Ranking Factors, Algo Changes, Google & You

Ranking factors

Google+ followers: Social Dominion+Facebook & Twitter: “Pay with a tweet” http://www.paywithatweet.com/sell.php

How to influence these factors

Backlinks: SENuke, PR websites, Wiki sites, oDesk. Fiverr only if desperate

Dealing with penaltiesIs it a manual or algorithmic penalty?

Manual Clues Webmaster Tools messages and site:yoursite.com searches Brand name searches - not a good indicator

Algo clues Traffic drops within a few days of algo going public* Lack of manual penalty clues

*Google updates: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change,http://seotrainingdojo.com/google-panda-and-penguin-updates.html

Dealing with penalties

Dealing with the algorithmic “penalty”

•Fix issues that the algo update addressed (e.g. Page Layout Update)•Increase presence on social media•Improve on anchor text variety (“Click here”, “http://yoursite.com/page/”, naked URLs)•Increase a number of “NoFollow” links•Increase a number of deep links•Increase a number of citations•Wait for a re-crawl

Dealing with penalties

Dealing with the manual penalty

•Clean up any BlackHat stuff, including, but not limited to:•Hidden Text/links (CSS, JS or HTML)•Scraped/Automatically generated/Hard-to-read content•Cloaking (Mobile browsers OK)•Excessive ads•Keyword stuffing•Rich Snippets abuse•Excessive backlinking that may have hurt you•User-generated spam (spammy free accounts, spammy posts on forums & blogs)•See more here

•Disavow tool links: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main (use sparingly and with care)•Check for malicious code (Webmaster tools does a pretty good job of notifying you of a compromised site)•Reconsideration requests https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration

Social Media Chatter = Branding

What are the most important social media signals

•Facebook likes and shares (public)•Authorship & Google +1’s•Tweets and retweets•Social bookmarks•Blogosphere chatter•Press Releases and sharing of the same•Usage of shortened URLs on Social media•CTR on shortened URLs (ShortTask.com)

Notes:-Do not rely on just one tactic for obtaining all of the above. Instead use a variety (pay with a tweet, Social Dominion, crowdsourcing & outsourcing)-Use the full the brand name whenever possible, unless it reads awkward

Snitching on your competition and other useful resources

Rich snippets issues: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/request.py?contact_type=rich_snippets_feedback

Reporting rich snippets spam: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=rich_snippets_spam

Report webspam: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Report buying links: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1&hl=en

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