Penguin Brings Attention to Negative SEO

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Terri Stevens

By now just about everyone working in SEO knows about Google’s Penguin update targeting web spam. Many say Penguin made a mess of search. It sure shook up the SEO world.

Industry forums were flooded with posts screaming frustration and rage; many attacked Google, a few lashed out at other SEOs. Some resorted to Negative SEO, which we will likely see much more of now.

Surely Google knows penalizing a site for backlinks rather than discounting the links encourages wide-spread negative SEO, which Dr. Philip Nikolayev calls Hostile SEO.

Nikolayev, founder and president of Search Benefit, wrote a well-expressed open letter to Google from white-hat SEOs, first published on SEOchat.  In the letter Nikolayev mentions a case study using Negative SEO bring sites down. It worked. Hopefully, Google took notice and will make changes to rectify that.

Negative SEO is Not the Way to Go

It’s bad karma.

Although not new, Negative SEO is gaining more attention now.  It involves efforts to push a competitor down or out of search results – not by improving your site, but rather by attacking the competitors’.

One way of doing so is to quickly build thousands of bad links to a competitor’s site. You could hack into a competitor’s site, or more easily make spam reports to Google against your competitors. Many things, all negative.

Surprisingly, there’s now an increase in advertising for negative SEO services. Seriously, people. That’s not what we want our industry to be about.

If Your Site is Hit by Negative SEO

Unfortunately, you will go through basically the same process you would if negative SEO wasn’t the problem: dig into your analytics, webmaster tools and link profile to find the problem and correct it. The difference is that if you had used questionable practices, you would at least have an idea of where to start looking for what caused your site to drop.

Your best defense is to keep a close eye on your site. If you see a large number of links or reviews flooding in unexpectedly, tell Google about it in advance – before your site drops.

On the other hand, if you bought bad links and lost rankings post-Penguin, don’t submit a reconsideration request. If it’s not a manual penalty, a reconsideration plea won’t help.

Regardless of how stressful or difficult search engine optimization becomes, using negative SEO against a competitor should not be a part of your work. Don’t condone it. Don’t do it, and don’t pay someone else to.

Posted in SEO | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Music Apps for the Portable Musician

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Lonnie Minter

I often joke with my friend about how easy musicians have it today. Back in the late 80s and early 90s everything was harder. Making flyers for your show involved creating it by hand and then going to Kinko’s to make hundreds of copies of it. Every now and then you would splurge and pay extra for colored paper. Only very special gigs were worth the bucks to make full color copies of your artwork. And then you only made a few to put up in special spots. Promoting yourself involved getting out there and flyering cars, handing out flyers, going to other shows and being part of the scene. Public News (awesome former underground Houston newspaper) was our Facebook back then!

Now here’s where I get jealous… Today anyone can make quality recordings of their songs for next to nothing. Recording back in the day was expensive. Studio time was something that only bands with money got to do. Most of us were sticking up a couple of mikes in the practice space and hitting record. Yeah there were 4-tracks. We went through a couple. We made some cool songs too. But these days, anyone can make high-end quality recordings using an endless supply of digital effects and instruments. We also made cassette demos manually to sell or give away. Heck, CDs will still relatively new and no one really had a computer. Even if we did, there were no CD burners. Having lived in a world before the Internet and the digital revolution, I can really appreciate the technology available to today’s future rock stars.

This brings me to my list of current favorite music apps. I should clarify that these are all apps for the iPhone/iPad. I know nothing about what is available for Droid phones.

Garage Band

Many musicians could get by with only this piece of glorious software. For only $5, you get all that you need to create, record and share your music. Garage Band is a multi-track recorder with an entire library of instruments and effects all built in. That’s right, all the instruments are in there. Multiple guitars, basses, drum kits, keyboards, and strings. All with multiple effects, too. It sounds great. It’s easy to use. It’s fun. What more could you want? Here’s a demo:

AniMoog

If you are a musician then you know all about Moog. Moog was a pioneer in early commercial analog synthesizers. You’ve all heard a Moog in action at some point. The Beatles, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk all made famous songs using the Moog. Well, now you too can have the power of a Moog analog synthesizer right in your hand. It’s perfect for recording or playing live. It has tons of preset sounds, and every sound is adjustable. The potential to create very interesting sounds is nearly limitless. Check it out:

iKaossilator by Korg

Now here is an app where you can easily lose lots of time. Basically it’s a one-man jam band, electronic style. There are 50 preset rhythms, including everything from house to dubstep to nujazz to reggae to pop to chill to hip hop…etc. Each rhythm is made up of 5 tracks. Each track can be controlled in various ways. It’s crazy versatile and fairly easy to use. A video will do this way more justice than my lack of words! Check it out in action:

