand and authority in your niche.

Guest blogging: There’s an increased focus today on guest blogging as site owners look for organic ways to build links. Guest blogging is simple: you find and pitch an appropriate blog with an offer to write a post geared toward their audience. When you’re guest blogging, look for reputable blogs that are relevant to your industry and subject matter.

Press release distribution:  Press releases are another way to build links to your site and help build brand recognition for your business. There are two keys for effective press release distribution. The first is to find a newsworthy story to write about in your release, or to find a relevant hook in the broader news landscape. For example, if you are a coach for administrative assistants looking for new opportunities and its Administrative Professionals Day, your press release is more likely to be widely picked up.

This syndication effect will help you build inbound links. It may also lead to valuable news coverage with publications running your story or reporters asking you to act as a source. The second piece of leveraging press releases is to use an effective press release distribution service. It doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. In fact, many are free. But make sure that whatever you choose is active and reputable. A popular choice is PRWeb.

Repackaging existing content: Building links to your site doesn’t require an army of writers constantly developing new content (although it certainly doesn’t hurt!). Instead, look at your existing content and see how it can be repackaged across platforms and mediums. Do you have a great, data-driven blog post? That could be the foundation of a fantastic and highly viral infographic. A case study or white paper could be paired with some simple imagery and turned into video content for YouTube and Vimeo. A newsletter distributed by email could be turned into guest posts or social media content.

Leverage real world connections into links: Are you sponsoring local events in your community, such as little league groups or a networking event? Perhaps you’re speaking at a conference or doing pro-bono consulting for a non-profit? Do you belong to any professional associations, speakers organizations, or civic groups? Many of the above opportunities will come with the chance to list yourself on their website, along with a bio or company description and a website link. Sit down and do an audit of these options – especially ones you may already be a part of and not using effectively. Circle back and have your site listed where possible, and be on the lookout for these opportunities in the future.

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How to Create an Effective Google AdWords Campaign

Useful pay per click campaigns should be viewed as a useful addition to a current, organic campaign rather than something that stands on its own with no support. In other words, relying solely on pay per click campaigns to drive traffic to your website has the ability to siphon your marketing budget in quick time!

But what if you need customers and you need them now? Here's how to create an effective Google AdWords campaign that won't get your accountant off side. But first, a quick look at the benefits of what an AdWords campaign brings to the table:

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Negative SEO: Myths and Facts You Should Be Aware Of

There are two ways to get ahead of the competition. Either you establish yourself as a better option. Or you prove your rival to be worse. The same goes with SEO, at least as far as the concept of negative SEO or anti-SEO has been making the rounds on the web. Even today, negative SEO is a matter for important concern for many website publishers or online businesses.

Usually, you’ll hear that there’s nothing like negative SEO.

If Google has to be believed (which you have to, as long as you are fairly Google-dependent), there’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your keyword rankings. Then Google comes up saying that it works really hard to prevent a rival from harming a specific site’s search rankings.

If there’s no such thing as negative SEO, why does Google try to prevent it? This is a question that any inquisitive guy like me would ask.

Moreover, why does someone need a Disavow Links tool?

Right from the day the concept or issue of negative SEO emerged, it’s also been associated with a lot of guesses. Webmasters have been continuously thinking when something like this can happen, how it actually happens and what do once someone’s in trouble due to reverse SEO.
Well, there are both myths and facts.

Though negative SEO is very real (under certain situations), it’s also given rise to plenty of myths. If you lack adequate SEO knowledge, it’s quite easy to give in to the most common myths of negative search engine optimization.

The biggest of these myths is, it can happen easily, with anyone. To tell you the truth, negative or anti-SEO also requires tons of knowledge in order to implement such a campaign with all the effectiveness. Moreover, large businesses or companies are mostly targeted by spammers who try to ruin search rankings by way of creating lots of spammy links pointing back to the competitors’ websites or blogs.

An extreme situation, in this regard, is where you want to blame negative SEO for everything that happens to your site.

Many people think that negative SEO can harm just any website’s rankings, which is not true at all. Most of the time, negative SEO will not do any harm at all to websites that have long been there or established. For example, Rand Fishkin openly invited spammers to do negative SEO to SEOmoz. The more credible an online resource you are, the harder it is to break into.

