Blog SEO

                                    
Why is knowing what not to do more important? Making a mistake when you’re building links can result in a Google penalty (…in which your website becomes negatively ranked). Nevertheless, if you’re able to avoid mistakes, you can protect the hard work, time and effort you’ve put into building your website.

Paid Links

Linking to your content is important; however, you should not pay sites for permission to link. Doing so will just waste your hard-earned money. In addition, paying for links can end up hurting your Google ranking. Instead, you should consider using our Premium Content Initiative (PCI). Continue reading here for more information on PCI content.

Abusing Press Releases

Press releases work to release good, solid information about a product or service to public. However, spammers abuse this method by releasing information (filled with random links to their blog) that is not newsworthy. For more information about creating successful press releases, read our blog on Press Release Optimization.

Spammy Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the more recent ways Google will negatively rank your website. However, only poorly written content from low ranked websites is bad. Practicing genuine guest blogging (…or “relationship building” as explained here) is fine, and if done correctly (i.e. providing well-written content on a relevant site), can boost your Google ranking.

Quantity over Quality

Rather than trying to produce as many blogs and websites (with as many links as you can shove in), focus on producing solid content (you can find suggestions for creating great content here). Otherwise, you’ll risk being labeled as a spammer.

Keyword Stuffing

When using keywords, they should fit organically in your content. Including keywords in your content is important; however, avoid using so many keywords that your content no longer makes sense. By reading 11 Tips to Increasing Keyword Saturation while Maintaining Valuable Content, you can learn how to add more keywords into your content without risking a Google penalty.

Overdoing Social Profile Links

While using social media networks is a great way to build links back to your website or blog, you need to be careful using them. You should only create a few at a time and you should get to know those you are interacting. Do not just start posting links.

Ignoring Social Media

On the other hand, don’t simply ignore social media. Just make sure you take the time to learn how to use it properly.

Check out 9 Do’s and Don’ts of Building a Social Bookmarking Network for suggestions on how to best use social media for your business.

Not Tracking Progress

You should always track your website traffic to know exactly where your visitors are coming from—and many websites will offer you tracking codes to use. One example is Google Analytics, which will track your traffic for you. Tracking your traffic will let you know what is working for your website and what needs to be fixed to bring in more traffic.

While it can take time to learn all of the ins and outs of link building, the results are worth it. For more information on successful link building practices, we invite you to continue browsing our blog.

As a content developer myself, I admit I may have somewhat of a conflict of interest in preaching about the importance of creating quality web content in your SEO strategy, but at least I’m not alone in my conviction. A newly released Google search rankings study from SearchMetrics has declared that quality content creation is “no longer an addition to, but is the main focus of, SEO.” And they’ve got data to back it up.
It shouldn’t be all that surprising then that content marketing topics seemed to be all the rage this week. From getting in touch with your funny side to discovering the voice of the customer, take a few minutes to check out these helpful links on rethinking your content marketing strategy, as well as these other well-written articles and SEO updates from around the web.
Content Marketing:
Need a good laugh? Your audience does, too. This comical article shows how injecting a little bit of humor into dull content can make your articles and blogs a lot more memorable.
Our friends over at Positionly reveal what separates the great writers from the rest. Here’s a hint: it has nothing to do with writing itself.
Also from Positionly, find out the key ingredients of sharable content and some surprising examples of blog post failures
Take the guessing game out of great landing page copy by checking out this guide to identifying the voice of your customers.
Social Media:
Facebook and Twitter may dominate the social media world, but how long will they stay on top? Browse through this list to find some recognizable and obscure emerging social networks to keep an eye on.
If you use Twitter as part of your social media strategy, a controversial proposed change may impact your hard work. For better or worse? You decide.
Google:
Google’s John Mueller hinted on Google Hangout that the he expects a new and improved Penguin to be rolled out within the 2014 year – the first major update in almost a year. A Google Christmas gift for SEOs, perhaps?
Google has introduced several new, long-awaited features within the Webmaster Tools API to bring it up to par with other API’s.

In recent years, the biggest change to the search landscape happened when Google chose to withhold keyword data from webmasters. At SEOBook, Aaron noticed and wrote about the change, as evermore keyword data disappeared.

The motivation to withold this data, according to Google, was privacy concerns:


SSL encryption on the web has been growing by leaps and bounds. As part of our commitment to provide a more secure online experience, today we announced that SSL Search on https://www.google.com will become the default experience for signed in users on google.com.

At first, Google suggested it would only affect a single-digit percentage of search referral data:


Google software engineer Matt Cutts, who’s been involved with the privacy changes, wouldn’t give an exact figure but told me he estimated even at full roll-out, this would still be in the single-digit percentages of all Google searchers on Google.com

...which didn't turn out to be the case. It now affects almost all keyword referral data from Google.

Was it all about privacy? Another rocket over the SEO bows? Bit of both? Probably. In any case, the search landscape was irrevocably changed. Instead of being shown the keyword term the searcher had used to find a page, webmasters were given the less than helpful “not provided”. This change rocked SEO. The SEO world, up until that point, had been built on keywords. SEOs choose a keyword. They rank for the keyword. They track click-thrus against this keyword. This is how many SEOs proved their worth to clients.

These days, very little keyword data is available from Google. There certainly isn’t enough to keyword data to use as a primary form of measurement.
Rethinking Measurement

This change forced a rethink about measurement, and SEO in general. Whilst there is still some keyword data available from the likes of Webmaster Tools & the AdWords paid versus organic report, keyword-based SEO tracking approaches are unlikely to align with Google’s future plans. As we saw with the Hummingbird algorithm, Google is moving towards searcher-intent based search, as opposed to keyword-matched results.


Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words

The search bar is still keyword based, but Google is also trying to figure out what user intent lays behind the keyword. To do this, they’re relying on context data. For example, they look at what previous searches has the user made, their location, they are breaking down the query itself, and so on, all of which can change the search results the user sees.

When SEO started, it was in an environment where the keyword the user typed into a search bar was exact matching that with a keyword that appears on a page. This is what relevance meant. SEO continued with this model, but it’s fast becoming redundant, because Google is increasingly relying on context in order to determine searcher intent & while filtering many results which were too aligned with the old strategy. Much SEO has shifted from keywords to wider digital marketing considerations, such as what the visitor does next, as a result.

How Will We Practice SEO In 2020, And How Will It Differ From The Way We Do It Today?
Aleyda Solis