Alchemy

All I can say about this is that it is a cool synth with excellent sounds and rhythms. And it’s free. Again, allow me to let the video do the selling:

Figure

This is basically just a beat maker. It’s easy to pick and use and it’s fun. You get to work with the drums, the bass, and a lead. Each instrument can be modified and tweaked. Each instrument can be manually controlled for soloing. Here’s a video of what you can do:

MadPad

Record 12 sounds (with video) and begin to make music. This is basically a very cool sample pad. You can trigger your samples simply by tapping the thumbnail. Record everyday sounds and make music from them. This thing is a blast. My kid loves it. There are tons of sets to download and play with. Check out the possibilities:

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mobile Advertising | Growth Up for Mobile Local Search

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Sabrina Gilmore

Identified new efforts happening within the swiftly progressing mobile marketplace, namely; mobile local search, gives way to different dynamics that have been shown to result in 3 driving factors of mobile ad success. According to the IAB (Internet Ad Revenues), U.S. mobile ad revenues of $1.6 billion in the year 2011 have increased 149 percent. Mobile advertising has seen one of the most rapid growths of its kind: triple-digit growth year-over-year.

“The year 2011 saw mobile advertising become a meaningful category,” quoted David Silverman, Partner of PwC U.S. “By combining some of the best features of the internet, along with portability and location-based technology, mobile advertising is enabling marketers to deliver timely, targeted, relevant, and local advertisements in a manner that was not previously possible. It is for these reasons that we expect strong growth to continue with mobile advertising.”
Marketing professionals have recognized that mobile marketing figures have been rapidly increasing year over year, and the data presented from 2011 only substantiates the importance of mobile advertising.

Below are 3 influences in mobile’s local search development:


1. Usage: Google has reported that 40% of mobile search inquiries have a locally based focus (which is up 33% from 2011). Search based ads are answers to inquiries and searches performed on mobile devices are typically questions based upon what is around the searcher. Mobile ads work to connect individuals to the local businesses and services around them, in the most relevant ways.

2. Smart Phone Spontaneity: If you think about mobile local search, it makes a great deal of sense. When individuals are out or away from their laptops or computers, they’re often trying to find things that are nearby. Perhaps it’s a new restaurant that just opened up, directions to a venue, a quiet coffee joint that is great for studying, etc… A smart phone or mobile device gives individuals the freedom to be more impulsive with their day to day activities. This spontaneity emanates the increase of mobile local searches.

3. Advertiser Advancement: Several advertisers are utilizing location targeting on their mobile advertisements. Advertisers are also creating mobile-only campaigns. Location targeting may possibly boost ad performance and engagement through specific points of relevance.

How do you feel about the growth of mobile advertising? Let me know your thoughts in the comment box below!

{image & data courtesy of Kelsey Group}

Posted in Mobile Advertising | Tagged , | Leave a comment

My Top 5 Web Developing Tools

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Lonnie Minter

Anyone who builds websites with any regularity will probably agree that there are some tools that are just crucial to being a productive web developer. Ultimately, all I really need is a text editor and an FTP program and I’m good to go. However, if you want speed and efficiency,  I’m gonna need a few of my favorite tools.

1) The Web Developer Toolbar – I consider this one of the greatest inventions ever! If you have been building websites since the 90s, then you will probably agree that this browser add-on was a godsend. The CSS viewer/editor changed my life. Suddenly I was able to work on CSS live! I mean, I could actually see how a style affected the page or element without having to commit it to a live site. This right here finalized my transition from the old table-based layout mentality of the 90s to the pure CSS nirvana that came with the Web 2.0 movement. The amount of time saved by not having to edit, save, upload, view and repeat until correct was a wonderful gift.

2) MODx – I won’t get into an overview about MODx. There are plenty around the Net. I will tell you, however, that MODx is another tool that saves me lots of time in the long run. Yeah, most CMS’s can make that claim. It’s pretty much the main benefit of a CMS from a developer point of view. Time is crucial and any tool that can save you time is a great tool to have. I’ve been using MODx for about 6 years now. I’m not going to try and make a comparison to other CMS’s out there. I haven’t used any of them except for MODx. MODx is free and open source. Free is always good.

