News

Google Unleashes the Page Layout Update

by Jon Heinl January 20th, 2012

Yesterday, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, confirmed on the Inside Search blog (and webmaster central blog) the algorithm change he forewarned us all about in November.

For all of you who may not have attended Pubcon 2011 in Las Vegas or missed the post on Search Engine Land, Cutts warned:

“If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it.”

Well, yesterday Google started rolling out the algorithm change that could affect websites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” which intern may prevent these types of pages/sites from ranking highly in Google’s SERPs. The algorithm update affects less than 1 percent of global searches so you may or may have not noticed this update yet.

I Have Ads Above-The-Fold. Should I Be Concerned?

If you have ads above-the-fold you don’t need to freak out. Google understands the monetization of websites BUT, if your content on the webpage is currently being pushed down below the fold by large, fugly ad blocks, you should probably consider a webpage layout change, especially if notice your organic ranks begin to slip.

Think Your Website Has Been Affected?

If you feel your websites has taken a hit by the new page layout algorithm update, you might want to consider your current page layout and monetization strategy. Google Labs has a nifty little browser size tool you can use to see how people are actually viewing your pages. If you notice that only a small percentage of Internet users can see your content without having to scroll, you may have a problem.

I’ve Updated My Pages, Now What?

After you’ve made the necessary changes to your pages, Cutts stated it can take “several weeks” on a typical website as Google re-crawls and processes the changes you’ve made. However, depending on the size of your website it could take even longer.

For more information on the page layout algorithm change, visit Google’s Inside Search blog.

This post was written by Jon Heinl

Brick-and-Mortar Businesses: The Case for Local SEO

by SEO Savvy October 28th, 2011

Everyone’s beginning to get pretty comfortable with the notion of SEO and the need for it if you want your business to go anywhere on the Web. We’re finally beginning to see and hear people realizing that there is a difference between SEO and social media – that being on Facebook isn’t going to do anything on its own for your ranking on Google. But the notion of putting local SEO or “local search” practices in place to attract local searchers is just now picking up steam.

The challenge with local brick-and-mortar businesses is how to make headway in organic search results, particularly when trying to reach a local audience, when there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of competitors vying for the same few coveted search results positions. Local SEO is the answer.

How does it all work?

Strategy-wise, it sounds simple enough. Create a Web site, make it live, the traffic will come. Even the most beautifully designed, strategically written, and technically advanced sites, won’t make that scenario come true.

SEO is key. Local SEO is becoming a game-changer. But to be able to figure out how local searchers are looking for you and how to tailor your Web tactics to make it easy for them to find you is easier said than done.

The fact is that local business owners typically just don’t have the time or resources to devote to the demands of creating, implementing, and following through on a local SEO maintenance plan. This is the part in the plan where hiring an SEO expert that can specifically address your local search needs comes into play.

What should we be looking for?

The best local SEO plan will incorporate a strategy that applies traditional search engine optimization tactics to the criteria of a local audience – a visitor who’s already looking for you – and pairs that with a plan to help convert searchers into sales either on the Web or in person.

Targeted keywords and PPC ads are key, but right now one of the most effective tools to leverage is a map search functionality within a search engine. Because of its size, placement, and appearance on a search results page, the Google maps search results, for example, are hugely effective; they’re typically the first thing searchers see when they run a Google search, for example, and they stand out from the text-only listings on the rest of the page.

Having your businesses come up in one of these map search results has become almost as important and necessary in terms of credibility, particularly as you wait for your traditional organic search results to get up to speed.

Where do we go from here?

When interviewing Web marketing specialists to run your SEO plan, make sure you ask for a proposal for a local SEO strategy. You wouldn’t expect your customers to pay for your goods or services without you being able to demonstrate that whatever they’re purchasing is legitimate and best suited to their needs. Don’t expect anything less out of your SEO expert.

Reputation Management on Steroids

by SEO Savvy October 28th, 2011

If you lose your reputation what do you have left? Nothing.

In the instant-news, always-connected, everyone-has-a-soapbox kind of world we live in today, your reputation is all you have and it can disappear or take a nosedive faster than you can send a DM on Twitter.

Whether you’re applying for a job, running a business, or just socializing with friends and family, reputation management is vital and you can’t always do it on your own. You need your own Lindsay Lohan-style team to help maintain your online image or combat an Internet pitfall from time to time, because you can’t control what other people say about you, but you can chose to take an active role in controlling how their comments are viewed, if at all.

Management Tool Options

The fact is that the Internet social world is really no different than the real social world in a sense; you have every right to represent yourself how you see fit and protect and defend that representation to the bitter end. Your livelihood and future could depend on this defense … it’s not something to be taken lightly.

When it comes to the free publishing world of the Internet, no one can be trusted. Competitors can say pretty much whatever they want about you, whenever, wherever they want and there’s nothing stopping them. No matter how honestly you run your business, there’s always someone out there willing to badmouth your company, your services, products, employees – anything – if for no other reason, sometimes, than just to hear themselves talk.

While a quality SEO and reputation management service would never give away its true secrets, the general approach to preserving your online “face” is to push out the disruptive content. This strategy may include bumping negative comments back a few pages in search engine results and replacing that content with new comments representing you and your organization in a much more favorable light.

Rip-off Report Removal

If you’re a business, there are tons of potentially damaging sites out there that claim to report on company rip-offs, but these sites aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. They have a reputation of not being able to substantiate their reports (sounds like they may be in need of some reputation management themselves) and not allowing filed complaints to take on any legitimacy because there’s little viable legal recourse against them.

The best way to fight these reports is through a reputation management service. A quality reputation management service should be able to push back these reports to the far-reaching pages of Google, or any other search engine, within just a few weeks. Once the report has been removed from the first few pages, most searchers won’t see what you’re trying to hide because, surveys show, they stop scrolling after page three; it’s as good as gone.

Most reputation management services will follow up by working on monitoring and maintenance to prevent the report from resurfacing and to police any other reports that may pop up. Daily maintenance is just not something all individuals or businesses have the time, money, or energy to carry out effectively. Consider paying the experts to take care of it for you.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

by SEO Savvy April 19th, 2011

When people refer to “organic SEO” (search engine optimization), they almost always use it as a blanket term to describe the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular engine. However, a sophisticated search engine optimization company will often take the meaning of “organic” one step further. To such companies, the description of “organic SEO” is not limited to what shows up in the “natural” search engine results – it includes the methodologies used to achieve such rankings.