We did have some forewarning this update was coming. As we discussed a little over a month ago, Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts was asked at the SXSW Conference what Google was doing about “overly-optimized” sites. Although it isn’t customary for Cutts and Google to announce an update ahead of time, he went on to explain how the search giant was planning an algorithmic update to deal with this issue.

So what is overly-optimized content?

In the context of the Penguin update, this can include content stuffed with keywords, shady link building and other practices. According to a report in Search Engine News and SEO Moz, sites negatively affected by the update likely have one or more of the following:

• Low-quality or “spun” content
• Questionable linking practices
• Overuse of exact-match domains
• Aggressive use of exact-match anchor text
• Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links

Below is an example from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog of a site with unusual linking patterns and excessive use of keywords. Notice how the links have no relation to the content.

Courtesy of Google Webmaster Central blog

Best we and others can tell the update was rolled out to all languages simultaneously on April 24^th. For searches in English, it’s estimated around 3.1% of queries were affected. To compare, the initial phase of Google’s Panda update affected 12% of searches done in English but in the beginning, Google said it would only affect 3% of searches.

But someone else’s loss could be someone else’s gain. Many sites who are not affected indeed improve their position following updates like Penguin.

From updates like Penguin and Panda, we can discern that Google prefers branded sites – early reports too indicate that sites with a good link profile survived the latest algorithmic update. We all know how Google has been targeting spam, unnatural links and low-quality sites for a long time. This latest “update” is simply a continuation down that road.

Penguin is a lot like Panda in that it is an “algorithmic” update – meaning that if you were affected, submitting a reconsideration request with Google won’t get you very far. Basically what you have to do is remove the spam, clean up your site and wait for a data refresh and re-crawl.

That of course can take weeks.

If you feel your site was caught in the filter by mistake, there is a form you can complete to petition Google. You can also visit your Webmaster Tools account or use Google’s Webmaster Forum to inquire about your site.

It’s suggested however that you be real careful in pursuing these options. Be absolutely sure your site doesn’t have an issue with it to cause it to be legitimately filtered during an update.

Check back with us again in the next couple of weeks as we explore things that can trigger a loss in rankings through algorithmic updates.

Was your site affected by the Penguin update?

If so, what was the issue and what are you doing to address it?

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How does Google write the algorithms that crawl a site, index its content, and rank it according to keywords?

While that’s certainly a question we could write many books trying to explain, Google does provide some guidance into its thinking. They do not discuss specific ranking factors but do provide some insights into what they consider a high-quality site.

The search giant’s stated goal is to deliver the best search experience for their users. In their Webmaster Central Blog post following their big Panda update a year ago, Google claimed it would be making nearly 500 tweaks to the algorithm over the course of 2011.

Rather than trying to keep track of all that, Google recommends and we agree that you should develop site content – articles, blogs, landing pages, e-books – with your readers in mind first and the search engines second.

The following questions originally posted on Google’s blog can serve as a good way for you to evaluate the quality of your pages and those of your competition. Continue reading for the 23 questions Google asks in assessing the quality of a webpage or article:

1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert of enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
6. Are the topics driven by genuine interests of the readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
7. Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
8. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
9. How much quality control is done on content?
10. Does the article describe both sides of a story
11. Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
12. Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
13. Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
14. For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
15. Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
16. Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
17. Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
18. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
19. Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
20. Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
21. Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
22. Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
23. Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Considering these questions and more when developing content for your site will go a long way toward ensuring your hard work doesn’t go to waste by way of a penalty.

WARNING: Low-quality content on one part of your site can impact the entire site’s rankings

Be sure you’re focusing on your entire site.

If you have lower quality content, it may be dragging your rankings down. Google suggests you can deal with this issue one of three ways:

• Removing the low-quality pages altogether
• Merging and improving existing content into more useful pages
• Move low-quality content to another domain

Of course, there are many other things to consider when making sure your website is crawlable by the search engines.

But from a content perspective, considering these questions above will go a long way toward excelling in the rankings and avoiding troubles during any algorithmic updates.

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Dubbed the “Venice” update, Cutts said Google would punish sites that are too optimized for SEO, or what he called “over optimized” or “overly SEO’d” (…according to reports from HubSpot and Search Engine Land).

