Back to basics

If you are just starting to learn all about Link building, here are some tips you might find helpful.

Back to basics:
1. Content is still king.
2. Don’t buy links(or make it look like a vote rather than a sold link).
3. Stay relevant.
4. Get a long spreadsheet and master your keywords.
5. Socialize it.
6. Internal linking and math your KWs with the right landing page.

Try to research on Googlesmostrecent updates.

Taking on new challenges everyday is thename of the game.

KJ Works M700

This Xmas season, I got the best riffle in the market.

I am first to own a KJW M700 Police model.

 KJW M700

http://youtu.be/AHFoWqDB6jE

This Baby packs a powerful 650 FPS out of the box performance using .2 bbs.

I really awesome gun for a really good price.

I got it from Tactical Lab.

Tactical Lab is the only Airsoft shop in the Philippines that will take orders.

I will also feature this rare find on my other money site: http://toycollectionsonline.blogspot.com/

This site features collector’s item toys.

 Like the link on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1574034145

Cheers and Merry X-Mas!!!

Yahoo Site Explorer Dead

Hi Guys,

Yahoo just announced that thwy will close Yahoo site explorer for good.

The date indicated was November 21, 2011. Yahoo site explorer has now ceased to exist.

They have completed the algorithmic transition to Bing.

The search has merged Site explorer into Bing Webmaster Tiils.

Bing assures quality orgabic search traffic and that Yahoo Site Explorer services will no longer be available as of November 21, 2011.

People can move to Opensite explorer or Majestic tool for this.

Recently, there was an error with Open site explorer in returning domain authority information but the problem is fixed now so we can still continue to get free service.

For years Google has deliberately suppressed reporting all links and this means the loss of site explorer is a major calamity that hit most SEO and link builiding businesses. 

There are other smaller tools that can help you with this.

Blekko is also a tool that we can consider.

That’s it for now. I will be creating a manual on how to use and register OSE free accounts.

Feel free to comment o this matter.

Yahoo just died tonight…

Panda 2.5

Last September 27, 2011 Matt Cutts of Google announced that there will be a Panda Flux.

Google had several updates and then there was 2.5, the latest addition for Google updates.

This wa the prequel to Panda 2.5.

Matt Cutts said that it was merely another algorythm change in the system and that the goal was to improve the results.

Taking this into account, I checked 3 of the sites that I managed and found a significant increase in Page Rank for two of them.

What has been done for the two websites?

Website A:

- fresh content was added

-checked the comments for spam

-did not fix RSS

Website B:

-fresh content was added

-improved usablity for visitors by changing the layout

What has exactlty has been changed in the Panda Algorythm?

Recalculation of how sites were measured.

Checked the sites for duplicate/syndicated content.

A sitewide assesment of signals.

When did Panda 2.5 take effect?

The dates were September 27,2011, Ocober 3,2011 and October 13,2011.

What needs to be done in order to survive this update:

Google Updates for 2011

Google has been having a series of updates this year.

 Do we know about all of them? Or do we only react if it had a significant effect on our websites?

To those who are unaware of the updates, I made a list.

To be honest, it’s hard to keep track.

Overstock.com Penalty - January 2011

Overstock.com had very shady SEO practices which led to a very public Google penalty.

JC Penney was hit with a similar penalty for blatantly buying links.

Bad practices from big companies are left by Google unless a big magazing like New York times write about it.

Such action forced Google to do something about it.

Due to the actions from both situations, this actually caused in Google’s attitude and foreshadowed the Panda update.

Attribution Update - January 28, 2011

Good news for AdWords

Freddy on Google

Google launches new Multi media logo for Rockstar Freddie Mercury!

Really awesome.

Go to Google and click on the play button then you will rediscover a great Queen song…

This also comes with a short clip to celebrate the birthday of Freddie Mercury!

ANother great thing I dicovered back then was google gravity.

step 1: go to google.com

step 2: make sure instant is off

step 3: type in Google Gravity and click on I’m feeling lucky.

This was so much fun when I discovered it. I was drunk that night.

An amazing way to look for online info without being bored.

Cheers,

M

Reall cool

Yahoo to shutdown Site Explorer

Yahoo! comes to us with the latest news that they will shutdown yahoo site explorer.

As most of you already know, we need this tool to check backlink profile.

This tool is integrated in SEO tools like SEO for firefox and SEO quake.

What will we do?

Here’s an alternative…  I use opensite explorer from the SEOmoz guys. Been using it for 2 years and it is worth it.

It can be used to show backlinks, link type etc.

Easy if you know how. I often use this tool to spy on competitors.

I just hope that such a tool can be incorporated with our firefox add ons.

Yesterday Copyscape announced that Yahoo wants to get paid for their API.

It left quite a mess as I was searching for websites to deal with.

Also, Copyscape stated that Yahoo did want to get paid ofr their API. This was from an email that Christina Zila sent.

You see textbroker uses  UN.CO.VER which is powered by Yahoo.

Where will go from here?

Yahoo’s API has decided to charge for API usage.

 Hopefully we’ll find a new way to live without Yahoo.

Will write to the boys at SEOmoz and find out more info on how to combat this issue.

Chip in for Chip

Hi Guys,

Please help witht the recovery of Chip Abrera.

An infant born last June 19,2011.

Chip suffers from a congenital heart condition.

He has ventricular septal defect, or VSD. He has, literally, a hole in his heart. Specifically, a hole in the muscular wall (septum) that divides the left and right lower chambers (ventricles) of his heart.

 For more info and donations please log in to: http://www.chipinforchip.info/

Thank you for your help.

MegReb

Link building rules with Press Releases

Link building rules with Press Releases

 Let’s stop talking about Panda for 1 second and focus on other things that can make you rank better.

One of the main focus of ranking factors by Google is the number of links and how they are placed on a website. Google also looks at where the links point to or rather where they go. Having more high quality backlinks means, the higher it will rank for the keywords that you are trying to rank for.

Here’s a tip: One of the most popular tool used in link building would be Press Release Distribution.While some press release directories allow two or even three links, it is always good to read the terms and conditions.You can actually find tons of press release directories online to help you quickly build a large volume of links back to your website.

Here are some simple guidelines one should follow when using press release distribution for link building.

As a reminder we would like to build links the ethical way.