3) Photoshop – Image editing is a crucial part of being a web developer. All sites start with a design. Everywhere that I have ever worked, those designs came in the form of a PSD.  PhotoShop is what I started with and it is what I continue to use. Heck, I don’t even claim to actually be good at PhotoShop. There are many things that I do in it that designers would giggle at. I’m sure there are faster and better ways to do the things I do in PhotoShop. I also realize that using PhotoShop for basic image editing for the web is slight overkill. It doesn’t really matter though. I’m comfortable in it and that’s all that matters.

4) Text Editor – Any web developer or site builder should be able to build a site using nothing but a text editor and FTP. No excuses. If you can’t code a site out in Notepad then you suck! Seriously, tools are nice when it comes to speed and efficiency, but if you don’t truly understand the code then you are too dependent on DreamWeaver or whatever WYSIWYG tool you might be using. WYSIWYG’s were not meant for people who build websites for a living. They are meant for people who don’t build websites for a living. Until they devise a WYSIWYG that doesn’t reformat my code then please, keep them away from me! I am quite happy using a text editor. By the way, I use TextMate on my Mac and Notepad++ on my work PC.

5) W3C’s HTML Validator – Another time saver. Of course, every site I build gets run through this before going live. But to me, the greatest asset of this service is for troubleshooting. One of the more frustrating things is trying to figure out why your page is acting all screwy in some browsers. Most of us have been there. You search and search, stare at your code, try to find where it all went wrong. The next thing you know, 45 minutes have gone by and you just now found a stray semi-colon or a missing slash. Annoying to say the least. This is where the validator comes in. It will tell you if there are issues with your code. It’s not exact all the time, but it still beats staring blankly at a screen for an hour. Sometimes  a minor error can cause a domino effect across your page. This will help you find it.

These are the tools that are part of my everyday life. I would be interested in hearing about your preferred work environment. I realize that I can get set in my ways, but I am always open to a tool that will help save me time or make more efficient.

Posted in Web Development | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi- Which Social Vending Machine Is The Winner?

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Jennifer Haubein

It’s Coke vs. Pepsi and this time their battling it out in the realm of social vending machines. What’s a social vending machine, you ask? It’s still a vending machine, but with an unique spin on it. You can either share a soda with your friends or even give the vending machine a hug! Check out the two videos below to see what all the fuss is about.


So what do you think? Any clear winner?

Personally, I think while the Pepsi machine is really different it seems too complicated and in order for it to work there would need to be a lot of machines in order for friends to redeem their gifts. I’m positive Pepsi spent a lot of money on this machine and while the press is definitely  covering this story it seems a little overwhelming to even the technical savvy consumer. I saw this Pepsi machine at SXSW in Austin and wasn’t quite sure what to do and ended up walking away from it. Now that I have watched the three minute long video above I have a much better understanding.  But can you imagine the line that would form if everyone watched the three minute video before ordering?

Coca-Cola on the other hand takes the opposite approach, simple.

“Delivering what is really a very simple idea. All you need to do is give the Coca-Cola Hug Machine a hug and it will love you back, by giving you a free Coke. Something simple and engaging, that lifts people’s spirits and brings a smile to their face”, said Louise Kuegler, Regional Business Director at Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific.

So what does this mean to you as a business owner? Keep it simple! While it might be really cool to use touch screen technology, video, and much more. Does it suit your overall goal?

Let me know in the comments below Coca-cola or Pepsi? It’s like the 80s taste test all over again!

Posted in Opinion, Social Media | Leave a comment

Don’t Have a Google Adwords Rep? Don’t Worry. Here’s How I Made the Best of It:

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Davis Baker

When there’s a way to get a leg up on the competition, PPC advertisers know they’d better take advantage of it. One of the most sought after advantages in the PPC world is to have a dedicated Google Adwords rep. The Google Adwords reps are there to make things easier on the advertiser, give them instant clarification on any sort of PPC issue and help guide them to running a perfect campaign by telling them what to do and how to do it. Having a rep also enables the advertiser to know about future Google updates and changes before everyone else.