Although Cutts initially had planned not to announce the update ahead of time, he decided to go ahead and spill the beans following a question the panel received from an attendee at the SXSW event.

Basically, the question asked what Google was doing to prevent overly optimized content. For example, if you search for “three-winged widgets” on Google and the first result is just a keyword stuffed document, it won’t have much value to you, the reader.

In his response to the attendee’s question, Cutts explained the changes as “trying to make the algorithm more adaptive.” Sites that will be penalized will be those who are clearly engaging in keyword stuffing, exchanging too many links and any other practices that go beyond “…what a normal person would expect.”

I’ve done things SEO-e and other sources have suggested I do. Will I have to worry about being penalized for following standard recommendations?

A similar question was asked of Cutts by our friend Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and the short answer is no, it won’t.

Those who will be penalized are sites whose content is driven by keywords rather than topics. If you’re selecting topics based on what you’re audience wants you shouldn’t have anything to worry about provided you’re not stuffing your content with keywords. As we’ve said before, if you spam your content with keywords to the point that it doesn’t read naturally, your site will be either ignored or penalized.

In a follow-up to Cutts’ response, Bing’s Duane Forrester added that social sharing is an important signal as to how others value your content. If others think you have great content, they will “…amplify it” Forrester explains.

“If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us,” explains Forrester.

In light of these revelations by Cutts, we want to take a moment to reiterate the old rule of thumb.

• 2-3 separate, unique keywords on a page
• Vary your use of keywords (i.e. singular, plural, stemming, synonyms)
• Above all, make sure your copy reads naturally. If it feels spammy to you, then it likely contains too many keywords

In the end, if you’re writing with your readers in mind first and the search engines second, you should be okay. Make your readers the first priority and the rankings will follow provided your site is easily crawlable so the bots can actually read and index your content.

Read some of our prior posts on keywords and how you can maximize keyword instances without your content being too spammy.

Are you concerned about Google’s Venice update? What are your thoughts on penalizing sites for over-optimization?

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We’d know – we’ve spent a few years working to get sites to the top of the search engines. Building links is a big part of that. But sometimes though, it can literally be considered a “needle in a haystack” trying to find the right, do-follow link that will really move a website.

As the years have gone on, this task has gotten even more complex as search engines like Google continually make changes to their algorithms.

Fortunately though, there are tools available that can expedite these steps and make the daily task of finding good quality links slightly easier. Below are 6 recommended tools for really cranking up your link building efforts. Each tool has its own unique strengths and focus.

1.    Screaming Frog SEO Spider (http://www.screamingfrom.co.uk/seo-spider/)

Utilizes an often overlooked way of getting links and audits your site and your competitors’ site(s). The desktop tool sees which incoming links to your site are going to 404 error pages and crawls competitor sites to see where they’re linking.

2.    Majestic SEO (paid) (http://ww.majesticseo.com/)

Majestic SEO is now considered the premier tool for comprehensive backlink data since Yahoo Site Explorer went offline last year. Many SEO companies use this tool as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ data provider for their own stats.

3.    Blekko (http://blekko.com)

Blekko is unique in that it uses backslash functionality to provide SEO-rich data. Basically, you register for free then enter any site’s URL with modifiers like “/SEO,” “/inbound,” or “/outbound” for detailed link information.

4.    SubmitEaze (http://www.submiteaze.com/)

Since Google’s Panda update last year, the value of directors and article links for link building is something to be real careful with. SubmitEaze helps you find the qualified directories related to your industry that will benefit your firm.

5.    Quix (http://www.quixapp.com/)

Quix is a “bookmarklet” tool that brings many everyday SEO, social, WordPress and webmaster tasks under one umbrella. Literally dozens of commands allow you to research competitor sites, Google and even social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

6.    ToutApp (http://www.toutapp.com/)

Although link building through blind e-mails requesting a link to page A in exchange for a link to page B are in the past, there is still a need for link builders to stay in touch and cultivate media and PR contacts. ToutApp helps do this by automating the process and providing detailed tracking.

We’ve used a few of these tools to help us dramatically improve link building efforts for us and our clients.

Have you used any of these tools?

Any other link building tools you’d recommend?

Let us know in the comments field below!!

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With that said, now is the time to consider integrating a mobile version of your website into your online marketing strategy.

