a451 Blog

Alas The Artificial Building of Links!

28 Mar 2012 at 14:28

Pip Norman

We have seen yet again that Google shows no tolerance for artificial link building undertaken to manipulate it’s search results. Whether you realise it or not, paying for links is ‘illegal’ according to Google. To understand exactly why you have to go back to the beginning of the web when these link-farms were not around.

‘Once upon a time, long ago, in an internet far far away and newly founded, webmasters would put up quality content on their websites. When other noble webmasters came along on their valiant Atari or Compaqs they would think:

‘Incredible, how qualityeth this content is-ith!’

They would then proceed to link from their website to this quality content. When the mighty Google was created it soon realised the important of these links between sites and used them as a signal to determine the importance of a website and therefore it’s content. This, in turn, determined in some part the ranking of websites. All was harmony; the user obtained goodly websites through search and the Google was happily fed with websites.

Then……….evil came to the land…………Spammers! They created businesses by offering webmasters backlinks for money = quality content loses some of it’s importance. Google found itself being manipulated by these spammers and decided to take a stand! It started searching out these spammers with it’s mighty Algorithm and continues to do so to this day. The End.’

So, I hope you enjoyed reading that as much as I enjoyed writing it. I also hope you got the main jist of what I was saying. The latest attempt of Google to thwart the manipulation of their search results came last week when they shut down a site you have probably heard of – ‘buildmyrank.com’. The website offers backlinks for money and had thought itself immune to Google’s rules due to it providing slightly higher quality links.

They were wrong.

After Google de-indexed what was described as an ‘overwhelmingly’ large amount of their backlink sites, they decided to shut down the company. A sad end but not surprising. This just serves to highlight the importance of White Hat link building or as we like to call it, ‘Natural Link Building‘.

If you are interested in our Link Building or SEO services you can view a451′s website here.

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Authorship Importance Explained in 3 Steps

19 Mar 2012 at 15:55

Pip Norman

Authorship, Google, Google +1

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There is no longer the worry of; what happens to my content once it’s online? Aren’t I just shoving it out into the ether? Can’t people just scrape it and claim it for their own?

Google Authorship Tags - a451 Search Engine Marketing

Google Authorship Tags - Jane Austen Would Have Done It!

Not any longer.

With various discussions going on in the search world about Authorship Tags, we’re taking the time to explain:

1. Exactly what Authorship Tags are.

2. Their pros.

3. Their cons.

The reason that Authorship Tagshave become a largely talked about subject in the SEO world in recent months can be

contributed in part to the fact that Google has started to include them more and put more value on them when creating their search results.

Q 1: What is an Authorship Tag?

A: An Authorship Tag is found in the meta of a site and therefore will not be seen by readers. It attributes the content to a specific person and over time online writer’s can gain a portfolio of their work with full credit given to them.

Q 2: What are the Pros?

A: Authorship Tags eliminate the ability for ‘scraper’ (copy-cat) content to rank higher than the original as Google can look at the Author Tagand understand which author originally wrote it.

Google Authorship Tags - Dickens Would Have Done It!

It gives writer’s the ability to form a credible ‘online CV’ which is attributed to them and which can be built up over time. This leads on to being able to build your brand and brand awareness across the web. Authorship Tags can work well for companies in this way.

If you put your writing up for syndication, allowing other sites to use your content providing they link back to the original content, with an Author Tag you can find out who is using your content whether they are a benefit to you or not.

Q 3: What are the cons?

A: It’s a real struggle to think of any; one could be the trouble of setting up Authorship Tags, but here at a451 we can work out all of that for you, helping you claim your online content and profit from it easily!

With all these pros lining up for attention it’s clear that investing in Authorship Tags is a very positive step for companies as well as individuals to make.

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What’s Yahoo Up To Nowadays?

05 Mar 2012 at 16:01

Pip Norman

Yahoo

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Yahoo

Yahoo, despite seeming to lie low in the search world, are in fact coming up with innovative ideas, one of which they are in the midst of testing.

Yahoo have been investigating the idea of a user starting a query on one device and being able to carry it on on another. How useful would it be if you searched on a query on your desktop computer at home for example say you wanted to find an address for a post office. Then you were able to save the the search and while you’re running down the stairs and about to hop in the car you can continue the search on your mobile, find the post code in the address and pop it in your sat-nav!

That IS convenience.