These are all incredible benefits that every PPC advertiser would love to have, but the question is: how do you get one? In order to qualify for this benefit, your account has to be spending a fortune and be hand-picked by the Google team. What about accounts that don’t meet the criteria to have a representative? How could you possibly find any good out of that?

Recently, I was handed a PPC campaign setup that almost caused me to pull out all of my beard hair. The campaign was in a super competitive niche and hit pretty much every controversial policy in the Google Adwords book. From the keywords to the content on the landing page, the entire team knew it would be a challenge right off the bat.

Of course, it’s the reps job to make those issues easy to handle and answer any questions we had. Having a Google rep would’ve saved us a lot of time by telling us exactly what we needed to do and the campaign would’ve been up and running in no time. That definitely would have been nice, but we wouldn’t know why certain things were getting approved or disapproved. We were left to fend for ourselves and give in to the trial and error mentality.

The biggest and most obvious benefit of not having a dedicated Adwords rep for this account was that we were forced to read up on every single Adwords policy. Having to resort to a trial and error and approach and finally getting it right was like studying for a Google exam but instead of receiving a score, we got a successfully running campaign.

Clearly, the good of having a dedicated Google Adwords rep definitely outweighs the bad. Being given the task of setting up and running a large campaign in a competitive niche is hard enough and doing it without meeting the criteria is even more challenging. However, in the end, you will come out with more knowledge than you would have if you’d been given a rep that you can use in future campaigns.

Have you ever had an experience like this? Let me know your thoughts in the comment box below!

Posted in PPC | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Google Search Updates: How to Maintain Your Sanity & Move Forward

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Terri Stevens

If you feel frustrated trying to keep up with Google’s search updates, you are not alone. But if you often need to alter how you provide SEO services due to those updates, maybe it’s time to stop and think about your search engine optimization.

Search engine algorithms change frequently. Already this year Google announced in its new monthly series on search quality highlights about 17 quality improvements for January, 40 for February and 50 for March.  The search giant makes roughly 500 updates each year, so that can be a lot to keep up with.

Some of those changes can frustrate even the best SEO professionals, especially when the description of an update is vague, leaving you clueless about what it means. It’s great that Google is sharing what it does, and we understand why search engines don’t tell all, but we do wish for more clarity about some updates.

The big ones, game changers that go down in SEO history, can impact a LOT of websites. If you’re an SEO who puts all of your eggs in one basket, then moves them to another basket (guess I’m still in Easter mode) each time Google updates roll out, you will eventually lose big time.

Seasoned SEOs will tell you to ‘think like a Google engineer”. What changes might a search engineer make to improve relevance? Think about that and work with it.

Don’t try to game the system. Make SPAM a four-letter word you would never use. And diversify, diversify, diversify. Build quality content that users will appreciate and link to. Build links using a variety of methods from a variety of quality sources. Build your audience. Build your brand. Strive for quality, not quantity. Help the search engines find and provide the best sites for your targeted audience, and work to ensure yours is best. When doing so, it’s a win for all.

Well, scratch that. It’s a win for your users, your sites, and the search engines – not for your competitors.

Posted in SEO | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

SEO Tips: Think Like …

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Terri Stevens

You often hear SEO pros say to ‘think like your users’ or ‘think like a search engine’ or ‘think like a Google engineer’. Why? What do they mean? And which one is correct?

Actually, they all are. Let’s start with the first one. Why should you get into the heads of your users and try to think like they do?

That’s really a no-brainer. Whether you publish a website to sell your products/services or build your brand, it is your customers (and potential ones) you want to reach. Therefore, you provide a website with content that your users need or want. You draw those users into your site with keywords, the words your audience uses in searches to find the products and services you offer. You also draw traffic through referrals from sites your users visit.  It’s all about the user.

So why think like a search engine?

Unless you want to waste your time building webpages few people will see, you need to consider the search engines. Can they quickly and easily crawl through your site, indexing page after page? Can they understand what your pages are about and trust that your site is a quality source to recommend? Unless the answer to both questions is yes, you probably don’t get much search traffic, if any.

When someone types a query into a search engine, they expect to quickly find what they’re looking for. If not, they will search elsewhere. Therefore, a search engine must provide relevant results to survive.

That brings us to thinking like a search engineer. How do search engines determine the most relevant webpages among the millions of websites online for over a billion queries made each day? If tasked with improving the relevance of search results, what changes would you make? When you start thinking like a search engineer, you better understand what your site needs to make it visible in search engine results for the keywords your targeted audience uses.