When examining this from a purely SEO standpoint though, one thing you must understand before anything:

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo don’t give a hoot if you have a mobile compatible web site or not

That’s right – websites designed for mobile users do NOT receive any special treatment from the search engines. In other words, searches from a mobile smartphone are treated just like any other search from a regular computer.

If you take out your smartphone and do a search, you’ll notice that search engines do not rank mobile sites higher unless you add “mobile” or some other unique keyword to your phrase.

Let’s be clear though – having a site optimized for mobile users is absolutely important. However, this is more of a usability issue and not necessarily a ranking issue.

From a search engine optimization standpoint though, it’s highly unlikely your mobile site will ever outrank your main site.

The big impact in terms of SEO and mobile smartphones is local search. Here’s where sites designed for mobile devices are treated differently than desktop sites (…notice, they treat them differently, not better).

Google and others essentially assume that a mobile search is local. In fact, statistics show that there is a 33% or higher chance you’re looking for something local when using your smartphone.

For example, if you type in “Best Buy” on your mobile device, it’s assumed you’re looking for the local Best Buy store in your town.

Another caveat of mobile search (..exclusive to Google) is the fact that Google Places is clearly pushed to the top in a majority of local related keyword searches.

Therefore, if your customers are local, it’s quite clear you need to have a presence in something like Google Places.

Aside from local searches though, there isn’t any special treatment for mobile-enabled websites.

With this assumption in hand, your best bet is to drive all traffic to your main site and put your mobile optimized site with a sub-directory (i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/mobile) rather than as a stand-alone subdomain (i.e. http://mobile.yoursite.com).

Setting up your mobile site this way carries several benefits, including:

• Content, trust and authority of your main site (…since it’s likely been around much longer) will be available to your mobile users
• You can maintain focus of your link building on your main site rather than having to split your efforts between multiple sites
• Setting cookies is less troublesome when you don’t have to go cross domain

If you’ve setup a mobile site with its own stand-alone domain, you’re probably experiencing difficulty in getting the new domain to rank. If so, you can setup a 301 re-direct to a mobile domain attached to your main website (i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/mobile).

From a marketing and usability standpoint, mobile compatible sites are becoming an absolute must, especially considering these devices are currently experiencing an explosive 400% growth in usage. Much of your content will stay the same – it will just need to include coding to make it compatible for the ubiquitous small screens mobile smartphones have.

But considering the fact that only a tiny fraction of companies have added mobile sites, you will likely have a distinct competitive advantage by starting one now rather than waiting another year or two.

Other Posts you May Be Interested In

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Preparing for the Mobile Revolution, Part II

But search engine optimization and building search rankings go well beyond just keywords, an arbitrary amount of content and so on. It also has to be informative and interesting enough to be shared either through linking or the increasingly important social media mentions.

Simply writing generic content that doesn’t grab the reader’s attention won’t exactly yield a whole lot of benefit for your firm.

Headlines are how you grab this attention, which should intrigue the reader into continuing on for more.

Time is valuable….

Since we’re bombarded with so much information all the time, we’re only going to look at what really intrigues us and think will benefit us. Seeing a boring headline limits your content’s potential in this regard. And if it doesn’t see much in the way of traffic, links and mentions in social media, it won’t have the impact it can.

That’s why taking a few minutes to craft a headline that grabs your reader’s attention is so valuable. Headlines are an invaluable part of print media (…think about when you’re in the checkout line looking at the magazines). In the online world, headlines are doubly important due to the sheer magnitude of content that’s out there.

Nick Usborne has outlined 7 approaches to headlines that can grab readers’ attention and ignite their curiosity to keep reading. Using one of these will help you maximize the impact your content has on your bottom line.

Approach #1: Ubiquitous List

People love seeing lists, which are easy to scan and read. They are a lot of times a hit on social media. Lists can be especially valuable if you include some sort of benefit like “5 Ways to save on your Vacation,” or whatever is applicable to your business.

Approach #2: “How To”

Always a winner too…explaining how to do something will always draw a lot of attention. Be sure you say that in your headline (ex: “How to save 15% on your heating bill) so people will clearly see the benefit of reading further. Millions of people go online each day to find out how to do something – buy a car, pick a stereo, fix a flat, whatever.