• Read and understand the rules of each PR directory – All press release directories have their own rules regarding linking. It is always good to repect them. While some may allow two links per press release; others may allow three. There are others that may say you can only include a link every certain number of words thus creating a limit. Others may even refuse to allow links in the body of the press release, instead requiring them at the end, in the contact section.
• Don’t waste your time on low quality PR directories – We all know that a lot of press release directories out there are worthless. They publish anything and everything, they allow any bit of content on their site without checking the quality, and they carry no authority with Google or the other search engines. Be sure that you are only spending time getting links from quality directories that have decent PageRank and authority.In other words, make it count!
• Use keyword-rich anchor text – This is very simple, the best results are easier to attain through keyword-rich anchor text in your links. Here’s an example, let’s say you’re linking back to a page on your website that’s about Blue Hat SEO. The text in your back link should use the phrase “Blue Hat SEO.” This tells the search engines that the page being linked to is about that keyword.
• Never link to the same page more than once – Let’s pretend that  you are allowed to include three links in your press release. Those three links should go to three separate pages. The reason behind this is simple. If you link to the same page more than once in a single press release, only the anchor text from the first link will pass. The others will be ignored by the search engines. This is quite imperative if you want toget results.
• Mix them up – It is no secret that Google likes variety. Never target the same directories. Mix them up. And also use other link building strategies like forum posts, guest blogging, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc. Make surenot to spam these networks as well.
• Post newsworthy press releases – If you are trying to get links it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the quality of your press releases. The quality of the press release is just as important as the quality of your content. The best directories have very high quality standards, so they won’t publish poorly-written press releases with no news value. Keep in mind that most directories can be strict.

Have you ever considered using press release to boost your rankings? Try it!

Paid linking during holidays

Paid Linking during holidays…

Can we actually take advantage of holidays in order to get bigger sales? 

A month’s worth of paid linking, can it possibly go undetected?

More and more people learn from mistakes.

 Google recently annouced that trying to game their search engine for  big calendar events.

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story called Trying to Game Google on “Mother’s Day Flowers”. Yet more big companies got outed for buying links, but this time, Google didn’t say the links had helped.

The story covers how top web sites that rank for search terms related to online flowers sales also appear to have purchased links. This is no big secret, we all gotta find a way to buy links and keep them under the rader. The names large brands such as Teleflora, FTD, 1800Flowers.com and ProFlowers as doing this. Luckily, not all companies were affected and Google also came out with a thread that allows webmasters to tell Google that they were wrongfully penalized. The effects of paid linking affects the natural growth of link thus creating suspicion. Google is wasy too old and too smart to be affected by such cheap tricks.

The reporter sent a list of 6,000 links (apparently paid links, though this isn’t clear) that these companies acquired over a month’s time to Google.Again we gotta consider natural link growth when we crawl them websites for links. Google replied that the links had virtually no impact on the rankings of those sites. While some believe that this is untrue, we are left to wonder, what else can we do? Google states that there are impact to boost or even degrade the rankings of those sites. This means that paid adverts will not get your sites penalized but they won’t let you rank for them. This then reminded me of the caffeine update back in May 2010 where links from blog and forum posts were not entertained.

Google told the NY Times:

None of the links shared by The New York Times had a significant impact on our rankings, due to automated systems we have in place to assess the relevance of links. As always, we investigate spam reports and take corrective action where appropriate.

Google also mentioned in this statement that they do not always penalize for paid links but rather ensure those paid links have little to no effect on the overall rankings. Such a fair system, this would affect black hat SEO from all around the globe. Sure it’s easy to comment and boom place that link then it bocomes a backlink. Haha! Google is wise enough not to let them suck some of that link Juice.

Large firms pay thousands of dollars ti rank using shabby techniques that are expected by our Google engineers .

 It’s nice to know that Google is starting to get wiser.

When the NY Times exposed J.C. Penney for their link schemes earlier this year, J.C. Penney received a harsh manual penalty. But when it comes to hurting these online flower retailers, the week prior to Mother’s Day, Google did not lift a finger – at least not yet.

I personally love the statement from Teleflora saying that its “corporate policy is to not pay for any links that would violate Google’s guidelines:

After closely reviewing the Teleflora links you provided, we believe we are in compliance with Google.”

Oh, so they have a policy to pay for links that do not violate Google’s guidelines? It’s naybody’s game now. But aren’t all paid links against Google’s guidelines? Maybe not?

So paid links aren’t so bad, they simply won’t let you rankfor them.

PSN update

Hi Guys,

DId you ever hear about the PSN getting hacked?

Here’s more intel on the subject:

親愛的PlayStation®Network用戶：

我們發現在2011年4月17至19日，部份PlayStation®Network用戶的帳戶資料在一次非法及未經授權的網路入侵中被洩露。對於是次入侵，我們已：

1. 暫時停止PlayStation®Network服務
2. 委託認可的外部網路保安公司對事件進行全面調查
3. 透過重建系統，迅速提升保安及加強網路基建，為您的個人資料提供更大的保障

我們衷心感謝您的耐性、諒解及信任。我們正設法迅速和有效地以可行的方法解決這些問題。

雖然我們仍然在調查事件的詳情，但我們相信一名未獲授權人士已取得您提供的個人資料，包括姓名、地址（城市、州、郵遞區號）、國家、電郵地址、出生日期、 PlayStation®Network密碼、登入名稱及PSN在線名稱。您的帳戶資料包括購買履歷、帳單郵寄地址（城市、州、郵遞區號）及密碼保安答案 可能已經洩露。如您為您的子女或監護兒童開立子帳號，您的子女或監護兒童的相同資料亦可能已經洩露。雖然現時尚無證據顯示信用卡資料被外洩，但我們亦不能 排除有關可能。如您已透過PlayStation®Network提供信用卡資料，基於審慎處理的前提下，我們建議您留意您的信用卡號碼（保安碼除外）及 到期日亦可能已經洩露。

為了保障您的資料，我們建議您要額外留意要求您提供個人或敏感資料的電郵、電話及欺詐郵件。Sony Computer Entertainment將 不會以任何方式，包括電郵，來要求您提供信用卡號碼、身份證號碼或類似號碼或其他個人識別資料。如被要求提供這些資料，您可確信提出的一方不是Sony Computer Entertainment。PlayStation®Network服務全面恢復後，我們強烈建議您登入並更改密碼。另外，如您在其他服務或帳戶使用 PlayStation®Network使用者名稱或密碼，我們亦建議您更改那些資料。

為了防止身份盜用或其他金錢損失，我們建議您保持機警，復查您的帳戶帳單和核查你的信用卡或其他類似的報告。

我們感謝您耐心等待我們完成事件的調查工作，並為造成的不便深表歉意。我們的團隊正24小時工作，儘快恢復服務。Sony Computer Entertainment非常重視資料保安，並會繼續確保採取額外措施來保障個人識別資料。為顧客提供高質素及安全的娛樂服務是我們的首要工作。如有查 詢，請致電2341 2356 (香港) 或 021 2994 8800 (印尼)或 1 800 81 4963 (馬來西亞)或800 8523 663 (新加坡)或0809 079 888 (台灣)或 0 2715 6100 (泰國)。

Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong Limited
謹啟

Valued PlayStation®Network Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation®Network user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

1. Temporarily turned off PlayStation®Network services;
2. Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
3. Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation®Network password and login, and PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation®Network password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation®Network, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony Computer Entertainment will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, identity number or similar number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony Computer Entertainment is not the entity asking.  When the PlayStation®Network services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password.  Additionally, if you use your PlayStation®Network user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well. 

