Aqeel Bilal Malik | SEO and Social Media Evangelist

7 Key SEO Strategies That Can Be on Auto Pilot

2015-07-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

Although it is difficult to track all the SEO tools that have been launched in recent years with the new features of existing tools, it is necessary to try to determine how their characteristics can support and help us to advance our SEO activities effectively. This is specifically true when it comes to tasks that are essential or very beneficial for SEO operations, but are composite or takes time in execution. Due to this I want to share with you those seven SEO tasks that are now partially or fully automated with the help of some tools.

1. Estimate Potential Traffic of Your Industry

The first activity when starting a new website or an SEO process is to estimate the potential traffic normally per channel and locate relevant potential competitors in the market of your business. Assessing this can be a difficult work, commonly when we started working in a new market that you are not already familiar. However, SimilarWeb "Industry Analysis" reports can help greatly by authorizing you to easily get the most beneficial traffic data for the entire industry in many countries and also helps in showing per source traffic, the channel's most popular websites and new trends. Nonetheless, don’t forget to take these figures as a reference, they may not absolute and try to validate these figures with other sources.

2. Identifying Keyword Opportunities for Your Sites

Discovering new keyword opportunities is very important when you are processing your SEO campaign and the organizing profitable but still achievable objectives. In old days, to do this kind of analysis was time taken process but it is fully automated now with the "opportunities" attribute of Sistrix. With the help of this function, you can add up to three websites of your competitors and it will tell about those keywords that you are not targeting for and your competitors are already doing, and level of the traffic possibilities and competition will be displayed.

3. Identifying Related Relevant Terms to Use In Your Content by Doing a TF-IDF Analysis of the Top Ranked Pages for Any Query

TF-IDF means “term frequency” - “inverse document frequency.” By using TF*IDF formula you can find out those words that are weighted as compare to all potential documents. It is also helpful in On-Page Optimization. However, it is already known that the TF-IDF was used for indexing pages; there was not a popular tool which offers you to recognize relevant variations within our themes that we should use. These statistics can be used to make our website better for other conditions relevant to our audience uses. OnPage.org adds a useful TF-IDF feature in its platform for analysis and monitoring of on-page optimizations, that feature can be used to pinpoint variations or combinations more than our competitors already using the terms, but we yet not. This is done by analyzing the top pages results and your own page you want to classify. By concentrating on terms corresponding to your main keywords, you can maximize the relevance of your content to the desired item.

4. Visualizing Your Site’s Internal Linking

Contemplate the pages of site and links to a site graphically for easy analysis of the internal links of a website, it was feasible but I took a lot of time and effort. The process needed to export the URLs crawled and then treated with visualization tools. This has been facilitated by the "Visualizer" function on OnPage.org. This functionality not only permits you to automatically create graph of internal links of a site but also provides features to navigate, filter the number, tells the relation of links and show that nodes and pages that follow a specific pattern. This feature can be especially helpful to better conclude how a site is linked to internal links, link’s multiplicity, if any "orphan pages" or specific parts of sites that are not internally linked with the others.

5. Getting All Key Optimization, Link Popularity, Social & Organic Traffic Data for Your Top Site Pages in A Single Place

Data collection during a SEO audit can be time taking process. These data include the technical optimization of a site, content, popularity of links, currently organic traffic and ranking of top search engines, we used to get this data from different sources, which are not connected data sources that were tough to combine later. This data collection can now be almost fully automated through “URLProfiler” that directly recover much of the needed data, while merging many data tools. There is no excuse for not developing a quick audit of SEO for your desired pages, considering all the key measures.

6. Getting Relevant Link Prospects with the Desired Requirements and Direct Contact Information

Getting a list of websites that are most relevant to your business may not be that tough as compare to searching for websites that contain heavily authority of a given country, searching by visible contact details is a slightly more difficult. All of this process can now be done easily with the help of "LinkRisk Peek" tool, which offers many advanced filters that can get sites that are relevant and feasible for use in consciousness.

7. Tracking Daily Rankings of Full SERPs for Your Relevant Keywords

We check the ranking of the keywords of both of our own sites and our main competitors for making our SEO strategies better. Due to the continuous fluctuations in the ranking, sometimes we see new competitors that we are not following and it is difficult to identify the interrelation of gains and losses on them. Furthermore, once we had noted the information, we had to analyze the pages to determine possible factors for changes in the ranking. We did this process by using the tools to get the link field / site popularity, between other reasons. It is now very easy to do this process by using tools like "SERPWoo". Instead of following the specified URLs of your own and your competitor’s, SERPWoo follow the 20 initial results of your keywords by default. This tool also added appropriate measures, such as domain page link popularity, social activities, etc to facilitate you in analyzing the possible reasons of rankings fluctuation more easily.

I hope these features will benefit you as they have benefited to me! What other SEO activities are automating that you are using? Please do share your experience in the comments!

Panda and Penguin Aftermath, Post Strategies for Link Building

2012-05-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

As everyone in the world of marketing and specially SEO or Online Marketing are worried because of the devastating results for their long effected strategies to build rankings and results, the game has came to an end. Recently in April, Google tweaked their ranking, quality and spam filters through various updates within their algorithm for which a list of algorithmic changes at Google, was published not only on their blog but on various top notch sites. Webmasters and SEO's have been trying to re-shuffle their strategies that best suit current factors and results can improve or the loss they've faced for drop in rankings or complete Goodbye in search results can be settled quickly.

Glimpse of April Algo Changes:

Google performed 3 major changes to their algo despite a bug of parked domains algo. Penguin is an update launched on April 24th designed to punish pages that have been spamming Google either to manipulate rankings with exact match anchor, or PR with paid links. Most updates as we noticed may take some time to get fully live but in this case, Google itself declared penguin to be fully live and active.

Before penguin hitting on low quality or unnatural links and spammers, Panda 3.5 was launched on April 19th that surprised many low content sites. Webmasters experiencing these shortfalls of traffic and rankings had no idea whether their site has been affected by Panda or Penguin. If you are one among those, please check your site on analytics and see if your traffic dropped after 19th or 24th to examine the root cause. Furthermore, if your sites saw another drop in traffic after 27th you have been hit by Panda 3.6.