Approach #3: Challenge

Another thing that compels people to read is a challenge. Do I know the answers or not? What don’t I know or what am I missing? Good example from Nick – “5 Things you don’t know about your teenagers.”

Approach #4: Intrigue

This approach is kind of like a brain-twister where the reader has to keep going to find the answer. “Body Found, Man Still Missing” is an actual headline from a newspaper. While searching for a missing person, someone else’s body was found.

Approach #5: Conspiracy

We all love a good conspiracy involving anyone in a position of authority (doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.). Giving any indication they’ve hidden the truth will certainly entice readers for more. (Ex:  The truth about raw food diets)

Approach #6: Secrets of the Opposite Sex

People love delving into the mystery of what makes the opposite sex tick. If you’re targeting a specific gender, you will grab a lot of attention this way. (Ex: Why women love to shop or Why men love to watch sports)

Approach #7: Scarcity

Indicating scarcity of an offer or a closing window of time to do something will indeed motivate people to read further. People don’t like to miss out on something so their attention will be drawn by the prospect of a last chance. (Ex: “Last chance to get tickets” or “Deadline for applications soon”)

Examples of headlines are mainly from Nick with a few more thrown in there by me.

These 7 approaches to headlines will garner much more attention than regular, descriptive headlines. The result will be a much higher number of social media mentions, likes and shares.

Nick Usborne has an e-book on crafting killer headlines that I hope to obtain and read here soon. When I do, I’ll come back and share what I learned.

Have you taken one of these approaches in crafting a headline?

If so, did you see more conversions, shares and so forth?

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It’s commonly known in the search marketing world that Bing has partnerships with Facebook and Twitter and integrates them into relevant search results.

Starting this week though, Google is rolling out a transformative switch that will integrate pictures and posts from Google+ in with search results. Those of us signed into Google will be able to simultaneously search the broader web and our own Google+ networks at the same time.

This latest update from Google is dubbed “Search Across your World.” Jack Menzel, Google’s product management director, explains that members will be able to “…search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.”

While they will be clearly noted, Google+ results will be blended in with traditional ‘authoritative results.’

Let’s say you’re researching your next vacation to the Grand Canyon and type that into a search. Besides sites showcasing the park, any tours and attractions, you will also see a post one of your friends wrote in Google+ about their trip. However, it will only appear if the post or picture has been shared with you or if it’s public (…in order to alleviate privacy concerns).

And that’s an important thing to remember – this new integration with Google+ and regular search will include images as well. Therefore, if you use Google Image search, pictures from your friends will appear alongside results from the broader web.

From Google’s perspective, this integration of personal, private, public and social will ensure you’re getting more relevant results because this is the information and the people you choose to connect with.

These new features will only work if you’re signed into Google though (…another move to allay privacy concerns). And to allow more flexibility, icons will appear at the top of the page – one allowing you to include social results and the other allowing you to strictly see standard, non-personalized results.

Amit Singhal, who oversees Google’s algorithms, comments that “The social search algorithm, and the personal search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.”

Think of this is as another integration of different searches into one place. In the good ol’ days, you had to do separate searches for news, images and so forth. For a while now though, these results have been integrated with regular searches. Google is now simply including social in that mix as well.

How will this affect business’ search engine optimization efforts?

Only time will tell. One thing is absolutely certain though – we will report on these effects as they become available to us.

In the meantime, see this quick summary from Google below and take a look at these expert reviews from Mashable and Search Engine Land to learn more about these revolutionary changes.

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Over the last few weeks of 2011, we took a break to assess the state of search engine optimization and where things were headed going into 2012. We do this in order to help our clients (…and readers of this blog) better understand where they should focus their online marketing efforts.

After reflecting on where we’ve been and where we’re going, we quickly realized that the lines between different types of search – namely organic, local, mobile and social – are now being blurred more than ever. Rather than web search strictly being the center of activity online, social is increasingly becoming the focus.

According to an exclusive web tutorial from Planet Ocean, web search was the sun and other types of search (…or planets) revolved around it. Now, instead of web search being the sun, social is quickly becoming the center of the universe with other types of search (…or planets) revolving around it.

As we’ve said here many times over the last year, being social is a critical strategy to being successful online – this will become even more critical in the coming year. A cursory review of search results for a variety of terms shows social mentions and engagement alongside traditional webpages.