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports. 

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience.  Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony Computer Entertainment takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority.  Please contact us at 2341 2356 (HONG KONG) OR 021 2994 8800 (INDONESIA) OR 1 800 81 4963 (MALAYSIA) OR 800 8523 663 (SINGAPORE) OR 0809 079 888 (TAIWAN) OR 0 2715 6100 (THAILAND). should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,
Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong Limited

Hackers Take Down Sony’s PlayStation Network

Hackers have managed to cut Sony off at the knees in several of the most competitive aspects of this generation of video games.

For the past five days, the PlayStation Network has been offline-making it impossible for PlayStation 3 owners to play multiplayer games, download updates to titles or use their PS3 to stream movies and music. This represents the most serious outage the service has faced since its start in 2006.

The company has acknowledged via its official blog,that the disruption was initially caused by an “external intrusion.” To ensure future security and figure out exactly what happened, Sony says it turned off both the PlayStation Network and the Qriocity music service on the evening of April 20.

The company says it is not yet certain if credit card or other personal information of users was taken during the intrusion.

Sony says the attack has led it to begin rebuilding the system and it has not given an estimate when it will be back online.

Top Selling Video Games

“Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure,” said Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications, on the blog. “Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security. … I know [players] are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.”

So far, no hacker group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The rogue group known as Anonymous, which has famously launched attacks on both Gene Simmons and Hustler Magazine, was initially suspected, after it vowed in early April to target Sony after the company’s legal action against a hacker who dismantled the PS3’s security.

The group managed to disrupt the service with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack earlier this month. (Anonymous attackers, using software known as “Low Orbit Ion Cannons,” repeatedly pinged the company’s servers. When done simultaneously by enough users, this can bring the site down-usually quickly and without warning.)

PlayStation 3 However, Anonymous denies responsibility for this incident, saying on its site, “While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves, AnonOps was not related to this incident and does not take responsibility for whatever has happened.”

The outage of the PlayStation Network hits Sony at a particularly bad time from a game sales perspective. The company released last week “SOCOM 4,” a multiplayer-focused action game that is traditionally one of its biggest franchises.

Additionally, the eagerly anticipated “Portal 2,” which comes with a co-operative mode, also hit store shelves last week-with an integration of Valve’s Steam online service into the PlayStation Network being touted as one of the chief reasons to opt for the PS3 version of the game, rather than the Xbox 360 version.

Richard Lawler, a senior editor at Engadget, summed up gamer’s frustration via Twitter, writing “PS3 version of Portal 2 came with a PC version and cross-plat[form] play! Xbox 360 version comes with a working online service.”

The outage gives Microsoft an advantage in the online gaming space, as its Xbox Live service has not been compromised. Unlike Microsoft, which requires a $60 annual subscription fee for access to most features of its Xbox Live service, Sony does not charge most users for access to the PlayStation Network. (A PlayStation Plus program is available, giving early access to demos, priority invitations to game beta tests and discounts on products in its online store.)

That will prevent it from having to issue substantial refunds, but that might be small consolation to users who pay subscription fees to companies like Hulu Plus and Netflix, using the PS3 to view streaming content.

Another Google Update Penalizing Sold Links

The Big Google PageRank Slap – Perception Is Everything

Recently Google did a major PageRank update where a lot of sites were downgraded. Many experts believe this PageRank update was Google’s response to link selling – sites which sell links lost points in their PageRank.

Google measures all web pages on a scale of importance from 0 to 10, which is shown in a small green pixel bar on browsers carrying the Google Toolbar. PageRank is “supposedly” measured by the number of backlinks to your site.

Online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your site. The more votes you have the higher your site is ranked. At least that’s how it was supposed to work until a lot of high PR sites started selling links and put a monkey wrench into the whole system.

The latest update may be a smart move on Google’s part to curtail this practice; who’s going to buy a link from a PR2 or even a PR4 site? Besides this could be more than a warning that your site will go down even further if you continue to sell links.

Now this is more of a cosmetic change in PageRank than a real change in your true rankings in Google. Just because your PR goes down doesn’t mean your keyword rankings or traffic from Google also goes down.

I saw some of my sites go up, some stayed the same, but my major site took a big hit – falling from PR6 to PR4. This was more of a devastating blow than I expected mainly for psychological reasons than actual consequences. After years of building the best content you can muster and constantly getting quality one-way links, to see that PageRank drop was very disappointing and hits to the core of your online work.

I have been around for a while so I have experienced many Google Updates – anyone remember the Florida Update? I also keep my ears peeled to discussions of the latest updates in Webmasterworld and Stompernet, and I even read Matt Cutts when I get real nervous… so I knew not to panic just because of the sudden drop in PageRank.

I also knew what most of the SEO experts were saying was true because my major keywords stayed the same and my Google traffic actually went up. But that’s little comfort when you’re talking about Google; you immediately go into overdrive and try to figure out where you went wrong. What caused the drop – because whether PageRank is meaningless or not, you’re still going in the wrong direction.

I saw many of my competitors drop too, but many stayed the same and even a few increased in PageRank. What are they doing right; what am I doing wrong? I don’t sell links but does Google think I am selling links was my main concern? I even moved one external link from my main page to another part of my site, just in case Google is mistaking that as a paid link.

Welcome to webmaster’s paranoid hell!

For SEO reasons I have very few external links on my main page. Can’t see why Google downgraded my main site. I have been at PR6 for years.

Herein lies my main beef, with Google you never really know where you stand; you are constantly walking on eggshells. No matter how good your content or your site is – one misstep and you could be in the doghouse. All your hard work can be taken away in a heartbeat.

It wouldn’t matter so much if it was one of the other two major search engines downgrading your site but this is Google.

Free organic traffic from Google is vital to any online site or business. I would take traffic from Google over any other source of traffic on the web, except for traffic coming from my articles on other sites, and even that traffic probably originated from a search in Google.

Google and Google PageRank have always been important to me – that’s one of the reasons a sudden large drop causes so much concern. There’s another important reason Google PageRank is important to me.

