Matt Cutts from Google on Link Building

In a recent interview done for an article by Eric Enge at Stone Temple Consulting, Matt Cutts, the lead Web Spam engineer for Google,  tells the industry that “link building is not illegal.”

However, in the same interview Matt goes on to state that there is a link building tactic that Google now considers web spam.

Links from press releases that are really written just to build links are no longer valued by Google. However if links that are generated by a news resource  reading the press release and then contacting the business to write an article which then linking back to the businesses website would be a great way to build links. So press releases are not dead persay, just now more what they were intended to be; a way to let the press know of something newsworthy. Not a link building strategy unto itself as SEO’s have previously used them as.

Matt and Eric agree that one of the best Google-approved ways to build links is by having great sharable content that is followed, talked about, and cited on social media sites like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. But, they both agree that just vomiting out links to your content on social media is not what they intend; rather audience engagement that  is built around content which is then shared throughout followers networks.

If you are looking for a new content strategy for your blog and social media, we invite you to visit our website to find out more about how we can help you.

What Does Google Say About Page Load Speed?

Just how fast your website pages load may be just one of the newest factors in regards to where Google ranks you in the search results. In fact Google considers PageSpeed so important that it has released a new tool for you to test your mobile and desktop versions so as to give you concrete areas of improvement.

Here’s the tool’s URL: http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Google considers page load time or PageSpeed (as Google has coined the term) an important factor in supplying relevant content in its search results. Since 2010 Google has been clocking websites but just recently really started pushing sites to improve PageSpeed.

Here’s a quote from 2010 as posted on the Google Webmaster Blog letting you know that Google has felt PageSpeed is an important issue for over three years:

“You may have heard that here at Google we’re obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.” Full article.

Now experts say that you’ll lose about 7% of your potential site traffic for every second it takes your page to load. Factor into that, that more users have faster Internet connections and a lower tolerance for a slow loading page and you start to see that changing technology and demographics are all a part of why Google is now laser- focused on PageSpeed.

In fact, in 2013 Google even has created a special team called “Make the Web Fast” headed by engineer Ilya Grigorik. You can watch his Google viewpoint in this interesting top level video. As Ilya notes, the speed problem for most website lies in un-optimized images. Ilya states that a one second threshold is the new web standard. So pushing the speed envelop to serve pages in under one second is their new goal.

In a recent case study done by Google and Bing slow loading pages 2,000 millisecond delays cause a 4.3% drop in traffic and lower customer satisfaction. You can see more details on this study in the video noted above.

Whatever Google decides is crucial for their search engine’s performance, you as a site owner should make important for your site and webmaster in order to place now on Google.com.

You Love a Keyword but Your AdWords Quality Score Stinks – What to Do

So you love a keyword in your AdWords account, it is right on target with what you sell, but AdWords has given it a very low Quality Score, what can you do?

1. First make sure that this keyword phrase is reflected specifically back on your website and on the landing page you use. You’d be surprised to find that in many cases the word you like is nowhere to be found.

2. If the word you like is only one word, pause that single word and come up with two word and three word phrases that are still a good match. You may find that Google has simply considered a single keyword simply too general and so the CTR on the single word is simply not high enough to warrant a good to excellent quality score.

Here’s an example. If you are a dentist and one of your keywords in your AdWords account about general dentistry keywords is dentist (all by itself), you may very well overtime get a low Quality Score on the word dentist. Typically a single word like this will get many impressions and relatively few clicks; negatively impacting Quality Score over time. A better phrase to use would be Auburn Hills Dentist – adding a location descriptor may very possible raise the Quality Score on this term. If you really want to use the term dentist or another single keyword in your account exact match it like [dentist].

3. If the Quality Score is poor on really on target two or three keyword phrases, try to improve the Quality Score by using dynamic text insertion in your ad text.

4. If the score does not improve in 30 days and you really need this keywords phrase, pause the phrase in the existing ad group, move the phrase and other variations of the keyword into its own ad group and use dynamic text insertion in the ad text and at the end of the display URL to see if you can improve the Quality Score. But if you take this approach, make absolutely sure that the landing page you are using also has this very specific use of the phrase in the content.

5. If the Quality Score is still bad on the phrase you like, start digging deeper to identify the problem. Consider is this phrase really pertinent to what you offer or sell? Do you have enough content back on your website to help Google to understand that this is important to your needs? Are you bidding enough to get enough exposure to even get a high enough position to improve your CTR?

If you need help with your AdWords problems, I invite you to check out the pricing and details on our AdWords account management programs. In many cases a Google AdWords Certified Partner, such as McCord Web Services, is able to unlock the performance you need to boost sales using AdWords.