Search Engine Optimization

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

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

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.

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

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.

Friday, March 4, 2016

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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IMPORTANT: You are receiving this email because you 0pted in to it. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, click on the unsubscribe link at the end, and you will not get it again.
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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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Correos 4
38410 Los Realejos
Tenerife
Spain

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TIwszBxMtKyMjMxsTOyctEa0zIwMHGzsLBw=

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

SEO Newsletter: What Should You Expect from a Search Engine?

SEO Newsletter | Vol 141 | February 24, 2016

This Month's News

Stay in the Know
New Subscribe Feature on the BCI Blog Keeps You Connected

Let's stay in touch more! If you like our free monthly newsletter or read our blog, sign up to get emails when new blog posts are up. Head to our blog and enter your name and email in the "Subscribe to Blog Updates" box on the right side of the page.

Take me there!

Feature
What Should You Expect from a Search Engine?
Author: Duane Forrester

Ever wondered what motivates a search engine to update its algorithm? Updates are a move from one state to a more advanced state. Updates happen because ... pause for drum roll ... something undesirable is happening! The end goal is making searchers happy.

After six years as a search engine representative, Duane Forrester describes the busy interior of a search engine. His experience guides his answers to these SEO questions:

When do search engines make updates?
How do engines feel about SEO?
How can businesses appeal to search engines?

Back to Basics
A Week in the Life of an SEO Trainer
Author: Mindy Weinstein

Our SEOToolSet Training is not your typical SEO training course. By the numbers, we cover a massive binder of material, or two, depending on which course you take. And more than 5,000 people so far have attended our classes worldwide.

What's harder to quantify is how the classroom becomes a place where friendships and business collaborations are formed. For three years, Director of Training Mindy Weinstein has watched people transform their businesses and move ahead in their careers after three to five days in the classroom. In this article from the trainer's perspective, Mindy shares:

What a business owner learned at SEO training that caused her to send four employees to the class.
What a manager took away from three days of training, including tools subscriptions and relationships.
How a black hat transformed his approach from exploitation to improvement in a week of intensive question and answer time with trainer Mindy Weinstein.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

EzSEO Newsletter - Web Content Studio User?

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EzSEO Newsletter - Web Content Studio User?

Dr. Andy Williams

http://ezseonews.com

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IMPORTANT: You are receiving this email because you 0pted in to it. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, click on the unsubscribe link at the end, and you will not get it again.
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Hi Peter

If you are not a Web Content Studio (WCS) user, then please forgive this intrusion. I just wanted to announce that I have created a free course on using Web Content Studio, and it's just gone live on Udemy. You can get access here:

https://www.udemy.com/web-content-studio-mastery/

If you do not own WCS, you are still welcome to sign up for the course if you want to see what the tool is all about and how a lot of webmasters create the kind of content that get's recognised by Google. If you are kind of new to content creation, you might also be interested in my How to Write Great Content Course, as that does not require any special software to get similar results.

https://www.udemy.com/how-to-write-great-web-content/?couponCode=JUST9

OK, that's it for now.

Have a great week!

Andy Williams

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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 contact me online: http://ezseonews.com/contact

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.

#######################################################

Correos 4
38410 Los Realejos
Tenerife
Spain

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TIwszBxMtKyMjMxsTOyctEa0zAzsTOyMDJw=

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

EzSEO Newsletter - January 2016 Google Updates

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EzSEO Newsletter - January 2016 Google Updates

Dr. Andy Williams

http://ezseonews.com

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IMPORTANT: You are receiving this email because you 0pted in to it. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, click on the unsubscribe link at the end, and you will not get it again.
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In this issue:

1. January 2016 Google Updates

2. Alternative to Google Analytics?

3. Help Please?

Hi Peter

1. January 2016 Google Updates

I think I have become pretty immune to Google changes in the last few years with my shift towards 99% white hat SEO. I actually only found out that Google had made some major changes in January when a subscriber wrote to me asking what was going on. I had to go and check. Apparently there were massive changes in the Google results pages. I've done a little digging to see what I could find, and posted an article here:

http://ezseonews.com/google-updates/january-2016-google-algorithm-updates/

If you have anything to add to that article, please leave a comment at the end.