Suggestions;

As it is unclear that link related issue is due to the existing links must not be removed, as in theory even the low quality links do help, If you are removing those links which actually are of low quality but not the cause of trouble, you might see the rankings drop even further.

Following points should be kept in mind while building links,

Avoid the use of exact match anchor text. Dilute your anchors with long tails, secondary, geographical keywords and modifiers.
Avoid the Overuse of exact-match domains. Try to get links from different sources instead of getting links from signatures of forums, as one of the practice people have been doing. No paid or featured listings at all except high quality and trusted sources like Yahoo Directory listing or paid (non anchor) listings in classified sites.
Low quality article marketing and blog spam must be avoided. Recently in march Google has banned many low quality blog networks that hosted content for free but had no real return to the site except anchor juice.
Article marketing can still be done but the quality of that article must be very good and it must not have more than 1 anchor link in it (First Link Priority as Google bot scans in a post nowadays). Content, in the form of article, blog posts or news, written by experts in the industry serves as a quality link for visitors to read.
Keyword Stuffing In Inbound/Outbound links.
Avoid purchasing links from any site or blog network. Penguin update has mostly killed the blog networks who were selling links and also the sites that purchased those links.
Avoid using footer links with exact match anchor text. As one of the practice, webmasters placed their anchor links on footer and the footer was copied to each and every page of the site (dynamic structure) that produced as many links as the pages of the site had. It is considered a spam technique now.
Use of Branded link building strategies rather than normal keyword based Link building. Non anchor link submission, Brand name addition or as called Brand mention are one of the best strategies to get your site a positive branding. More brand mentions, more strength can be seen in results. This is one of the latest factors Google is trying to use as to rate a site as a brand with positive outreach and not to compromise them with Penguin again.
Referrals from the guest blogs can be useful but make sure the information those blogs provide is genuine, and the reader has something to take back after reading the blog posts.
The importance of directory links can never be neglected, as most people search useful information from directories. So it is useful to get link from directories, making sure the directory is reputable and the relevancy of the category is not compromised for your domain.
Any website owner would love to be promoted by word of mouth instead of depending upon oiling the PR machinery. This is where Social Media Marketing comes into play. Make your content and sites Social friendly. This will help in Link Bait and getting social outreach as well.
Other Off-page optimization techniques, Like Social Bookmarks (quality links instead of sites hosted on same servers, c-lass ip based domains) and Blog comments can still be used as it is very important to have quality back links for better rankings. But the only thing that needs to be kept in mind is the quality of the website from which the link is to be attained. Technically making sure that blog is not already spammed with lot of OBL.

Twitter a Traffic Machine - Improve your marketing strategy to lead at twitter

2011-01-05T23:16:00.000-08:00

The world is changing leaps and bounds every day and with the introduction of WEB 2.0 and social media, it’s getting more and more volatile and fast to keep up the pace. For businesses, who have an online presence, its more than just necessary to contain to these changes and spread their marketing approach using these very tools which have revolutionized the way online marketing is done. Twitter is one example which can immensely help you with spreading your marketing collateral and offerings to a huge number of actually people, calling themselves tweeples.

Although many may argue that the “twitter nature” is not as monetize-able as other conventional online marketing methods like blogs etc. But now the crux of the matter is that people don’t actually want to get into reading those huge praising blog posts. Now they just act by reading the tag line and clicking the link associated. So how to send your social media marketing strategy through twitter to optimize your revenues? Well, a very straight answer to this will be to gather a trusted circle of followers and make them listen to what you have to say. Some people might just adhere to a large number of followers and think they have got what it takes to market through twitter, but there is a lot more to it. Having a large number of followers is not as important as keeping them engaged in the conversation. You need to keep them on their “toes” with your unique twitter tag lines and messages so that they are loyal enough to click every link you send.

Here are some basic rules that will help you in improving your marketing strategy to lead at Twitter:

Target The Right Niche:

This aspect of twitter oriented marketing is very important because you want people to actually what you market. So, there are many twitter related API tools that will allow you to search for the right audience by performing a thorough search using the keywords that you supply. Most of these tools are free and all you have to do is Google for them.

Upfront promotional campaigns:

This is more effective if your follower base is large and you engage with at least 75 % of them on regular basis. In this kind of advertisement usually link shortening and click through monitoring services like su.pr and bit.ly really come in handy in determining how effective was your marketing message. But again, be cautious that over doing upfront advert messages can really make your followers annoyed. Great ways to do them is first tweet the link with your tag line and then start a conversation about the link by @ing people who you think will be interested in your message more. Don’t beg people to retweet, if you believe your tweeted link and message was good enough, it will achieve RTs its self.

Twitter Background really counts!

To win loyal followers and prospects, you need to be extra careful when opting for your twitter background. Don’t make it look like just another company logo, create a difference by putting different customer testimonials and other casual things. Remember that twitter is all about engaging in the conversation so you must know where the line must be drawn when marketing.

How to refine your marketing approach with Facebook

2010-12-20T03:20:00.000-08:00

If you are wondering that what actually is Facebook and how can it help you in business, then you are late jumping the bandwagon. Facebook currently holds 2nd position in the most visited website category all through the world and it is thoroughly essential for every business now to have a well organized and attractive presence on the Facebook.

Like other social media websites based on the web 2.0 platform, Facebook is also extremely user oriented and propagates the concept of micro blogging through status messages. It is a common practice among the youth and the elders to check their farms or mafias on Facebook every two to three hours or so.

Online marketers and social media marketing savvy organizations have been quick enough to capitalize on the endless and extremely cost effective marketing through Facebook. Marketing through Facebook is a fun oriented task but requires attention to detail.

When it comes to refining your current marketing approach with Facebook, then all you have to do is communicate it effectively to the Facebook crowd that you have. You can propagate regarding your offers and services through status messages, photo tagging, offering discounted coupons for your Facebook fans etc.

