Google Panda

Since the spring of 2011 Google Panda updates (previously also called Farmer updates) have been consistently rolled out across Google’s server centres.

The purpose of these algorithm updates has been to improve the quality of the sites that Google includes in its algorithm.

The largest change to their algorithm has been a fundamental shift in the weighting given to specific metrics. It used to be the case that in order to rank for a keyword, all you had to do was to get the keyword density right on your target page, and then link to that page using the keyword as the link text for those links. As long as you didn’t exceed a total link text density of more than 40% you would see your site ranking at or near the top, just as soon as you had enough ‘Link Juice’ pointing at the site.

Google’s latest update has turned this process on its head. Google now considers the use of link text in this way to be ‘Unnatural’ and consequently now wants to see a more natural spread of links pointing at each of your pages. It looks like the current figure is a maximum link text density for a specific term of only 5%.

The effect of this overnight change has been to cause many sites to drop out of the top spots for some competitive search terms.

How do you change what you are doing to restore your rankings?

The first thing that you need to do is to change as many targeted ‘Keyword’ rich links as you can. You will need to change these to junk link status, by either using your URL as the link text (there doesn’t appear to be a limit on junk link density) or using your Company name.

This launches an interesting point, as if your URL is BlueWidgets.com then you will be able to use www.bluewidgets.cm and Blue Widgets as your link text and will not be penalised in the same way as someone with the URL www.fprsmithandco.com. In this case, their links will have to be FPR Smith and Co. or www.fprsmithandco.com. This gives owners of keyword rich URL’s a massive SEO advantage as they are far less likely to ever be penalised for an excess of Keyword rich back-links.

This new algorithm update has also opened another can of worms, as it is now possible, just by pushing a sites link density over the 5% thresh hold, to see it penalised in the SERP’s.

Is this the dawn of true ‘Negative SEO’ ? I suppose time will tell.

The owners of SEOMOZ have issued a challenge to the black-hat industry to try to demote their site in the rankings if they can. Their justification for this is that if it is possible to affect the rankings of a massive authority site such as SEOMOZ, then they are the ones in the best position to go to Google to discuss a fix.

It looks to me like the current algorithm is open to massive scale abuse from the dark side, so keeping an eye on the links currently pointing to your site can only be a good thing.

Where will Google’s quest for quality end? It is judge, jury and lynch mob at present with no recourse for webmasters to redress the issues that need to be discussed.

Once you have downgraded all your links to junk status, you will need to turn your attention to your page content. Google has become increasingly clever at determining what your pages are all about, and is now confident that it doesn’t need link text too tell it, so instead, while the overall volume of links, and their PR etc will still propel your site up the rankings, it is your site content that will determine the keywords that you will rank for.

For this reason it is important to go through every page of your site, and make sure that your most important keywords had a page density of 1.5 – 2.5%. You also need to make sure that they are located in the main ranking indicator so that Google will rank you where you want to be.

The most important indicator of all these is the page title. If your keywords are not in here, you are going to struggle.

Have you been penalised recently? Tell us about it?

The exciting launch of Google Drive is soon to be unveiled later this month offering the most up to date service allowing you to store online.

Currently displaying an Error 404 message on http://drive.google.com, after the grand launch of Google Drive on Tuesday 24th April , all being well Google promises this site shall be the most up to date and useful way to store online, tying in nicely with current Google applications plus offering support for companies such as IOS, Android, Mac and Windows.

Offering first time customers an incentive of 5GB cloud storage space for free when they sign up puts Google in a better position compared to current rival service Dropbox, who will offer you only 2GB but sits comfortably alongside Apple who will offer the same of 5GB with their ICloud. Google do state that additional storage will be available to those willing to pay but information is limited and more will be revealed at a later date.

We look forward to hearing Googles next announcement expected in one week as right now they are unable to comment on speculation

After taking over from Eric Schmidt last April, Larry Page for the first time discusses what changes and updates he has bought to Google. Page talks of his achievements and failures he has delivered in the last year. The main achievement being Google+, the new social networking site which is up against other sites such as Facebook.

