Google’s monthly series on algorithm changes set a record in February – reporting 40 new changes. “Each individual change is subtle and important,” said Google, “and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine.” By the end of 2012, Google is expected to make over 500 changes to its algorithm.

Several of the changes appear to be rolling updates including tweaks to the Freshness Algorithm and Google Panda. Notably, Google has disabled several query classifiers for link and freshness evaluation.

Here are some highlights from the update:

• One stand out February tweak is the Link Evaluation change. Notably, Google said, “We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years.” With the heavy emphasis on link-building in many SEO firms, it will be interesting to see if the effects of this change are noticeable.
• This one could help local businesses. Improved local results is a new system that Google claims is “better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”
• This one might be of interest for online stores with foreign customers. The international launch of Shopping Rich Snippets helps you to see product prices, availability, rating and reviews, to more quickly help you find the products you need. You can provide the info to Google that shows up in your snippets through merchant center feeds. Previously available in only US, Japan and Germany.
• Disabling of two old fresh query classifiers. Looks like Google is continually placing an emphasis on improving the freshness of content.
• And again. A freshness update, codenamed “news deserving score” uses online signals to detect current topics spiking in popularity.
• For the world traveler. Google made improvements to try to help users get more accurate flight results. Originally created in December, the feature was developed to help users find the most useful online travel resources. 

Check out our earlier post on Google’s algorithm updates in 2012. 

The Klik Marketing Blog is your source for Charlotte SEO and Small Business topics. It is written by Klik Marketing founder and President Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.

Google’s New “Search, Plus Your World” And What It Means For Your SEO Campaign

What Is “Search, Plus Your World”?

We already know from Gmail advertisements that Google watches our every move. 

Now, Google is inviting us to check out Search, Plus Your World, which tracks your actions to provide a more personalized search experience. If you are already using Google’s social network, Google+, your search results will automatically be personalized while signed in. If not, you can upgrade to Google+ to get this search experience.

Google’s personalized search uses your web history – what you ended up clicking on and where you spent the most time – to place your previous search results higher up the next time you go searching. Google notes that “searches completed while Web History is paused won’t influence your search results.”

Connect with Klik Marketing on Google + 

However, Google still allows you to switch on and off your personalized results.

             This Icon In The Upper Right Hand Corner Means That You Are Viewing Personal Results

               This Icon Means That Personal Results Are Hidden

So far, however, people aren’t reporting drastic changes between their general and personal search results unless they have done some serious Google research on a topic in the past. The one big difference is the appearance of Google+ results in the SERPs.

How Can I Leverage My Google + Account For SEO?

Simple – do what you can to get more +1’s. Google+ is no doubt Google’s push to stake its claim in the online world of social networking. But it’s also a way Google can rank your site based on user-generated content.

It’s time to get on board the Google+ train for the sake of your company’s ranking within the organic search results. SEOMoz CEO Rand Fishkin and some other SEO geeks recently tried an experiment where they asked lots of people to +1 a site. They successfully got the site from 16^th rank to 6^th in no time. (Drag your mouse immediately to the right of a url in the Google SERPs to see the +1 button appear.)

Remember, Google owns the search market, and they have the control over how Google+ will influence the results. And so far, it looks like they are placing a good bit of importance on their social network in the SERPs.  

Google+ In Search Results- The blogosphere is lighting up with instances of Google placing Google+ results over relevancy in the organic search results pages. Check out this post from Search Engine Land for some examples.

Others are simply remarking that they’ve noticed a lot more Google+ results appearing from people they’ve put in their “circles” in their organic search results. Not surprising considering that Google said “relevant Google+ posts and comments that have been shared with you will now appear in your search results.” What does this mean? Type in your friend’s name and you’ll actually get the “John Doe” that you know, not some other guy. Images search will also include pictures from your friends and Picasa albums.

Google+1 For Human Relevance – Google+ could help Google overcome a big obstacle in the current search algorithm. It has been trying to develop a crawl bot that can determine the relevance and quality of a website. The Google+1 button allows users to do that work for them.

Instead of relying solely on keywords and backlinks, humans can tell Google which sites are most important with the single click of a button.

So, what to do? Get a Google +1 Button on your website landing pages. Try to post interesting content on your Google+ page to get others to +1 you. Make +1 profile connections by adding people to your “circles.” 