In any case, it’s vital to increase your knowledge base on the topic of negative SEO if it ever happens (god forbid!) to your own site. This includes making yourself aware of those key tactics that spammer make use of while trying to ruin the search rankings of a site through negative SEO.

Most Common ways for Negative SEO a Website:

Spammy Links – This is commonest one. In order to harm your site’s rankings, the spammers will try to point ‘tons of bad links’ to your domain. The results of this spammy practice will vary depending on the strength of the link profile.

Hacking into Your Site – Another form of negative SEO is that where the spammer would try to hack your site first. Once hacked, they’ll most probably stop or block Google from crawling your site’s pages.

Report a Site as Spam – Spammers can also report to Google that your site is packed with spam or indulges in spammy activities. Since Google always welcomes such complaints, spammers benefit from it.
Though there are several other (really hard) ways of doing reverse SEO, the ones you see above are among the commonest.

As you can see, there’s no one single magical solution that you can use to protect your web properties against the evil effects of negative SEO. However, you can definitely bolster up your position in a way that makes it simply unviable to launch a negative SEO attack against your site. Here is a video by Matt Cutts, where he talked about negative SEO:

Conclusion Yes, negative SEO is very very real. If you don’t believe me, you should at least wait till the time some dirty spammer ruins the search engine presence of your own website or one of your friends’.  To make it really hard for your rivals to start a negative SEO campaign against your web properties, you should avoid mistakes that would make you vulnerable to such attacks.

At the same time, you need to keep a close watch at the link profile and the overall SEO health of your website or blog, consistently.

Also Read: 

• 20 Ways to Get More Website Traffic This Year (Ethically!)

  • Google Penguin Update: An SEO update to Look out for

    • Matt Cutts: SEO Needs To Focus On Helping Users Not Link Building

      • 6 Ways SEO Will Change in 2013

        • Have Google's Panda and Penguin Replaced SEO With Social, PR and Content, or a New Type of Savvy Marketing?

          • Importance of Social Media in SEO
          • On Page SEO Guide – How To Rank Higher And Get More ...
          •  

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How to Make Money Blogging

You must know the key for your online success. Internet is a 24/7 marketing medium. It is a global medium where people look for information to solve their problems. If you use this medium to market them the crucial information or online product and solve their problems, in return they pay you for the solutions.

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1. One of the truly great things about blogs is that they are a means of self-expression. In a world where it can be difficult to be heard, they provide a convenient way of airing your opinions and broadcasting your ideas. There is nothing more rewarding than blogging about your passions and interests. It is also a brilliant way to enter the world of writing.
   

2 Blogs are very cheap to set up and maintain. Another great benefit from blogging is that they are very cheap to run. There are only two components to a blog that cost you: your domain name and web hosting fees. For as little as EUR10 a month you can have your blog up and running. There are even websites that provide free hosting and domain names, thereby, costing you nothing. Although I would recommend that you pay for both hosting and having your own domain name, as in the long run it is much more beneficial.

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Blogging software is very easy to use and there is lots of support from dedicated websites such as WordPress. Plus there are also many forums and guides available to giving the novice a helping hand. WordPress offers many plug-in features which can maximise your blog's potential.

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A blog is a very easy way to generate income. There are many ways to earn money from advertising, sponsorship, affiliate programmes, to selling your own products. Many people successfully earn healthy incomes from blogging.

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Blogs can be used to target niche markets. You can target a certain niche that is generating a lot of interest and write product reviews on your blog. You can then earn money through affiliate marketing by sending interested readers to product vendors.

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You can also generate a lot of traffic through your blog with relatively little effort thanks to great support structures in place for blog users. The above are just some of many reasons why you should have your own blog up and running.

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Having a blog can really add to your credibility in the marketplace. It allows your readers to get a sense of who you are as a person. This is very important in building rapport for future business relationships. A blog is also a great way of giving you a platform so that you will be heard above the masses.

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The better your blog's content the better your results will be. So make it interesting and you will surprise yourself with the results

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A Quick Blog: Methods for a quick Blog

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Your blog can make money with Clickbank.

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Your blog can make money with Affiliate.

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Your blog can make money with Google.