With more than 400 million active users and 50% of those logging on to Facebook in any given day, a social media expert finds him or herself in a paradise! The Facebook pay-per-click side bar ad campaigns can actually help you in surgically targeting the right folks with exceptional filtering out possibilities. If you want your current marketing message to reach only a specific audience, say females who are married and reside in the US, then the powerful Facebook ad creator helps you do that by providing some quick filtering options. That’s how you can leverage massive traffic from this social media platform by only investing a little.

Apart from that companies, who have a tight budget, can even avail the free marketing spree through Facebook fan pages and groups. It also works a lot for getting some targeted traffic because whenever someone becomes a fan of your Facebook Fan Page or joins your group, their status messages communicate this to the whole crowd which is in their network. This is how you get social networks working for you free within the Facebook scope.

All in all, Facebook is about people. So, it’s better to engage with your loyal fans on daily basis. Although, your Facebook fan page or group carries a lot of potential but the base profile that you use to control these fan pages can also turn out to be an exceptional marketing platform. Get one to one interaction with people using the Facebook chat option and let them know what your marketing message is. Connection on personal basis can really do wonders! And Facebook is all about that.

2010-12-20T01:40:00.001-08:00

How to refine your current marketing approach with Social Media

2010-12-10T08:53:00.000-08:00

Social media in the true sense in not only restricted to Facebook or Twitter, it’s actually related to different going concerns having and sharing effective conversations. From the first look of it, the statement might seem vague, but the reality of the time is that most of the big companies are using social media services to refine their current marketing message.

Advertising and marketing through social media is not only cost effective but the marketer is at liberty to target the right market segment. Social media is all about what people think is interesting. Anything that has the potential to become news and buzz is what marketing through social media is all about. So in order to utilize the social media to refine your current marketing message you need to come out with newsworthy content which has an appealing factor to your targeted audience.

If you are able to create a space for yourself by providing such content, then you will see how quickly your marketing message will exalt the ladder of becoming the “talked –about” think over the whole social media world. The best part of working with social media is that everything to any thing is shareable. The content you will find at buzzfeed.com will most probably be making to first page on Digg and propeller.com etc.

The beauty of Social media is that it can be easily leveraged to perform mass communication marketing as well as strictly target oriented one. You can create something newsworthy about a product you sell online or you can also share some news that is directly or indirectly related to the services or products that you offer. Marketing is all about creating need; social media is about using your market message to create that need amongst the netizen masses.

The crux of the matter is that all the social media applications ranging from Facebook to twitter and from Hubpages to Squidoo, love to have user generated authentic content. It’s about first disseminating an opinion and then allows liberal dialogues and discussions on it. The more your content or buzz is discussed by your social media crowd, more are the chances that it will end up getting viral. So, if you haven’t decided to refine your current marketing approach through social media; think again!

Let the Apps Crash! i am on party, GoogleBot.

2010-07-05T02:10:00.001-07:00

Googlebot, Apps and Labs team, all are on party these days! Due to summer i believe it is the best time when anyone can enjoy a sun bath or cocktail parties out at the beach. Why to look at work, we are off so let the ball pass into next's court.
This is the reason why different apps are crashing day by day and Google tech guys are either ignorant of issues or are not responding to people who have pointed out many issues. In my previous post about Google Webmaster Tools i have pointed out malfunctions of webmaster tools which is a functionality issue due to which Links to your site is potentially showing wrong data.

I contacted John .M (Google Employee and Webmaster Central Head), he replied and what he meant to say was that he was ignorant of this issue,

the abstract of what he said is as below,

Hi everyone

Yes, we revamped the data behind the backlinks feature in Webmaster Tools -- it has started using more data from "Caffeine" for some sites and is planned to continue with a bit more data in the next week or so. The goal is to have more fresher & up-to-date data there :-).

You, didn't understood my question thoroughly, i agree that Caffeine is a good addition to Google's room, but if your existent applications aren't working properly, what we should expect from newer ones.
I contacted tech team at Google again and explained this serious issue within webmaster tools and requested them to first understand the problem and then let everyone know what is happening.

So here emerged a funny part of the story. The team fixed the bug at this weekend, as to increase their product stability. But it was our fate that their correction didn't worked. Instead of decreasing wrong numbers and irrelevant data, they've injected some more links to our sites. See figures in snapshots A and B below to understand what were the results before i contacted them and what they've corrected later in "B".

Snapshot - A - Before i contacted Google Apps Team.

Snapshot - B - After Apps Team Work.

Yippee, my links are rising more then ever.!!! Thank you Google for reporting me all my links :), even those which aren't mine.... ;)

I feel if Google team instead of correcting it has made some more errors to this particular section of "external and internal links". You can see clearly that the numbers have increased instead of decreasing and specially the date of last updated is as recent as i can hardly mention. Guys buck-up and do the job efficiently as Its been the sixth day when people are looking towards you. My post at webmaster central is yet waiting for a green signal where many other professionals are suffering from such a huge error i can say.

I am concerned about SEO people who normally create their weekly reports based on the stats as being shown in Google Apps. If this is an error i presume there must be lot of bugs in every tool for which we are simply unaware. Everyone around the world believes at what Google says, and even don't verify a result from its source or origin as in terms of traffic/visitor or a simple link. I suggest everyone should open their eyes and see what is going to happen in the later stages.

Google Apps Crashing, will it have an impact on your SERPs or PR ?

2010-06-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

The day two begins! and we are floating on a boat lost in an ocean....!

Yesterday, me and many other professionals reported malfunction of Google Webmaster Tools or what we can say a bug. Links to your site becoming a buzz after the question raised at Google Webmaster Central, and have been discussed on various networks. It was presumed that issue will be fixed in not more then 24 hours. But its our fate that Google guys worked on webmaster tools but not corrected this issue and funny thing was that they just updated the date under the links that are shown to you in this section. This date tells when a content has been crawled and updated for you. See the following image showing facts on it.

