Content marketing is a great SEO strategy – even better better than link building. Shifting your strategy from search marketing to content marketing is increasingly leading to higher search rankings and more organic traffic.
Some tests in May that looked at the impact of Google+ to organic search performance produced some interesting results. I analyzed two sets of clients I was working with and categorized them as:
Websites with strong social profiles.
Websites with weak social profiles.
What this analysis showed was:
Websites with weak social profiles saw a 19.5 percent reduction in organic traffic.
Websites with strong social profiles saw a 42.6 percent increase in organic traffic.
Google is now valuing authorship, natural links, and social signals far more highly. So the next natural step is content marketing.
With many SEO campaigns, it can be easy to over-analyze, often at the expense of the most important ranking factor: doing. Yes, analysis and auditing is important, but if you don't take action and change anything, your results aren't going to change. If anything, they'll probably get worse because your competitors will be out there doing instead.
Every site will have different SEO needs and requirements – but too often the actionable outcome of SEO audits and analysis is that a website needs more great content and it needs more high quality links. In these cases, why not just get on with building great content and attracting high-quality natural links?
Why Link Building is a Short-term Tactic
If your main focus for achieving search success is via SEO-based link building, then I think this can only ever be a short-term tactic at best.
The algorithms are looking to catch anything that appears unnatural – so when the next Penguin or Panda updates come around (or Platypus or Pigeon, whatever stupid name they give it next!) you're unlikely to be in a defensible position where you can expect to see a benefit rather that a drop. In fact, you're probably going to be pretty scared and concerned about what's around the corner, even if you haven't been hit yet.
Link Building Should be a Byproduct of Great Content
The main difference is that link building is a tactic, while content marketing is a strategy. What I mean by this is that if you're just trying to build links for SEO purposes and nothing else, you're basically just chasing Google's algorithm and making the most of what works while it's still getting you results. It can still work, but it's not a long-term strategy.
Great content, however, can send you targeted traffic for years. And I don't just mean search traffic, but referral, social and viral/word of mouth traffic.
Getting a great link shouldn't be your only end goal – you should think about other target metrics such as audience reach, traffic, mentions, citations, eyeballs, rankings, followers – or, more importantly, revenue!
What Happens if Links are no Longer Valued by Search Algorithms?
I can't see this happening in the near future – certainly with Google, but who knows what's ahead of us. The 2011 ranking correlation factors from SEOmoz showed that Facebook likes/shares had the highest correlation to rankings out of all factors. This is correlation not causation.
Google has said that they don't use this data for rankings - but it showed how powerful social data can be in terms of identifying the best content. So what happens if Google change their mind and start using it? Or what if Facebook/Twitter search becomes a real threat to Google?
You need to have something else to fall back on.
If a piece of content has 100 or more links and no social footprint, it's a clear sign that those links have been built to a page – they've not been naturally generated. Likewise, if you have many social votes for a piece of content, yet no links, it's also not the best sign that this is a high-quality page that demands trust and relevancy from the search engines. You need a mix of both – and it's becoming much more difficult to fake and make shortcuts.
Where to go From Here?
Whether it's content marketing, inbound marketing, earned media or just online marketing – what it's called is largely irrelevant. What's important is that you've got a great content strategy in place and you're able to make the most of this by promoting your content to generate attention online.
If you've got great content and you can attract/build an engaged audience, you don't have to rely on search. And even if you don't notice your organic traffic rising straight away, I would be confident that this is the best method right now for achieving long-term success.
The first thing that most people think when they want to boost their online sales is to increase their website traffic. Thus they focus on getting more links, achieving better Search Engine Rankings, investing more on advertising, sending more emails and newsletters, finding more affiliates, becoming more active on Social Media and using other ways that can help them increase the number of their visitors. But is this always the right approach? Certainly not! Before spending all of your resources on trying to acquire expensive traffic, you should first ask yourself: “Are my landing pages optimized? Do they help me generate sales?”
The Landing Page Optimization is probably one of the most important but at the same time ignored part of the Online Marketing strategy. Have in mind that in many cases, increasing your traffic by 10% will not have the same impact on your revenues as improving your conversion rates by the same percentage. This is primarily due to the fact that increasing your traffic incurs several costs that can squeeze your profit margins. Thus as we discussed on a previous article building effective landing pages should be a top priority in order to improve your conversion rates and increase your sales.
That is why in this article we discuss the 10 most common Landing Page Optimization mistakes and we explain how these problems affect the online marketing campaign:
1. Hidden or Unclear Call to Action
As we said in a previous blog post, the Call to action is a simple way to interact directly with your visitors and encourage them to take an immediate action (such as buy, call, subscribe, register, download etc) after visiting your website or viewing your page. The call to action should be distinctive, it should be visible on the top of the page and it should communicate a clear message to your readers. Failing to use clear call to action or failing to focus the user attention on it, is something that can definitely lead to lower conversion rates.
2. Having too much Text
Having too much text on the landing pages of your website is not helpful for your visitors. Keep in mind that the landing page should get the user’s attention and make him/her understand the basic features of your product/service. The rule “less is more” applies in this situation. Present to the user the most important aspects of your product/service and provide him a way to read more details if he wants. Use clever graphics/visuals to pass hidden messages and don’t forget that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Now I am sure that many SEOs will argue that such an approach will have a dramatic impact on the SEO strategy of the website. Think again! There are several ways to add this text below the fold (where it will not distract the users) or use JavaScript/jQuery to hide and show the content in case they want to get more information. There are several ways to solve this problem technically. Just think out of the box and have in mind that visitors have limited time and thus you have only few seconds to get their attention.
3. Too many Links/Choices
Providing too many choices to the users is not advised since it can confuse them and make them leave your website. Make your users navigate easier on your site and increase the odds of focusing them on the Call to Action by keeping the number of choices short. This applies especially when the visitor lands on the page from an Adwords or PPC advertisement.
Again you don’t have to sacrifice your SEO campaign and destroy the Link Architecture of your website in order to create effective Landing Pages. You can resolve these issues easily by using several web development techniques and by implementing clever designs. The links can remain on the page as long as you focus the user attention on the choices that you want him/her to make.
4. Visual Distractions
Avoid at all costs any visual distractions that will make user ignore the call to action. Removing flashing advertising banners, floating boxes, popups or any other similar distractions is essential to increase the conversion rates. Keep in mind that using too many call to actions on the same page can also be considered as a distraction. Even though you can have more than one call to actions on the same page, make sure you prioritize them and not confuse/distract the user from your main goal.
5. Request too many information on the forms
In many cases the landing pages contain HTML Forms where the visitor has to fill in his/her information in order to proceed (download, buy, subscribe, register, contact sales etc). If possible eliminate the forms that are not necessary since they are considered as barriers by many users. In case they are needed, try to request from the user only the information that is absolutely necessary and avoid asking for things that are not useful/relevant or that he/she might be reluctant to provide immediately. Don’t forget that you can ask later for this information, once you gain the trust of the user.