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The most important thing is traffic to your site.You can use:

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Emailmarketing

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Article marketing software

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Social networking…

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PayPerPost.com will give you a fee for posting a product review on your blog. Keep in mind, however, a lot of bloggers consider undisclosed advertisements very unethical. So only post reviews where you are allowed to disclose that it's a paid product review. Most people don't realize that a lot of so-called television news stories are really sponsored paid slots. That's why there are so many stories about the next health food, next health study, next financial product. Bloggers don't like this.

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Matt Cutts: SEO Needs To Focus On Helping Users Not Link Building

Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts has addressed a number of factors to do with digital marketing in his latest video post entitled ‘What are some misconceptions in the SEO industry’.

In the five minute YouTube video, he looked to clarify one of the biggest misunderstandings in the industry, the difference between algorithm updates and data refreshes, as well as dismissing claims Panda and Penguin were all about generating short term revenue for Google. He also suggested SEO firms needed to focus their efforts away from link building.

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In terms of algorithm updates compared to a data refresh, the main difference lies in the fact an algorithm update involves changes to how the algorithm works to rank, index or filter search results.

So, the recent Penguin 2.0 for example was an algorithm update. A data refresh on the other hand, is, as the name suggests, a refresh of the data within the existing algorithm, usually only making very small changes to how it works as a whole.

In the YouTube video, Google’s distinguished engineer also added there was a misconception among many within the SEO industry that Panda and Penguin updates were all about making the search engine giant money in the short term.

However, Cutts immediately rejected such concerns, suggesting algorithm and organic search were separate from its revenue goals. If anything, he believes Panda has the opposite effect as Google is cutting out the low quality spammy sites, highly monetised via AdSense.

Cutts also said many SEO firms were still concentrating too much of their time on link building and understanding search engines, rather than the users themselves.

He said it would be in their interest to look to social media and other such areas in order to develop more awareness of their site.

Also Visit:

Importance of Social Media in SEO

 

Google Penguin Update: An SEO update to Look out for

 

6 Ways SEO Will Change in 2013

 

Have Google's Panda and Penguin Replaced SEO With Social, PR and Content, or a New Type of Savvy Marketing?

 

On Page SEO Guide – How To Rank Higher And Get More Traffic 

 

20 Ways to Get More Website Traffic This Year (Ethically!)

 

 

 

 

 

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Importance of Social Media in SEO

It is not subject of an argument when it comes to importance of SEO in every business whether it is big or small. SEO tradition has been changed over the years, now it's not only about optimizing your pages but also connecting with the people. Social Media is a universal hub for connecting people, and now social media optimization is not a fashion but it is a requirement.

Why Social Media is important?

Through Social Media you can get connected to your local clients to global audience who will listen to your voices. It will help you to interact with people where you can share, give and take relationships whether it is social media optimization or social media marketing.

Now, Social Media optimization is not different from SEO but it is an integral part of SEO. It is true that SMO helps you to do promotional branding of your products however it also helps to nurture your SEO ranking with better exposure.

Without a doubt, links provided from Social Medias are Search engine's favorite because Social networking sites are obviously most trusted sites and the links that come from them hold higher values. Promoting your business through Social networking sites create a unique platforms to nurture your business with proper good links and sometimes lead to straight conversion.

There are various social media options for you to explore.

Twitter: Twitter is a micro blogging site used by more than 300 million people. Besides getting connected to the thousands of people, you can also share your links, videos, photos, and web page and PDF files. Twitter is one of the best social networking sites to get connected to your potential customers and to have a better search engines ranking. You can create your brand image, built a strong foundation, talk and share about your services. You can also follow your followers to catch what they have been up to.

Facebook: Facebook is now the highly functional biggest Social media with more than 845 million users. Facebook is most convenient social media solutions for marketers and business owners. Facebook as great social networking tools will provide you so many options to elevate your business and target potential customers. You can create your business page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/business/build) and also create Facebook advertisement page to advertise your product on Facebook. Furthermore, you can also ask your Facebook page to share with your friends and family.

YouTube: Yet you don't know the power of YouTube, if you think it is the place only for funny videos. Over 3 billion people watch videos on YouTube daily for different purpose. People often find reading boring instead of that summarize the videos with informative and quality contents. Creating interesting videos about your business and services will likely to gain more attention and it's definitely great method to create buzz.