Most SEO experts mistakenly believe PageRank is meaningless because Google is not giving us the true ranking of any site or revealing all the backlinks, which is supposedly one of the major factors in how Google ranks sites. While this fact is obviously true, it has caused many to jump to another conclusion.

Because Google is not giving us the real ranking, many webmasters have dismissed PageRank as a vital element in their sites. Don’t make the same mistake.

Google PageRank is extremely important if you’re doing business on the web. The higher PR you have, the better. But it has nothing to do with keyword rankings or first page SERPs.

What many SEO experts fail to realize (not really their business) is the whole “perceived” value of PageRank.

Google, hate it or love it, has become the most respected company on the web in the eyes of the majority of the web’s users. It carries enormous weight and prestige. The “perceived” value of a high PR7 or PR8 is extremely valuable.

We are not talking about link selling; we are talking about how a perspective business partner or customer will treat your site or business.

Say you have two identical sites you want to do business with online and you discover one is a Google PR2 site and the other is a Google PR8 site – which one would you choose to do business with? Honestly?

From first-hand experience, I know any online company or marketer will get more business offers and be offered more partnerships/joint ventures if you have a high Google PR site than a low one. It will make a difference to your bottom line.

PageRank is important. PageRank has meaning. Even if it has little bearing on your SERPs rankings or Google traffic, PageRank can greatly influence the success of your online site or venture. Don’t ignore or dismiss PageRank as a meaningless relic that didn’t quite work out as Google had planned for it in the first place.

High PageRank will always be valuable.

The day Google gives its own site a PageRank of PR1 or PR2 instead of the current PR10 – that’s the day you can dismiss PageRank as truly meaningless.

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go here: http://www.marketingtoolguide.com 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Free software

1. Evernote - FREE ($5 a month if you upload more than 60MB of data)

Compare to: Microsoft OneNote ($79)

Evernote is like a super organized digital scrapbook. As you go through your daily tasks on the computer, you can toss just about anything in it — pictures, web clippings, and PDF documents. Evernote even lets you search for text inside images, so you can snap a picture of a product or recipe and then find it without digging.

You can create notebooks around projects, folders of web clippings, and notes to organize lists. Then Evernote syncs your notes to the web so you can access them from your Windows PC or Mac, and even via an app for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android and Palm phones. You can also capture new pictures and notes on your smartphone while you’re out, and those sync back to your main computer.

2. LibreOffice - FREE

Compare to: Microsoft Office ($249)

LibreOffice looks and feels much like Microsoft Office, and the resemblance isn’t just skin deep! It lets you import files from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and work on them and share them just as if you were using Office. You can even create new documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in Office’s file formats, and your friends won’t know the difference.

LibreOffice is open-source software, which is created by volunteers and by employees at corporations which use it. They don’t mind sharing, so you’re welcome to download it for your Mac or your Windows or Linux PC.

3. Avast! Antivirus - FREE for basic Anti-virus ($49 to add firewall and anti-spam functionality)

Compare to: Symantec Norton AntiVirus ($34)

Avast is a complete anti-virus and anti-spyware solution for Windows PCs, like AVG and Microsoft Security Essentials. And it not only protects you from unknown online threats, it also scans your PC to get rid of the junk that’s already there.

Avast performs scheduled scans, and provides real-time protection against viruses coming from email, web browsing, instant messaging and peer-to-peer file sharing. Its web shield keeps suspicious websites from loading, and its “sandbox” lets you isolate programs and keep them from changing anything on your computer. But its best feature may be the “silent mode,” which keeps Avast from giving you pop-ups about updates and scans.

4. Dropbox - FREE for up to 2 GB of storage ($9.99 a month for up to 50 GB)

Compare to: Verbatim 2 GB USB Flash Drive ($11), Fetch FTP software ($29)

Instead of emailing yourself files or carrying a fiddly USB key around, try Dropbox! It’s just like a folder on your computer, except that you can access that same folder from any other computer. Download the free software to your Mac, Windows or Linux computer, and it creates a central Dropbox folder. Then drag files there, and you can access them from any device with a web connection. You can even invite friends or coworkers to your Dropbox, and share files with them that are too big to email.

Free Dropbox apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry, so you can also access your files on the go.

5. Kindle Reader - FREE

Compare to: Amazon Kindle ($139)

You probably already know about Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, and its competitors, Kobo and Nook. But did you know you can access the same Kindle ebooks and bookstore from your laptop or smartphone? The free Kindle software is available for Macs and Windows PCs, with mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Phone.

Once installed, you sign in with your Amazon login (or create one if you haven’t already got an account) and then you can choose from thousands of bestselling books, for less than the cost of a paperback and with no shipping charges. Plus, Amazon has over 16,000 free Kindle ebooks, just waiting to be downloaded.

Google Ads

Here’s an example of Google ads:

  <script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-0368103809381297″;
/* 300×250, created 4/7/11 */
google_ad_slot = “0614653917″;
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>

our Site’s Traffic Has Plummeted Since Google’s Farmer/Panda Update. Now What?

our Site’s Traffic Has Plummeted Since Google’s Farmer/Panda Update. Now What?

March 4 update from Insider.

Google’s latest algorithm change has impacted nearly 12% of queries. That means that a lot of sites, big and small, are looking at their web analytics reports this week and seeing devastating traffic graphs down and to the right. It can be difficult to think strategically and objectively in such a a situation and your first reactions may be panic and anger.

Understandable, but if you want to restore your site’s traffic, you need actionable steps for evaluation and change. Even if it is truly the case that you were unfairly hit as a result of collateral damage, you want to spend your limited time and resources on tactics that are likely to bring your traffic back. Read on for more tactical things you can do now, and methods you might want to avoid.

Ineffective Strategies

What is unlikely to bring back your traffic is an appeal to public opinion or the sympathetic hearts of Google’s search engineers. Google extensively tests their algorithm changes to improve search quality and they don’t roll out substantial changes like this unless their internal data shows a marked improvement. Google is a data-driven company, so anecdotal reports just don’t stand up against hard numbers.

<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-0368103809381297″;
/* 300×250, created 4/7/11 */
google_ad_slot = “0786235858″;
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>

In addition, imagine that you’re Google. Now imagine the size of the web. Consider that many site owners whose sites were negatively impacted feel it was a mistake. The point of using algorithms to determine rankings is to avoid both the impossible task of judging each site individually as well as the editorial judgment and censorship potential that would require. The foundation of Google’s organic search product is using large-scale quality signals to determine how to rank the web. Without that, the whole thing falls apart.