Learning from his past mistakes, Page talks about failed Google products such as Buzz, Sidewiki and Knol and how this has helped him to produce Google+.  With the envy he has for Facebook and its huge 850 million users, Page pushes his employees to help him achieve the same number from his current and ever growing 100 million active users of Google+. He is confident in achieving this such numbers with the assistance of 120 products of which a large amount of them are already owed by Google anyway.

After sharing his excitement and determination of his first year as CEO Page goes on to tell us how he is aware of what hurdles may stand in his way and how he continues to fight his corner with the ever ongoing battle he faces with the business and privacy practices of the US and Europe after shutting down Googles three previous products. Buzz, Sidewiki and Knol.

Page later goes on to talk about Googles latest $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola and how this will improve their hardware development of Android. He continues to boast about Googles already $30 billion revenue created from the AdSense program and other up and coming exciting products and services such as the driver-less cars.

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook has bought the Photo editing App Instagram for $1 Billion.

The Instagram App allows users to edit their photos on their mobile phones, adding sepia tints, or changing the colours of the photo. While this may not seem like a massively valuable tool, with 30 million users and growing, it has quickly become valuable IT real estate.

Kevin Systrom, 28, the founder of Instagram only 2 years ago, allegedly built the App in just 8 weeks.  Mark Zuckerberg has previously tried to employ Systrom straight from Stanford University, but his delay will have netted Systrom $400 Million (£250m).

Instagrams market valuation this week topped $500 m despite the company having never made a profit. Is this the sign of another Tech bubble with over blown valuations appearing from out of nowhere? Time will tell.

Just recently we were looking at Groupon as the next big thing, but they are currently experiencing a few legal problems. Another buzz arose around Pinterest in the past few months, but this also seems to have died away recently.

Google Panda 3.4 started rolling out on Sunday 25th March. Described by Google as nothing more than an algorithm refresh, it is actually far more than that.

Google Panda updates have been a cause of concern among the SEO industry since they began back in the spring of 2011, but this latest incantation appears to have tied up some of the loose ends, resulting in some significant changes for many sites.

The Panda updates have predominantly focused on measuring perceived site quality, or at least Google‘s mechanical interpretation of a sites quality. The metrics being used are widespread, from the ‘Naturalisation’ of link building, across the site content, including bounce rate, social media presence, ‘Naturalised’ on-page factors, namely not ‘over’ SEO ing a website etc.

All told, this latest update is the biggest single step change in Google algorithm since they downgraded reciprocal links years ago.

During the first few months of 2012 Google went to war against many large Article sites and networks. This to a certain extent is understandable, as they ended up being used as a cost effective way of building large numbers of links quickly and without too much effort.

Whatever criteria Google sets in order for a site to rank well, the SEO industry will dial into, eventually reaching a point where there is too much manipulation of results, at which point Google has a rethink about how to police any over optimization that it finds.

That is what is happening at the moment, Google has decided to filter out all the sites that it believes are providing easy places for SEO companies to build links. What this means is that links that were considers to be from good high Google PR sites, which had previously powered target sites up the rankings, suddenly lost their PR value, and in some cases were de-listed completely, resulting in target sites losing many links.

The other affect of this is that the keyword density of links pointing to websites has been altered dramatically. This is one of the causes of the movement many sites have seen, and is just a knock on effect of the algorithm update.

Up until Panda first came into existence, link text was a straightforward process. By using the link text that you wanted to rank for, pointed to a specific page related to that keyword, you would climb up the rankings.

Since Panda, linking text has not been so straight forward, as Google is looking for ‘Naturalised’ links, so it is a lot more likely that you would see a wide spread of link text pointing to a page if these links have been built naturally, rather than a large volume of links with similar or the same link text. Altering back link text in order to ‘Naturalise’ it is often a lengthy process, and you will need to make sure that you have a large volume of links using different text, and from a variety of sources, including social media, with ‘No-follow’ attributes as well as ‘Follow’, as this is what a natural campaign is likely to look like.

The latest update has lead to many household names rising in the rankings, at the expense of smaller sites that up until now have been competing for the same traffic, in addition many directories such as Yell etc have risen in the rankings, which Google has never been keen on in the past. We are expecting to see further updates to address this as Google wants businesses websites in its rankings, rather than other directory sites that ultimately compete for its business.

