Google’s Trick or Treat? Last week at PubCon Matt Cutts announced a 15% reduction in rich snippets. For SEOs this was big (and for some disappointing) news. In this post I’ll explain (in as geek-free language as possible) what this means to businesses who are vying for higher visibility on a Search Engine Results Page …
Manual Spam Action News
New Video. Old Message. Evergreen Advice. As an online marketer I routinely review SEO trends. Google’s Matt Cutts released a video in August but it was recently picked up by the Search Engine Journal on October 16. This is a case where I can honestly say “we told you so.” In this post I’ll explain …
Worried about SEO Rankings?
Recent Algo Changes Affect SEO Rankings Google Webmaster Help just released a video yesterday. It was filmed early in the summer and Matt Cutts alluded to the waves of the algorithm changes (Hummingbird) that were headed to SEO ranking shores in September. If you’re familiar with these videos, Matt takes a question from Webmasters from …
Advanced Segmentation & Insights
Data — especially intelligence garnered from Google Analytics — is a beautiful thing. One of my favorite features is Advanced Segmentation. It allows you to isolate subsets of your website traffic. In this post I’ll share the predefined segments I routinely use when pulling Google Anlaytics reports each month. Predefined Advanced Segmentation in GA Advanced …
SEO Guarantee: An Unethical Claim
Reasons Why Ranking Guarantees are Bogus Want an SEO Guarantee? Then spend your money on Google AdWords or Bing Advertising. I know this sounds harsh. Bear with me. In this post I’ll explain: 1) why Google frowns on it 2) why guarantees are unethical and 3) what businesses should really ask when hiring an SEO agency. Search …
Protecting WordPress from Attack
Protecting WordPress against the recent (and massive) brute force attack has been a popular subject on online newswires lately. While security attacks on open source platforms (like WordPress) are nothing new, this latest barrage has become truly sensational. Let me clear up what’s really happening and, more importantly, what you can do to protect your WordPress website. …
Quotes, Duplicate Content and SEO
Duplicate content and SEO continues to be a topic of discussion especially in light of continuing Google search updates. Should you be concerned about quoting a great source in your web marketing generation efforts? No, as long as you follow a few simple rules. Googler Matt Cutts recommends using block quotes and linking back to the original source. Having a string of quotes …
Disavow Links Tool Now Available
As many of you know, I’m a staunch White Hat SEO practitioner. Anything else in my mind is cheating. So imagine my excitement when Google announced this week they launched a Disavow Links Tool. Let me explain. Some Black Hatters try to sabotage their competition, pushing down their SEO rankings by some pretty sneaky… and in …
Google Search October Update
On the heels of recent algorithm changes, Google search has undergone another major change. The latest update is good news for the human user, a change that Google has been working on since January. Have you landed on a page where the content is buried in a sea ads? Annoying, right? If your website does …
Website Page Speed & SEO
If you’re concentrating on building SEO rankings then you need to pay attention to website page speed. It matters more than you think… and will continue to increase in importance. Google just announced they transitioned mod_pagespeed out of beta. In Google’s quest to make the web faster, they’ve been working on improving this open-source Apache …