A recent Wired article implied that Google did in fact look into and fix individual cases, but Google clarified that this was not the case and emphasized that this change is entirely algorithmic and that their internal data has found the change to improve search quality overall. So while they plan to continue to refine things, they aren’t going to roll the change back.

That said, once you’ve gone through the evaluation I recommend in this article, if you can’t find anything on your site to change, Google has set up a thread on their webmaster discussion forum where you can provide details of your situation. Later in this article, I’ll provide advice on how best to post to that thread.

Ask “Why Me?”

You may take the plummeting rankings as a specific statement from Google on the quality of your site and be personally offended. Some businesses affected are taking the PR route to voice their painful outrage. Gloria Tsang, whose site healthcastle.com lost 40% of search traffic in the last week, issued a press release to say: “To be named a low-quality site is saddening. I want to know why Google named us low quality.”

That’s a sentiment that’s being echoed in press releases, blog posts, board rooms, and discussion forums everywhere. While understandable, your “why me?” question should instead be aimed at, “What is it about my site that caused it to be affected?” This is an algorithmic change that doesn’t target specific sites. Google engineers didn’t create a blacklist a la Blekko. Instead, the algorithms detect specific quality (and non-quality) signals. See later in this article for how to turn the “why me” question around.

Demand to Speak To Google

This is the initial reaction of a lot of site owners impacted. In the Google webmaster discussion thread opened for just this purpose, someone writes, “I would VERY much like to speak with someone at Google.”

See above re: size of the web. It’s just not practical. And as noted above, even if you did speak with someone in Google search quality and they agreed with you that your site is amazing and was only hit due to unfortunate collateral damage, there’s nothing they would be able to do for your site specifically. As they note in their webmaster discussion thread, “this is an algorithmic change [so] we are unable to make manual exceptions”. They can use your site to tweak their algorithms and that in fact may eventually restore your traffic, but they can’t put your site on a whitelist that instantly restores rankings and they are unlikely to roll back the new changes for the sake of your site. Their internal testing has found that overall this change improves search quality and they have to make decisions based on large-scale numbers of searcher satisfaction.

Tell Google How to Change Their Algorithms

Generating high quality search results is amazingly complex and the search engineers at Google have been working hard at it for years. A comment such as this one in the thread Google opened for this discussion on this issue doesn’t take into account all of the moving parts that search engineers keep track of:

My suggestion is this.  You should tweak the algo for any site that shows a secure shopping cart with add to order buttons you should not have the same content standard as pure content sites.  E commerce sites can’t have only original content if they sell products unless they are mfg the product they sell, direct distribution.  So you should make the algo work for ecommerce by not holding them to the same standard on their product pages, pages with an add to cart button.

Spending hours crafting recommendations for how they should be writing algorithms is time that you could be spending investing in your site.

What To Do Next And How To Gain Traffic Back

The first step is to pinpoint exactly what’s causing a problem and narrow in on what those problems are. The first part of this process may be time consuming but it’s fairly easy in that it deals with hard numbers. The second part can be more difficult as it requires subjective evaluation. But the data can help there, too.

Check Your Analytics Data To Ensure You’re Investigating the Right Problem

If your site suddenly lost of all its traffic on February 24th, then yes, it’s likely that this algorithm change is to blame. But remember that site traffic fluctuates for all kinds of reasons so it’s worthwhile to check the cause before spending a lot of time looking for solutions.

1. Check the date of decline. If it’s any date other than February 24th, it may be unrelated. Google tweaks its algorithms all the time though, and all are ultimately towards the same goal of providing the best search results possible, so the advice in this article may still apply. Don’t stop reading yet!
2. Check your traffic sources. Is traffic down across all channels or just unpaid search from Google? If the traffic drop is not unique to Google organic search, something else may be going on. Is a section of your site returning errors? It could be that you don’t have a traffic drop from search at all and instead the ads team has halted an advertising campaign or you’ve lost a link from a prominent high-traffic site that previously sent lots of visitors. If traffic is down across all search engines, your robots.txt file may gotten misconfigured to block large sections of the site.

If you determine that your traffic drop is only from Google unpaid search, then this algorithm  change (or one like it) may be to blame. Below is an example from Google webmaster tools where this clearly seems to be the case.

Pinpoint The Query Categories and Pages In Decline

Take a look at your web analytics data and Google webmaster tools search queries data to see what queries are in decline.  (This may be easier if you export the data into Excel.) Is traffic down across the board? Is branded traffic down? Are only certain categories impacted?

Consider the hypothetical case of a site about cars. Has traffic remained consistent for queries related to car reviews but declined for queries related to finding local used car dealers? Google webmaster tools provides average position for each query so you can also look at rankings declines.

Below is data from Google webmaster tools showing impressions, clicks, and average position for categories of queries for my fake car site (note the data is fake as well and is intended simply as an example). Note that this data compares month over month changes using exported historical data, but if you don’t have historical data, you can do similar analysis with the change percentage information Google webmaster tools provides.

In this fake example, you can see that branded traffic held steady, as did queries related to car reviews. However, traffic from accessories queries dropped in half and traffic from searches for car dealers has slid to almost none.

The reporting package we provide at Nine By Blue not only tracks this data historically, but also tracks queries by category and calculates high rates of change in impressions, clicks, and position by those categories, which makes parsing the information a lot easier than tracking by individual query.

Let’s look more closely at the car accessories queries. This data is sorted by highest drop in impressions, but you can also look at the data by largest drop in clicks and ranking position. In this example, you can see that rankings dropped dramatically (100 spots) for some queries, but only a few positions in other cases. Isolating cases where the site may have lost a lot of traffic because it now ranks lower on the first page of results (vs more dramatic drops) can help you pinpoint pages that may be easiest to regain rankings for and which pages to look to for the more obvious signs of issues.

In the cases where the rankings dropped but the site is still on the first page of results, the number of impressions may not have declined, but number of clicks and click-through rate likely have. Below are queries with significant declines in click-through rate for the car dealer category. You can see that for these examples, impressions are actually up, but since the site is now ranking lower on the first page than before, the click-through rate and subsequently number of clicks to the site is down substantially.

Take a look at the pages that have lost the most traffic as well. One easy way to do it is to in Google webmaster tools Search Queries > Top Pages. If you change the start date in the date range field to February 25th, you can sort the pages by decline percentage. (You can sort this by both decline in impressions and decline in clicks.) Again, exporting into Excel first will make it easier to filter by pages that began with high traffic. You can also try sorting by decline in average position and can cluster the URLs into path-level data if your site is organized such that level of analysis makes sense.

