Month: July 2014

Updated in 2014, Google’s Quality Guidelines for webmasters spells out some new details that all website owner’s should keep in mind.

In a nutshell, Google wants quality, relevant, unique, mobile-optimized content. The content that appears highest in the search results will be those that Google deems are the most relevant for a user’s query. The key is what Google deems most relevant and how a business owner’s website can make it into the pool that Google will select from to show for each unique query.

With Google showing results that are mobile-location determined specific, based on the user’s current location, and based on historical data of a user’s search history; relevancy simply cannot be determined by the keywords or for that matter even content on your website that you control. There is simply no way, based on the current Google parameters, to consistently garner top organic placement with some many variables being determined by Google’s file on the end user.

However, Google has still provided insight into what it considers important for a website owner to do on their end so that a website can even be included in the results that will be “racked and stacked” based on the individual users needs. These items are hugely important to embrace if your website is going to be a player in the way Google now delivers search results.

Here are some of my top tips for website owners to follow:

1. Make sure you craft your message for relevancy to users not search engines.

2. Be transparent in all you do; what you sell, who you are, what you do with user information; where you are located, and so forth.

3. Don’t use tactics that you may find difficult to explain to others or that may degrade over time in an effort to simply garner search engine placement now.

4. Focus on what makes your website, products or services unique and sell that uniqueness on each and every page.

5. Here’s the big list of don’ts – no automated content, no scraped content, no link schemes, no hidden text, no affiliate program sites will place without additional unique and value-driven content, no abuse of rich snippet coding. You’ll want to visit this page for more don’ts.

6. Google has even noted that website owner’s should pro-actively monitor for hacking now, as well as rogue installation of malicious code and excessive spam comments.

Additionally Google states that low quality pages are not okay, hiding content with CSS or JavaScript is not acceptable and will now be filtered out algorithmically, as well as inclusion of about us pages and contact us pages are now must have’s.

The key for website owners to consider, to even have the chance to appear for a user’s search, is to focus on the positive, unique, winning aspects of your business or product. Be transparent and honest about what you sell and do. Doing all of this then gives you the opportunity to be added to the mix of results that Google will then chose from to return a list of sites each unique user search query with a strong focus on what is “right” and “best” for the searcher.

If you need help with your content changes or a refocus strategy, I encourage you to contact my firm today at www.McCordWeb.com.

 

Like never before, you’ve got to keep a careful eye on your content; reviewing your online message for authority and placement. Google is penalizing thin content, duplicate content, and link-heavy content.

How can you make sure your content stays in the “green zone” versus the “red – penalty zone”? Here are a few tips to identifying and solving content related issues.

1. Check the bounce rate of your pages in Google Analytics. Look for pages where your bounce rate is higher than 75%. If the page has over 300 to 350 words of content you may want to consider if you want to keep the page. It may simply be a one stop page that does not lead prospects further in to know about your product and may need to be removed or updated to entice them to travel further into your site. Or if the page has under 250 words, the page may be too thin and need a rebuild.

For some of our clients, a 75% bounce rate may appear on pages that had previously been built for in-depth articles or to build site authority. These pages, although valuable years ago for SEO, may now be penalizing a website with a high bounce rate with Google as the site reader comes in to visit, but never makes it off that one page.

2. Consider using a tool like Screaming Frog to scan your site (up to 500 pages for free more with a license) for word count. You can watch a video of what the tool does on the Screaming Frog website. Target the pages that you find that have about 250 words only and then review the bounce rate in Google Analytics. Additionally I would recommend you take a look at pages that are over 1,000 words. In today’s mobile-sensitive Google extra long pages that will not render well on mobile or may cause excessive scrolling may damage your placement as well. Consider those extra long pages as candidates for a “break-up” into multiple pages that will be mobile reading friendly.

3. Use a tool like the MOZ Site Explorer to get a snapshot of what is happening with nofollow links and authority of inbound links. Use the tool to find your top linked pages as well as the top anchor text. Although you can see a few things for free the paid version will unlock more data if you decide to buy it. Taking a look at outbound links from a page may give you additional possible content related penalty insights.

Content pages under about 250 or so words, with lots of outbound links, and that have a high bounce rate may actually help to lower your website’s overall Google placement. Although one page or two certainly will not play a big factor in your overall ranking having a significant number of problem pages may set up your site for a Google thin content penalty.