Yahoo’s Senior VP of Search and Marketplaces, Shashi Seth was quoted originally on MediaPost and subsequently on Search Engine Land as describing the search-across-devices idea:

‘Yahoo has begun to test the ability to start a query on one device and continue it on another. For example, searching for local restaurants on a desktop PC, finding a location and saving it to continue it on a mobile device, such as iPad or smartphone.

Signing into a Yahoo ID allows the engine to connect searches on smartphones to tablets, desktops and laptops. Searchers will not only benefit from being able to save queries and continue them on another device but advertisers will have an option to target Ads across devices.’

Yahoo have been very clever here. They have managed to target two things with one overall product. The consumers will want to use their product because of the ease of being able to search across devices and they are also drawing in advertisers thanks to the potential ability to advertise across devices. Very clever.

The one aspect of this venture which could be viewed as a draw-back is the need to sign in to your Yahoo account. We’ve already seen in the blog about Google’s secure search, that the majority of searchers do not sign in to their accounts when searching. This could provide a stumbling block to Yahoo’s innovation but it is a case of waiting and seeing. Here at a451 we are interested to find out how this tool of Yahoo’s will be received.

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Google Panda 3.3 Update

02 Mar 2012 at 11:49

Pip Norman

Google, Panda - Google

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Search Engine Land wrote an article describing the latest Panda update. Panda was originally launched in early 2011 and has since undergone several updates and caused quite a stir in the search world. You can read the previous blogs on Google Panda by a451 here.

Panda 3.3 Update February 2012

This latest update, known as the Panda 3.3 update, has been described by Google as:

‘…This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web’

On the face of it, this update sounds a little more positive than the previous updates that Google has rolled out. This positive feeling comes from the idea that the Panda update will enable it to be more sensitive to changes on the web.

This implies that perhaps those sites who have been hit by Panda in the past, dutifully re-written their content and ensured that it is valuable to the web and received no ‘kudos’ for it, may well be able to finally receive that hard-earned pat on the back.

With many website owners striving to change their content and recover from being ‘pandarised‘ in previous months, for some there has been little hope of recovery despite their efforts but with this update Google may well be allowing those sites to be effectively analysed again and maybe, if they’re lucky, be let of the hook!

It’ll certainly be interesting to keep an eye on it and see what happens…

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Google+ Promotes Quality

23 Feb 2012 at 10:25

Pip Norman

General Search, Google, Google +1

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Earlier this week I put up a post on Google+ and the benefits of circles and how they actually manage to promote quality through their innovative design -

‘Well, something I have noticed since becoming part of Google+ is that this social platform inadvertently (or perhaps advertently), promotes quality. Whether it’s quality comments, content, shares or +1′s, it promotes quality. The reason I have come to this conclusion is that unless you have something valid to share, say or contribute, people won’t pay attention to you.

Google+ Circle Promote Quality

It’s this whole circles deal isn’t it? Because you can add every single person on Google+ to your circle but that certainly does not mean that a single person will add you back. This control which Google have given to us over our social circles actually promotes quality. For instance, I wouldn’t add someone shouting ‘ADD ME’ across the platform no matter how many times they typed it and how big the font was. The only way I’m adding someone is if I think they are quality, have quality views and have quality contributions which I’ll actually want appearing in my stream.

So, what do I say to all this? Well done, Google, you have managed to promote quality on a social platform through giving more control to a happy user!’

It is interesting to watch Google find new ways to promote quality and Google+ is just another string to their ‘quality-promoting‘ bow. This ‘quality-promoting‘ trend which received a lot of attention with the launch of Panda in early 2011 is something which has continued to evolve within Google’s products and strategy, making it something for all website owners and users to be aware of.

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7 Pointers For Good Content

21 Feb 2012 at 09:56

Pip Norman

General Search

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In recent months it has become rapidly clear that content is at the forefront of SEO. Google, through their recent updates, have been trying their utmost to promote the importance of content to website owners and SEOs.

The Murky Internet

Why Content is Important:

It has been easy to believe that content is not as important as say, Link Building or Meta-Tagging, but the fact of the matter is, content is the bedrock upon which the rest of the SEO house is built. Who is going to want to link to a website if there is nothing useful on it? Or if the content is hard to understand or not compelling at all? The answer is no one. And, does it matter if all your meta-tags are in place if there is no content supporting them? Yes.

You see, in a time when the internet is constantly being flooded by information and then reflooded as second and third parties tag onto and re-create original articles, the once clear waters of the internet are becoming murky and quality content is hard to find. Google have promoted quality content through their Panda updates, the Freshness update, Page Layout update and through their innovative design of Google+, which will be discussed in the next post, and at the end of the day any good search engine will do so because as much as it is business, it’s important to remember who you’re business is made up of: people.