Below is an example of page-level data from our fake car site:

The FAQ section of the site looks like it may have been hit particularly hard. We can try clustering the data by path and, for instance, calculate average rankings loss per directory. Be careful with this type of calculation though. If one URL went from position 2 to position 500 and another went from position 6 to position 7 for instance, your average loss for the folder can look skewed, which is why it’s important to start with sorting page-level data.

Below, I’ve aggregated the data by directory and averaged the ranking decline. The FAQ section doesn’t look great, but the regional dealership directory potentially had the biggest rankings loss. (You can combine this with historical data and analytics data to prioritize by amount of traffic loss.)

To get accurate data, including how the site is ranking now for queries, filter the data to web-only, U.S. only and compare date ranges before and after the algorithm change, as shown below.

What you’re looking for is a sense of whether your entire site has been impacted or only particular topics or pages. Since this algorithm is site-agnostic and looks at specific quality signals on a page-level basis, you may think of this change as hitting your site, but in reality, it’s hit particular pages of your site.

You can see this even with sites that have publicly been very hard hit by this change. Take mahalo.com, for instance. Presumably, their traffic losses have been significant, as they’ve laid off 10% of their staff (even though they saw the writing on the wall early). But their site still ranks well for some queries such as [how to become a travel agent vermont].

By isolating what pages are still doing well, you can learn a lot about how to apply components of those pages to parts of the site that were affected. If the ranking pages don’t seem to have unique attributes, you may want to take a prioritize these pages for improvement so they don’t get hit by the next iteration of Google’s changes.

You can further use this data to prioritize investment in improving pages and determine which sections of the site need to be completely revamped vs. slightly improved.

Data In Action

You can do several things with this data, including:

• Determine which sections of the site are unscathed.
  • Review these pages to determine if they need any adjustments to protect them from additional algorithm changes. For instance, Mahalo should take a look at pages such as the one shown above about becoming a travel agent in vermont to determine if it includes elements that could cause it to be a casualty in the next set of algorithm changes.
  • Otherwise, you can spend your resources on the pages that are having trouble.
• Determine which sections of the site are heavily hit.
  • Compare the qualities of these pages to the ones that are unaffected to see if you can determine patterns about what caused the declines (as described more below).
  • Evaluate if some sections require too substantial an investment to improve and consider removing them.
• Determine which sections of the site suffered minor losses as those may be easiest to improve so you can start gaining traffic back.

Take healthcastle.com, for instance, who sent out that press release. I’m currently in Australia, where the algorithm changes have not yet hit, so what I see in rankings on google.com is likely very similar to how things looked in the United States before the shake up. Ranking position isn’t the best metric to use for lots of reasons, but in this case, I don’t have access to traffic data, so it will have to do.

Here in Australia, the site ranks #1 for [acid reflux diet].

I will make the assumption for purposes of this example that the site used to rank #1 for that query in the U.S. as well. Now, the same page that ranked #1 now ranks #6 in the U.S.

While that’s surely causing a traffic loss, it’s likely still bringing in some traffic. That it dropped to #6 rather than off the first page entirely indicates the page can likely be saved with a little work.

On the other hand, take a look at the query [bill paying system]. Here in pre-algorithm change Australia, an Associated Content page ranks #5 (it may have ranked even more highly in the U.S. before the ranking shift as one of the pages that ranks above it here is a .com.au).

In the U.S. that same page now ranks #17. Let’s take a closer look at that page.

The advice?

1. Create a bill payment chart. This step has amazingly insightful tips such as:
   • In the first column, write “Bills”.
   • Notice that the “bills” column is wider than the rest, since you’ll be writing the names of your bills in rows beneath the “Bills” heading.
   • Make lines going across so there are empty boxes underneath your month headings.
2. Pick a Place for Your Bill Payment Chart and Your Bills. These tips include:
   • I strongly suggest putting them somewhere where you’ll have easy access and visibility so you don’t forget to pay your bills.
3. Choose a Day of the Week to Pay Your Bills.
4. Once a Week Pay Your Bills and Check Them Off Your List.

The author concludes that she’s never paid a bill late since “creating” this “bill paying system”. I can hardly believe she’s giving away such wisdom for free.

Look For Patterns

When I asked Google for their advice for site owners, they told me:

Google has always said that the best practices for sites are to work on original content, original research, authoritative information, or other compelling ways of adding value for users. A site that users love or mention to their friends is the sort of site that Google typically wants to return in our search results. A good litmus test is to ask “What unique or compelling value does my site offer that other sites don’t?”

They had earlier told Search Engine Land:

Sites that believe they have been adversely impacted by the change should be sure to extensively evaluate their site quality. In particular, it’s important to note that low quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site.

This may sound like a lot of non-information, but we can actually learn a lot from it.  When the news of this change was first announced, someone emailed to ask what changes I plan to make in the recommendations I give people about how best to optimize for search. I said that my advice is exactly the same as before. Don’t optimize for algorithms; optimize for what search engines are trying to accomplish with their algorithms and ensure that your pages are the most valuable results for searchers.

In a recent Wired interview, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal provided even more detail. They noted that with the launch of the Caffeine index, they could crawl and store more of the web.

The problem had shifted from random gibberish, which the spam team had nicely taken care of, into somewhat more like written prose. But the content was shallow. It was like, “What’s the bare minimum that I can do that’s not spam?”

They don’t claim to have solved the problem of determining high quality content from poor, but have put together concrete signals to that give clues that they can use.

That’s a very, very hard problem that we haven’t solved, and it’s an ongoing evolution how to solve that problem. We wanted to keep it strictly scientific, so we used our standard evaluation system that we’ve developed, where we basically sent out documents to outside testers. Then we asked the raters questions like: “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?” … . “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?” [Our] job is to find a plane which says that most things on this side of the place are red, and most of the things on that side of the plane are the opposite of red.

Creating a Tactical Plan From Google’s Advice

If we break down what Google’s saying, it’s that ways to avoid being negatively impacted by this (and other) changes are to have a site with:

• Original content and original research (not aggregated or syndicated from other sources)
• Authoritative information (deep and useful content, not simply words about a topic; content that answers people’s questions and that they find credible)
• Compelling added value (if the content isn’t unique, does the page add significant value over the original source?)
• Significant user engagement, including links and social sharing
• Valuable content across the entire site

Look at the pages of your site that are still doing well and the pages that now rank highly for the queries you no longer rank for. Are there patterns that match the bullets above? Certainly it will be the case that for some queries you may find that pages that you don’t feel provide value are ranking, but you should find some common elements in pages that are doing well.

It also may be useful to take a look at the sites that have experienced the largest drops. What elements do they have in common? Are there any similarities with your site?