6. Message Mismatch
It’s a common mistake to use Advertising campaigns with misleading texts in order to drive traffic to the landing page. A message mismatch between the ad and the landing page can lead to high bounce rates and low conversions. By using misleading ads not only you attract not-targeted traffic and you waste your resources but also you risk getting banned by the advertising networks since this is a clear violation of their Terms of Use. The same applies not only for ads but also for all of your promotional campaigns and links that you place across the web.
7. Lack of Trust
Another reason why you might have low conversion rates is because the potential clients that visit your website do not trust you. In order to resolve this problem first of all make sure you have a well designed website which is an indication that you are a serious company. Also make sure you include the logos and reviews of your satisfied clients or provide reviews from experts of the industry. Finally keep in mind that you should include in a visible position any Trust Seals or Badges that show that you website is safe for online transactions.
8. Not tracking the results of your landing pages
In order to be able to optimize a landing page, you must be able to know how well it performs. A major mistake that lots of people make is that they don’t monitor and track the results of their landing pages. Make sure you invest time and effort on reviewing your traffic logs, tracing the behaviour of the user within your website and above all track every click of the user by using Google Analytics Event Tracking or Virtual Pageviews or similar techniques. This information will be invaluable for you when you start evaluating and optimizing the results of each landing page.
9. Not testing the results of your landing pages
If you don’t test different versions of the landing page you can’t be sure that it works properly (or how well it works). By using A/B testing you can get lots of useful data about the behaviour and needs of the user and use this information to improve your pages and make the right marketing decisions. Don’t forget that in order to be able to evaluate the results of the A/B testing you need gather results over a period of time and of course to set all the necessary mechanisms that will help you monitor the results of each page. Google’s Website Optimizer is a useful service that can help you perform such tests, nevertheless there are several other solutions and tools that you can use.
10. Not optimizing your Landing Pages
Webmasters and Online Marketers optimize their Ad/SEO/Social Media/Online Marketing campaigns all the time. Why should not we do the same for the Landing Pages? Redesigning the Landing Pages of the website by taking into account the results that we track, the A/B testing and the feedback from the users is absolutely necessary in order to improve the conversion rates. Don’t forget that it’s your client that should “design” your website and not your Web Designer or Online Marketing consultant. And since different clients have contradictory needs you need to find a solution that satisfies most of them. This can only be done by dedicating time and effort on monitoring, testing and optimizing your landing pages.
The Landing Page Optimization is a difficult and challenging task that requires you to present the information in an optimal way, to know your clients and understand their needs, to monitor closely the performance of the pages and to invest time and effort on improving their results and on trying new approaches. Still Landing Page Optimization is not rocket science and as a result in many cases by dedicating the appropriate time you can achieve very good results just by making few targeted changes on your marketing approach.
In “Keyword Clustering for Maximum Search Profitability”
we discussed the idea of clustering keywords and how doing so can
increase the speed and effectiveness of your link building efforts. The
article was based on the principle of passing internal strength between
the pages of your website.
Today we'll discuss this subject in more detail. Be warned, it'll
involve a little bit of math (we are dealing with Google's algorithm
after all, so there's almost always going to an element of that). That
said, I'm going to do the math for you to provide what's most important,
an understanding of why the formulas work and simple ways to determine
what needs to be done. If you understand the why, the math essentially
does itself.
What Are Internal Links?
We all know that internal links are the links within your website
that enable visitors to get from one page to another, a point we won't
dwell on further. The question you want to answer here is, “What do
internal links mean to a search engine and how are they weighted?”
At its core, an internal link adds value to your pages in a manner
similar to third party links to your site. That said, this would be a
poor attempt at education if I assumed knowledge so let's take it from
the top and answer first the question… how does strength pass from one
page to another? (Note: many of the principles of this apply to both
internal and external links to a page.) From there we'll look at how
external links impact the weight flow.
When I ponder the value of a link, either internal or from a third
party, I consider the world of Orwell's "Animal Farm". The first and
foremost thought is my head is that each page has a vote – a chance to
cast their ballot in favor of other resources. Where it gets Orwellian
is in his infamous quote which I will bastardize for my use here, “All
votes are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
To put this in the context of internal links, a link from the
homepage of a site or another strong page will be weighted higher than a
link from a weak page 12 levels deep in its hierarchy. With this
sentiment we know that the old real estate adage of “location, location,
location” holds as true in SEO as it does in the “real world” however
it gets even more true when we consider the other elements that come
into play.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so below you'll find an image of
a simple site hierarchy. Due to my complete lack of design ability,
hopefully this picture is worth at least 75 words or at least doesn't
draw from the overall word count of this article. It will serve the
purpose needed here at least.
A Simple Website Structure
Below is a seven page website (six internals and a homepage). Now
let's consider how the weight will pass from one page to another. In my
calculations I am not factoring in the evaporation of weight that occurs
with every link (Matt Cutts discussed this at second 40 in his video here).
Because this happen with every link on your site and your competitors
as well, it can be viewed as a level playing field and negated for
simplicity though it is reinforcement for limiting the number of links
on a page to minimize evaporation. But back to the point at hand.
No matter what the site is, one can assume the homepage value is 100.
This is because I'm only factoring in the link passing within the site,
not valuing the site against others. So let's begin.
If the homepage value is 100, the value passes as:
Homepage – 100
One – 33.3
Two – 33.3
Three – 33.3
Four – 16.7
Five – 16.7
Six – 33.3
This assumes that each of these pages links only to the pages in the
diagram and the weight is split evenly among all links. In the real
world, however, it would be more realistic (though messy in the
illustration) to assume that each page links to each page higher in the
hierarchy plus the homepage. So let's look at what each page will pass.
The homepage starting value is 100 meaning that it will indeed pass 33.3 value to each of the pages one level down.
Rather than linking downward however these pages will also link back to the home page giving the following values:
The Home page passes:
33.3 to Page One
33.3 to Page Two
33.3 to page Three
Page One passes:
11.1 to Home
11.1 to Page Four
11.1 to Page Five
Page Two passes:
33.3 to Home
Page Three passes:
16.7 to Home
16.7 to Page Six
Page Four passes:
5.6 to Home
5.6 to Page One
Page Five passes:
5.6 to Home
5.6 to Page One
Page Six passes:
8.4 to Home
8.4 to Page Three
So at the end we end up with the following values:
Home – 180.7
Page One – 44.5
Page Two – 33.3
Page Three – 41.7
Page Four – 11.1
Page Five – 11.1
Page Six – 16.7
So clearly we see a situation where the second level in a hierarchy
gains value by having a larger number of pages as sub-sections of it.
Now let's look at a more realistic (albeit advanced) example and
consider the weight passing if each page links to those within its
cluster as well as all the pages above it.
