SEO Newsletter: Behind the Scenes at Google through SMX

SEO Newsletter | Vol 142 | March 22, 2016 This Month's News
File Under Proud Moments Googler Gives Props to Credible SEOs, Naming Bruce Clay, Inc.'s 'Great Team'   Forgive us a moment while we dance in our chairs! Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes said that he's seen our SEO team work "magic" for websites. We won't lie, it's nice when your hard work and dedication to excellence gets noticed. This is unabashedly one of our proudest moments in our 20 years in the SEO biz. Give it a watch at the 53 minute mark of Gary's interview with the gents at Stone Temple Consulting.   SMX Rewind Behind the Scenes at Google through Search Marketing Expo Coverage   Following Q1's biggest gathering of digital marketing experts, SMX West, marketing insights are ripe for the harvest. SEO-minded marketers have much to process after presentations by Google engineers, analysts and product development leads including Maile Ohye, Paul Haahr and Gary Illyes talking about everything from the engine updates its ranking algorithm factors to how the engine wants businesses to think of customer service. You'll read that plus much more to up your Google Analytics power user status and search advertising capabilities you may not be leveraging in our SMX live coverage featured in this newsletter.   Liveblog Highlight How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story at SMX Reporter: Kristi Kellogg   In a highly anticipated keynote, Google Software Engineer Paul Haahr took the SMX West stage to reveal just how he and other engineers approach ranking and quality. Haahr has been at Google for more than 14 years. His job entails writing code for searches, optimizing metrics, looking for new signals, combining old signals in new ways, moving results with good ratings up, moving results with bad ratings down, fixing rating guidelines, developing new metrics and more. For thirty minutes, Haahr pulled back the Google curtain and shared an unprecedented look at how Google works, from an engineer's unique perspective. In this liveblog, you'll learn about: Query processing Key metrics Live experiments and human rater experiments Needs Met ratings Read more   Liveblog Highlight Doing What Matters for SEO & Google in 2016 Reporter: Virginia Nussey   Search engine optimizers can get caught in a trap of optimizing for a search engine. It's right in the job title. But chasing search engine algorithms comes with the risk of forgetting the human customer, whom the whole business exists to serve. In a mini keynote, Maile Ohye, senior developer programs engineer at Google, pressed to change the SEO paradigm. Don't chase the search engine; don't even think in terms of your user. Think about serving your customer. Sounds simple, right? It turns out you have to redefine conversions and ​the way you map data to customers. Read how Ohye suggests we realign our thinking with the offline world in this session coverage ​from SMX West. Read More   Liveblog Highlight Googler Speaks Out about Manual Actions Reporter: Kristi Kellogg   Juan Felipe Rincon specializes in webmaster outreach and manual actions at Google. Rincon's team of anti-abuse specialists focuses on trust and safety: monitoring ad traffic, web spam, community guidelines ​​-- and manual actions. Rincon took a deep dive into how his anti-abuse team approaches spam and what types of spam result in manual actions. Independent from algorithmic actions, manual actions are the result of a human being on Rincon's team encountering pages or sites with issues and de-ranking or de-indexing them accordingly. At SMX West 2016, Rincon sat down with Search Engine Land ​Founding Editor Danny Sullivan for an in-depth conversation on manual actions. Rincon answered key questions on topics like: What and who generates a manual action Reconsideration requests User generated spam reports Who makes up the anti-abuse team Read More   PPC Spotlight AdWords Customer Match: The Next Big Thing in Email Marketing Reporter: Virginia Nussey   If you aren't already collecting email addresses from your customers and visitors, there's a new reason why you should ​... so you can target them (or people like them) in PPC advertising. Using Customer Match, a Google AdWords feature that was launched in the fall, you can upload a list of emails you collected first-hand into AdWords and target those specific individuals with ads in Google Search, YouTube and Gmail. Customer Match helps you bridge the gap from that first interaction with your brand to a follow-up ad showing up later, just when the person may be making a decision. You can extend your targeting further with a second AdWords feature called Similar Audiences, which lets you show ads to people who are like the customers in your email list. New audience members who have similar interests and needs as your customers are likely to find your services relevant, as well. All of this powerful SEM ability starts with an email list. Find out more in our SMX West liveblog of the eye-opening session by WordStream's Cleo Hage. Read More	Top Blog Posts Understanding Your Consumer's Journey Using Search Science for Keyword Research Getting AMP'd: What You Need To Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages and Google 10 PPC Hacks, Tips and Tricks to Optimize Your Time Google Analytics Power Reporting for SEO and SEM   Connect with us:
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EzSEO Newsletter - Penguin plus a shock from Udemy