Is Google having a party on some of their recent hits ? like chrome beating safari and a few other browsers ? Or is there someone in the crowd who will listen to us or can guide us if it is actually a problem or these links are actually the links coming to our site or whatever.
For this i thought to touch different tech guys in this industry and the worst part was, that webmasters were worried like me but concerned people have yet not just taken part to address something.

Upto my knowledge and comments shared by people following me at webmaster central have thoughts like:

1) People at Google are ignorant of this issue.
2) The issue doesn't matters alot.
3) A new change in Google's Backlink Algorithm is coming up soon.
4) Data centers are being updated.

OR

5) Google apps are crashing.

Someone addressing the same issue on buzz written an email to me and she was worried like rest of webmasters. She asked me following questions to which i replied in the same manner.

Is this going to effect my Page Rank ? in positive or negative manner ?

Answer: No there wouldn't be any change in PR because it is a bug not an update of PR or Backlinks crawl.
Will this have any effect on my SERPs?

Answer: Apparently i will say No. But if this is not an error you can predict negative or positive jumps.
Is Google following Yahoo's backlink crawl method ?

Answer: In current circumstances you can say yes.! But Google is all about Quality not Quantity. So i don't feel it like wise.
Is Google ignoring no-follow tags on links and showing sites which have links on no-follow sites ?

Answer: Yes, right now the lists i have downloaded shows me most of the links which are from no-follow sites. But, will Google ignore no-follow for a long time, is yet a question in my mind.
Are referral links which aren't html links, being counted in this list ?

Answer: You mean text links ? like www.abc.com ? Yes with this bug your text referrals are also being counted as a link to your site.
Why we have different numbers in "sample of xxxxx external pages" and "Total links: xxxxx" ?

Answer: Uhhh.... i think the sample links are actually the links to your site. But the total links is wrong due to this bug. So don't worry about that.
Is this a code error at Google Apps ?

Answer: Yes...!
Am i going to be ban for all the links Google has crawled, including referral or no-follows ?

Answer: No, don't worry about that. But make sure that you don't do anything wrong in this time period just to make sure that all the links you can make like no-follow, referral, javabased, text e.t.c will be counted as link to your site.
I will simply say, hang up! and wait until things get sorted.

All these answers which i have given to her are based on the research i have done, and the thoughts i have received from people in my circle.

But what to expect later, will Google fix it up ? or will these links remain ? or are competitors like Microsoft or Yahoo are going to cash this buzz in a negative way ? are some of the questions popping up in my mind.

Lets hope for the best and do some more finding on it.

Google Webmaster Tool Crashed, Link to Your Sites is Buggy.

2010-06-29T05:19:00.001-07:00

Mayday, Mayday.... It is Google Webmaster Tool crashing for its different tools, reporting stats specific to a category.

As per my routine assignments, today when i logged into my Google Webmaster Tools, it amazed me with the stats of "Link to your Site". A figure "2,439,598" which was far higher then what i noted yesterday just only didn't cheered me up, but frankly speaking i stood up on my seat.

Same was the scene with one of my other sites getmore.dk for which i have been doing a campaign of links in this month on "Samsung LCD TV". Once i thought that Fifa world cup campaign has injected many many links to my site, but this happiness ended in a short while, when i tried to examine all my sites on different parameters.

I tried to see my links on link: parameter, (though i don't like this parameter as it don't gives exact amount of links you are actually getting, as to control spammers to copy your list).
I tried to download the CSV file of backlinks, but it was my fortune that once the link didn't worked. Second time when i tried to download it, it gave me only a few thousand links.
I tried filtering my previously downloaded files with the file i had recently downloaded. There were many new URLs, which are sometimes considered as referral links or No Follow even. Here i thought that Google is cloning Yahoo's strategy of calculating links.

There seems to be something fishy .....

Upto my understanding, it is a bug or Google is updating records which are being shown in webmaster on different data centers. I have tried to reach John Mu and Matt Cutts to help me and my other friends who are still waiting for a reply to my thread "Is Link to Your Sites in Webmasters, reporting links with a Bug ? " at Google Webmaster Central post.
I hope, if this is a issue it will be fixed soon. But if these all are my links i am the lucky one, to expect a boom in PR.

Do Social Media Optimization really helps your SEO efforts.?

2010-04-17T10:24:00.001-07:00

Something is better then nothing..! This is one of the famous proverbs, used normally when you are striving for something better and still you've lost a lot.
Long time Search Engine freaks have been scribbling around search engine updates and have been monetizing their websites or blogs to ensure that they have content and code very specific as to what S.E. guidelines recommend. But this is the time when we need to understand that user or user experience comes first instead of human scripts running on huge data servers.
In this month i have planned to write something about how we can refine our current marketing messages by using different off page platforms to ensure that we get maximum traffic and better rate of conversions. "So hang up till the next series of informational posts come".

Website Penalization Issues and How to Recover Search Rankings.

2009-12-02T20:54:00.001-08:00

Is my website penalized? Did Google dropped your rankings and excluded pages from its index due to some penalty? Get professional ideas to fix search penalties..
in reference to:

"Is my website penalized? Did Google dropped my rankings and excluded my pages from index due to some penalty? What is Search Engine Penalization? How to recover back my rankings ?"
- Aqeel Bilal Malik | Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Professional: Website Penalization Issues and How to Recover Search Rankings. (view on Google Sidewiki)

Website Penalization Issues and How to Recover Search Rankings.

2009-09-15T04:25:00.000-07:00

Is my website penalized? Did Google dropped my rankings and excluded my pages from index due to some penalty? What is Search Engine Penalization? How to recover back my rankings ?

These are one of questions most Web Owners and webmasters have. But what exactly is the scene behind Search Engine Penalization or Search Engine Ranking Drops, this is what most SEO's and Search Specialists talk about. Recently a study has proved that Search Engines (which keep on changing their algorithms), are moving towards most user friendly environment by giving quality results. Sometime, we feel whether search engines will not let us come on top search results even if we have keyword rich Meta Tags, keyword saturated content and a search friendly web structure. But here is the thing which we totally mess up! Quality...!