For example, Page Four would link to pages One and Five as they're
within its cluster and also the homepage and pages Two and Three. This
mimics an environment where pages One, Two, and Three are in the main
navigation along with the homepage.
Further to that, we'll consider the inclusion of breadcrumb
navigation adding additional links to pages within the direct hierarchy
and thus part of the cluster. As discussed in the video above (and
witnessed many times in practical application) the addition of these
links passes more “juice” to those pages (the simple math is, two links
to a page gives it twice the weight – we'll go with that for our
purposes here).
So let's look at how that weight passes this time:
The Home page passes:
25 to itself
25 to Page One
25 to Page Two
25 to Page Three
Page One passes:
7.1 to Home
3.6 to itself
3.6 to Page Two
3.6 to Page Three
3.6 to Page Four
3.6 to Page Five
Page Two passes:
10 to Home
5 to Page One
5 to itself
5 to Page Three
Page Three passes:
8.3 to Home
4.2 to Page One
4.2 to Page Two
4.2 to itself
4.2 to Page Six
Page Four passes:
0.9 to Home
0.9 to Page One
0.5 to Page Two
0.5 to Page Three
0.5 to itself
0.5 to Page Five
Page Five passes:
0.9 to Home
0.9 to Page One
0.5 to Page Two
0.5 to Page Three
0.5 to Page Four
0.5 to itself
Page Six passes:
1.2 to Home
0.6 to Page One
0.6 to Page Two
1.2 to Page Three
0.6 to itself
So at the end we end up with the following values:
Home – 153.4
Page One – 40.2
Page Two – 39.4
Page Three – 40.0
Page Four – 4.6
Page Five – 4.6
Page Six – 4.8
So we end up with a curious situation in the math. What one may
conclude is that it's better to keep a limited number of sub-pages in
your site, after all – Page Six is carrying more weight than Page Four
so it must be a better structure.
The only takeaway I hope you draw at this stage is that it's a good
idea to take out expired products or useless pages (for your users as
much as the engines). To illustrate why I'm going to shift our site into
the real world and imagine once again that we're selling bike parts
(see last article for reference here).
Let's imagine the following page definitions:
Homepage – My bike store
Page One – Suspension forks page
Page Two – Privacy Policy
Page Three – Dual-suspension frames page
Page Four - Marzocchi 44 Rlo page
Page Five - Marzocchi 44 TST2 page
Page Six - Banshee spitfire page
To see the impact on ROI, let's imagine a scenario where I build a
link to both pages Four and Six. The link built will give the same
weight (let's give it the arbitrary value of 5 by our weight model
above) and let's now calculate what happens.
I'm going to omit the math and simply list the final numbers. We'll
assume that the starting value are those defined above so the weight and
re-factoring on the engine's part will produce higher numbers (as the
values from the pages low in the hierarchy add weight to the pages above
it).
Homepage – 248.8
Page One – 131
Page Two – 125.6
Page Three – 129.4
Page Four – 25.4
Page Five – 20.4
Page Six – 26.2
So here we see that the weight given to Page Six is higher than
either of the two other third-tier pages however there are two important
points we need to consider before asserting that a hierarchy that puts a
single path to each product is superior.
Had we divided the paths off into four from the homepage to
facilitate each of the product pages the split in weight from the
homepage would have yielded the following example.
If this is the case we would have found the following to be the final
values (assuming the link additions to pages four and six as above and
the same breadcrumb navigation):
Homepage – 228.5
Extra Page – 87.1
Page One – 85.1
Page Two – 80.6
Page Three – 87.1
Page Four – 10.8
Page Five – 9.8
Page Six – 10.8
The weakening of the links off the homepage weakened the entire site reducing all the potential rankings on the internal pages.
While the link to page six in the first example yielded a higher page
weight on that specific page when it was in a single path on the third
tier of the site, the benefit was limited to that page alone. When we
linked into a cluster, the benefit on the individual page was reduced
slightly as the weight shifted with the increased number of internal
links however the weight of a number of pages improved (including the
product category page).
By clustering your targeted keywords together you'll be building
links to groupings of pages that will, by design, help the rankings and
page weight of each other.
A Beneficial Issue With The Calculations
It's only fair to note when there are known issues and unknowns with
data. In the above calculations where I added in weight from third party
links I reduced the weight of those links along with the internal
weight.
The treatment of weight from external sources by the major search
engines is undoubtedly different than internal weight and it's likely
that the target page of the link would hold the full weight or a larger
portion of it and then pass the weighting along without diminishing from
itself.
What I mean by this is that the link to page four in the initial
example held a weight of 5 and was divided in our math by 8 (the total
number of links on the page). It's far more likely that the page would
keep all or something near all 5 and then proceed to pass on weight
internally without diminishing its own or diminishing its own only
slightly.
Essentially what this means is that building a logical clustered
hierarchy is, if anything, even more effective than outlined in the
examples above.
Final Word
The data matches closely to what the search engines are trying to
push webmasters toward: provide a logical and well-coded site
architecture that serves your visitors well and you'll be rewarded.
Imagine if Amazon tried to apply the example from the second graphic
above and provide a link to each product page on their homepage.
Usability would be horrible, page load speed would be a disaster, and
because math works well, their rankings would be non-existent.
I don't expect all the readers of this article to draw out diagrams
and do the math behind this for their own sites, it's time-consuming
enough with a seven page example – let alone a 1,000-plus page site.
However, as the numbers expand, the math stays the same and the benefits
only amplify. And that's why clustering keywords as discussed in last
month's article works.
It’s been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update.
Google’s happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as
intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and
there remain concerns about “negative SEO” as a threat. I caught up with
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, on these and some
related questions.
Penguin: “A Success”
The goal of any algorithm update is to improve search results. So how’s Penguin been for Google?
“It’s been a success from our standpoint,” Cutts said.
What About Those Weird Results?
Of course, soon after Penguin was released, people quickly started citing examples of odd results.
The official Viagra site wasn’t listed, while hacked sites were. An
empty web site was listed for “make money online,” and there were
reports of other empty sites ranking well. Scraper sites were reported
outranking the sites they scraped.
How could Penguin be a success with these types of things happening?
Cutts said that many of these issues existed before Penguin launched and were not caused by the new spam-fighting algorithm.
Indeed, the Viagra issue, which has now been fixed, was a problem before Penguin hit. Penguin didn’t cause it.
False Positives? A Few Cases
How about false positives, people who feel they’ve been unfairly hit by Penguin when they weren’t doing any spam?
“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but
this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,” Cutts said.
The Panda Update was Google’s big update that targeted low-quality spam last year. The Florida Update was a major Google update in 2003 intended to improve its search quality.
I’d agree that both of those seemed to have impacted more sites than
Penguin has, based on having watched reactions to all these updates. Not
everyone will agree with me, of course. It’s also worth the regular
reminder that for any site that “lost” in the rankings, someone gained.
You rarely hear from those who gain.