Connect with Klik Marketing on Google + 

The Klik Marketing Blog is your source for Charlotte SEO and Small Business topics. It is written by Klik Marketing founder and President Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.

As a small business, you are looking for the biggest bang for your buck. In SEO that translates to the most sales per dollar you hand over to your SEO consultant. Will Reynolds, founder of SEER interactive, recently blogged about how Google has turned the SEO “good guys” into “bad guys” by punishing them for spending money on “white hat” strategies.

How? By giving sites that buy lots of low-quality links the top spots in the search results pages. In doing this, Google is choosing not to reward sites that focus on quality content and creating a great user experience (what Google tells us we should do). Thus, Google is encouraging sites to do SEO one way, and rewarding those who do exactly the opposite. 

This month I wrote a blog about the importance of content marketing. It’s important that I note this isn’t a service that is offered by most SEO firms. That’s because it takes creative effort and can only be done by someone who has a marketing edge. These types of folks aren’t necessarily the ones running SEO companies.

Instead, it’s IT-savvy, html coding geeks that are plugging in meta data and pitching websites for we’ll-give-you-content-in-exchange-for-a-link deals.

And they’re smart for doing so.

As Reynolds shows with charts, sites with lengthy, but low-quality backlink profiles still fare better than blogs with lots of subscribers, lots of Twitter activity and sites that engage on Google+. This, he says, means that Google is “ ‘letting’ the bad guys rank, which only gets them more clients, and pollutes more of the web with crappy sites that have over aggressively linked.”

Here’s how we break this down at Klik Marketing. From my experience I would say the top four SEO activities that produce the quickest results are:

1. Placing optimal keywords in the title tags
2. Building back-links
3. SEO-minded content
4. Optimizing backlink anchor text to match keywords on the pages to which they link

Professional, quality content makes the user happy and can also be helpful for a website’s SEO campaign. Here’s the problem for Google: a search engine can’t evaluate whether or not content is quality in the same way humans can. It can only use an algorithm designed to try to be intuitive enough to try to guess the level of quality. So the SEO activities in the list above, like correct keyword density and anchor text, end up being the focus of many SEO campaigns.

The problem with stopping at quick fixes to try to rank higher in the search engines is that you haven’t stopped to think about what your visitors will think of your site once they arrive. If it appears “spammy” or like a machine wrote it, they aren’t likely to stick around. Traffic is half the story, conversion rates are the other.

The bottom line: Reynolds is right to acknowledge that Google is contradicting itself by rewarding sites using tactics it explicitly tells us not to use.

However, we shouldn’t be getting mad when what Google is telling is just plain common sense. Yes, rankings are the first thing we should be concerned with, but once we use strategy to get our sites ranked high, we shift focus to our branding, what others are saying about us online (social media) and providing quality content that make our visitors happy. That means a focus on content quality. After all, SEO is really all about turning visitors into customers.

And we should also not forget that Google is continually updating its algorithm. It’s possible that Google will eventually be able to think of better ways to match how it ranks websites in the search results to its own advice.

The Klik Marketing Blog is your source for Charlotte SEO and Small Business topics. It is written by Klik Marketing founder and President Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.

A big part of small business SEO is local search optimization. The first step is providing search engines with information about your geographic location. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Add Company Address & Phone Number To Footer
   Adding your contact information to a footer that appears on every page lets search engines index your site for local search. Also, where natural, include the city’s name a few times in-text and in title tags.
    
2. Add Your Company To Local Directories
   Look up industry specific directories or umbrella organizations that might be interested in listing your services. As a small business, it is especially important that you are listed in all local business or industry directories.
    
3. Find and Target Local Exact Match Keyword Phrases
   If your city is large enough, many users will type in what they are looking for plus the name of the city where they are trying to find it. Use keyword tools to find and target complete keyword phrases with your city’s name in them. For example “Boston car repair shops” or “Atlanta salons.” Don’t forget to try searching for city abbreviations as well. Google Insights has a filter function where you can narrow search by city and state, though many results do not have enough search volume to return results.
    