Search Engines look onto different attributes like Meta specially Title of the Page, Content relevancy, user interface, internal (anchor) links and then off-page coverage as for the page to which user is being directed. The important thing is Repute and Quality of the page.

So if anything don't comply with Search Engine Fundamentals its relatively less chance for it to come on higher search positions. But what exactly causes a penalization? is mentioned as below:

The spam activity which enforces search engines to rank a page higher even if it is not exactly what a user is looking for.
Secondly if users are being forced to download or see a page which they don't need.
A virus or malicious script which can cause any damage to users system or data.
Excess use of keywords i.e. keyword stuffing.
Irrelevant links or links from a banned site or network. Moreover, link farming.
Violations of Search Quality Rules.

So here i would like to share some of my practices as compared to Google Standards of Search.

How to Identify, if website is penalized or not?

To check whether a site is violating with Google’s terms and conditions and to get help to manage your SEO strategy to tackle with any issues with ranking drops we need to do different quality checks. In order to be aware of penalty from search engines, you should learn how to recognize if your site has been tagged (tagged as violating search terms) and is at risk of removal from the search pages. It can be simply seen if a position of a keyword is continuously changing its position or is behaving abnormally in search engine ranking pages as a routine matter, this gives you the first chance to act quickly to minimize damage. At this stage you can simply check, what changes you have done on previous submission? also verify when the site was previously crawled, note the delay period. This will help you understand if the site is in sandbox or there are not enough changes to be crawled by search engine. Once it is confirm that there is some issue, submit a fresh sitemap with checked pages with satisfying on-page factors. Or submit a request of reconsideration and regain favor from search engines as soon as possible. The webmasters or web owner who don't take time to familiarize themselves with any early warning or intimation can waste months unaware with the fact that the keywords downfall was due to search engine filters or penalties.

Once If you feel that your website may have been penalized, try the following diagnosis:

1. Use Google Webmaster Tool: Google’s webmaster tools is one of the first ports of call when attempting to identify possible penalties. This tool clearly shows the detail of how the search spider interprets to your website, pages or content. Check reports such as the crawl errors – it may be that the page is timing out. Or check for any HTTP errors. If there are some, modify them on earliest possible.

3. Access Google’s Safe Browsing Diagnostic Report: The report informs about the search engine’s current listing status for your domain. Crucially, it mentions if the site has been identified as “suspicious” with the search engine.

If so, then you can be pretty sure about a penalty or temporary filter as have been applied to your site, which caused keyword drop page. The Safe Browsing page also gives a report of any malicious software being downloaded or installed without user consent in the last 90 days – again, if the report flags up any software activity, a penalty is likely to be given. Suspicious web content and the hosting of malware script or software or use of the site as an intermediary for the distribution of malware is also checked and findings are reported.

To run the diagnostic enter the following in to your browser address bar — http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.mywebsiteurl.com. And study the report carefully.

4. Conduct Google Searches For Your Domain: Go to Google and perform different searches for your domain name. If your site is not too new, it should naturally rank number one for its URL. If not, there’s a very real possibility that your site has been penalized. To check this, you can try a site: mywebsiteurl.com search. Normally, when conducting this search, it helps to understand how many results or links are being returned as indexed data for a website. It is simply sure if the search returns 0 results or less results then your previous information. Penalty can only be given to a page, a category (section) or even a complete domain. So it should be clearly noticed that what is the scenario for your website. It can only be confirmed by matching the returned results this time with previous noted data.

If the results of these checks indicate that your website has been penalized, try to resist to make huge changes quickly, as may be the reconsideration request might help in recovering rankings. Having confirmation of your website not complying with Search Engine required standards, you’ll need to tread carefully to identify the cause of problem. Normally, possible causes include duplicate content, keyword stuffing, a large number of inbound paid links or outbound links which fall in non relevant or link farming or injection of links in source code to obvious bad neighborhood or spam sites.

Webmasters and owners of huge dynamic sites may find themselves facing two or three of these problems. The key to success here is, change things slowly one step at one time and test the impact all tuning over the course of a number of days. For non-serious infringements, the penalties will disappear automatically at the next crawl. However, in most cases you need to submit a reconsideration request to search engines as to get things working normally again.

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Heavy Weight Championship of Search Industry - Bing Vs Google

2009-07-08T04:36:00.000-07:00

As Microsoft has launched its search engine Bing, now the SEO community is putting lot of attention to this new Search Engine. At one side this is quite logical because Bing is supposed to be one more heavy-weight rivals and it is expected to cut some shares from Google in search industry. On the other side, it is hardly the first time a new search rival with superb qualities has came into the ring, so expecting that Bing will put an end to Google's monopoly, don't remains a assumption only. But still Bing is quite different (positively) from many other search engines and we can say that it is its major strength.

Whats new in Bing?

First thing that is new in this Search Engine is a great idea of getting users attraction with an impression anyone gets when Bing.com site is opened and a beautiful background appears. The background makes it cute but sure, there are many other concerns in search engines with tons of graphical frills to disguise their irrelevant search algorithms. However, when a search query is added in the search box, the results coming out are relevant to what is being found. This is surprising sometimes.

This relevance of search results, worries SEO experts. Because the results you get from a query in Bing are relevant, yet they are very different from Google's. Actually, no matter if you search with Bing or Google, the results are relevant to what end user needs. Though SEO Experts are still finding who has the exact result to the search query for any specific website, they are working for.

The most important thing these days for SEO experts is that they are curious to know Bing search algorithm. Obviously, Bing's algo is different from Google's which is proved when the search term is the same but the set of results are different, a difference in the algorithm can be seen easily. But the debate is not yet over!

Question is exactly, what is different between the two search algorithms?

What to do for now?

Hold on! i can say its the first thing you need to do :)
It's too early to say what specific steps can be taken to optimize your website for Bing.