Bottom line, Google seems pretty confident that the Penguin Update is indeed catching people who were spamming, as was intended.
Why Spam Still Gets Through
Certainly when I’ve looked into reports,
I’ve often found spam at the core of why someone dropped. But if
Penguin is working, why are some sites that are clearly spamming still
getting through?
“No algorithm is perfect. While we’d like to achieve perfection, our
litmus test is, ‘Do things get better than before?’,” Cutts said.
Cutts also explained that Penguin was designed to be quite precise,
to act against pages when there was an extremely high-confidence of spam
being involved. The downside is that some spam might get through, but
the upside is that you have fewer false positives.
How Can You Recover?
One of the most difficult things with this update is telling people
how to recover. Anyone hit by Penguin was deemed to be spamming Google.
In the past, if you spammed Google, you were told to file a reconsideration request. However, Google’s specifically said that reconsideration requests won’t help those hit by Penguin. They’ll recover naturally, Google says, if they clean the spam up.
However, one of the main reasons I’ve seen when looking at sites hit
by Penguin seems to be bad linking practices. People have used sponsored
WordPress themes, or poor quality reciprocal linking, have purchased
links or participated in linking networks, such as those recently targeted by Google.
How do people pull themselves out of these link networks, if perhaps they don’t have control over those links now?
“It is possible to clean things up,” Cutts said, and he suggested people review two videos he’s done on this topic:
“The bottom line is, try to resolve what you can,” Cutts said.
Waiting On Penguin To Update Again
If you do clean things up, how will you know? Ideally, you’ll see
your traffic from Google recover, the next time Penguin is updated.
Is Penguin a site-wide penalty like Panda or page-specific? Cutts
wouldn’t say. But given that Panda has site-wide impacts, I think it’s a
fair assumption that Penguin works the same.
What that means is that if some of your site is deemed Penguin-like,
all of it may suffer. Again, recovery means cleaning up the spam. If
you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to
start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said.
New Concerns Over Negative SEO
Before Penguin, talk of “negative SEO” had been ramping up. Since
then, it seems to have gotten worse in some places. I’ve seen
post-after-post making it sound as if anyone is now in serious danger
that some competitor can harm them.
At the core of these fears seems to be a perfect storm of assumptions. Google recently targeted some linking schemes. That caused some people to lose traffic. Google also sent out warnings about sites with “artificial” or “unnatural” links.
That generated further concerns in some quarters. Then the Penguin
Update hit, which caused more people to lose traffic as they were either
hit for link spam or no longer benefited from link spam that was wiped
out.
These things made it ripe for people to assume that pointing bad
links at a site can hurt it. But as I wrote before, negative SEO
concerns aren’t new. They’ve been around for years. Despite this, we’ve not seen it become a major concern.
Google has said it’s difficult for others to harm a site, and that’s
indeed seemed to be the case. In particular, pointing bad links at a
good site with many other good signals seems to be like trying to infect
it with a disease that it has antibodies to. The good stuff outweighs
the bad.
Cutts stressed again that negative SEO is rare and hard. “We have
done a huge amount of work to try to make sure one person can’t hurt
another person,” he said.
Cutts also stressed again what Google said before. Most of the those 700,000 messages
to publishers that Google sent out earlier this year were not about bad
link networks. Nor were they all suddenly done on the same day. Rather,
many sites have had both manual and algorithmic penalties attached to
them over time but which were never revealed. Google recently decided to open up about these.
After Negative SEO Campaign, A Link Warning
Of course, new messages do go out, which leads to the case of Dan Thies. His site was targeted by some trying to show that negative SEO works. He received an unnatural link warning after this happened. He also lost some rankings. Is this the proof that negative SEO really works?
Thies told me that his lost rankings were likely due to changes he
made himself, when he removed a link across all pages on his site that
led back to his home page. After restoring that, he told me, he regained
his rankings.
His overall traffic, he said, never got worse. That tends to go
against the concerns that negative SEO is a lurking threat, because if
it had worked enough to tag his site as part of the Penguin Update, he
should have seen a huge drop.
Still, what about link warning? Thies did believe that came because
of the negative SEO attempt. That’s scary stuff. He also said he filed
three reconsideration requests, which each time returned messages saying
that there were no spam actions found. Was he hit with a warning but
not one that was also associated with a penalty?
I asked Cutts about the case, but he declined to comment on Thies’s
particular situation. He did say that typically a link warning is a
precursor to a ranking drop. If the site fixes the problem and does a
reconsideration request quickly enough, that might prevent a drop.
Solving The Concerns
I expect we’ll continue to see discussions of negative SEO, with a
strong belief by some that it’s a major concern for anyone. I was
involved in one discussion over at SEO Book about this that’s well worth a read.
When it’s cheaper to buy links than ever, it’s easy to see why there are concerns. Stories like what happened to Thies or this person, who got a warning after 24,000 links appeared pointing at his site in one day, are worrisome.
Then again, the person’s warning came after he apparently dropped in
rankings because of Penguin. So did these negative SEO links actually
cause the drop, or was it something else? As is common, it’s hard to
tell, because the actual site isn’t provided.
To further confuse matters, some who lost traffic because of Penguin
might not be victims of a penalty at all. Rather, Google may have
stopped allowing some links to pass credit, if they were deemed to be
part of some attempt to just manipulate rankings. If sites were heavily
dependent on these artificial links, they’d see a drop just because the
link credit was pulled, not because they were hit with a penalty.
I’ve seen a number of people now publicly wishing for a way to
“disvow” links pointing at them. Google had no comment about adding such
a feature at this time, when I asked about this. I certainly
wouldn’t wait around for it now, if you know you were hit by Penguin.
I’d do what you can to clean things up.
One good suggestion
out of the SEO Book discussion was that Google not penalize sites for
bad links pointing at them. Ignore the links, don’t let the links pass
credit, but don’t penalize the site. That’s an excellent suggestion for
defusing negative SEO concerns, I’d say.
I’d also stress again that from what I’ve seen, negative SEO isn’t
really what most hit by Penguin should probably be concerned about. It
seems far more likely they were hit by spam they were somehow actively
involved in, rather than something a competitor did.
Recovering From Penguin
Our Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice post
from two weeks ago gave some initial advice about dealing with Penguin,
and that still holds up. In summary, if you know that you were hit by
Penguin (because your traffic dropped on April 24):
Just in, by the way, a list
of WordPress plug-ins that apparently insert hidden links. If you use
some of these, and they have inserted hidden links, that could have
caused a penalty.
I’d also say again, take a hard look at your own site. When I’ve
looked at sites, it’s painfully easy to find bad link networks they’ve
been part of. That doesn’t mean that there’s not spam that’s getting
past Penguin. But complaining about what wasn’t caught isn’t a solution
to improving your own situation, if you were hit.
by Danny Sullivan Source : http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463
If you’re not used to SEO, and frankly, even if you are, there’s a lot to take in, a lot to remember. To make sure your bases are covered, here are ten things to check right now. (Start at the top of your web pages and work down.)