4. Add Company to Search Engine’s Local Listings
   Getting on Google Places, Yahoo!, Bing and Yelp’s local directories should be at the top of your list. Also, because of the rise of blended search (SERPs including a mix of video, images and news) make sure to add photos to your local profile. Ask your satisfied customers, especially those who are repeats, to leave you a review on one of the above listings. Your business will rank higher if it has more positive rankings.
    
5. Add Company to Local Business Listings on LinkedIn
   It’s free. LinkedIn is considered one of the most important professional businesses databases online. Add your site by clicking here. Make sure to complete your profile, adding as much information as possible.
    
6. Set Your Geographic Location in Google Webmaster Tools
   Some people try to use meta geo tags, or meta data that specifies a city, state and geographic location of a website. But Google says it places very little weight on those tags. Instead, Google recommends setting your location through Google Webmaster Tools! Go to Webmaster Tools Homepage. Site Configuration. Setting. Geographic target. Select your location option.  There are lots of different ways to tell the search engines about your geographic location. 

   Each of the steps above is just a small percent of the total equation for local optimization. So make sure to put your company on every local listing you can and keep on-page local optimization in mind.

   Once you’ve completed these steps, you can start using more creative ways to optimize your site for your target city or region. For example, try submitting press releases to PR Web. You should always tag the city where the news is happening in any press release. This affords you a great (and natural) opportunity for local optimization. 

   The Klik Blog is written by Klik Marketing founder and president Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s

The days of black hat SEO are gone. And while SEO strategy certainly isn’t dead, the release of Google Panda, the Google algorithm that crowned quality as king, ensures that meta stuffing isn’t the best way to climb to the top of the SERPs. It appears that Google is moving steadily in this direction of rewarding high-quality sites with real content, rather than sites with keyword-heavy articles and tags. As SEO experts try to think of more and more ways to get any old site in the #1 spot, Google is creating more and more ways to make its crawler more intuitive so as not to be ‘tricked’ by those tactics.

How does Google define the quality of a webpage? 

 Who better to advise us on this subject than Google itself? The search engine’s staff has been making noise for some time now about websites that create a poor “user experience.” Those sites are usually advertisement-laden and provide little useful information to the visitor based on the key words they were searching for. And Google has tweaked its algorithm to penalize them. Characteristics of a strong webpage in Google’s eyes include: non-recycled content with relevant information, recently posted content and fewer advertisements located on the top half of a page.

Where does Content Marketing Fit in With SEO?

If you only update your site once a month, people don’t have any reason to visit it more often than that… Innovative content has the power to tell relatable stories and the fluidity to travel easily throughout the internet. It will naturally earn you link juice, keep visitors on your site for longer periods of time and help you brand your site, which will earn you higher rankings in the SERPs. Creating content with these characteristics will require a good deal of creativity.  

Here are some strategy tips for creating your content marketing plan:

• Figure out where you will promote your content – website, Facebook, Twitter, guest post on another blog?
• Research your competitors. Where are they posting, what keywords are they targeting, what type of content are they producing?
• Decide what type of content you will be creating. Try to use a mix of content that appeals to different types of viewers. An article can be enhanced with an informational video or chart/graphic explaining some concept in the content. Perhaps an editorial cartoon?

Strategies for Developing Content Ideas

The key here is creating something that people will want to share. That means posting lots of new content that your visitors will find intriguing. Here are some ideas to help you get your creative juices flowing:

• Create a how-to video for your product or service
• Film videos of your expert staff answering questions submitted by site visitors
• Analyze several recent pieces by well-known bloggers or experts and give your own commentary
• Create a poll on your site and then use the results as a hook for an article or blog
• Get an interview with an expert or popular blogger and post the it on your site Q & A style
• Attend a conference or webinar, summarize what you’ve learned and give your own opinions about the programming
• Download Feedreader (a search feed aggregator) and set up Google Alerts for pertinent keywords in your field to try to spark ideas

For small businesses, it is important to first do research to learn about the people you are marketing to in your community. Ask your customers about their interests and try to keep them satisfied by frequently posting new content to answer questions you think they might have or give analysis on topics they care about.     

Once you’ve created original content, consider it a prime SEO real estate and do your best to optimize it without interfering with the quality of the user’s experience.  Then you’ll have a powerful package of great content and SEO.

The Klik Blog is written by Klik Marketing founder and president Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.