With many website owners not reviewing their content except when they update to a new website, some businesses have content that has not really been reviewed for over three years and in some cases much longer than that.

If you have not taken a careful look at your business online presence recently it is important that you take a look now, as Google is factoring in thin content and bounce rate into their organic placement algorithm.

If you are looking for help to rework your content for Google and to build value for readers, I encourage you to contact McCord Web Services today. We are content experts!

If you read our post on Tuesday July 8th and feel that your website may have been penalized by Google, doing nothing will not make the problem go away. Neither will simply disavowing any links in your Google Webmaster Control Panel. It takes work to get your business back in the SERPs and Google wants you to sweat to get it.

Although we do not provide placement remediation services and none of our clients we webmaster or have optimized have been hit by a penalty, I do have several AdWords clients that have had problems with their organic placement and have shared with me their pain and process.

I will share with you one client’s story and how he worked to fix the problem.

First, he had been hacked several times through WordPress bringing his site down. Although I am not privy to an SEO tactics he may have taken on the side, he did tell me he received notice from Google that his site had been penalized. In his case, it was over links. Google even gave him an example of the types of links that had caused the problem.

To remediate the issue, this person created a spreadsheet of all links and hired temporary staff. Then he went through every link record he could find in the Google control panel to review if the link should be allowed to stand or not. For those that were questionable in character, he contacted the webmaster of each site or tried to do so, on four occasions. Each activity date and time was documented in the spreadsheet. He then disavowed the link in the Google Webmaster control panel if he could not get a concrete response that promised to take down the link.

After nearly two full weeks of work, he then asked for a site review and attached his working spreadsheet (as a Google doc) to the resubmission request along with a note about what had happened and that he was not going to take these questionable actions again.

After three weeks Google responded and removed part of the site suspension and gave additional insight as to what else needed repair. He then worked the next set of links/problems in the same manner and after two weeks sent in his document and resubmission.

His site has now been fully recovered on Google. What nailed him were links of questionable nature. The key to his recovery was showing Google his work via a Google docs shared spreadsheet. I have had other business acquaintances state that they have disavowed links but have not gone through the trouble to communicate with Google and their sites have not recovered.

What is interesting to know from this positive recovery is that even when Google stated he had full recovery, there appears to be a filter of a set period of time that just has to expire before the site can pop back up on Google.com.

Although we do not perform Google remediation services you may need to promote your business on AdWords while you are trying to remediate your problem and we can certainly step in and help get your business generating leads again using Google AdWords pay per click services. Learn from those who have been less fortunate when it comes to getting penalized and run a “clean” site and don’t hire or practice “shady” visibility enhancing services.

In the past six months I know of several prospects and AdWords clients whose site’s have received an organic smackdown from Google. Some business owners have come to us not even knowing that they have been hit by a penalty just that they seem to have dropped off Google.com. I will be writing a two post series on this topic.

First you need to know if you may have been hit by a penalty. Here’s how to tell.

1. Has your business suddenly dropped?

2. Have phone calls stopped?

3. When you do a search for your domain on Google do you even appear under your own business name.

There are different levels of severity of this visibility problem and some harder to correct than others. If you think you may have been hit by a Google penalty for organic placement, take time to dig a little deeper.

1. Do a search like this on Google: site:yourdomainname.com. Does anything come up?

2. When you do searches that you would typically appear for is your home page visible or just inside pages?

3. Check your Google Webmaster control panel for messages. If you don’t have one, set one up ASAP and verify your website there. You will want to look for messages and also manual actions.

4. Even if you do not have a message you may have still been hit by a Google penalty.

If you think you have been hit with a Google penalty what may have caused the penalty?

1. Duplicate content may be one issue.

2. Server and page problems. If your site is delivering a lot of 404 errors (file not found) you may have been penalized.

3. Your SEO firm has done some things without your knowledge that have caused a problem such as buying links, using link farm pages to try to boost link numbers, used keyword stuffing in your pages and source code, added hidden links to your pages. For the full list of possible reasons, please read this article for more insight. Know that even if you did not know of these tactics taken on your behalf you will still have the consequence.

On Thursday I will be writing about how to try to remediate your problem and get back on Google so make sure to check in.