1) The blue text you see in the search results (see the picture further down) is called the ‘title tag’. What do yours look like? Are they enticing? Keyword rich? If someone read yours, would you want to click through?
2) Does your meta description, the bit that comes underneath the title in the search results, describe your web page accurately? Is it inviting? If I was a random user, would I click it? The answer to these questions should always be yes.
3) Are all your URLs (eg, www.example.com) easy to understand? If a human read them, could they get a sense of what your page was about? Test it now. Pick any page on your website (not your home page), copy what appears in the address bar of your browser and email a relative. An old one. Could they roughly describe your page without seeing it?
4) If someone was to look at your page for three seconds, could they tell you what it's about? Make sure your headers, the headlines in the copy, and the H1 and H2 tags in the code, are descriptive and keyword rich.
5) Is your navigation clear and intuitive? If you asked a stranger to find something on one of your deep-level pages, let’s say, find a specific product or article, could they do it just by using their mouse? Great! OK, now test it. Ask a friend to do this now.
6) Are your images optimized? (Right click on an image and ‘inspect element’ and look at where it says “img alt” - is this an accurate description of the image? Does it even exist? The alt tag is what search engines ‘see’ when you upload an image. It’s also used for site readers for the visually impaired. Ensuring your alt tags are descriptive makes your site more accessible and better for search engines.
7) Does your copy (text) sing? Are the words on your pages inviting, informative and punchy? And do they use the language your customers use, or are they jargonized?
8) Is the copy on every page unique? (It should be.)
9) Does the footer (the bit at the bottom of the web page) offer some more navigation options? Navigation that’s keyword rich, and helpful for users (perhaps they have a slow internet connection - could they still get to where they want to go quickly?). If I just looked at the footer of your home page, would I see links to your most important pages?
10) Do you have clean code? (Right click on your web page and click 'view page source’ to see the code). Is it free of Javascript and Flash where possible? If you’re not a coder and you asked this question of someone who is, what would they say?
And that was all pre-Penguin no less. Seems my Spidey-sense was tingling. The world of search engine optimization just keeps getting more convoluted. Now more than ever, very little is clear.
To date I have not touched upon the Penguin update because, well, we just didn't know. There wasn't enough data to say much. Of course that really hasn't changed, but there are a few things we can certainly look at to help better understand the situation at hand.
But let's give it a go anyway shall we?
A Name is Just a Name
The first thing we need to consider is that there are numerous Google algorithm updates, some of which aren't named. In the weeks before the infamous Penguin rolled out, there was a Panda hit and another link update. The three of them, being within a five-week period, makes a lot of the analysis problematic.
And that's the point worth mentioning. Don't try too hard to look for dates and names. Look more to the effects.
We're here to watch the evolution of the algos and adapt accordingly. Named or not, doesn't matter. Sure, it can be great for diagnosing a hit, but beyond that, it means little.
Regardless of the myriad of posts on the various named updates, none of us really know what is going on. That's where the instinct part of the job comes in. Again, knowing the evolution of search, goes a long way.
What is Web Spam?
To understand how web spam is defined, you need to look at how search engineers view SEO. While there are many, I like this:
“any deliberate human action that is meant to trigger an unjustifiably favorable relevance or importance for some web page, considering the page's true value.” (from Web Spam Taxonomy, Stanford)
And:
“Most SEOs claim that spamming is only increasing relevance for queries not related to the topic(s) of the page. At the same time, many SEOs endorse and practice techniques that have an impact on importance scores to achieve what they call "ethical" web page positioning or optimization. Please note that according to our definition, all types of actions intended to boost ranking, without improving the true value of a page, are considered spamming.” (emphasis mine)
Well la-dee-da huh? We can intimate that Google has eased that stance by trying to define white hat and black hat, but at the end of the day any and all manipulation is seen in a less than favorable light.
The next part of your journey is to establish in your mind what types of activities are commonly seen as web spam. Here's a few:
Link manipulation: Paid links, hidden, excessive reciprocal, shady links etc.
Cloaking: Serving different content to users and Google.
Automated queries to Google: Tools on your site, probably a bad idea.
That's about the core of the main offenders. To date with the Penguin update, people have been mostly talking about links. Imagine that... SEOs obsessed with links!
However, we should go a bit deeper and surely consider the other on-site aspects. If not on your site, then on the site links are coming from.
On-site Web Spam
Hopefully most people reading this, those with experience in web development and SEO (or running websites), don't use borderline tactics with their sites. We do know there is certainly elements of on-site with both the Penguin and Panda updates... so it's worth looking at.
Here are some common areas search engines look at for on-site web spam:
Domain: Some testing has shown that .info and .biz domains are far more spam laden than more traditional TLDs.
Words per page: Interestingly it seems spam pages have more text than non-spam pages (although over 1,500 words, the curve receded). Studies have shown the spam sweet spot to be in the 750-1,500 word region.
Keywords in title: This was mentioned in more than a few papers and should be high on the audit list. Avoid stuffing; be concise.
Anchors to Anchor text: In other studies engineers looked at the ratio of text, to anchor text on a page.
Percentage of visible text: This involves hidden text and nasty ALT text. What percentage of text is actually being rendered on the page.
Compressibility: As a mechanism used to fight keyword stuffing, search engines can also look at compression ratios. Or more specifically, repetitious or content spinning.
Globally popular words: Another good way to find keyword stuffing is to compare the words on the page to existing query data and known documents. Essentially if someone is keyword stuffing around given terms, they will be in a more unnatural usage than user queries and known good pages.
Query spam: By looking at the pattern of the queries, in combination with other signals, behavioral data manipulation would become statistically apparent.
Phrase-based: looking for textual anomalies in the form of related phrases. This is like keyword stuffing on steroids. Looking for statistical anomalies can often highlight spammy documents.
Globally popular words: Another good way to find keyword stuffing is to compare the words on the page to existing query data and known documents. Essentially if someone is keyword stuffing around given terms, they will be in a more unnatural usage than user queries and known good pages.
(some snippets taken from my post "Web Spam; the Definitive Guide")
And yes, there's actually more. The main thing to take from this is that there are often many ways that the search engines look at on-site spam, not just the obvious ones. Once more, this is about your site and the sites linking to you.
A lot of on-site web spam that's a true risk, will be from hacking. Sure, your CMS might be spitting out some craziness, or your WordPress plug-in created a zillion internal links, but those are the exceptions. If you're using on-site spam tactics, I am sure you know it. Few people actually use on-site crap post-Panda, many times it's the site being hacked that causes issues. So be vigilant.
Link Spam
Is the Penguin update all about links? I'd go against the grain and say no. Not only do we have to consider some of the above elements, but also there seems to be an element of 'trust' and authority at play here as well. If anything, we may be seeing a shift away from the traditional PageRank model of scoring, which of course many may perceive as a penalty, due to links.
