Google Penguin, Over-optimization, Googled Panda Safe

If you are looking for an SEO package that complies with the current (2012) search engine algorithms, you have finally found one. Following is not flashy sales page text, instead, it is valuable information you have to know about this SEO package. 

Our all new offering is based on extensive research on Google's algorithm changes and the safe SEO practices to avoid over optimization. According to Matt Cutts video QnA session, organic and natural SEO still has value and he has hinted how Google’s decides the reputation of a website to rank in the search engines. He says (see the video to the left) a website should have some interesting information or something interesting to talk about which is then shared widely in the social media. If a website has such activity with social media signals, Matt has confirmed that these are considered as ranking factors as well as points to gain page rank.

A solution to stay away from over optimization penalty!

Another most important factor to consider when SEOing your website is "Over Optimization". If you have read the SEO news around, you would know the importance of taking over optimization factors into consideration. While all the SEO experts are clueless on what qualifies as over optimization, our research team at SIM labs found those factors:

• Promotion is spread over a period of one month with slow, organic and natural SEO
• Safe use of natural and varying anchor texts so that over optimization of targeted keyword is eliminated
• Usage of a mix of inner page urls within your website to ensure that the promotion looks natural to both search engines and users. SEO benefit would be applied to the entire website along with achieving rankings to the main targeted keywords and pages
• As usual, usage of the most updated list of top websites for promotion. This makes sure that your website gets only quality links, which is a safe SEO investment.

Googled SEO is Panda Safe and Penguin Safe

Google panda update has been around us for quite a long period of time. We had mastered the safe SEO strategies to fulfill the panda update.Now with the recent webspam (penguin) algorithm update, we have extended our Panda SEO research and implemented more organic strategies to make sure that Google loves your website. Being Panda and Google Penguin safe:

• Uses 100% manual process from formatting, submission to report creation. We strictly adhere to the "ZeroBOT" policy to make sure that the strategy is Penguin proof
• Handpicked site lists. Each site we use resides on different IPs from different locations. Your website is safe as there are no sites belonging to a huge network in our list
• Unique content used as applicable to deal with the latest Google panda update
• There are many other factors from Google Penguin update and the latest panda algorithm, which are taken into consideration

The Strategy

1: Creating the buzz about your website

As mentioned, the initial approach is to create something interesting about your website. The natural and organic way of achieving this – Write and publish well researched content related to the target keywords. For that, you cannot think of any other services other than "Advanced article marketing" and "Press Release promotion".

Advanced article marketing

• Write a well-researched, unique article of 450 – 500 words based on the main target keywords.
• The article would be then prepared for publication at 24 best article directories. Now here is the real optimization part in this SEO package. All 24 articles would carry unique resources boxes with different anchor tags. We would be making use of 10-12 keywords to link back to the related urls of your website. This makes sure that over optimization focusing on a particular keyword is not done.
• Publishing the articles will take place gradually over a month. Articles would be published in 6 spots every week for 4 weeks. This gets you 24 published articles in total.

Deliverables: 24 Published articles with varied resource box in a month with 2 links from each article

Duration: 4 Weeks

Press Release Promotion

• Write a newsworthy press release about your company which would create an instant buzz online. The press release would be written as an official release so that there is no harm in sending it to all online news channels in a single shot
• The press release would be distributed to top 90 Press release sites for maximum visibility
• Guaranteed syndication by Google News ensures that a huge buzz would be created about your website.

Deliverables:

• Login Details of each press release directory
• Screenshots of press release distributed to 90 sites

Duration: 5 working days

2: Social Media Marketing to spread the word

Now that a buzz is created about your website, it's time to spread information in the social media and perform social media marketing. Though there are countless numbers of social media marketing strategies available today, we have handpicked the services that Google values the most. Watch another clip from the same QnA video session of Matt where he confirms that the social media signals from networks such as facebook and twitter, social bookmarking sites such as stumbleupon and reditt, blogging sites such as blogspot and considered in the search engine rankings. Now we have the interesting information about your website in the form of articles and PRs, so Google bots would identify any social media marketing done right now as a natural one.

All the following promotions would start after 7 days of initial promotion so that the initial approach is indexed by Google.

20 shared social document sharing of article

The article that we had already written would be shared in top 20 social document sharing sites. For the promotion to look natural, we would use one of our general, old authority profiles to share the documents. The shared documents would carry links back to your website as well.

Deliverables: Published links of all 20 shared articles

Duration: 5 working days

10 news bookmarking of Press Release with different title and description

Now we already have the Press release about your company live online. It’s time to get the press release shared in the social media. This is where social news bookmarking comes into play. The live press release would be bookmarked in top 10 news bookmarking sites such as Slashdot and newsvine. To get rid of duplicate bookmarks, we make use of unique titles and descriptions as well.