What Is Good Content?

People want true, compelling and easily understandable content. THAT’S IT. No smoke and mirrors, just valid content. So, to help you keep thinking about this:

7 Pointers For Good Content:

Write it to the point (the visitor has probably already read at least ten web pages before coming to yours)
Avoid using lots of lingo and industry words that people won’t understand (the internet is universal remember)
Include headings to show readers where the content is going
Break——-it——-up——-with lots of paragraphs
Include bold, italics and underlined text to emphasise your point
Include multi-media, such as images and videos (remember every visitor is a different person who takes things in in different ways)
Go for the simple: Subject, Explanation and Action approach to structuring your content.

Now Go Out And Try It!

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Google Image Search

10 Feb 2012 at 12:30

Pip Norman

Google

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It was interesting reading the unofficial Google blog post on Google images which was posted yesterday. Finding out a little more about images and Google’s image search has us here at a451 thinking, but before I get into that I’ll let you know just how neat Google Image search has become.

The standard way to search for an image on Google would be to click the image tab and then write in a keyword which you want images to appear for like so:

Standard Google Image Search

Which should bring up a page of pretty horse images for you to browse through. Well, how about you see the perfect image and you think to yourself, ‘If only I could search on that…’ Well, you can:

Google Drag & Drop Image Search

And, say I search on the bottom right image by dragging it and dropping it as requested I come to a page like this:

Google Drag & Drop Image Search Results

Brilliant – but wait! It gets better, as you can see in the search bar of the screen shot above, the image I’ve searched on has gone into the search bar AND I can add a keyword to it to combine the image and keyword search. Now that you know just what you can do with image search on Google, as an SEO it’s good to think about what this can tell us.

It tells us that Google DOES care about images and if anything it’s only getting smarter where images are concerned. In the thirdscreen shot I took, you can see that Google has picked up images of the same horse in different stances and of other horses of the same colour and breed.

It also tells us that copywriting images on the web, although before was like keeping tabs on a needle in a haystack, is becoming slightly easier. Now you can simply drop an image into the search bar and have the websites which are displaying that image pop up in the search results!

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Google Algorithm on ‘Page Layout’

06 Feb 2012 at 10:46

Pip Norman

Google, Google Algorithm Updates

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During January Google announced a new algorithm change which relates to the layout of your web pages. The main reason for this change is because on some sites they have so many adverts displaying (Ad-heavy) that the visitor can’t even find the content which the page is supposedly on. To rectify this Google has decided to promote non-Ad-heavy pages in the search results it provides.

Ad-Heavy Website

So, if you have Ads on your website then that’s ok, however, Google are now looking at how many Ads you have and where they are placed. If Google deems your site to be too Ad-heavy and or if you have Ads placed to the detriment of the content then they can give you a good ol’ Google penalty which could be being downgraded in the search results. This algorithm change of Google’s has been in the pipeline for a while and does indeed benefit the user however website owners who display Ads should be aware of the algorithm change to ensure they do not get penalised.

The main word which Google used to describe it’s quality control was ‘fold‘. It understood that visitors would not want to scroll past Ads to get to the content so site’s need to make sure their content is ‘above-the-fold‘. Being ‘above-the-fold‘ is approximately the first area which you see when you come into the site. With Google’s new Page Layout checking tool you can see how your site is doing in relation to Ad placement:

Google's Page Layout Tool on a451's website - http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

The above image shows our own a451 Search Marketing website in Google’s Page Layout tool with the different colours showing the importance of different layout areas on the website. This Google Update is worth being aware of, especially if you have a website which displays Ads.

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Google+ Interview on Usability

02 Feb 2012 at 13:22

Pip Norman

Facebook, Google, Google +1

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In a recent report Google+ was said to have over 90 million users however, despite it’s high numbers the network is still considered by people with skepticism. Who’s really using it? Why not just stick with Facebook? What’s so special about yet another social networking service?

Well, we here at a451 sent one of our own in to mess around on Google+ and then report back on their thoughts. Pip Norman has never used Google+ but was asked to create an account and then spend about half an hour on the platform before coming back and answering a few questions. The interview went as follows:

Q. So, first thoughts on Google+ Pip?

A. Well, it looks nice…really clean layout, in fact it’s one of the tidiest looking social networking sites…I don’t think I saw any ads either.