But what is link spam? That answer has been a bit of a moving target over the years, but here are some common elements:
Link stuffing: Creating a ton of low-value pages and point all the links (even on-site) to the target page. Spam sites tend to have a higher ratio of these types of unnatural appearances.
Nepotistic links: Everything from paid links to traded ones, (reciprocal) and three-way links.
Topological spamming (link farms): Search engines will look at the percentage of links in the graph compared to known "good" sites. Typically those looking to manipulate the engines will have a higher percentage of links from these locales.
Temporal anomalies: Another area where spam sites generally stand out from other pages in the corpus are in the historical data. There will be a mean average of link acquisition and decay with "normal" sites in the index. Temporal data can be used to help detect spammy sites participating in unnatural link building habits.
TrustRank: This method has more than a few names, TrustRank being the Yahoo flavor. The concept revolves around having "good neighbors". Research shows that good sites link to good ones and vice versa.
I could spend hours on each of these, but you get the idea. With many people are theorizing about networks, anchor texts, etc... the larger picture often evades us. There are so many ways that Google might be dealing with 'over optimization' that we're not talking about.
The last 18 months or so we have seen a lot of changes including the spate of unnatural-linking messages that went out. Again, Penguin or not doesn't matter. What matters is that Google is certainly looking harder at link spam, so you should be too.
It wouldn't hurt to keep a tinfoil hat handy as well… Look no further than this Microsoft patent that talks about spying on SEO forums. Between that and the fact that SEOs write about their tactics far and wide, it's not exactly hard for search engineers to see what we're up to.
How Are We Adapting in a Post-Penguin World?
What's it all mean? Well I haven't a bloody clue. Anyone who says they've got it sorted, likely needs to take their head out of a certain orifice.
What you should do is become more knowledgeable in how search engines work and the history of Google. Operate from intelligence, not ignorance.
Have you considered the elements outlined in this post when analyzing data and trying to figure out what's going on? I know I didn't. It was researching this post that reminded me of the myriad of various spam signals Google might look at.
Here's some of my thinking so far:
It really is a non-optimized world: Don't try too hard for that perfect title. Avoid obsessing over on-page ratios. You don't need that exact match anchor all the time, in fact you don't even need a link (think named entities). In many ways, less-is-more is the call of the day.
Keep a history: Be sure to always track everything. And when doing link profile or other types of forensic audits, compare fresh and historic data (such as in Majestic).
Watch on-site links: From internal link ratios to anchors and outbound links, they all matter. From spam signals to trust scoring, they can potentially affect your site.
Faddish: Another interesting thing, how much it plays into things we know not, was that Google might have an issue of the tactic du jour.
Watch your profile: In the new age of SEO it likely pays to be tracking your link profiles. If something malicious pops up, deal with it and make notes of dates and contact attempts.
On site: Hammer it and make it squeaky clean. The harder links get, the more one needs to watch the on-site. Schedule audits more frequently to watch for issues.
Topical-relevance: When looking at links think about topical-relevance. Are the links coming from sites/pages that are overly diverse (and have weak authority)?
Link ratios: Watch for a low spread in anchor texts as well as total links vs. referring domains (lower the better, it means less site-wide links generally).
Cleaning up: When possible look at link profiles and clean up suspect links. And I wouldn't wait until you get an unnatural linking message or tanked rankings.
We've seen a ton of data (this one is interesting) since this all went down and while there are common elements, nothing is conclusive (again, there have been a spate of updates). What is more important is to understand what Google wants and where they're headed. It's just another step in the long road of search evolution, don't get caught up in the names.
Taking the easy way out rarely works for success in life. SEO is no different.
Understand how a threshold might be used. This thing of ours is like the old story of the two of us in the woods when a hungry bear appears. I don't have to outrun the bear; just you. Ensure your strategy is within a safe threshold and it should work out just fine.
It's About Time
To close out there is the one part of this that keeps nagging; history. If you've been squashed by the recent updates (including Penguin) it may not entirely be about recent activities. There is a sense that Google is indeed keeping a history and that this may be playing into the large scheme of things.
Some of the most interesting Google patents were the series on historical elements. Be sure to go back and read some of these older posts:
Google Analytics Custom Reports can be incredible time savers if you have the right reports. Instead of spending time digging around for important metrics, you can find what you need separated neatly into columns for some analysis that will lead to some actionable insight.
1. Content Efficiency Analysis Report
This report is from none other than the master of Google Analytics, Avinash Kaushik. Brands all over the world are starting to double down on content so it's important to answer questions such as:
What types of content (text, videos, pictures, etc.) perform best?
What content delivers the most business value?
What content is the most engaging?
The Content Efficiency Analysis Report comes in handy by putting all the key content metrics into one spot.
Here are the columns that the report will pull in:
Page title
Entrances
Unique Visitors
Bounces
Pageviews
Avg. Time on Page
Per Visit Goal Value
Goal Completions
2. Keyword Analysis Report
If you're doing SEO, you want to make sure that your optimization efforts are working as intended. Is the right keyword pointing to the right page?
This first tab of this report, Targeting, will break things down by placing the title and keyword side-by-side. The four metrics you'll see are:
Unique Visitors
Goal Completions
Goal Conversion Rate
Avg. Page Load Time (sec)
Using the 4 metrics above, you'll be able to judge whether you need to make adjustments to your campaign or not.
The second tab, Engagement, will tell you how effective each page is by looking at the following six metrics:
Unique Pageviews
Pages/Visit
Avg. Time on Page
Bounce Rate
Percentage Exit
Goal Conversion Rate
The third and final tab, Revenue, will tell you how much money a keyword is bringing you based on 3 metrics:
Revenue
Per Visit Value
Ecommerce Conversion Rate
3. Link Analysis Report
What websites are sending you the best traffic? If you're link building, what links are worth going back for more? Link building isn't all about rankings, it's about increasing traffic and conversions as well. If you find a few gems, it's worth looking into them more.
Here are the columns you'll see with the report:
Source
Landing Page
Visits
Goal Completions
Pages/Visit
Bounce Rate
Percentage New Visits
4. PPC Keywords Report
If you're paying for search traffic, you obviously want to discover high performing keywords. You can then take this data and use it for future SEO campaigns.
Here are the metrics in this report:
Visits
CPC
Goal Completions
Cost per Conversion
By breaking things down easily, you'll be able to hone in one which keywords you need to put on hold and which ones you need to pour more cash into.
5. Social Media Report
Ah yes, a report that tells you how different social media channels are performing for you. This is a simple way to figure out where you should consider investing more time into socially.
The social media report looks at:
Visits
Social Actions
Goal Completions
Goal Conversion Rate
Goal Value
6. E-commerce Traffic Report
If you run an e-commerce site, it's important to break down your different traffic channels to see which one performs best. Why is one channel performing better than the other? Is it worth it to invest more in a campaign that is trending upwards? Is your investment with paid advertising effective?
