Google – Page 40 – The Web Authority

September 12, 2013September 19, 2013

Structured Data Gives Google What It Wants

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, and movies. Each year Google has added new categories as they expand the types of data that they are integrating into search results.

Here’s an example of coding for a review:

<div><img src=”http://www.mccordweb.com/images/five-stars.gif” alt=”Five Stars” height=”20″ width=”83″ align=”absmiddle” border=”0″ /> Overall Rating 5 out of 5 "Very Professional and helpful. Quality of the writing was excellent."

Neil Primack, Owner, Florida Health Insurance Broker Jupiter, Florida</div>

Notice that the review has 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 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

September 5, 2013August 31, 2013

How to Develop a Keyword List for Your Organic Strategy

Even though Google says don’t keyword stuff your site or write content using an unnatural keyword density, it is still important to do careful keyword discovery and analysis as part of your content creation strategy. So how do you develop a keyword list that helps you and your writer to keep focus?

1. If you use Google AdWords, take a careful look at the keyword combinations that are generating lead conversions. Make sure to use the Search Funnel report to find last click keywords and assist click keywords.

2. Glean additional data from Google Analytics. Look for trending phrases to identify are words in a certain order are plurals used versus singular forms. Check the bounce rate for the terms you are carefully considering.

3. Put on your thinking hat. Sit down with your client and do searches on Google for terms you both think that someone would use to find his or her website. Then take a careful look at the search results. If you do not find competitors showing for that keyword phrase it may be either too general, may be too narrow, or not on topic. When I see .edu sites and Wikipedia sites showing for a query, I know that I need to keep digging to find a better match as this type of query will drive information gathering traffic not lead conversion traffic.

4. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Insights tool. Look for trending keyword variations and new opportunities. Look are high and low competition areas.

5. Take your list and start testing your blog posts using the keyword phrases your have created. If you feel that you have a great list start testing pages in the website to see if you can get a boost based on the new keywords.

6. Make sure to report and review monthly. Without this important step, you’ll never clearly identify if the content, meta tags, and blog posts improved placement for the site.

If you need help creating a strategy for your website, it starts first with our SEO Evaluation. Find out more about how we may be able to help you.

September 3, 2013August 31, 2013

Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty – Is It Fiction?

I read this article at SiteProNews with interest “Duplicate Content — It’s Time to Shatter the Myths” by Martin O’Neill. In the article the author states:

“..feel free to use content from online sources but your long-term goal should be producing quality, original content and material that will serve your website and online presence in the months and years to come.”

You’ll want to read the full article yourself to understand the full breadth of the topic. I however, with all due respect, disagree with the conclusions drawn by the author about duplicate content and rankings for sites that use it on Google.

Case in point – just ask the owners of e-commerce stores whose product descriptions are shared by a large number of similar websites what has happened to their website placement. Most sites have been penalized; pushed so far back in the organic results that they now have to move into Google AdWords in order to have their websites found. Don’t take it from me, listen to what Matt Cutts, Google’s lead Web Spam engineer says about duplicate content in this video.

The takeaway is that duplicate content is a placement factor and especially if you do not provide additional value or a unique point of view. You’d just have to sit in my office for a week to know that duplicate content is a huge problem for website owners and that many are struggling to regain placement that they have lost.

The author of the article gives an example of a small limited test he did with two websites he launched with the same content and that Google placed both in four weeks. I want to point out that this is a very limited test and that he reviewed placement in four weeks only. We’ve found that after launch a site will be boosted in organic placement and then after six weeks or so the placement will significantly drop to where it will typically stay in the SERPs. Small overlaps of content may not be a huge impact as shown in his own test, but one should not derive that duplicate content is not penalized by his limited review.

What I have found is that when you scrape a site, use article marketing sites to build your content from (where others pull and use these articles as well), use content that is widely duplicated by others (vendor descriptions), you will need to make sure to have a nice sized AdWords budget as you will simply not be able to place organically on Google using these types of tactics.

August 29, 2013August 24, 2013

Google Says It Hates Keyword Stuffing But Why Do Top Sites Still Use It?

Google hates keyword stuffing and clearly addressed this SEO tactic in the Panda update last year. In fact, Google actually states this in their webmaster guidelines about keyword stuffing:

“Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value

Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for

Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.”

Here are some sites online that are using keyword stuffing so you can take a real world look at this technique in action:

http://www.ranchland.com/
Take a look at the footer to see the stuffing in action? But although this site is clearly in violation of Google’s rules, it is still getting top placement on important industry specific keywords. Take a look at the content and you’ll see that it is in some places nearly unreadable for keywords interspersed in the content. So why has this site not been penalized? There simply may be more at play than we know that is keeping this site in the top spot.

Keyword Stuffing in action.

http://www.bowcolabs.com/
Here’s another site that is using the tactic that Google has clearly disavowed at the bottom of the page just as an example. Although this site does not have top 60 result placement, it is a fine example of what to steer clear of in regards to keyword stuffing.

So back to the topic, if Google hates keyword stuffing, why are top sites still using it and why have they not dropped in placement? Although these sites may have slipped through Google’s filter, there may be other factors at play that are keeping top sites using stuffing still at the top. Or it may also be that Google simply has not caught up with sites using these tactics. Whatever the reason, for sites that are using this stuffing, I would recommend a slow revision to remove it while improving content and user engagement.

I personally don’t believe that using just these disavowed techniques will get any site top placement. What gets placement is a combination of quality content, some degree of keyword density (1% to 2%), quality inbound links, and shareable content.