Deliverables: Direct links to each published news bookmark

Duration: 10 working days

40 shared social bookmarking (10/ week) with different users and different titles and descriptions

You have heard Matt himself say that signals to your website from social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon and dig are valuable for rankings. However, at most caution has to be taken when it comes to social bookmarking, when the over optimization penalty is lurking around. So we have formulated a unique social bookmarking strategy:

• Write 40 different, unique titles and descriptions
• Bookmark your website on a slow and natural pace of 10 bookmarks per week for 4 months
• Bookmarks would be done using highly reputable unique user account that we have along with posting different titles and descriptions.
• This makes the bookmarks look like being done by individual users.

Deliverables: Direct links to each bookmark (40 in 4 weeks) in the final report

Duration: 4 Weeks

Continuous participation in twitter, facebook and linkedin (Google Plus can be chosen instead of linkedin)

• 20 Wall updates to your facebook fanpage in 20 days
• 20 Tweets to your twitter profile in 20 days
• 20 updates to your Google Plus company page in 20 days

We would write interesting updates based on extensive research. It would be made sure that the social media posts that we write would be shared like a wildfire within these networks.

Deliverables: 24 Published articles with varied resource box in a month with 2 links from each article Duration: 4 Weeks

Bronze Social Media Blogging Wheels

Now it’s time for publishing unique content in social media blogs with optimized anchor texts. With the social media wheel, you would get:

• Completed profiles in 12 social media blogging sites
• Keyword research to find 12 unique keywords related to your website
• 12 Unique, well researched social media content (250-300 words) written based on the keywords
• The unique content published in 12 blogs with a Google safe link pattern.

Deliverables:

• Profile login information of all 12 social media blogging sites
• 12 Published content links

Entire project duration: 30 working days

Read More

Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips and Advice

Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. We’ve got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with our own.

What Was Penguin?

The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to Google’s search results that was designed to punish pages that have been spamming Google. If you’re not familiar with spam, it’s when people do things like “keyword stuffing” or “cloaking” that violate Google’s guidelines. To learn more:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Iolations & Search Engine Spam Penalties

Is Penguin Fully Live?

Sometimes it can take a few days for an update to fully rollout across all Google’s various data centers, which in turn means impacting all its search results. In this case, the rollout is complete. Google confirms that Penguin is fully live.

Was I Hit?

It’s easy to run some search, see that your site has gone and assume the worst. While Google does report some spamming offenses through Google Webmaster Central, it tells me there’s no way currently to log-in and know if the Penguin Update hit you.

My advice to people worried has been this. The update launched on April 24. Look at your search-related traffic from Google immediately after that date. Do you see a major drop compared with a day or two before? If so, you were probably hit by Penguin. See a rise in traffic? You probably benefited from Penguin. See no change? Then it really had no impact on you.

I ran this advice past Google; I was told it was good advice. It’s also exactly the same advice we and others have given people trying to understand if they were hit by the various Panda Updates over time.

How Do I Recover?

Since this was targeting spam, you need to remove any spam you might have. In some cases, Google may have sent messages to you about spam activity in the past. Messages may even be waiting for you in Google Webmaster Central, if you’ve never verified your account.

Obviously, correct anything that Google has flagged as spam with your site. If nothing’s been flagged — and you’re sure it was Penguin that hit you — then correct whatever you can think of that might be spam-like.

Within Google Webmaster Central, there’s the ability to file a reconsideration request. However, Google says this is an algorithmic change — IE, it’s a penalty that’s applied automatically, rather than a human at Google spotting some spam and applying what’s called a manual penality.

Because of that, Google said that reconsideration requests won’t help with Penguin. I was told:

Because this is an algorithmic change, Google has no plans to make manual exceptions. Webmasters cannot ask for reconsideration of their site, but we’re happy to hear feedback about the change on our webmaster forum.

What If Google’s Wrong!

Feel like Penguin has nabbed you for spamming incorrectly? As explained, there’s no reconsideration request process. As the statement above explains, you can post feedback through Google’s webmaster forum.

My advice is not to go in with the attitude that Google has wronged your site. Maybe it did, but Google’s more interested in whether its search results that are doing wrong by searchers.

Give an example of a search where maybe you were previously listed. Explain the quality of your site. Explain what remains, especially if what remains seems to be benefiting from spam or is of low quality.

Of course, giving examples like this is also seen by some as “outing,” and there’s a belief among some SEOs that it should never be done. Others disagree. If this bothers you, then at least explain the quality behind your site and what’s being missed by searchers, not an emphasis on things like how much traffic or business you’re losing.

Postscript: There’s now also a specific form you can use. See Penguin Update Peck Your Site By Mistake? Google’s Got A Form For That.

What About The Over-Optimization Penalty?

Google had initially warned that an “over-optimization” penalty was coming. This is the penalty it was talking about, but it has clarified that it’s not meant to target some hard-to-pin down “over-optimization” but rather outright spam.

What About Panda 3.5?