It may be temping to focus on sites that you consider low quality that are still ranking well. However, Google has been very clear that this algorithm change is a work in progress so those sites may not continue to rank well for very long.

Original Content

Do your pages consist of original content or primarily of content aggregated or syndicated from other sources? For my fake car site, my dealership pages primarily are comprised of business description information that’s replicated across a number of local directory sites.

In the case of healthcastle.com, the same content exists across multiple pages of the site.

Note that in their case, this content also exists across other sites. According to their press release (and their “open letter to Google“, this is because other sites have stolen it and they are the original source. Google recently launched an algorithm update intended to address this issue, so any scraper sites shouldn’t be outranking the original (and in the cases I checked for this site, they weren’t), but it’s certainly the case that Google’s latest changes didn’t completely solve this problem. If scraper sites outranking yours is the primary issue you find, it may be worthwhile to post to the Google webmaster discussion forum s described later in this article.

If you syndicate your content or publish content that authors also publish on their own sites, look at requiring use of the rel=canonical attribute.

Authoritative Content

It’s not enough for content to be original. It also should provide substantial value. Do your pages provide the very best information for the topic? Do pages contain more ads than content? The healthcastle.com page is very ad-heavy and while I can’t say definitively that is contributing to its rankings decline, there’s significantly more advertising than authoritative, valuable content above the fold. Note that I’m not at all saying that sites shouldn’t have advertising or that pages with advertising on them will rank below sites without them. I’m simply saying that if a page consists primarily of advertising rather than content, there’s very little on the page that fits the authoritative and compelling value criteria that Google describes.

As for the content on the page, it’s not bad. But it hasn’t been updated since 2006, so the information could be out of date. Does any newer research exist about this topic? The article contains two myths and six recommendations so I’m not sure if it’s as comprehensive as it could be.

How does this compare to the pages that are now outranking it? The first result is an about.com page, which has been itself criticized for potentially being a content farm.

It also has its share of ads, but more content is available above the fold. It was last updated at the end of 2010, so potentially contains newer medical data. It contains a much more complete list of foods, along with links to all kinds of resources to related information. It’s arguably a better result for searchers.

For queries your site has lost rankings for, look at the pages that now rank well. Even better, have someone not involved with the site take a look. How do the search results look? How does your site compare to the pages that rank more highly? Are they offering more value to searchers?

ezinearticles.com, one of the sites hit the hardest, plans to require authors to write a minimum of 400 hundred words rather than the current 250. But note that length alone isn’t  good measure of value. Google is trying to measure what page across the entire web provides the very best information about the subject matter queried.

Compelling Added Value

It’s certainly possible to rank well with aggregated data, but the page should provide substantial additional value beyond the original source. For instance, take a look at the query [best cell phone rate plan].

The number one result both before and after the change is a page from myrateplan.com. This page doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of content and the large portions of the site rely heavily on aggregated content from cell phone carriers. However, the wizard featured on that page is highly valuable as it sorts through the details of every rate plan and provides useful comparison charts and recommendations.

Significant User Engagement

One way to gauge potential value is to look at the number of links to the individual pages. If people are linking to a page, they are likely finding it valuable.

Google webmaster tools provides reports on the pages of your site with the most links (to get a true picture, export the data and filter out multiple links from a single site). To get real insight, combine that data with information from web analytics about which links bring the most traffic to the site. Pages that aren’t getting traffic from external links might need a closer look for quality.

According to Yahoo Site Explorer, that healthcastle.com page has 224 external links (although once you consolidates multiple links from each site, that number is greatly reduced). The best way to judge which of these are indicators that users are finding the site valuable is to filter it to include only editorial links from “real” sites. And one of the best ways to generate that list is using data — whether or not those links bring traffic.

But since we don’t have that information, we can take some guesses. The link from suite101.com? Likely not being valued all that much by Google considering that Google’s Matt Cutts’ response to the fact that they had lost 94% of their search traffic was “Oh, yes. Suite 101, I’ve known about it for years. I feel pretty confident about the algorithm on Suite 101.”

How about this link: http://awccanadianpharmacy.com/blog/page/2/?

(The random Viagra links in the middle of each blog post is a nice touch.)

And why are sites about single cup coffee brewers linking to a page about acid reflux? If your external link profile looks like this, it’s time to dig deeper. Where did these links come from and why aren’t more of the incoming links from reputable sites?

Web-wide Engagement

How about engagement? If the site allows comments, is your audience actively discussing the topics on your site? Are they sharing the content on social media sites?

If the pages have few links and little engagement and the quality of the content is high, you may need to raise awareness that the content exists through traditional marketing channels (such as press releases, guest blog posts, etc.) and social media channels (for instance, seeking out discussion forums where your topic area is being discussed and answer questions).

Visitor Behavior on Site

Take a a look at your web analytics. Is there a high bounce rate from search? If so, searchers may not have a good first impression of your site and may be going back to the search results to click on another listing. Even if the site has the most useful and compelling content in the world, if that’s not obvious to the searcher due to overwhelming ads, bad design, or other factors, they won’t stick around.

How’s your click through rate from search results for queries in your topic area? Look at the data provided by Google webmaster tools before February 24th for queries your site ranked highly for. How’s the click through rate? If searchers weren’t clicking your listing, investigate why that might be and how to improve the title and meta description on the pages to better compel clicks.

How many pages do typical visitors view? Does the navigation make it easy to see related content and to understand the structure of the site and what it has to offer?

Does the site get many return visitors? If the site isn’t engaging and delighting your audience, what’s missing and what can you do to change that?

Low Value Pages

When looking at the data for your site as described earlier in this article, are there certain pages or sections of the site that have been impacted significantly more than others? (The earlier example that showed a page that had an average ranking decline of 600 positions is a good candidate.) Look at those pages to evaluate if quick changes can improve them.

If that seems unlikely, consider removing those pages or blocking them with robots.txt until you’re about to devote resources in improving their quality. Blocking with robots.txt is a good option if the pages get traffic and provide revenue from other acquisition channels; removing the pages is a good option if they hurt the overall credibility of the site for visitors.

Some pages, such as the Associated Content bill pay system article mentioned above, may be better to be scrapped entirely.

Make a Prioritized Plan

At this point, you should have compiled enough data to make strategic decisions about how to proceed. You know:

• What pages are still driving substantial traffic and should be protected.
• What pages can be improved fairly easily.
• What pages would take considerable resources to improve and may be hurting the overall perception of the site.

You also likely have a good sense of what issues may be causing the rankings declines. Do the pages need more original content? More valuable content? Do you need to raise more awareness of the content in order to increase engagement and links?

