Watch this video from Google to see what Google specifically acknowledges is spam and may affect your organic placement.
Nuggets from this video:
Blog and forum comment spam can impact your placement on Google.
Keep an eye on your comments look for small comments with links and links in a signature block.
I recommend on your blog only allowing comments to be posted that you approve.
It is not unusual for a blog to get over 1,000 spam comments a month. If you are set to auto approve all comments this could negatively impact your placement on Google.
Michael Wyszomierski of the Google Search Quality Team talks about errors that Google will report to you in the Webmaster Control Panel about the crawl and indexing of your website.
My Comments
There are two types of crawl errors they are site errors and specific URL errors.
Site errors means that the Googlebot cannot access your website and are usually from an item listed in your robots.txt file. You should give these errors top priority for fast resolution.
The most common URL is a “not found” error. This means that a page may be missing from your site or the URL changed and your sitemap.xml file should be updated to remove the triggering of these error messages.
Having specific URL errors on your site is completely natural and nothing to worry about, but best practices should include a review and clean up periodically of these problems.
The crawl errors are more important. Although a crawl error can be caused when your server is not available due to a glitch or network error, they should be investigated to make sure that your site is not blocking the crawl by search engine robots. You may even need to get with your web host if server errors happen frequently.
Daniel Seef from Google talks about the Message Center in the Google Webmaster Control Panel in this excellent and informative video.
My Comments
Google provides messages about issues that impact your search results. Additionally they provide helpful tips on how you can improve the indexing of your website.
Maile Ohye of Google explains in this excellent video why Google+ is so important for your overall web presence. Watch the video and then review our comments at the end of this blog post.
My Comments
Google+ is much more than a personal social networking page, but it does start with the creation of your profile page. You can use Google+ Circles to decide what gets shown to people based on your intimacy level. Keep a Circle for your personal updates and a Circle for business. Choose what works best for you.
You don’t have to put everyone who follows you into a Circle.
Hangouts are audio video group chats. You can connect with up to 10 people where you can see their face and they yours. Hangouts can be recorded public or private. So you can use these as conference seminars.
Google+ posts that are more heavily visited will be pushed to the top of your Google+ stream; allowing popular posts to be seen more frequently.
Google+ allows you to see the impact of your posts using Ripples. Hit play on the left corner to see how your post has been spread on the Web.
The Google +1 button allows you to build a reputation on the Web. In search results you can +1 things you like. You can see what others in your network have liked too. This works on AdWords ads too. When you see friends and connections have liked a product, website, or ad you have the confidence to buy, shop, or view as well.
Google’s key is to return the most relevant search results, Google+ takes into account the number of +1 votes of a page or website in their algorithm.
When you are searching on Google.com, Google integrates Google+ posts, Google+ Circles and those you follow, as well as +1 from connections within your own personal search results.