Yesterday, Google confirmed that it also released an update to its Panda algorithm, Panda 3.5, on April 19. Unlike Penguin, which is meant to target spam, Panda is designed to target pages that aren’t spam but aren’t great quality.

The date is important. If your traffic dropped on April 19 and never recovered, then you were probably hit by Panda rather than Penguin, and you need to follow advice for recovering from Panda, such as these:

• Your Site’s Traffic Has Plummeted Since Google’s Panda Update. Now What?
• Hit By Panda Update? Google Has 23 Questions To Ask Yourself To Improve
• 5 New Tactics For SEO Post-Panda
• Can You Dig Out Of Your Google Panda Hole By Offloading To Subdomains?
• Yet More Tips For Diagnosing & Fixing Panda Problems
• Google: Low PageRank & Bad Spelling May Go Hand-In-Hand; Panda, Too?

What About That Parked Domains Mistake?

Around April 17, a number of sites reported lost traffic. That turned out to be a problem with how Google was incorrectly classifying them as being parked domains.

If your traffic dropped around April 17, it’s probably related to that, especially if you recovered by April 18. It shouldn’t be responsible for any drop you might see after April 18. Rather, Panda and Penguin are more likely culprits.

What About All Those Link Warnings?

Around mid-March, Google began taking action against some blog networks that seemed chiefly designed just to generate links to those participating, in hopes of boosting rankings. Then around the end of March, Google also sent warnings about “artificial or unnatural links” to a variety of sites.

If you saw your traffic drop in mid-March, it could be for one of two reasons. First, Google might no longer be letting the traffic from the link networks you were in carry weight. You’re not penalized. You’re just not benefiting any longer. Second, Google might have actively attached a penalty to your site.

It’s really not clear which has happened to people. Getting a warning doesn’t necessarily mean you got a penalty, it seems. But we’ll try to confirm this more from Google in the coming days.

What About Negative SEO?

Especially in the past week, there’s been a huge rise in forum discussions that “negative SEO” is now a serious problem. The idea is that if being in a blog network or having paid links could hurt you, then anyone could point bad links to harm another site.

This fear has existed for years. It’s not new. It’s even something Google acknowledges can happen in some limited cases. The fact that we’ve not had many sites over the years complaining that negative SEO has hit them should be reassuring.

For most sites, it’s not a problem because good sites have enough good signals in their favor that bad ones stand out as an oddity. It’s more a liability for smaller sites that haven’t built my authority, in my view.

I’ll be following up in more depth on the current round of worries, and I’ll try to get Google to weigh in more on the fresh concerns.

Is Penguin Bad For Searchers, Small Businesses…

If you read forum discussions, the Penguin Update has ruined Google’s search results. The reality is difficult to tell.

Make no mistake, it’s easy to find plenty of weirdness in Google’s results, as I covered in yesterday’s post, Did Penguin Make Google’s Search Results Better Or Worse?

However, these still remain anecdotal reports. It’s always been possible to find oddities like this.

There’s been no mass outcry from ordinary Google searchers that it’s suddenly gotten worse. There’s also typically outcry mostly from publishers who have been harmed by updates and not from publishers who have gained. Those who’ve gained have no reason to speak up.

As a result, after any update, it’s always possible to come away with a skewed view that the sky is falling in terms of relevancy. The reactions I’ve seen to the Penguin Update? They could have all been drawn directly out of reactions from the Florida Update of 2003. This presentation I did for concerned publishers at the time are equally applicable today.

After that update, Google was accused of trying to do everything from put small businesses out-of-business to trying to get more AdWords cash out of big brands. And SEO was dead yet again.

If SEO is dead, it sure has been taking its time dying, as I’ve written in the past. If Google really does have a grand master plan to wipe out small businesses, then it’s going on 10 years now that it hasn’t managed to do it.

The reality is that I’d say the vast majority of small businesses are getting plenty of traffic from Google, real small businesses that make real things or provide real services.

Of course, if the definition of small business is someone who writes hundreds of articles for a blog, to carry Google’s or someone else’s ads alongside, then “spins” those articles using software into slightly different versions for three other blogs to carry more ads, then yes, those types of businesses are in danger. They were from the beginning, actually, and it’s surprising they’ve lasted so long.

None of that is meant to take away from anyone with a quality site who has been harmed by latest update. If Google’s screwing up on listing relevant sites, we want to know, and we sure want that corrected. But as someone who has witnessed Google updates for as far back as we’ve had Google — who can remember panic over updates with Excite that existed before Google — this seems fairly normal.

Search didn’t suddenly stop sending everyone traffic. Google didn’t just stop sending sites tons of traffic. A bunch of people were definitely hit, some of whom probably should have been hit. A bunch of people were rewarded, some of whom should have been rewarded. Most people probably noticed no change at all. Here’s hoping the people who were hit mistakenly, or who weren’t rewarded as they should have been, get corrected in future updates.

Read More