Q. Pip, you created a profile on Google+ is that right?

A. Yep

Q. How easy was that to do? And how does the profile differ from Facebook or other similar sites?

A. Yeah, I think it was pretty self explanatory. I don’t think I filled in all the sections I could have, but it said I could go back and do that. I quite like the little blurb bit that appears below your name – It’s like a catch-phrase or motto section or something. I put a photo up which was easy and filled in a few details. There’s not many differences between Google+ profiles and Facebook profiles. The most interesting bit was adding your friends, that was a bit complicated at first but once I got the hang of it it was easy.

Q. Ok, can you explain what you found complicated?

A. Well not complicated, but just different to Facebook. Google+ allows you to add people to your ‘circles’ which are areas which determine how you know them e.g. work, friends, family. It’s quite a good idea actually, I think it means you can have a Google+ account that works as a personal account and work account. Also, when you put someone in your circle that doesn’t necessarily mean they put you in theirs so it doesn’t really work like a Facebook friend request. I think in that sense you have more control.

Q. So, once you had your circles sorted what did you do next?

A. I went onto the actual Google+ area which displays a feed of things posted by people in my circles or people/companies I’m following (people/companies you follow you don’t necessarily know personally but they are interesting i.e. Matt Cutts.) I shared something on my wall and saw that you can choose who to share it with i.e. public, one of your circles like work colleagues or you can pick individuals. The post still shows on your feed but has ‘Limited’ in the top right corner if you specified who you’re sharing it with – That’s a pretty neat way of sharing stuff. Plus, if you want to see the feed/stream for posts by a specific circle you can, so if I wanted to just look at my friends posts I can click on that on the left side panel and that’s all it would show.

Q. How is the navigation?

A. Well at first I was a bit confused because the look of the site is so clean there’s not much colour to make buttons stand out but when I looked closer I saw that the navigation is text on the left hand side and pictures on the top line. I liked the ‘circles’ button on the top line, it takes you to a place where you can move people into different circles or multiple circle like if they’re you friend and colleague. Plus they have a games button with loads of online games you can play! I refrained from having a go though

Q. What’s the best feature of Google+ for you?

A. Um…Well, I think the fact that you can keep up-to-date with things going on with your area of work as there are a lot of companies/businesses on Google+. There’s also a ‘What’s hot’ area which is fun to look at.

Q. Will you use Google+ now?

A. For work definitely, the more I use it the more I think it’s really good for industry news and work connections.

Well, we hope that this interview has helped give you a good idea of Google+ and what this slowly catching-on Social Network platform is really like.

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AdWords Just Keeps Getting Better!

19 Jan 2012 at 09:53

Pip Norman

Adwords - Google, Google

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It seems like AdWords is on the ball and it’s worth knowing a little bit about the new and improved features it is now offering after it’s latest updates. The main thrust of these new improvements is in the area of mobile search. This rapidly growing source of website traffic is one which is worth keeping up-to-date with as more and more individuals are changing over to smartphones and spending a significant proportion of their time searching for things on their phone.

Google’s AdWords is cottoning on to the mobile phenomenon and they’re allowing advertisers to tailor their paid search even more for mobile traffic. The new functionality of Adwords will allow advertisers to target specific versions of operating systems on phones to ensure the ads are being seen and clicked on by the right users, thus improving traffic quality.

SearchEngineLand described it like this:

‘Say you’re marketing an Android app via AdWords targeted to mobile devices, but your product only works on Honeycomb and newer versions of the OS — still, you keep getting folks with older versions showing up on your landing page, and likely getting frustrated. That’s exactly the type of problem Google is trying to address with new mobile targeting functionality for AdWords, announced this week.’

AdWords Mobile Features

In addition to that update, AdWords is also now allowing for advertisers to target users based on whether they are using a faster Wi-Fi connection. This is helpful if for instance you have a landing page which takes longer to load due to high-bandwidth content like videos – you won’t want to target someone with slow Wi-Fi because the chances are they will click on your ad and then bounce out of your landing page before it’s even had a chance to fully load because it’s taking too long!

It’s fascinating to see how Search Engines etc are facing the mobile market and creating new ways of tailoring search around it. The mobile search phenomenon is definitely something to watch as it keeps changing over the coming months and year.

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a451 Blog

Alas The Artificial Building of Links!

Authorship Importance Explained in 3 Steps

What’s Yahoo Up To Nowadays?

Google Panda 3.3 Update

Google+ Promotes Quality

7 Pointers For Good Content

Google Image Search

Google Algorithm on ‘Page Layout’

Google+ Interview on Usability

AdWords Just Keeps Getting Better!

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