Instagram: About 90 million people use Instagram on monthly bases. This Smartphone application created huge buzz and still is going strong. This Smartphone application is the largest growing social media network employed by many marketing specialist to promote their business and services. Pictures say a thousand words and that's right, some of the biggest industries has already been employing Instagram and getting more success.

Google+: According to the recent surveys 343 million people are active users of Google+. As Google also encourage people to use their Google+ page, it can add quality and value to your contents. Furthermore, Google+ is lot more convenient as it allows you to update your Google status with your content's link. Have a quality articles shared through Google+ page as it can add value to your Authorship ranking also.

Pinterest:Pinterest another social networking media also has been gaining more exponential growth, as recently Pinterest has allowed to change personal account to business account. Make a known appearance in Pinterest with your company name, well described portfolio, reciprocal links to your original websites and share your portfolio. If people find your pinterest interesting enough they will surely visit your official site too.

Blog:There are plenty of options for you too blog. Blog is one the effective way to tell about your services and new offerings in your manner. Add interesting and quality niche articles that your clients will love to read and share it to their friends too.

Other social media sites:There are plenty of other social media sites which you can employ such as Foursquare, LinkedIn, Tumbir, Myspace, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg. Enjoy the benefits of social media to boost up your SEO ranking.

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Have Google's Panda and Penguin Replaced SEO With Social, PR and Content, or a New Type of Savvy Marketing?

As a blogger who can't tell a Panda from a Penguin, at least the ones prowling on the web, I decided to investigate when I noticed changes in the Google search results of my posts and was told I might be the victim of the pair of these lovely creatures. Happily, I also noticed significant increase in visits to my blog from Google.

As they were intended to maul the mal-practitioners of SEO badly enough to ensure a cleanup of the ecosystem of the Web, Google must have chosen, names like Panda and Penguin for its ferocious algorithms, with a purpose.

If Google counted on lovable creatures like Panda and Penguin to assuage the mayhem it intended to unleash on its own support network, albeit with a good purpose to weed away the undesired, it seems to have created only bad blood.

Surely, Google intended only to cleanup SEO, not banish it or set off a turf war on who got the millions of Dollars thrown away by business in the name of SEO.

The truth and Irony is, if SEO will eventually die, it will not be because of these poor creatures who take the blame but on account of Google's own measures to personalize search for each of us.

Like all ethical rules Google play to, personalized search may be what we want and even be the best thing for us but it takes away all other definitions of natural selection of what is most relevant.

The Great SEO Turf War Of 2012

The trouble started when influencers like Forbes magazine declared "Google is in the process of making the SEO industry obsolete, SEO will be dead in two years." and appeared to advice the Industry "not to waste any more money on SEO".

An Article by Ken Krogue titled "The Death Of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR and Real Content" appeared to lead to a turf war between SEO Heavy weights who were miffed by the advice being given to business to save millions of dollars spent on SEO and the evangelists of PR eager to be rehabilitated together with the new breed of Social Media Gurus, who will love a piece of the cake.

"By definition SEO "games" the system with Google to get your content artificially ranked higher than it should be. Sure there is "white hat" SEO practices and "black hat" SEO practices. Black Hat is very obvious gaming of the system, and White Hat is just more subtle. The bottom line is that all SEO is counterfeit."

It was blanket statements like these which rattled the cage and infuriated ardent SEO practitioners who came up with stinging attack of Ken's assertions with comments and arguments justifying SEO like the ones below.

"SEO is not dead... SEO is evolving... it is shifting towards target based marketing.. instead of just practicing few things for getting first page or getting more customers."

"I just don't see how SEO can die if search engines still exist. SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks well in search engines. In the end the practice of SEO will be around as long as there is search engines. It's really that simple."

Ken Krouge's grouse appeared to be that strong research, great copy writing, compelling video, interested social communities, publicity, intriguing design, journalism, etc., is content that originated from other disciplines, yet the SEO industry is adopting them all for their own and then saying they are "SEO" and that good "SEO" covers everything.

The point Ken appeared to miss is if all of the above are part of the great and real content he insists what websites must put in front of Google's search spiders, how can there be SEO which doesn't just deal with all of those but capable of fine tuning for best results?

