Category: Google

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Guest Blogging as We Know It is Dead – Per Matt Cutts

You know something for SEO tactics is dead when Google’s Matt Cutts comes out point blank and says:

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.” Read the full blog post.

But not only does this mean that the tactic is dead, but continuing to use a tactic like this for link building may actually get you penalized in the Google index.

Let’s Explore Guest Blogging Further

Here’s what’s considered bad:

If you or your SEO firm were trolling the web and sending out unsolicited notes to webmasters saying “Hey use this blog post and keep the links as dofollow, or we’ll pay you to post this content”, ouch, watch out! This is exactly what Matt is talking about that you need to steer clear of.

Here’s what’s still considered good:

If you are guest blogging for a news site like SiteProNews, the Huffington Post, industry trade journals – these types of high quality guest blogging opportunities and high profile exposure can really continue to work for you; building your online authority. But the reality of these types of gigs is that they are few and far between and not available to the typical newbie.

Tie the demise of guest blogging in with Matt’s thumb’s down on article marketing and you can clearly see that link building now is considered a spammy practice and one worthy of a Google penalty.

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What to Know About Google’s Structured Data

Google recommends that website owners start to provide special XML code snippets to assist it in sorting and categorizing their website data. This is called structured data and is usually done in a format known as microdata.

This new format is not hard to understand nor is it hard to implement, but it is important to know that Google considers its use important and is making it fairly simple for website owners to add these code snippets.

First, not all data on your website can be marked up as structured data. For now Google is only using code for products, local businesses – including address, phone, and other information, articles, software applications, reviews, events, and movies.  Each year Google has added new categories as they expand the types of data that they are integrating into search results.

Use of special tags:

Coding a review will need special tags that denote rating, vcard, title, name, locality, and region. This is all a part of sorting the data for Google in their approved and specific format. Google makes it pretty easy for website owners to start using structured data and has even provided some great online tools.

Here are a few additional resources for you to consider:

Google’s blog post on the topic:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/getting-started-with-structured-data.html

Structured Data Markup Helper:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/

Embedding Structured Data for Gmail:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/embedding-schemas-in-emails

Google Webmaster Tools Data Highligher:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

Structured Data Bread Crumb Snippet:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/185417?hl=en

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Google States They Do Not Use Facebook or Twitter for Ranking

Matt Cutts, the lead Spam Engineer at Google revealed just this last week that Google is not using Facebook or Twitter posts or profiles for index ranking. This is very big news and a change in what Google has stated about how social impacts their algorithm.

You can watch the full YouTube video here.

Here’s the bottom-line about using social media and Google rankings:

1. Google is not ranking your site based on the activity you have on social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Google does look at links that are shared on these social sites just like they look at content pages when they can spider the content.

3. Google is concerned about using social profiles to create “identity” as this may change or be blocked over time.

4. Google is not recording, for their algorithm, the number of likes or followers a social profile has.

5. Matt Cutts states that he personally likes social profiles for sharing and driving traffic, but does not recommend using them as an avenue to impact Google search placement.

This is an interesting change for Google as previously Google has stated that it did include likes and follower numbers as part of social signals and that these social signals impacted organic placement.

My recommendation is to continue to use Twitter and Facebook if it makes sense to do so. Some businesses have a rich forum on Facebook and should not abandon their followers just because they now don’t get SEO juice from activity there. But for SEO’s to encourage social media interaction now appears to be just one more SEO tactic that Google is clearly disavowing as a way to get organic placement.

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Why Does Your Page and Website Fluctuate in Organic Placement?

Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.
Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.

It is not unusual for a new page on your website, or for that matter a new website to place, well initially in the organic search results and then drop in placement over time. Why?

Matt Cutts at Google explains why there are fluctuations in organic placement on Google.com in this video found on YouTube http://youtu.be/BzfK6isC7CA.

Here’s a synopsis of his comments as to why there is fluctuation:

  • As Google spiders the Web, it may find similar content knocking down your placement.
  • New content may be created over time that is more recent and knocks down your content’s placement.
  • Google initially boosts the page and then drops it if over time it does not garner backlinks.
  • Google is initially guessing where a page should place and then understands later due to links and co-citation if the page should continue to stay highly placed.