Start with the pages or sections of the site that have had only slight drops and for which you can identify improvements. If you see consistent patterns, you might consider how you could change the overall processes for creating content, site design, and engaging with visitors.

• Do the pages contain more ads than content?
• Does the site provide exactly what your visitors want?
• Can you think of creative ways to use the data you have differently (such as in the form of wizards or visualizations)?
• Is the first impression of the site engaging and credible?

Your initial reaction upon this review is that even after identifying what content has suffered the biggest drops, you don’t see obvious quality issues. If that’s the case, try to get feedback from an objective third party. Have them answer the same questions Google set up such as:

• Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card?
• Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?
• Do you consider this site to be authoritative?
• Would it be okay if this was in a magazine?
• Does this site have excessive ads?

It could be that this is an opportunity to learn ways to provide value to your audience and subsequently not only increase search traffic, but return visitors, conversions, and loyalty as well.

File A Reconsideration Request?

In many of the discussion threads, site owners have wondered if they should submit a reconsideration request after making changes to the site. Since this Google change is a algorithmic search quality change, and not a penalty applied to specific sites for webmaster guidelines violations, generally, a reconsideration request would not apply. However, if, during the evaluation of your site, you find webmaster guidelines violations and clean them up, then a reconsideration request would be in order.

Reaching Out To Google

What if you do all of this analysis and you can’t identify obvious quality issues with your content? What if scraper sites now outrank you with content they stole from your site? As noted earlier, Google has started a thread in their webmaster discussion forum so you can provide them with more details.

Before you embark on this route, it’s important to keep in mind that even if Google agrees that your site was collateral damage and shouldn’t have been swept up in this change, you may not see things fixed quickly. Google has been very clear that this was an algorithmic change that overall improved search quality. Because it didn’t target specific sites and is based solely on signals across the web, Google can’t manually restore a site’s rankings. And they aren’t going to roll back the change. Instead as they continue to refine things, they will use the examples from this thread.

As they posted:

Note that as this is an algorithmic change we are unable to make manual exceptions, but in cases of high quality content we can pass the examples along to the engineers who will look at them as they work on future iterations and improvements to the algorithm.

Some have taken this to mean that this is a special case and they realize their algorithm change wasn’t as great as they originally thought. That’s unlikely to be the case. Google tweaks its algorithms hundreds of times a year and with every change, they continue to refine based on searcher behavior and feedback. In fact, this type of feedback is one of the primary reasons I created the webmaster discussion forum and webmaster trends analyst position when I worked at Google. Search engineers can use this information to look more closely at specific examples and make improvements.

Crafting Your Post

If you truly believe your site was caught up in collateral damage, you are likely understandably upset. But the most useful kind of post is one that’s reasonable and objective. Provide specific details, such as queries and URLs that have lost ranking. If your content is being scraped, point out examples. Mention that you’ve gone through the type of analysis and evaluation described in this article and logically describe the ways your pages provide value for the example queries over the pages that now rank.

Avoid using charged words and being defensive. Don’t tell Google how to change their algorithms; just provide facts. For instance, the first post in the thread includes comments such as “this move violates the democratic principles of the Internet.” That’s a subjective statement that doesn’t provide Google with any useful information.

Don’t just ask Google to evaluate or reconsider your site or just say that your site is high quality. Provide specific examples. For instance, this post gives Google very little to work with:

“We’ve noticed numerous instances where our top (1st-2nd) SE rankings have dropped several places to several pages.  This is a huge and devastating hit to the well-being of our website.  Please review…”

And this post, while understandable, isn’t the intent of the thread:

“Please look at my site and tell me what is wrong with it.”

This post, however, provides actionable, detailed information:

For example, we wrote a review for the latest episode of the CBS show “The Good Wife”.

http://www.daemonstv.com/2011/03/02/the-good-wife-great-firewall-review/

We are ranking for this review on page 3 for the keyword:

“THE GOOD WIFE “Great Firewall” Review”

But there is a site that scraped our feed that is ranking for the same keyword on page 1

http://earlytopnews.com/entertainment/the-good-wife-%E2%80%9Cgreat-firewall%E2%80%9D-review.html

It’s not useful to mention how much you spend on AdWords or that your site was featured by AdSense. Google’s unpaid search results are not influenced in any way by a site’s relationship with AdWords or AdSense.

When To Expect Changes

If you identify areas of your site to improve, you should see changes in search results not long after you make those improvements. As Google recrawls and re-analyzes your site, the new signals associated with your pages based on your improvements will be used for future ranking.

If you feel your site was collateral damage and Google agrees, it’s difficult to say when you might see changes. Google has said they’ll be making changes in “the coming weeks” but in reality search engineers are always tweaking the algorithms and this will be a long term iteration. Google is likely to look over the feedback to pinpoint large scale patterns, then tackle those first.

As your improve your site, make sure you are also maximizing other acquisition channels and engendering loyalty from your existing customer base. Give your customers reasons to come back to your site again and again. Reach out to your potential audiences where they are — other sites, social media, offline. A comprehensive strategy that doesn’t rely solely on search will help get your business through the peaks and valleys inherent in the changing nature of the web.

Old School Ranking Factors

Top 5 Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

   73% very high importance

   73%

2. External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

   71% very high importance

   71%

3. Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

   67% very high importance

   67%

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

   66% very high importance

   66%

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

   66% very high importance

   66%

Top 5 Negative Ranking Factors

1. Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative Intent

   68% very high importance

   68%

2. Link Acquisition from Known Link Brokers/Sellers

   56% high importance

   56%

3. Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages

   51% moderate importance

   51%

4. Cloaking by User Agent

   51% moderate importance

   51%

5. Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility

   51% moderate importance

   51%

Top 5 Most Contentious Factors

1. Cloaking by Cookie Detection 16.3% strong contention
2. Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection 15.4% moderate contention
3. Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background 15.3% moderate contention
4. Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention
5. Cloaking by User Agent 15.2% moderate contention

Note: Consensus and contention percentages are calculated based on the standard deviations of contributor answers.

Participants were asked to apply the ranking factors to Google’s search engine, and although we’ve found that it’s largely applicable to other major US engines (Bing, Yahoo! & Ask), some variance almost certainly exists.

Overall Ranking Algorithm

• 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 20% Anchor Text of External Links
• 15% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 6% Social Graph Metrics
• 5% Registration and Hosting Data

Google AdSense

This post confirms my
ownership of the site and that this site adheres to Google AdSense
program policies and Terms and Conditions.”

Google AdSense

This post confirms my
ownership of the site and that this site adheres to Google AdSense
program policies and Terms and Conditions.”