In addition to this, no matter how promising Bing looks like and what people say about its beauty or search quality, it is still early to predict if it will become a real competitor to Google or if it will become one more failed attempt to dethrone Google. Just wait and watch how how users react, will they start Binging more or will they stick to Google as being the most used search engine with maximum data to feed your needs. When it becomes clear that Bing will be able to make it, then it makes sense to optimize for it as well. So for now the best you can do is sit back and watch one of your favorite movies.

Current Web Usage Stats:

Now if we talk about current web usage stats of Google Vs Bing, then it is very clear that Google had no effect of launch of this new rival. Not even in a single day the usage has dropped for Google.
So we can assume that Google is never going to give its search shares to any new rival. As i have mentioned in my previous post that

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked to Fox Business about Microsoft's Bing "It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year. From BING's perspective they have a bunch of new ideas and there are some things that are missing. We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It's difficult for them to copy that."

So it means that SEO Experts and end users still can believe that Google will remain at the higher end in Search Industry.

Back into Business. Chasing Bing and Google Updates

2009-07-02T02:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

I am back to business after around one month. Bed rest some times seems to be very tiring, but its good when there is soccer match.

A head to head match is under process in Search Industry these days. The two teams are Google Search Team and Bing (MSN Search Engine) Professionals.

These days news rooms are hot with the news of new features being added in Bing, as in search its been a new revolution. But Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked to Fox Business about Microsoft's Bing "It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year. From BING's perspective they have a bunch of new ideas and there are some things that are missing. We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It's difficult for them to copy that."

Eric thinks whether Microsoft is copying Google's idea of search, it's comprehensiveness and freshness. But Microsoft CEO say's they have injected their research into Bing and have made it the most powerful search engine on the globe.

The fight is still head to toe, who will win God knows. But if we talk about search freaks, every loves Google because of it's maximum shares of traffic each month. Previously Axandra reported Google as Top Search Engine with close competition of Yahoo, as Yahoo is the most loved search engine in some major areas of United States. The world wide leader is still Google and as they are creating new products and putting some innovative changes in their previous products, ensures that they will give good competition to their traditional rivals.

Google Search Behaving Abnormally...!

2009-05-22T02:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever played ping pong ? Well Google is playing it these days. Today when i was looking at the keyword performance report of my website, i found that most of the keywords of my site which were producing good traffic and were on first page have dropped to 2nd or third page or even more deeper. It was a huge shock i had today, but this was not the end! Something which astonished me was the keywords which were not properly optimized are on first page. Is it a glitch of Search Robot or something as a new test of Google. I believe as the Search Robot is even helpless in managing huge data each day :)

STATISTICS OF WEBSITES:

Website: Dr Sir - Healthcare Management Software
Keyword: Healthcare Management Software
Current SERP: Page 2nd 4th Position.
Previous SERP: Page 1 3rd Position
Search Engine: Google.com (Intl)

Website: Dr Sir - Pay For Performance
Keyword: Pay For Performance Software
Current SERP: Page 1, 9th Position.
Previous SERP: 7th Page 4th Position
Search Engine: Google.com (Intl)

RESEARCH DONE FOR SERP JUMPS:

I, thought that it is the case with one of my websites, but as i have seen several websites and their keyword serp's some alien numbers are now coming on the screen. Therefore i have done some research and have studied various SEO Forums and Platforms for the recent changes of SERP's and found that most of the folks have the same question that, Is Google Testing Something new ? Why SERP's are floating up and down ?

The reason for this change which i have observed is the updates Google has done previously. Like Matt Cutt's said in his post that

"Google is testing its new features in Search"

Moreover, some news rooms were also mentioning a change to come up with the third or fourth week of this month, which is now on screen. As Jason Lee Miller mentions in his post on Web Pro News

"Google Set to Change Ranking Algorithm"

Google is set to make changes to its search ranking algorithm to combat the spate of links leading to malicious web pages appearing at the top of Google’s search results, according to an inside source.

But as David of Waters (Web Pro News Reader) replied with his previous experience that Good sites fall with the bad one's, shows that this malfunctioning in Search Engine Ranking Results has not happened for the first time. Previously when Google tested it's new launched features, the positions of keywords were dropped. But within 24 to 36 hours the original positions for the keywords were resolved.

Instead of development of products (though every product is superb in its own dimension), Google should consider at its core part that is Search. I hope soon search engine results will be maintained for White Hat Optimized websites and a strong strategy would be implemented to only Block Black Hat Users.
As some new features have been added in Search as Search Options can help intelligent Search Users, same should be done for a lay man.

Don't wait for a miracle to happen. Now its the time to do something to manage our keyword results with positive approach and by thoroughly studying these new changes in Search Engine Algorithm.

Twitter Search Starting URL Indexing and Adding Ranking Algorithm

2009-05-08T00:56:00.000-07:00

A few interesting changes are coming towards Twitter search as according to Twitter’s new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram.

Jayaram, who was previously the Vice President of Search Quality for Google, broke this hot news that Twitter Search will begin to start crawling and indexing the links which are posted by tweeter's in their tweets and Twitter will index the content of those pages. Instead of simply indexing the tweets of its users, Twitter Search will now offer search technology which will transform it into more of an open window of the live conversations and real time indexing which is happening within the Twitter community.

Twitter Search will also be adding a reputation ranking system, which Needleman reports which will take into account the repute of the user who actually wrote the tweet, and rank its search results based upon that reputation. There is no news yet however this reputation will be calculated. It's a question for Marketer's that will their automated tweets can get them a repute or not ?

The idea behind this new addition is to index web pages in real time and to produce results which are based on the information provided by users.

Perhaps such a ranking system could be built upon trust factors and influence. In a similar fashion that Google has always counted links as a system of relevance and popularity, maybe Retweets and follower relationships and interaction will influence user reputation.

The end result, Twitter harnesses its search capabilities and almost instant ability to not only index a brand new web page or document, but also determine a relevancy and reputation ranking will give the company outstanding leverage in further valuing itself AND even licensing out its technology with search partners in the future.