This report answers some of your e-commerce questions by looking at the following metrics:
Visits
Percentage New Visits
Bounce Rate
Pages/Visit
Revenue
Average Value
Per Visit Value
7. Browser Report
This report will tell you how different browsers are performing for your site. You'll immediately see which browsers are your winners and which ones might have problems.
For example, if Chrome and Firefox seem to be doing OK but if Internet Explorer has extremely high bounce rates, you might want to look into Internet Explorer more. After all, Internet Explorer has x percent of the browser share. (research market share for internet explorer)
Bonus: Custom Reporting in Google Analytics
Jaime from SEOmoz created a wonderful realtime Google Analytics report. Here's what it looks like:
This spreadsheet allows you to compare different metrics of your choice with different start and end dates as well. You can easily see how your campaigns are performing from a high level all in the comfort of a clean Google Doc.
Want even more custom reports? Make sure to read Greg Habermann’s top five most used Google Analytics Custom Reports to learn about and get custom reports for Unique Visitors by Page; Conversion by Time of Day; Customer Behavior; Top Converting Landing Pages; and Long Tail Converters.
Conclusion
Google Custom Reports ultimately save you a lot of time and help you make actionable decisions that will help your bottom line. Take a few minutes to set these reports up and explore them. You won't regret it.
What are some useful Google Analytics Custom Reports that you use?
Danny Sullivan published a new story yesterday named Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO.
In that article, he interviews Google's spam lead, Matt Cutts on ways to recover from the Google Penguin update. There are some solid tips there but scary ones also.
Here is one that is scary for those who were hit by the Penguin update:
If you've cleaned and still don't recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said.
Yes,
that is scary for someone who was hit, is trying to frantically make
changes but has not seen any recovery. Now, if you have not seen a
recovery yet - I wouldn't worry, I don't think they refreshed the update
yet, so there wouldn't be any recoveries in my opinion.
But
Google is not going to roll this back. Google's Matt Cutts said, "It's
been a success from our standpoint." Were there false positives? Few
Cutts said, "we've seen a few cases where we might want to investigate
more, but this change hasn't had the same impact as Panda or Florida."
Very interesting.
Key Take Aways:
(1) Google is not going to roll this update back.
(2) Google says it had less of an impact than Panda or Florida.
(3) Don't take drastic measures yet, do what you can now so when Google does refresh the update, maybe you can break free.
Google has been making substantial changes to its search engine
algorithms. This has led many website owners to reconsider how they
implement their SEO campaign. Over the last year, two major new
algorithm changes are going to have a major impact on website owners.
Google Panda was enacted last year to help remove low quality content
sites from the front page of its indexes. This update had a major
impact on a number of websites, particularly content farms and low-level
affiliates.
The other update has not been put into place yet and we know even less about it than Google Panda.
Google chief engineer Matt Cutts had a discussion with Danny Sullivan
of Search Engine Land last month to discuss some of Google’s practices.
In this discussion, Cutts let it slip that Google was working on a new
algorithm change to penalize sites that have engaged in too much SEO.
Both of these topics are expected to have a major impact on search
engine rankings in the coming months. Here is the lowdown on what they
both mean.
Google Panda Update – Dreaded for SEO
Google Panda has really opened up a can of worms for many marketers.
Almost every Internet entrepreneur I know has started panicking about
how the Panda Update is going to impact them. That is completely
unnecessary though. The Panda Update was intended to hit content farms
like Ehow and many of the affiliate sites that use spun or stolen
content.
After Panda, many of the leading content firms lost substantial amounts of traffic.
One of the most extreme cases was Acesshowbiz.com, which lost 93% of
its SEO traffic. Meanwhile, a number of leading content providers like
Youtube increased their search engine traffic by 10%.
Google is clearly looking much more closely at quality content now.
Internet entrepreneurs have got the message that they are supposed to
update their site with fresh content as regularly as possible. Although
fresh content remains a priority, entrepreneurs who have felt the
Panda’s bite are likely to find that they are going to need to put more
of their emphasis on creating insightful, fresh original content, than
just updating regularly.
The Panda Update suggests that you should do the following:
Make sure your site is written for humans more than search engines.
Get rid of duplicate content as much as possible.
Publish content that has never been featured elsewhere, such as article directories.
Make sure your content is authoritative, rather than just rewrites of other people’s articles or spun content.
These tips could help you considerably as you try to keep your site on the top of the search engines.
Next Algorithm Change
The next algorithm change could mean any number of things for the
site. Matt Cutts was pretty vague with his statement, but most SEO
experts have at least some idea of what he was getting at.
The new algorithm change is supposedly intended to target over-optimized websites. Adam Audette of
Rimm-Kaufman Group stated that SEO should be invisible. The sites that
are most likely to get nailed by Google’s new update are those that
don’t have any business model.
Audette said that SEO should be an “invisible layer” that is added to
a site after creating value to the readers. Too many SEOs think that if
they get to the front page of Google then the bucks will start rolling
in. This notion is obviously flawed, considering how much readers hate
over-optimized content. The new algorithm change is intended to keep
these sites from even getting on top of Google.
What are some of changes you may need to make in your SEO model? I would follow these points:
Respect the Panda
Whatever new algorithm update Google has in the
books isn’t meant to replace Google Panda. It is targeting
over-optimized content, while Panda was directed towards content that
provides no value. However, there is definitely an overlap between the
two. Appeasing the Panda by creating great content will help you take
your efforts away from over-optimizing your site for SEO.
Refrain from Black Hat Strategies
Many Internet marketers shun black hat SEOs like they are the worst
kind of sinner. I personally don’t have any ethical standing against
most black hat SEOs. However, I will say one thing about most black hat
SEO tactics: they rarely lead to long-term results.
Google has been waging war with black hat SEOs from day one. However,
Matt Cutts new statement showed that Google is clearly working even
harder to boot black hat spammers off the front page. Here are some of
the things he specifically mentioned:
“Excessive link exchanges.” The reason Google
evaluates backlinks is to assess how authoritative a website is in the
eyes of others. Google hates seeing sites that just exchange links with
each other, because they give no indication on the real value of the
site. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with sites linking back and
forth between each other to network and share resources. I think Google
can tell when sites are clearly trying to manipulate the algorithm and
wants to ding anyone who does anything unnatural.
“Overuse of keywords.” Keyword stuffing has been a no-no for a long-time. Avoid using keywords unnecessarily throughout your content.
“Beyond what Google would normally expect.” Cutts
could mean any number of things with this one. Some SEOs have ventured
some guesses that I think were right on. One idea they suggest that he
meant unnecessarily linking to the homepage in the body of the article
of the footer. I have seen plenty of bloggers link to the homepage in
the middle of their post for no reason with a random string of keywords.
