Impact of SEO on Google’s New Privacy

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Recently Google announced they’re would be making Search more secure. Secure in lament sense means rather than searching google’s engine from http://www.google.com, you may be searching Google via https://www.google.com (note the ‘s’ in http).

What does this mean and how does it impact businesses and their Search strategies, especially SEO. Google will begin redirecting users who are signed into their Google account (GooglePlus, Gmail, Calendar, Android, etc.) to their secure website vs. its open public website when a potential customer or users performs a search

Google has become more and more customized and personalized in their search results, thus now attempting to better protect its users (google account holders). This at first seems good, but for marketers, especially SEO experts and search engine marketers, its the start of a few problems. The first that we’ve come across is now that users who search under the secured google domain (as they’re signed into their google account), the analytics (ex. Google Analytics) will not show you the search terms and keywords that were used by the users / customers who arrived at your online business via the secured google search.

This creates a few problems for marketers and agencies such as broken transparency of the impact of their search engine optimization strategies, and the performance of the optimization. In other words, if an SEO expert optimizes an online business on specific action-oriented ‘buy’ keywords, and attains a stronger SERP (search engine result) position as a result, does the keyword a) draw the traffic to the site, and b) did it convert the visitor to a lead or customer. Under the new encrypted (secure) Google URL, the web analyst and conversion optimizer won’t have the full view on this any more.

According to Google:

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What’s the *#@! is inbound marketing and outbound marketing?

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In those kind words, it was still a good question someone asked upon me the other day. I’ll let the infographic describes it best (see below). Inbound and outbound marketing, their buzzy words the last few years yet everyone seems to have a slightly different response to it.

In my view, inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that a user or customer dominates or controls.  It  focuses on a specific and targeted group rather than the masses, yet its fair to say the masses can still be funneled through it (ex. websites and search).  Inbound marketing is essentially an online based marketing tool that has shown strong and effective results. Read more

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Tip: Google +1 in Adsense

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In the next month, Google will introduce the Google +1 button and personal recommendations to display ads. A very similar ad strategy approach as Facebook has already started, Google appears to be following suite.
The Google +1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content display ad formats — image, animated gif, and Flash. +1s will be one additional signal to help determine an ad’s relevance and Google will continue to show the ads that will generate the most revenue for you. Read more
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Tip: Link Building in Post Panda World

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Pay more attention towards relevant content, traffic sources and conversions rather than emphasizing on Page rank. Old link building methods are just not that effective in this Post Panda world (what is Google’s Panda update) and you need to switch to these new link building strategies that will give your website a boost, or learn more why the Panda update caused websites to drop in rankings.

Guest Blogging: It’s a great way to obtain quality links and to extend your network. It benefits both the Guest and the Host as the Host receives quality fresh content and the Guest receives the backlink. Read more

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Tip: Link Building

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Link Building counts for the credibility, and contributes to reputation, of your website. The more credible and reputable, the higher search engine rankings you’ll receive, and aims to accomplish the goal of attaining search engine positioning within the ‘Golden Triangle’ (top 3-4 search results) that drive more than 80% of click thrus from Search. Here are some tips and trends that are likely to impact your Link Building efforts:

  • Start using mix-match technique for link popularity building and that makes your site reliable.
  • Focus more on how to secure the links that help you in long run.
  • Social media integration – (ex. YouTube, Google +1 and other social media where conversations and linkage is being published on your brand), and keyword in tweets including a link back to your website and this when indexed in Google helps in your link building efforts.
  • Forum participation
  • Industry authority sites and organizations (ex. better business bureau, and others)
  • Like your reputation, link reputation is built on quality, not quantity.

There are other link building techniques and tactics we employ in client projects and within our mentoring and coaching services. Inquire within to see which tactic direction would work best for your website.

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Tips: Google’s Panda Update

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Recently Google announced a major algorithm update on how it ranks websites and this affected almost 12 % of the search engine results. “Panda Update” named after one of the Google’s engineer was designed to get rid of low quality websites-websites with copied and low-value content that is of no use for the readers.

At the same time, it aimed at providing better search engine rankings to the websites with original and informative content. With this update, it is now required to tweak your SEO strategies a bit in order to rank high is SERP.

Focus on creating high-quality content for your website and you can use the Panda as an advantage.

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Tips: Google Places Local Listings – Avoid Suspension

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When optimizing a Google Places local account listing (or Yahoo or Bing local listing), attempt to exclude inserting keywords in your Business name. This could lead to account suspension. To lean on the side of best practices, use the keywords judiciously in “Description” and “Additional information” section; and massage to some extent the keywords into the categories where you can create a few custom categories, containing keyword, out of the five options available.

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Tips: Search Engine Marketing – AdWords Quality Score

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Most Internet marketers believe that there is only one type of Quality Score in AdWords. But in fact there are three types of quality scores that are considered.

Search Network Quality Score
Quality Score for Google and the search partners network, depends upon following factors:

  • the historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google and Google Network
  • your account history measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords and the historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
  • the quality of your landing page
  • the relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
  • the relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query etc.

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SEO Octagan: Google vs Content Farms

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There has been a lot of buzz this past week about Google’s latest algorithm update, labeled the “Farmer Update,” performed in February 2011. This algorithm update from Google aims to take on content farms; spammy, low-quality content sites that have been crowding their search results.

“Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible…This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on…”

The Google crackdown affected 11.8% of search queries.

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Google Page Rank – Schooling the Scholars

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A common tactic of increasing page rank to improve organic search results is to align your site with authority sites in your business vertical, industry or just plain gorilla PR sites. This is all worked into Google’s algorithm to help determine a sites reputation, thus position in Google’s SERPs (Search engine result pages). One recent event however to strategically manipulate this comes from Overstock.com. I tip my hat for the effort.

Overstock.com’s tactically brilliant yet ethically deficient plan to game Google’s search engine has blown up in its face.

The popular online discounter had struck deals with several universities, offering students and faculty 10% off in certain categories in exchange for a product-based link from campus websites. Google has been known to rank sites higher if they are linked to from the authoritative vantage point of .edu domains.

Smart move by Overstock? Not so fast. Google’s been coming under fire for the sneaky ways that content farms and some e-tailers are trying to rank higher on popular search queries. One can argue whether Overstock’s ploy was white-hat or black-hat, but the correct answer is that the closeouts specialist was donning a gray hat here.

Google doesn’t like to be embarrassed this way, so it’s penalizing Overstock’s organic results by backing out the PageRank gains resulting from its .edu campus invasion.

As Rick at Fool.com elegantly put it, ‘I guess the scholar just got schooled”.

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