Source of the Post: Search Engine Journal

How Google's latest algorithm changes affect your website

2009-05-07T03:34:00.000-07:00

Google has changed its algorithems for indexing a site for a certain keyword that has been written for a particular page in Meta Tag, Content, URL's, Alt's, Anchor Links e.t.c. Results are more likely to appear for long written searches as compared with traditional model of writting keywords for a site with one, two or three worded keywords and phrases.

Lets have look at the news below

Source: Free SEO News
Google improves its ranking algorithm on an ongoing basis. During the last weeks, Google changed three things on the result pages that are visible to all Google users.

The changes are an improvement for searchers but they might be bad for your website.

1. Google has increased the snippet length. Less visitors for you?

Google now shows an extended snippet for queries that consist of three or more keywords. The idea behind this change is that these multi-word queries are very targeted and complex. The usual short snippet might not contain enough information.

What does this change mean for your website?

The longer snippet contains much more information. As Google tries to provide the user with the most relevant information in the snippet, the snippet might already contain the answer to the user's query. The longer snippets might result in the following:

Fewer users might click through to your website because they get the answer to their question in the search results.

Users might begin to use more multiple-word queries to get more detailed search result snippets.

As the longer snippets need more space, the longer snippets move another result page below the fold and web surfers will see fewer results at first glance. That increases the importance of very high rankings.

It seems that Google ignores the meta description tag for the snippets. That means that you must include a call to action in your web page titles.

2. Google now shows more related searches at the bottom of the results

When you search for a keyword, Google will display related searches at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of the search results.

For example, if you search for the keyword "principles of physics", Google will suggest "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" as related terms that could help you find what you need.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's important that you optimize the different pages of your website for different keywords. Do not concentrate on a single keyword but cover a wide range of keywords so that Googly will classify your website as relevant to the complete topic.

The more related keywords and pages can be found on your website, the better.

3. Google now shows local results based on IP addresses

Search Google for the keyword "pizza" and you'll see local results in the middle of the search results. These local results are delivered based on the IP address of the searcher. That means that you will get different results than people in another city.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's now easier to rank for competitive keywords for some local searches. While it's very difficult to get a high ranking for a very competitive keyword such as "lawyer" in the regular results, it's much easier to be listed for that keyword in the local results if you're living in a small town.

You should submit your website to Google Maps so that web surfers can find you in these local searches.

If you run a local business, you should include your business name, your category and the name of your city in the title tag of your homepage.

Google Hired Goats in Recession.

2009-05-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

A hot news about Google is that in this period of recession and global warming a new and low cost approach has been adopted. Lets have a look on what is done.
Google at their Mountain View headquarters, haves some fields that they need to mow occasionally for the clearance of weeds and brushes to reduce fire hazards. This spring they decided to adopt a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that use gasoline and pollute the air, they've rented some goats from California Grazing to do this job. Isn't that bit funny, i.e. "Goats at Google" yeah its fun but is really happening. A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs them about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

Google's power-hungry data centres.

2009-05-05T06:25:00.000-07:00

Few places throw the internet's rapacious appetite for energy into relief more sharply than a remote 30-acre patch of scrubland in northern Oregon owned by Google

Google plant in The Dalles in 2006. Photograph: Craig Mitchelldyer/Getty Images

The site, on the fringes of the city of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia river, is home to one of the world's largest and most powerful data centres. Inside four towering air-conditioned warehouses sit tens of thousands of internet servers, acting as a clearing house for billions of pieces of data that stream from Google's servers to users around the world each day.

The plant siphons off vast amounts of energy from the nearby hydroelectric dam that produces 1.8GW of power – comparable to the Hoover Dam in Colorado, and more than 50% greater than the output of British nuclear power stations such as Sizewell B.

Although Google has traditionally been secretive about what goes on inside its data centres, last week it gave outsiders their first glimpse of its secret weapon in the battle for efficiency: the shipping container. Inside The Dalles and five other data centres that Google operates around the world, hundreds of containers are stacked in seemingly never-ending rows and columns, each one containing racks of custom-built web servers. Designing these systems to be the fastest in the industry has proved so important to Google's success that employees have referred to it as "our Manhattan project".

The Oregon facility is considered one of the jewels in Google's crown, and the company refuses to talk about the precise costs and energy demands involved. But there is clear evidence that the footprint of a centre such as The Dalles plant is enormous: industry estimates suggest that once it is running at full capacity by 2011, it could require as much as 103MW of power to run – enough to supply every home in Newcastle.

Setting up a new data centre of this size is a massive undertaking costing hundreds of millions of dollars, but that has not stopped Google continuing to expand. Despite the tough financial circumstances, the company recently announced it was considering adding a further European site after spending €40m on buying an old paper mill 90 miles east of the Finnish capital, Helsinki.

Curtsy: Bobbie Johnson

Guardian.co.uk

How to get indented listings for your website on Google ?

2009-05-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

Source: Axandra SEO News

Wouldn't it be great if your website was listed twice in Google's top 10 results for your most important keywords? Although Google usually shows only one page from every site in the top results, it is possible to get two listings if you do the right things.

What are indented Google listings?

Indented listings on Google's search results pages can give your website additional exposure. Having an indented listing in Google's search results means that you'll have two listings for your website in the top 10 results in Google instead of one:

These indented listings are also called double listings. Google explains these listings like this:

"When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it."

It's obvious that your website will get more clicks and more visitors if it is listed twice in the top 10 results. Most webmaster don't know how to get these results. That's your chance to get a step ahead of your competition.

How to get indented listings for your keywords

To get an indented listing for one of your keywords, do the following:

You must have a web page that already has a top 10 ranking for that keyword. If you do not know how to get top 10 rankings on Google for your keywords, use IBP.

Create a second web page on the same domain that links to the first web page that has the top 10 ranking. Optimize the second page for the same keyword as page one but use different content.

Link from the first page to the second page with your keyword phrase in the anchor text. If possible, use a contextual link within a body of text rather than a site-wide navigational link.

Get inbound links for the second page. Depending on the competition for the keyword, a few high-quality links can be enough to get the indented result.

Repeat step 1 to 4 for as many keywords as you want.