So how do you fix your rankings?

There are several areas of your strategy that you need to concentrate on if you have dropped in the rankings, firstly you need to ‘Naturalise’ your on-page SEO, which in simple terms means undoing much of the SEO that has worked up until now.

Google’s algorithm has evolved to better understand relevance so you don’t need to repeat your keywords within the main indicator sections of your site, Page Title, Meta tags, page headings, alt text etc, instead, the core essence of each page needs to be focused on the areas you want to rank for, so a page about ‘Blue Widgets’ should still discuss blue widgets, but in a natural unforced way.

Your linking campaign should also be naturalised, without too much emphasis on one or two specific keywords, so you might have links to ‘Joe Blogs Widget Company’, ‘Low Cost Blue Widgets’, ‘Joe Bloggs Ltd’, ‘Next day Widget Deliveries’ etc

This style of linking is much more likely to happen naturally as not everyone will link to you with specific keywords.

If you build a large spread of keyword links to many  different pages of your site then your rankings will return.

Keep thinking what looks ‘Natural’ and work towards it.

There is also a greater prevalence towards social media popularity, especially Google + unsurprisingly. Having pages that other people ‘like’ in Google + will give Google an additional indicator of your sites popularity, so adding a Google + button along side your Facebook, Linkedin and Tweet buttons is good practice.

If you would like to know more about Google Panda 3.4 and how you can restore your rankings, please either Contact Us or Click Here for more information.

The Home office is planning to introduce “Big Brother” style surveillance in the UK, allowing for the first time the collection of data about every website you visit, and every email you send.

The plan is that every provider of email services and internet portal will have to gather this data which will be available to authorised departments including security agencies, fraud agencies, the police, local authorities etc on demand.

Currently the government spends about 11 million pounds annually on internet surveillance, but this is predicted to rise to over 200 million pounds per year as this data is collected.

The government wants access to who you are emailing, so it knows who you are in contact with, as well as access to the websites that you visit online. Potentially there is an argument that this might help to prevent future terrorist attacks before they can happen, but many people are concerned that it is a massive invasion of individual privacy and confidentiality.

The majority of people in the UK are law abiding citizens, who do not need to be monitored in such an intrusive manner, just so the security services can potentially catch a minority of criminals. Is this invasion of our civil liberties justified? What do you think?

The collection of this data also opens up the possibility that it might be used inappropriately but those collecting the data. It would be hugely valuable for marketing purposes and how could we be sure that our data wasn’t being used to further market products and services to us?

Imagine a world where you send an email to Aunt Mable, telling her that you are thinking about having a new kitchen, only to then be bombarded with marketing from Kitchen fitters. This isn’t a huge step from where we are now, where cookies allow your search patterns to be tracked across search engines, social media sites etc.

Do we really want marketing companies to be able to target us to this degree?

Some major search engines and social media sites are currently operating marketing tracking in order to deliver suitable Ads to likely buyers. Many people are catching on to this and are beginning to protest at this level of intrusion, so what will we make of the government joining in and having detailed access to are innermost thoughts?

There is much discussion online currently regarding Google and Facebook’s terms and conditions which when agreed to, permit the sites to gather information about you which then allows them to target you for specific marketing. The government is in the process of instructing providers to collect even more potentially sensitive data in the name of security, but what will it be used for in the majority of cases?

What do you think about all your emails being read by government departments?

Search Engine Optimisation Packages can be fraught with difficult for several reasons. The first of these is that in the main, search engine optimisation isn’t an off the sshelf product, not only is every website different, but the search terms are often different too.

Because Google measures so many metrics in order to rank a website, including, on-page seo, keyword density, load speed, bounce rate, etc, two similar looking sites can easily behave very differently. In addition, site A might only want to rank for a handful of keywords, whilst site B might have 200 keywords on their wish list.

All this makes off the shelf pricing for search engine optimisation packages a very difficult proposition. Many companies offer say a 10 keyword package, a 20 keyword package etc, but without knowing the competitiveness of those keywords, how can they give you an accurate prediction of when your site will achieve top rankings.