He also compromised his assertion that SEO will be dead by stating that eventually all agreed that onsite, internal, or technical SEO is more important than ever (the practice of making your content adhere to best practices so Google ranks you high).

Ken concluded his dig on SEO by saying when the end of summer of 2014 comes around, he will eagerly look to see that SEO as we knew it is dead, and something new and better has taken its place.

I was curious to find out if Ken's prediction is on its way to happen and how much the SEO has transformed to take on the New Google.

As no one is likely to admit anything, I set out surveying the aftermath of Google's mayhem searching for new and upcoming practitioners oriented to meet the new challenges which came out of the great war of 2012.

Has Google's Penguin Bitten?

No one (except Google perhaps?) really knows exactly how the Panda and Penguin and their various updates have worked and caused and how much irrevocable damage to the SEO fraternity.

Naturally, the SEO specialists who have been affected and consequently lost their contracts and revenues do not come forward, at least in public. However a new generation of real marketers seem to know how to repair the damage and take corrective actions as part of the service they offer.

Google has zeroed in on duplicate content and now shows only the authority sites where I have recently published in the search results and ignore numerous syndications and reposting on my own blog. On the other hand It looks like Google is showing my own blog posts more prominently, sending more visitors for the search terms I have used.

What is not clear is how Penguin has affected big content providers like NewsCred who engage in generating in-house content by big corporations and its distribution through syndication. NewsCred has recently blogged assurances about how Google does not object to legitimate syndication.

How Google Will Rule the Roost Over Search and Our Lives?

What is not noticed in the battlefield of SEO is how Google is implementing its own scheme of total control of search and your life by it, making any form of SEO less relevant.

It is already clear that as long as people continue to use Google as the default engine & Google continues to push organic results further down the page or below the fold then any form of SEO will effectively be obsolete before long.

Recent changes and consolidation of Google's own products including Google+ have significant influence on how search will be personalized and how results can be presented. This is what one expert had to say:

"I think we can all agree that how we used to define SEO has changed forever. I took note of six major changes by Google over the past year that really dented the traditional SEO process. But perhaps most profound is the personalization of search rankings with the "Search + your world" change earlier this year.

Now, you and I can search for the same term and get wildly different results, and even more so if we are logged into our Google account (remember, it's just one account now, so that is Gmail, analytics, YouTube, G+, doesn't matter).

Purists simply say, "just log out of Google and you will see the non-personalized rankings." But when roughly 30% of surfers appear to be logged in (and rising) just who is seeing the "natural" rankings? As a result, the notion of tracking Page 1 rankings is probably dead."

Did Google Really Kill SEO With Panda and Penguin After All?

So having reached the halfway mark of lifetime predicted by Ken Krogue, which was two years, Is SEO still alive?

At least one former SEO is known to have folded up and gone in to Pickle business. That's about it.

"The reality is that after the Penguin update and Google's 500 changes a year and more, search engine optimization doesn't make sense anymore. It's more a gamble than a business. With SEO in 2012, search engines are pretty much 100% in control of your destiny. They change algorithms like underwear."

There are no official data of any sort readily available on the state of the SEO Industry except a biennial report produced by MOZ.com.

According to their report for 2012, nearly a year in to Ken's prediction, and after Google's Penguin, the SEO industry is well and thriving despite a lingering doom on industry in general.

"While I admit that I'm biased, the one thing I see the most in our industry is optimism, even in a struggling economy. Companies are hiring and building new offices, new tools are exploding on the scene, and niche conferences are popping up every week. It should be an exciting two years, and we look forward to checking back in with you in 2014."

At least one report say the SEO market in the UK alone was worth £ 500 Million last year.

So by all reckoning, SEO is not dead yet even though what the Industry is doing may be totally different.

Better luck Ken, for 2014.

SEO Will Never Die But Will Evolve

Many who articulated their objection to Ken Krouge's assertions were emphatic about their belief that SEO will never die as long as Search Engines were around because they needed them.

Here is an interesting infographic on how the myth of "SEO Is Dead" survives like a zombie after each attack.