If your website has two links on Google's result page, then it will represent 20% of the organic results instead of the regular 10%.

That means that you'll get more clicks and more visitors. It would be foolish not to optimize a second page for your keywords.

Optimize more pages and get more results in Google for a single keyword for broader coverage and increased traffic for your website.

Google Tests Location-Aware Toolbar. Localize your Search Results!

2009-04-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

Google has posted a new beta version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer over here for users to test. The new version is currently a labs project only and brings location services to the toolbar. This allows Google to determine your current location, I believe based on your ISP's data, and then serve up local search results to you.

It is called, "Google Toolbar with My Location." The help document describes the features:

Find locally-relevant search results on Google when local information is available.
Center maps on Google Maps around your current location.
See your approximate current location using the Google Maps gadget.

Google allows you to enable and disable the location services. It also doesn't tie the location data to your Google account.

Source: Search Engine Round Table

Google's New "What's Popular" Feature Aims to Clone Digg.

2009-04-29T02:05:00.000-07:00

Google's personalized home page, iGoogle, added a new feature that basically clones the core features of Digg and StumbleUpon by embedding them into a gadget that is easily accessible from right within the web desktop.

The feature, which Google started highlighting in its directory this week, is called "What's Popular." Using the widget consumers can submit links either anonymously or publicly and rate whether they like or dislike other submissions.

According to Google's description, the What's Popular gadget "uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader."

That's just the half of it though. When you click on the maximize link the gadget expands into a canvas view that sorts submissions into different categories - e.g. stories, videos and images.

This won't be the last we see of Google adding social services to iGoogle. They are slowly adding such features to many of their products. Eventually I expect they will also follow Microsoft's lead in rolling up your friends' social content from around the web on Windows Live. (Microsoft is an Edelman client)

Source For The Post Micro Persuasion:

Google Space Launches at Heathrow Airport.

2009-04-29T01:01:00.000-07:00

What if you are in London on World's famous Airport Heathrow, and are looking how to get to your destination without anyone's help with a map, or to see an important email. For this reason Google has taken a step forward to facilitate people with Google Space.

Below is the Post By Jeremy Geelan describing the whole story.

In Terminal 1 at Heathrow Airport in London, Google is launching Google Space -- a laboratory comprising "Google pods" that travelers can access for free once through security, to log onto the Internet, check their mail and use Google tools to find out about their destination.

Google Space will be running at Terminal 1 until 17th December, with Google staff on hand to offer advice and assistance to users. It is inspired by research that shows the average airline passenger wastes over 9 hours a year waiting for flights. That adds up to more than a day of annual holiday allowance lost every year, and nearly three weeks of an average working life.

50% of the British passengers surveyed said they had nothing better to do in airport terminals than eat, drink and shop. However, 71%of respondents stated that they would like to use this time to find out more about their destination.

The top five things people want to find out are:

A map of their destination (73%)
Weather forecast for the destination (68%)
Which tourist traps to avoid (64%)
A guide of famous sites and landmarks (61%)
Information on how to get to the city centre (54%)

Digg Ends Exclusive Ad Deal with Microsoft.

2009-04-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

What if we speak about Search Giants like Google and Yahoo can step back from all the struggle back door for signing a deal. Same has happening in Social Giants. Yeah, i am talking about the deal that has been recently ended by none other then Digg, which was made with Microsoft for ad selling relation ships.

Let's have an overview of what happened in between these two I.T Giants by the Post of Zachary Rodgers.

Digg is ending its two-year-old exclusive ad selling relationship with Microsoft, one year earlier than the deal was set to expire.

The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called "network reserve" inventory. Microsoft's network reserve ads represent high visibility placements sold to advertisers on a blind basis.

But beginning in July, Digg will be solely responsible for all custom ad deals and a significant portion of its own Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad inventory.

The partnership initially was supposed to last until summer 2010, but the two always had an understanding that Digg would at some point step up to rep the bulk of its own ads, according to Mike Maser, Digg chief revenue and strategy officer. He said the company's internal sales efforts will focus on custom, non-IAB inventory combined with standardized banner ads.

"We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half," said Maser.

Digg hired its first ad sales executive, former Yahoo sales exec Thomas Shin, in January, and is now recruiting a national sales force. The company said it would soon make regional sales appointments for the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By the end of the year it hopes to hire a total of five to seven reps in San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Chicago and New York.

Even though it will work with Digg on remnant inventory, Microsoft remains dedicated to high-engagement ad deals, according to Robin Domeniconi, VP U.S., Microsoft Advertising.

"We want to do custom," said Domeniconi, who was appointed in December to oversee a dizzying array of ad products at Microsoft. Those products -- represented by over 1,100 sellers -- include MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Live Search, partner deals like those with Facebook and Digg, and game products like Massive and Xbox Live, among others.

Under her leadership, Microsoft is moving away from pitching those products individually. Rather, reps are proposing custom ad packages that combine non-standard advertising, premium display placements, and remnant ads across all its channels.

For instance, Discovery Channel recently graced Microsoft with its entire online ad budget for the fifth-season debut of "Deadliest Catch." High-engagement placements spanned mobile, Web, gaming and other channels.

"I don't believe [IAB standard ads] are the only thing the Internet is good for," she said. "These types of packages let us get out of an ROI conversation."

Google Search Is Still Not Perfect.

2009-04-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Today i was looking around for Identical or Duplicate content issues within and outside a website. Astonishing thing was, when i found a link to the following Post Written by Jonathan Dingman.

POST DETAILS:

As Brent pointed out, Google is still having duplicate content problems. Today’s case is the BBC. The BBC (news.bbc.co.uk) has a PageRank of 9, which means they have a lot of weight in the search engines. Their pages will rank very high and very quickly.

Here is the problem that Brent, an SEO Specialist pointed out. The BBC has two, identical, listings right after each other in both the first and second slots.

Google has been working on duplicate content issues for a long, long time. Typically though, Google deals with it in the sense of duplicate content across separate domains. I thought Google had taken care of duplicate content on the same site a long time ago, but the problem is still occurring.