Tag: Google

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Building Links With Dead Strategies

We create customer-winning content.
We create customer-winning content.

Creating articles that were informational in nature with links back to your website in a bio and placing these on news sites, article directories, and ezine sites for use by other webmasters on their blogs and in their websites in a way to build incoming links is just another previously good tactic that Google has disavowed.

Unfortunately, there are many business owners who are still using this tactic and are encouraged to embrace this tactic by SEO firms. It is very important to know that using this type of tactic today may actually work against you.

Make sure to watch this video on this topic from Matt Cutts the lead web spam engineer from Google and the voice to my industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo75Og4M34Q

Now using this tactic to build inbound links may actually drop your organic placement. Guest blogging is also another high profile tactic that has also fallen under Google’s eyes and has also been disavowed as a usable tactic to improve organic search placement.

With Google focusing on high quality unique content, that is not overly keyword dense, and has high user relevancy as tested through click through rate, time on page, and personal search history it is nearly impossible to scam your way to the top of the organic results.

A much better approach for placement today is to focus on improving the user experience on your website, refining the message, and promoting your site to generate traffic on social media and Google AdWords. There will always be sites that are placed in the top ten slots on Google but getting there now is no longer an art form but rather creating the very best user experience that is the most relevant to a unique search query.

For help in creating user-centric content and blog posts please make sure to review our service offerings.

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New Title Tag Length for Google Search

Illustration of new title tag length on Google.
Illustration of new title tag length on Google.

If you are a Google watcher like me, you’ve seen changes come and go on Google. Here is a new one that I am seeing now in the search results and it has to do with the length of the title tag.

“I am seeing title tags of 49 to 58 characters but typically with a pixel width on the Google page of search results ranging from 486 to 506 pixels wide. It is time to shorten your title tag from 80 characters down to 50 to 55.” – Nancy McCord, President of McCord Web Services

After reading this article at SiteProNews, I started really checking out the title tags. Previously we had been recommending a 80 character title tag but had typically exceeded that as Google would truncate the title tag to there needs, but in some cases would show the full title. Bing would show more than the 80 characters as well. Now however, Google seems to prefer about the 50 character length at this point in time and is justifying the title in formatting to fill the smaller space. The font of the title is larger but with fewer characters.

Bing is showing a variety of title tags and without the justification that Google appears to be using in formatting. Bing is also showing the title tag with a bigger font.

My recommendation at this time is that if you have not reviewed your title tags in over a year, I would recommend a review and possible revision. I will be revising mine to a 50 character length with a clear description of the page written in marketing-type language (meaning to entice a click in to my site).

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AdWords the New Keyword Discovery Tool

What About Keyword Data???
What About Keyword Data???

In the name of privacy Google has been stripping away one by one the tools website owners and SEOs have used to identify important keywords that drive organic traffic.

First, it was Google’s announcement that they were moving only to https:// and that they would no longer supply keyword data for organic search activity in your Google Analytics account. This was sold to the public as a way to keep you the user secure from prying eyes. The dreaded “not provided” for keyword data started to appear in all Google Analytics accounts for more than 60% of the recorded traffic.

Now Google is stating that they will not even flow AdWords search terms into Google Analytics. Although I do not believe that this change can be passed off as a user security enhancement, it clearly is a move on Google’s part to enhance their own ROI. Due to this soon to be enacted change, the only way a website owner can now know AdWords search terms is to login to their own Google AdWords account. Some data is available in the Google Webmaster Tools site but only the top 2,000 queries and only for a 30 day period. This data will no longer appear in Google Analytics.

“This change means that Google AdWords is not becoming the world’s most lucrative keyword search tool.” Nancy McCord, President of McCord Web Services

Remember when you used to pay for a subscription to WordTracker so you could optimize your own or client website’s with words with a high KEI index? Is this the direction that AdWords is moving in? Do we need to have a running AdWords account while we are optimizing a website so we can see keyword traffic?

To me it seems like Google has decided to start closing access to their own services and are moving to a pay to play model.

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Improving Your Rank in Google’s Local Listings

Man's hand pointing on street map
No Kidding Google Knows Your Business Location!

Local listings on Google.com can make or break certain types of businesses, but did you know that when you drop in placement there may be some things you can do to remediate your drop.

Here’s what I recommend you look at first after your ranking has dropped:

1. Make sure you review, understand and fully embrace Google’s Places Quality Guidelines.

2. You must link to a specific address – no post office boxes.

3. Google wants a local phone number not your vanity number or a 1-800 number.

4. Select one category at the minimum from Google’s own list of categories. Even if you provide permanent makeup not tattoos, the correct category for you according to Google is tattoos. Provide other choices using the custom category option.

5. Here’s a big one: “Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.” So if you don’t ever meet your customer face to face, you will not be able to get Google+ Local placement and should not expect to rise in the rankings or placement.

6. Be aware that Google is cracking down right now on duplicate listings for Google+ Local Places; trying to weed out fictitious accounts or those that have previously gamed the system trying to get better location specific placement by using fake or bogus addresses. You can no longer use your mother-in-laws address as a store location just to get placement in that city.

With Google Local providing an excellent avenue to drive traffic to local stores, but with Google’s improved understanding of your real business location, it is getting nearly impossible to “game” the system as many were previously able to do.