2. Alternative to Google Analytics?

A lot of webmasters are suspicious of Google and therefore don't want to use Google Analytics for website tracking. I can understand that, and for the last year I've been testing an Analytics packages called Yandex Metrica. It's totally free to use and has some fantastic reports. I love it so much I created a Udemy course on this topic. If you want to see some of the highlights of Yandex Metrica, check out the promo video here:

https://www.udemy.com/website-analytics/?couponCode=8DOLLARSLAUNCH

3. Help Please?

I am looking for a script to manage software licenses. The one I currently use only works on older versions of PHP on my server, and my web host wants to start charging me an extra $8 per month just to allow me to use the older version of PHP. Obviously it's time for a change. If you know/have experience of any scripts (must be a one-time fee) that allows me to issue usernames/password/license code type information and limit use of my software to registered customers, please let me know.

OK, that's it for now.

Have a great week!

Andy Williams

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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 contact me online: http://ezseonews.com/contact

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.

#######################################################

Correos 4
38410 Los Realejos
Tenerife
Spain

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TIwszBxMtKyMjMxsTOyctEa0zAxszIzsbGw=

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

SEO Newsletter: SEO PSA! Google Algo Update Imminent

SEO Newsletter | Vol 140 | January 19, 2016

This Month's News

SEO PSA
Today Is Penguin Awareness Day

Yesterday, Google spokesperson Gary Illyes said that the next Penguin Update is just weeks away. Are your backlinks ready?

DisavowFiles is the FAST, FREE tool for checking the health of your backlink profile.

Try DisavowFiles Today

Feature
43 Reasons SEOs Can't Fear Change: 2016 Digital Marketing Predictions
Author: Bruce Clay, Inc.

There's a word for fear of change: metathesiophobia. The way search, media, technology and consumer behavior change from week to week, it's not a phobia that SEOs can afford to harbor. Instead, digital marketers race to get ahead of competition, ahead of algorithm updates, and ahead of upcoming technologies with early adoption and forward-looking strategy.

Where to start the race of 2016? Right here. Bruce Clay, Duane Forrester, David Szetela, and digital marketing rockstars share their predictions for the online marketing industry this year. Read for predictions by:

Bruce Clay: 20-year SEO veteran calls out apps, millennials, and local search revenue as drivers of change. Duane Forrester: HTTPS, podcasts and search from Facebook and Amazon make an appearance in this former Microsoftie's predictions.
David Szetela: Facebook, Instagram and Bing display are big winners in the "Pay-Per-Click Marketing: An Hour a Day" author's picks, but read to find out who he bets against.
Cindy Krum: With mobile changing everything about digital marketing, you'll want to read this mobile tech expert's take on 2016.
Dan Petrovic: The international SEO's predictions echo the familiar theme of content quality, backed by some interesting new research out of Australia.
Marcus Tandler: User experience is Tandler's hot topic in Germany, with conversion optimization cooling off; read why.
Maddie Cary: U.S. Search Awards 2015 Young Search Professional of the Year dubs 2016 the year of removing resistance, with PPC predictions to back it up.

Back to Basics
SEO, PPC & Content Virtual Conference: 2015's Liveblog Recap
Author: Bruce Clay, Inc.

On the BCI blog, we publish updates to keep digital marketers current on new tactics and evolving perspectives. To do so, we send livebloggers to major digital marketing conferences so readers can get the 411 from the industry's search marketing, content, conversion and advertising experts. This year, we covered more than 85 sessions live from six conferences.

We packaged up the most high-impact liveblogged sessions of the year to create a virtual conference so you can follow along with the real-world challenges and solutions shared by the search engines and marketers at in-person educational events. Choose the tracks that interest you:

Content, Social Media and Understanding Your Audience
Search Engine Marketing and PPC Advertising
SEO Milestones of 2015