Social is being aggressively integrated in Bing, who has partnerships with Facebook, Skype and Twitter. Google has basically bet the farm on its new social network Google +.

From these arrangements and others, we can ascertain that social sharing will increasingly integrate with web search. Going forward, social shares or votes will increasingly be the new links.

How many have liked, +1’d or otherwise made a comment regarding content on your site?

So how can I ensure my site continues to rank high in 2012?

Dominating your market online in the new year will require some tried and true methods mixed with some new ways of engaging your audience online.

Since the web has become increasingly social, it’s become increasingly democratized as well. Users will more and more be the driving force in determining which social networking platforms you ultimately adopt.

The key to all of this though is content – as in years past, successful online marketing will be driven by your ability to create reference grade content that helps the reader. In turn, this can lead to true engagement that builds trust and value.

Rather than a few pages earning links, success online will hinge more on how socially engaging your content is.

The more likes, +1s and buzz your content has, the better your business will do.

Besides content itself, freshness will also be a driving factor in maintaining and building high search rankings. It’s increasingly become clear that Google and others are placing a high value on ‘fresh’ content. Just in the last two months, we’ve seen Google make updates to its algorithms to reward sites with fresh content, especially in areas that are always changing.

This update though has sadly penalized some sites with great ‘evergreen’ content that’s been around awhile but still valuable. Repurposing this content will help you get around this ‘freshness’ problem, especially if you experienced a drop in rankings due to this latest update.

Also in 2012, expect to see more firms using social media tools for product development and testing as well as technical support.

What about mobile-based search? Will it continue to grow in 2012?

An emphatic yes!! It’s projected that by 2015, more users in the U.S. will access the Internet through their smartphones or tablets than a regular computer.

Mobile search is deeply tied into local search with over 40% of searches on a mobile device being for something local like a restaurant, doctor’s office or brick and mortar store. According to Google, 44% of searches from a mobile device in the 2011 holiday shopping season were for store locations and last-minute gifts.

With mobile devices, users can seamlessly float between mobile, local and product search as well as their social media activities.

In 2012, it’s imperative that local business establish their presence on places like Bing Local, Google Places, Foursquare and others. Don’t be hesitant to allow reviews – customer reviews give you an opportunity to address grievances and open yourself up to new ways of engaging customers.

So there you have it – things will continue to move at wharp speed in this new year – social and mobile is most certainly revolutionizing how people interact and find things they need.

Stay tuned to our search engine optimization blog as we slice and dice the trends and developments in the search marketing world. Most of all relax and have fun with the possibilities the online sphere will bring in 2012.

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Preparing for the Mobile Revolution – Part II

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This latest update is known as the ‘freshness update’ because of its stated goal – rank newer content higher in search results.

The search giant says these changes should affect around 35% of searches, mainly in areas where the most recent content matters – current events, hot topics, celebrity gossip, product/movie reviews and breaking news are examples of where this principal would apply. See further explanation and a list of the winners & losers in this great post from TechCrunch.

Here are a few searches you can look at for an example – “Black Friday 2011,” “Penn State scandal” or “NBA lock-out”

One thing you will notice is how top results are time-stamped and annotated more visually than before. Some of these annotations are in days while others are notated in minutes or even seconds. From these ‘time-stamps,’ we can tell that date-specific content is being served now more than ever.

Considering this emphasis on placing newer content higher in search results, consider the following 7 strategies to ‘evergreen’ your content and increase your chances of a ‘freshness’ boost in search results.

1) Start and maintain a blog

It’s clear from this update that more timely content is better. Therefore, one of the best ways to accomplish this ‘timely’ requirement is to publish content on a variety of topics on a regular, even daily basis. A blog is one of the best ways to easily get this content online.

2) Generate ‘Link Bait’ pieces

Content pieces that are informative and entertaining sometimes bring in thousands of visitors, hundreds of social media impressions and dozens of links each day. When these types of pieces are published on your blog, you will certainly see higher rankings. Seeing the popularity and relevancy for so many people will be a strong signal to Google.

3) Use Time Stamps to your advantage

Take a look at the top results in our sample searches and you’ll notice that each one has a time stamp. Each ‘freshness’ result has a clear publication date pulled by Google from the piece. Time stamping is easy to do and automatic on many blog platforms like WordPress. Google recommends the YYYY-MM-DD format (…2011-12-12).