SEO Packages don’t allow for comprehensive analysis, which means that most of the sites that offer these packages are guessing that they can achieve success for you rather than knowing that they can. Detailed analysis of your site, your competitors sites and the keywords you want to rank for (or should be ranking for) is the only way to be confident of achieving your end goal of top sustainable rankings.

Where possible you should take the guesswork out of your SEO and not opt for a search engine optimisation package as 9/10 you will be disappointed.

For a 100% free no obligation 175 point SEO site audit and proposal, please go to http://www.deeho.co.uk/contact_us.php and we will let you know what can be done for your site.

Many people seem unaware of the possible security issues surrounding the terms and conditions of iPhone and Android Apps. Whilst the majority of us don’t even read the T & C’s when downloading an App, it has come to light that many App’s include the right to harvest what seem to be unnecessary data from our phones via the downloaded Apps.

Some Apps have the ability not only to collect the contact details of all contacts in your phone, but some even have the ability to operate the camera without your knowledge, and even make phone calls to premium rate lines without the phone owners explicit consent.

It is deemed that by agreeing to the terms and conditions of these Apps, you have given your permission, but if people actually knew what they were agreeing to, many would think twice.

Many seemingly harmless Apps do not require this data, but gather it in order to sell it on as it is considered very valuable by the advertising industry.

Many Apps also have the ability to read text messages, emails and other personal data on your phone, as well as your internet history, and intercepting your calls.

Larger sites including Facebook and Youtube have the ability to take photographs or videos from your phone at any time, as well as having access to all your contacts.

This is a worrying time for users of smart phones, as this potential invasion of an individuals privacy is a massive cause for concern. Whether the industry begins to self regulate, or has data protection legislation thrust upon it, but at present it appears to be a free for all, in the battle for all of our online data.

It has been revealed that Google has been exploiting a loophole to bypass the privacy settings in Safari browsers. In addition, they have been doing the same thing with Internet Explorer in order to track visitor activity regardless of the privacy settings on an individuals PC. Microsoft has to date been using 10 year old P3P protocols in order to define privacy, which requires all websites to publish their self declared privacy policy in machine readable format. This in turn should prevent cookies from storing information about that particular site. Because this technology is widely disregarded, it is not too difficult to bypass with a clever cookie.

Facebook has recently been accused of similar activity via it’s ‘Like’ button, but it transpires that they have in fact been relying on the same method as Google in order to track visitors.

The ability to track visitors and to map their likes and interests is incredibly lucrative, as it allows advertisers to target interested parties. Is it an invasion of your privacy to know what you like or are interested in? Opinion seems to be split. It is seen in some circles as an enhancement to the buying process is you are shown potential products that you are interested in. After all, there is little point in a dating site advertising to married people, so the facility to target singles is an obvious bonus for advertisers. Does this harm or damage the user? As i said, the jury is out.

It is anticipated that Microsoft will soon change it’s P3P structure in order to limit the use of tracking cookies by third parties. How this will affect the advertising community, only time will tell.

During March 2012, Facebook will roll out their new Timeline feature, which will organise all your previous posts since you joined the site in chronological order. Currently this information is still available to anyone prepared to trawl back through your previous pages of comments, entries and posts, but Timeline will make it far easier to find old information.

This is concerning for many users, in fact over 50% have expressed concern about their information from the past being more accessible.

Old posts, and comments that you have probably long forgotten about still exist in Facebook’s archive and depending on your privacy settings may well be available for anyone to look through.

Facebook are informing all users about the change before it happens and giving people a chance to change their privacy settings. Sometimes that is not as clear cut as you think however, as the privacy settings are more complicated than they necessarily need to be, meaning that for many, this unwanted information will be visible against their wishes.

The easiest solution is to set your account to only show your full information to accepted friends, as this limits outsiders from accessing what may be personal data.

Will this change lead to a backlash against Facebook? Only time will tell, without a viable alternative, users are unlikely to leave in large volumes, as currently all their friends are on Facebook too, but if enough people vote with their feet and move over to Google+ for example, then we might start to see a major shift in the popularity of the respective sites.

Facebook are keen to protect their market share as they have an upcoming IPO share offer later this year which will determine the valuation based on market confidence in the companies ability to build on the user base it currently has.

What do you think of Facebook Timeline?