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EzSEO Newsletter - Penguin plus a shock from Udemy
Dr. Andy Williams


http://ezseonews.com

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Hi Peter

I've got a couple of interesting things for you today... Some news/advice concerning Google's soon to be released Penguin update, and some shocking news coming out of Udemy.

If you are into SEO, chances are you already know that Penguin 4.0 is coming soon. Before the holiday season, a Google spokeperson reportedly said:

"With the holidays upon us, it looks like the penguins won't march until next year"

Is that "won't march" a clue to when it is happening? If so, then changes could be coming this month.

Penguin has been a huge headache for many webmasters, so what can you expect form Penguin 4.0? Well, probably more of the same, with Google wreaking havoc on spammy links (again). We'll have to wait and see how drastic the effects are, but one thing we are expecting is a realtime Penguin - and that is good news. This will mean that penalized sites probably won't have to wait months to get a penalty removed. Removing the offending SEO that got you penalized should get you reinstated pretty quick.

If you want to be prepared for Penguin 4.0, my advice would be to login to Google Webmaster Tools and check out the backlinks they know about your site. Go through them, and if there are obvious spammy links, disavow them. Google have always warned us to be careful with the disavow tool, and I echo that advice. However, links on sites that are clearly spammy, manipulative or deceitful will never be good links, so I personally disavow the whole domain, not just the link. I'll also disavow links from any poor quality site, but that is just my personal preference for keeping my link profiles squeaky clean.

If you want to read more details about Penguin, I suggest you look at this article:

http://niksto.com/penguin-ranking-factors/

Incidentally, just because we have to follow Google's webmaster guidelines to get some Google love, Google don't always practise what they preach. This is an interesting article:

http://www.webpronews.com/report-suggests-google-bought-links-for-chrome-again-2016-02/

Before we leave Google, there was at least one more interesting development recently. Google removed the right hand sidebar from the search results. That right hand sidebar, if you need reminding, was a list of adverts. Unfortunately that does not mean a more ad-free Google. They've simply added a new advert at the top, making a maximum of 4, and then pushed the rest to the end of the page.

SHOCK AT UDEMY!

OK, at the start of the newsletter, I told you that there was some shocking news coming out of Udemy. Udemy is a site I've used in the last year to publish a number of my courses online, and it's been working great. At the moment, you can charge pretty much what you like for your courses, up to a maximum of $300 I think. You can also offer coupon codes with any level of discount you want, so you'd see $299 courses discounted to $12 or less, which was great for students wanting to learn new skills.

Well, this won't be happening any more come 4th April. On that date, Udemy are not only capping course prices to a maximum of $50 and minimum of $20, but they are also capping coupons to a maximum of 50% of the course price.

With most of my own courses being sold currently for over $100, it means I can now only charge a maximum of $50.

For a course priced at $50, the minimum price it can be sold for is $25. For a $20 course, the minimum is now $10. I am in two minds as to whether this is a good thing. I certainly do not like being told what I can sell my own courses for. However, Udemy work on a profit sharing model, so if instructors do not make as much money, then neither will they. I know they have done a fair amount of work in the background to verify this is the correct thing to do, but only time will tell for sure.

Remember, this change happens at the start of next month on April 4th. However, until that time, I am going to offer ALL of my own courses for just $8. That's a price that won't be matched again unless Udemy change the rules again. To see what courses I have, and get the links, please visit this page:

http://ezseonews.com/coupon-codes-for-all-of-my-udemy-courses/


That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

All the best

Andy Williams


http://ezseonews.com
http://webcontentstudio.com



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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please leave a comment at the online version of this newsletter: http://ezseonews.com

Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site if you want it. That's extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.

The products reviewed in this newsletter are often affiliate products, and as such, if you buy through my link, I may receive a commission.

The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2015 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.

This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying.

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