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Google Aggressively Takes on Website Optimization as Web Spam Part I

In the last thirty to sixty days Google has been changing and tweaking their algorithm and has also quietly been updating and changing its webmaster guidelines.  Here are just a few things that you should know just in case you missed them.

  1. New disavow link tool – not to be used lightly, this tool is to be used only after you have tried other removal protocols first, but using this tool will tell Google you do not want them to consider a particular site that is linking to you in their algorithm. More information from Google on this topic. Google continues to work to categorize inbound links weighting some heavier than others and penalizing website for certain types of links.
  2. Update to the webmaster guideline about links and other optimization tactics. Read the information from Google. What may be a concern to some is the use of CSS and possibly some uses of Spry widgets where some webmasters may have been hiding keyword dense text specifically for improved placement.

Come back on Wednesday to read the rest of the points in this article.

 

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Google and the Disavow Link Tool Best Practices

This is an excellent video that really reveals what links Google is really rewarding and which links Google is actually penalizing your website in their index for.

First, it is important to hear in Matt Cutts’ (top Google Web Spam Engineer) own words in the lead-in to the video what links Google is now considering as spam. The Panda and Penguin updates were all about web spam, so his thoughts are very important to take to heart.

Web Spam Links from Google’s Perspective

1. Paid Links
2. Blog Spam
3. Comment Spam
4. Forum Spam
5. Guest Blog Spam
6. Low Quality Articles Widely Syndicated that Are Keyword Dense
7. Links with the Same Anchor Text from Link Spam Schemes
8. Fast, Unnatural Link Building

The disavow link tool is not to be used lightly. Matt says that you should contact webmasters and websites first personally to ask to have links deleted from their websites first and then and only after as a last recourse should you use the disavow link tool to let Google know to not consider that specific link in your placement.

The bottom line is that when links are built too quickly, scamming is done to generate a large number of links quickly from low quality sites, and inexpensive, low quality, keyword dense content is widely disseminated on the web pointing to your site – Google will damage your organic placement for these efforts. Unfortunately, this was part and parcel the typical SEO strategy in the last three years. This has never been our strategy, but the SEO industry’s strategy overall. Many websites have been negatively impacted with the Panda and Penguin updates by heavily using what is now consider link spam tactics.

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Guest Blogging for Links

What does Google (Matt Cutts) think about guest blogging and the links that are generated from doing it? This excellent video answers the question.

This is the bottom line. If you did not sweat in creating the guest blog post Google will typically not give you link juice for it. That’s the hard cold fact. Write a light weight blog post of about 250 words, post it on a variety of sites, and maybe even use article spinning software in an effort to create unique content for each site and you really will not be getting link benefits.

Create a well written, informative, insightful blog post for a site that supports your industry and yes Google does like this approach. It’s all about the time you take and the insight you provide. Do not do guest blogging just for links with minimal effort on your part Matt and Google pretty much say in this video that it is wasted effort.

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Facebook Cleaning Tips

I am using Facebook less and less and in part due to the clutter but this article may just turn that around for me. I recently read an article called “How To Reclaim Your Facebook News Feed – 20 Spring Cleaning Tips” and it was filled with some really great tips. It is definitely worth a read.

Here are some of my own tips on how you can clean your Facebook page to add to the articles 20 tips.

1. If you don’t like the language in a post on your wall by one of the young people you follow (family members or extended family), just hide it by right clicking on the right top of the post. This way you won’t have others see bad language on your page.

2. If you want to unfriend a person, they won’t know you did so, just click the hyperlink on their name to go to their Facebook page and then click the starred friends button on the top right just under the cover photo. The drop down that appears allows you to select how much information to see from this friend as well as a link to unfriend them.

3. Know that every time you like a page, you are allowing them to spam your wall and the wall of your friends if they are following your information – they may or may not see these posts depending on how much information they have subscribed to on following you. But know if they get all your updates if you like the Giant Grocery Store page and they follow all your updates they’ll see Giant’s wall posts on their wall too. Review who you like and purge accordingly. I have found that sometimes I have more posts from page likes in my news feed than I would like. Plus know that if you allow the like and app installation, you are agreeing to share your personal information with this business. Be aware!

4. Don’t Friend people instead choose to subscribe to their updates for greater control. If you have a person who does a lot of gaming on Facebook when you start to get game updates, click into their profile, go to the starred friend button and tick off the things you want to get updates on. You may want to choose only life events.

When it comes to Facebook you are now really in control, but it does take a little tweaking to set the amount of information you want to see.