As per some experts apart from treating Content with great expertise, an evolved SEO will be called up on for:

An SEO today (or in the future) must encompass a variety of skills and they include:

1) Social media marketing
2) Information architecture
3) An understanding of interface design and how a site can be designed with the user in mind
4) User experience. With great user experience comes popularity and better qualified traffic that actually converts. What is an SEO without actually measuring conversions and generating leads?
5) An SEO MUST analyze, measure and reform their efforts through Google analytics or other measurement tools. These numbers are essential and will be more so in the future.
The future is engagement (even though it has started, but not there yet) and if an SEO can apply all of the above, they should be fine.

Why Small Businesses Need Savvy Marketing Companies Now More Than Ever?

The impact of Google's measures have warranted an evolution of not only the SEO but the whole range of services rendered to business and individuals as 'Internet Marketing.'

However the pace of change is so fast and dynamic, it is not clear who is keeping up and who is lagging behind.

As content in any form is the centerpiece of the new ecosystem of the Web, it actually becomes incumbent on any provider, big or small of such services to be not only fully aware of the exigencies laid down by Google but also have mastery of content creation and its dispersion in the system.

A growing number of experts have argued that business should gear up to do this in house and many big corporations are already doing it and even monetizing on it.

However this is not a feasible proposition for small business which will need to depend on specialist providers.

It's clear that the marketing industry is turning toward original content to deliver value, but for small businesses and agencies, the time and costs involved can make it seem like a tactic reserved for those with the biggest budgets. There's a definite race to meet these demands, and I feel that technology will continue to the equalizer that allows smaller companies to compete.

With that in mind, I decided to find if there are such providers around, for a start in Utah, which appeared to be the capital of SEO from the discussions on the SEO war.

Rather than established names like SEOBOOK and SEARCHENGINEJOURNAL or DISTILLED.NET, etc, I did look out for relatively unknown start-ups in Utah.

What caught my attention of this start-up called TOFU marketing is a rare blog post by its owner Chris Kilbourn on how to recover from a Penguin attack. So I decided to throw a few questions at him to see how much awareness there is about the need for a reformed SEO. 
Here are the answers.

The name TOFU Marketing is a little unusual for what you do, Is there any particular reason?

TOFU is a loose acronym for Top of the Funnel. It's a common term in the internet marketing industry for marketing used to pull traffic into your sales funnel. 
We chose it because we do Top of the Funnel marketing for our clients, tofu is a healthy food and "healthy marketing" is our motto, and it's easy to spell, say and remember.

What has been your company's biggest achievement so far?
We doubled the traffic of 75% of our clients, such as Haymore Endodontics, within 30 days.

In the light of Panda and Penguin, what is your approach to SEO?

Keep it healthy. We oppose all forms of spam and unethical means of SEO. It's given our clients a distinct advantage, especially in light of Google's recent release of Penguin 2.0.

Writing great content that people love and becoming active in the industry is extremely important.

How do you intend to tackle Google's monopolizing search functionality?
We adapt. There's always best practices that Google encourages business to pursue, and we follow them to a T.

Google will evolve and we will evolve with it, but companies that create products and content that their users love will always prevail.

They say genuine content is the way forward, how do you intend to get your clients this?

Our clients have access to excellent writers that they can utilize or they can delegate the responsibility to an employee.

For example, we utilize the employees of Underwater Audio, to write blog content to become leaders in the swimming industry.

Do you think engaging good content providers in your team is inevitable in the future?

The Internet is comprised of content. Eventually, the best content will be pushed to the top and the companies providing that content will win in their space.

Because of this, I believe that it's essential to provide great content.

Semantic Web Technology?

Semantic Web Technology -- The Next Big Hurdle for SEO?

The new potential challenge for any SEO evolved out of the current revolution is likely to be the addition of Social Semantic Web Technology.

The Semantic Web is a system that enables machines to "understand" and respond to complex human requests based on their meaning. Such an "understanding" requires that the relevant information sources be semantically structured

This will impose new requirement on coding of the website and the way it is built and organized for the search engines to read it. This will be the new way that Google decides search rank. The easier it is for your site to be crawled, the easier it is for your content to be properly indexed, the faster your position will increase.

Those who are aware and building their strategy to deal with Semantic Web will be the ones which will survive the mayhem unleashed by Panda and Penguin on the web.

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