It gets really annoying to be honest and I am sure it looks weird to
Google as well.
Most of the penalties should be clear to marketers by now. Google has
been flagging unnatural use of keywords and linking for a long time. We
will need to assess what Google is really doing differently this time
around. Quite frankly, I think they are implementing some new changes
that we may not have considered previously. Matt Cutts made a statement
back in 2009 that Google doesn’t have any “over-optimization penalty”
for websites. However, he specifically used that term in his most recent
statement. Has he changed his mind or just took a new stance on the
terminology he used?
It is much too early to see. Websites are going to need to see how
their sites are ranked now and what they are going to need to do
differently in the future. Carefully monitor your websites rankings
before and after Google’s supposed algorithm change. This will give you
some idea on whether or not you have over-optimized your website.
If your site has witnessed a drop in rankings over the next couple of
months, you can pretty safely bet that your site is considered
“over-optimized.” Sadly, that doesn’t give you any indication as to what
you have done to overly optimize it.
I would say you should do a page-by-page analysis of your site.
Analyze every single link, block of text and meta description to see
what may look unnatural. You may need to play around a bit to figure it
out. Anything that looks unnatural to you should probably be changed.
Just the same, I wouldn’t make any new changes just because your site
drops a little for a while. Google often applies a heavy hand to its
algorithm changes in the beginning, which harms innocent sites. It could
reverse some of those mistakes later, which would help your site regain
its ranking. There is no sense undoing a good thing just because Google
has inadvertently penalized your site temporarily.
These two new algorithms may be just the beginning of the changes we
are going to see with Google over the next few years. They should remind
us that Google is constantly working to improve the quality of the user
experience. Therefore, we will have to come to terms with the fact that
our techniques to enhance search engine rankings may become
increasingly obsolete.
As you build your blog, you may need to turn your efforts away from
keywords usage and traditional linkbuilding strategies as you attempt to
establish yourself on the front page of the world’s most popular search
engine.
In Google fashion, late on Friday, Google released their now monthly
update on the changes they made to Google search over the past month.
It is really great that Google does this and this time they shared 53 changes in April. Here is last months update.
Below I grouped and listed out the more important changes, at least the ones I find to me most important.
But let's try to see which items in this list are Penguin related. Can we even figure that out?
Penguin Related?
Anchors bug fix
Keyword stuffing classifier improvement
More authoritative results
Improvement in a freshness signal
No freshness boost for low-quality content
Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking
If I had to guess, these and maybe more, are all related to the Penguin update.
Here are some more that I find important but wouldn't specifically related to Penguin, Panda or others:
Ranking Changes:
Improvement in a freshness signal. [launch codename "citron",
project codename "Freshness"] This change is a minor improvement to one
of the freshness signals which helps to better identify fresh documents.
No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename
"NoRot", project codename "Freshness"] We have modified a classifier we
use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as
particularly low-quality.
Smoother ranking changes for fresh results. [launch codename "sep",
project codename "Freshness"] We want to help you find the freshest
results, particularly for searches with important new web content, such
as breaking news topics. We try to promote content that appears to be
fresh. This change applies a more granular classifier, leading to more
nuanced changes in ranking based on freshness.
Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch
codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search
is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you're
searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.
Backend improvements in serving. [launch codename "Hedges", project
codename "Benson"] We've rolled out some improvements to our serving
systems making them less computationally expensive and massively
simplifying code.
Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"]
We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword
stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.
More authoritative results. We've tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.
Link Analysis Changes:
Anchors bug fix. [launch codename "Organochloride", project
codename "Anchors"] This change fixed a bug related to our handling of
anchors.
Index Updates:
Increase base index size by 15%. [project codename "Indexing"] The
base search index is our main index for serving search results and every
query that comes into Google is matched against this index. This change
increases the number of documents served by that index by 15%. *Note:
We're constantly tuning the size of our different indexes and changes
may not always appear in these blog posts.
New index tier. [launch codename "cantina", project codename
"Indexing"] We keep our index in "tiers" where different documents are
indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to
be to users. This month we introduced an additional indexing tier to
support continued comprehensiveness in search results.
Search Listings:
More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename
"Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the
same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set
of domains.
Categorize paginated documents. [launch codename "Xirtam3", project
codename "CategorizePaginatedDocuments"] Sometimes, search results can
be dominated by documents from a paginated series. This change helps
surface more diverse results in such cases.
Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"]
Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant
to a particular country. For a while we've had systems designed to
detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of
countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the
page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some
pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while
others might be considered relevant to Spain.
Disable salience in snippets. [launch codename "DSS", project
codename "Snippets"] This change updates our system for generating
snippets to keep it consistent with other infrastructure improvements.
It also simplifies and increases consistency in the snippet generation
process.
More text from the beginning of the page in snippets. [launch
codename "solar", project codename "Snippets"] This change makes it more
likely we'll show text from the beginning of a page in snippets when
that text is particularly relevant.
Tweak to trigger behavior for Instant Previews. This change narrows
the trigger area for Instant Previews so that you won't see a preview
until you hover and pause over the icon to the right of each search
result. In the past the feature would trigger if you moused into a
larger button area.
Better query interpretation. This launch helps us better interpret
the likely intention of your search query as suggested by your last few
searches.
News universal results serving improvements. [launch codename
"inhale"] This change streamlines the serving of news results on Google
by shifting to a more unified system architecture.
More efficient generation of alternative titles. [launch codename
"HalfMarathon"] We use a variety of signals to generate titles in search
results. This change makes the process more efficient, saving
tremendous CPU resources without degrading quality.
More concise and/or informative titles. [launch codename "kebmo"] We
look at a number of factors when deciding what to show for the title of
a search result. This change means you'll find more informative titles
and/or more concise titles with the same information.
"Sub-sitelinks" in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename
"thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by
showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet.
Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename
"Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by
providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same
URL used in general ranking.
Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks
(the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into
the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site
structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show
users. We've recently updated the data through our offline process.
These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks).
Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename
"Megasitelinks"] We've adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in
the snippets of expanded sitelinks.
Local Changes:
More local sites from organizations. [project codename "ImpOrgMap2"]
This change makes it more likely you'll find an organization website
from your country (e.g. mexico.cnn.com for Mexico rather than cnn.com).
Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename
"onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint
seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank
the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases
where the navigational page does not mention the location.
More comprehensive predictions for local queries. [project codename
"Autocomplete"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of
autocomplete predictions by expanding coverage for long-tail U.S. local
search queries such as addresses or small businesses.
Images & Videos:
Improvements to SafeSearch for videos and images. [project codename
"SafeSearch"] We've made improvements to our SafeSearch signals in
videos and images mode, making it less likely you'll see adult content
when you aren't looking for it.
Improved SafeSearch models. [launch codename "Squeezie", project
codename "SafeSearch"] This change improves our classifier used to
categorize pages for SafeSearch in 40+ languages.
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