4) Maximize Your Use of Social Media

Make sure you’re using social media tools to ‘push out’ new content as well as ‘pull in’ traffic     and social signals to that same content. Nothing says ‘fresh’ like a Tweet, Facebook comment or a +1 on Google’s new social network. Also, you can tap into your social networks to help write more content for you. If that isn’t possible, getting your friends to simply promote your content or leave comments will dramatically boost your ‘freshness quotient’ with Google.

5) Dynamically Update XML Sitemaps

By default, XML sitemaps include time stamps for each crawled URL within the sitemap.      Making sure these time stamps are updated regularly when new content is posted is now a pretty big deal. Blogging platforms like WordPress do this automatically but for your regular site content, it’s recommended you install a standalone XML sitemap generator that will automatically update your pages when you do.

6) Publish more Press Releases

Press releases scream ‘fresh’ and timely. In this new era of freshness though, press releases just may be the best and fastest way to feed the search engine a steady stream of the type of content they’re displaying high in search results. However, a press release will only remain fresh for a couple days up to a week so think about ways you can ‘update’ a prior press release with new, more detailed information when possible.

7) Get into Google News

Although it’s extremely difficult for a lone blogger to get into Google News, doing so can have a tremendous influence in how/if your content will find its way to the top of these ‘freshness’ results.

After reading about Google’s new fascination with freshness, you may be thinking that you can simply make changes to a previously published piece of content. According to Google’s statements though, one of the more important factors affecting which content they serve is when they first crawled a page. Making changes to your content in the hope of getting a ‘freshness boost’ will not work.

Therefore, be sure your content is correct the first time!!

One observation about these changes that we and others like our friends at Search Engine News have noticed – freshness doesn’t always equate to ‘most relevant’ in terms of returned search results. Down the road, this distinction may cause problems for Google…we’ll see of course.

Related Posts

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A recent video from the head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, tries to answer this question. In short, no it isn’t. According to Cutts, all SEO basically means is making sure your pages are well represented in search results.

There are many legitimate, or ‘white hat,’ tactics SEO pros can use to help your pages rank high, including:

• Making sure pages are crawlable with good links
• Using strong keywords in site’s content. Words everyday people will use, not insider industry jargon
• Constructing a site that’s highly usable and has a design conducive to search engines
• Making your site loads fast, which is one of many of Google’s search ranking factors
• Building a good URL structure that’s easy to follow for both users and search engines

Using techniques like these and many others are considered to be okay by Google. Sites that follow these guidelines and build good quality that’s easily crawlable will, over time, see their organic rankings build.

However, there are ‘black hat’ techniques as they’re called that Google frowns upon. Sites who are caught using things like hack sites and keyword stuffing will be penalized severely by Google. Sometimes, these penalties are impossible to recover from.

The goal of Google is to return the best search results as possible for their users. If a searcher isn’t able to find the right information, they will start looking elsewhere for it. As the #1 search engine accounting for over 2/3 of searches online, Google has an interest in making sure it returns sites that are informative and relevant to what the searcher was looking for.

Matt explains (…correctly in our opinion) how search engine spiders are not smart enough yet to figure out what a site is about all on their own. Therefore, it’s the site owner’s job to ‘help’ the spider learn what your site is about…this at its core is where SEO comes in.  In our experience, basic fundamentals are not addressed.  A good SEO will fix these SEO fundamentals (…listed above), analyze site traffic, ROI and other important factors to keep your site’s rankings consistently high.

With that said, SEO is about building a site Google can crawl and index. If you hire a search engine optimization company to handle your site’s SEO, there shouldn’t be any secret as to what they’re doing. Your SEO should be open about what they’re doing to get your site to the top of search results.

If they’re not, you should go elsewhere for these services. If the SEO firm is employing ‘black hat’ techniques, your site and business will be the one who suffers, not the SEO firm who used the shady tactics.

If your site is penalized for employing nefarious techniques, it will take a long time for you to make up the lost ground. Meanwhile, the SEO firm will have taken a lot of your money and will not suffer the same consequence.

Watch the video below to learn more.

One lesson though to keep in mind in this situation – buyer beware!!