Tag: SEO

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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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Confidence Equals Sales

Sure you’ve seen sites like this on the web; ones that have no phone number, no address, and just a contact form, but they want you to buy! Do you? I don’t! Especially if I am comparison shopping. In fact, I’ll pay more to know that I am dealing with a legitimate firm, do you?

In my business, confidence equates sales. It is just simple, if you are not willing to share your phone number, email address, and location address on your own website, you communicate that you will be hard to reach if there is a problem. Not sharing these important items can become a big problem that does really impact sales.

In online sales, it is all about confidence. Are you who you say you are? If I have a problem will I get help? Will I be able to talk to a “real person”? These are the items that all website should have prominently placed to communicate legitimacy and thereby build confidence with potential customers.

  1. Phone Number
  2. Email Address
  3. Location Address – no P.O. Boxes – a real office location!
  4. Hours of Service – for phone contact
  5. Time Zone – for customer planning

Don’t  have these on your website because you think that you may be spammed? Think again! You do not communicate your willingness to trade with potential buyers by hiding your contact information. Take a look at your website and make sure that you aren’t communicating improperly your desire to serve and sell. You may just find that your sales significantly improve when you are confident enough to put your own information on your website.

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Google’s New AuthorRank Part II

Continued from Monday.

In February of this year there was more chatter in my industry about AuthorRank. Here is a great background article to review for a fuller picture.

“AuthorRank could be more disruptive than all of the Panda updates combined. ”  AJ Kohn

It appears that AuthorRank will factor into Google’s algorithm in regards to the importance of links and thus organic placement. The focus seems to be on PageRank, shares, traffic, and link numbers. These cues will all be evaluated and tied to one author. With Google already encouraging that you tie your content to your personal (not business) Google+ page this sure looks like a roll-out and big change in in the near future.

The thrust is that Google is actively and aggressively pursuing a link to content identification. To me this makes perfect sense and is in part just one piece of stopping spam and improving search quality in Google’s results.

There are two excellent articles I recommend that you read for further information on this important topic. The are as follows:

How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google

Author Rank

If you are currently not tying your content to your Google+ page I would highly recommend that you do so. If you syndicate content as I do on SiteProNews and Bing Ads Blog Community, make sure your site owners are already working to help you identify yourself as the author of content you share with them.

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Google’s New AuthorRank Part I

It is important to watch Google’s Patent Disclosures as they will give you a view on what Google considers important. I remember reading one over five years ago where Google spoke about “agents” at that time I wrote that I felt that there would eventually be an author meta tag introduced so that Google would know who really should get SEO juice credit for what they write. You can read my full blog post from February 12, 2007.

What is highly interesting is that now in 2012 Google has given a new name AuthorRank to this specific tactic and it looks like they are tying the algorithm update in with activity on Google+.  Here’s what I thought was important in 2007.

“…it appears that Google working to identify content and assign it an Agent Rank and assign an authority rating based on the author.  Well, that is it in a nutshell in very simplistic terms.”

“There has never been a more important time than to become an expert in your own field using your website to disseminate information about your area of business and to keep your clients and readers up-to-date with information using a blog, RSS news feed, and e-newsletters archived on your website.  Doing this will establish you as an authority in your marketplace and provide value to your readers.”

“In the past four months, this will be the second patent disclosure from Google that I have read.  The earlier disclosure had to do with identifying duplicated content across websites and identifying which website should be the one to receive top ranking as more authoritative.  Now we have a disclosure to identify how authoritative a writer is on the web.  These two patent appear to dovetail very nicely with each other.”

Back in 2007, Google+ was just a thought on a white board, now with Google+ being heavily entrenched into the Google mindset and algorithm, AuthorRank is finally now something to really think about as you position your website.

From my point of view there is nothing negative about AuthorRank. In fact, I consider it a huge improvement for sites such as mine, where I am a prolific writer and a target for content scraping. With AuthorRank, when I create a  whitepaper, article or blog post, Google will KNOW that I have written it and give me the full credit not a snatch and grab artist.

Check back Wednesday for more on this important topic.