How do you know what keywords they will use? You think like your users.

Posted in SEO | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Google+ For SEO – Steps to Follow to Get Set-Up Properly

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Nick Lindauer

Why should you care about Google+ now if “no one” is using it? Because Google is using it – and it’s yet another way you can enhance both your PPC & SEO programs.

Why you should do it:

  • Content Verification
  • Enhanced Natural Search Listings
  • Increased Indexing Speed
  • Increased CTR on natural search results
  • Social Signals
    • Increase sharing
    • Increase brand trust

Google+ For SEO – steps to follow to get set up properly.

Step 1: Add a link to your website from your Google+ profile. This can be done by editing your profile and adding the link there.

Step 2: Place a rel=”publisher” link on the main page of your website (and only on the main page). See example code below

<!– Place this tag in the <head> of your document –>
<link href=”https://plus.google.com/112170009871767978133″ rel=”publisher” />
<!– Place this tag where you want the badge to render –>
<a href=”https://plus.google.com/112170009871767978133?prsrc=3″ style=”text-decoration:none;”><img src=”https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-32.png” alt=”" style=”border:0;width:32px;height:32px;”/></a>

Note: The badge needs to appear in the header of your site or right hand navigation.

Step 3: Place a rel=”author” tag on all the author links within your content. Example code can be seen below

<!– Place this tag in the <head> of your document –>
<link href=”https://plus.google.com/112170009871767978133″ rel=”author” />
<script type=”text/javascript”>
window.___gcfg = {lang: ‘en’};
(function()
{var po = document.createElement(“script”);
po.type = “text/javascript”; po.async = true;po.src = “https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js”;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();</script>

<!– Place this tag where you want the badge to render –>
<g:plus href=”https://plus.google.com/112170009871767978133″ width=”300″ height=”69″ ></g:plus>

Step 4: Test the tag additions with the rich snippets test tool from Google.

Step 5: Make sure your data snippets are optimized. Your snippets need to contain the keywords and information that a user is going to want to see with a 2 second scan – so these need to be well crafted.

Step 6: Use it! Make your posts as readable as possible and post frequently. You can create a title for each post using bold formatting. You can do this by placing a * at the beginning and end of what you want in bold (i.e – *This is the title*). When you share the post, the * will disappear and the text between will be in bold (i.e – This is the title)

Step 7: Google Verification – Can only be done after you have 1,000+ people that have added your Google+ page to their circles.

Key Factors for Google+ Page Optimization

  • Page name is given enormous weight – chose your page name wisely
  • Page verification – following the steps above
  • Rel=“publisher” link must use the canonical version of your Google+ Page
  • Only place the rel=“publisher” link only on the homepage – this ensures that unique authors can connect to their content on your site and increase your circle reach

 

 

Posted in Internet Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Viral Marketing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Roping in your Brand Reviews Online

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Neha Gupta

One of the most important ways to manage your brand online is to continually see what reviews are made about your brand or product on the Internet.  Reviews are listed on sites such as TripAdvisor, social media sites, and Yelp, which can affect the way both new and returning customers feel about your brand experience.

In today’s online market, consumers are ready to give both raving reviews and abysmal reviews about your business.  With the ease of using mobile phones to quickly type reviews, consumers are able to do this while they are at your business or right after they experience your brand or product.

According to a study released last summer by Boston-based strategy and communication agency, Cone; 80 percent of consumers said they changed their minds about purchases based on negative information they found online.

Business owners need to be proactive to resolve any negative reviews online, instead of ignoring them. Ignoring reviews only allows the perception of your business to become a reality.

Here are some tips on how to handle negative reviews:

  1. Take a breath. One of the hardest things to see is a negative review about your business. Remember that for every one person that writes a negative review, there are usually ten positive reviews that are not being written.
  2. Respond quickly with a well-thought-out message. The quicker you respond, the more other customers notice your focus on helping to build a better experience for customers.
  3. Personalize it by introducing who you are and not just your business name.
  4. Make sure you re-read your response a few times, before posting.
  5. Read positive comments and make sure that your staff knows the great compliments, and that these are now expectations for future customers.

Another key note to remember, is to peruse your competitors’ reviews. You can learn a lot about the little details they are doing to keep their customers happy. Let me know what you think in the comment box below!

Posted in Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing | Leave a comment
Subscribe