How to Optimize Local Search Listings - An Infograph

Recent Google Panda and Google Penguin Updates

We have recently seen that Google has launched three major Algorithm updates one by one within a span of 10 days i.e. Google Panda Updates on (April 17 and April 27) and Google Penguin Update on April 24.

Google panda is more of content related update similar to that of its earlier predecessors, but Google Penguin update targets more of Spammy links and sites.

After both these updates within such a short span of time, number of websites which have a low quality or duplicate content, in addition to the sites with spammy link profiles and have paid backlinks have suffered a lot or seen a drop in their search engine rankings and consequently traffic.

Exactly which websites have suffered?

After reading different analysis and articles, I have concluded that websites with the following characteristics have suffered a lot at the hands of Google Penguin:

• A website having maximum number of low quality backlinks i.e. coming from link exchange schemes, Sponsored Links or the websites engaged with blog networks.

• Websites having link profile has many links from un-related sites

• Sites that do not have a mix of anchor text link profile i.e. they are using only one or only few keywords to target.

Suggestions to do better after Google Penguin Update:

• Avoid getting links from footer of any site.
• Avoid links from unrelated or too generic sites or directories
• Avoid getting too many links for same the anchor text
• Avoid using many door way pages on the site


What to do if your site is affected by Google Penguin Update:

You will have to ensure whether your site is hit by Google Penguin update or not; by looking and analyzing your analytics. You can check the date after which there is a drop in website traffic and rankings. After that you will have to check your link profile, i.e. all backlinks and try to remove the links which belongs to above mentioned categories (don't remove all such links all at once, remove few and then wait for few days / weeks to see the difference in rankings) and with that also emphasize on creating high quality and related links for your website.

In addition, continue to add high quality and original content on your website. Once all these things are done, I am sure you will once again see your website done well on Search Engine Rankings.

Self Serve Ad Platform by Twitter

After wordpress now its Twitter who launches its self served advertisement platform, which is still in beta testing. Right now only 20 advertisers can use it.

As per my knowledge its is a self-serve advertisement system where advertisers can purchase the promoted tweets and accounts. May be twitter can make this self-serve advertisement system available to larger group of people in coming weeks.

According to an official email from Twitter's PR representative - "These advertisers can now set up and run their own Promoted Products campaigns and pay via a credit card. This is an important step in continuing to grow Twitter’s business. Our Promoted Products can help small and medium-sized businesses build their audience on Twitter and better engage with the people they want to reach."

Twitter's officials claims that advertisors won't mind the character limit for each tweet, as according to them the Conversion rates in twitter are much higher than other traditional display advertisement. Right now twitter claims that their conversion rates are around 5% where as for other traditional display advertisements it is around 0.5% only.

Manual Link Building is Worth Than Using Shortcuts

As we all know link building requires a lot of hard work and believe me or not, manual and legitimate link building has more value than creating thousands of links using automated methods. Unfortunately, many SEO experts and website owners still believe that building thousands of links on junk or unrelated sites (Website Directories, Articles Directories), will get them rankings, which isn't true.

No doubt when someone is building links manually, then definitely the number of links built in particular time period will be less as compared to automatically generated links, but the main advantage of manual link building is that you have the option of checking and analyzing each link beforehand. So, it is worth that we create a handful of links rather than ending up with thousands of junk links, as search engines will value the handful of links which are from high domain authority sites, rather than thousands of links which are created from various unrelated website directories etc...

Domain / Link Authority are Important:

It’s a misconception that a link is a link, but no if link is from any junk site it can hamper your SERPs Rankings Badly.

Let me explain this with the help of an example of an Election Campaign, where two Candidates (A and B) are fighting for the Top Chair. A is backed by people who have good reputation in society though they are only few in numbers. But supporters of B are more than that of A, but all of them have bad reputation in society. Here General Public will act as Search Engines and definitely they will go for Candidate - A as his supporters has good reputation in society. Isn't it?

In Short, Getting a link from related and reputed sites is more important as Search Engines will definitely give the benefit of such links to your site in SERP Rankings. So, it’s my suggestion to get links from sites which have high domain authority and are related to your site.

Latest SEO Updates and Information Blog Launched

I have been working in SEO / SEM / SMO industry from past 5 years. During these years, I have read and followed many blogs / bloggers and have learnt a lot. All things which I have learned with the help of these blogs, are well utilized, as I have used them on my websites, and believe me that I have come up with mixed results (some successes and some failures).

Now, I feel an urge to share all my experience and SEO Tips, which I have learnt during all these years with you all. I am sure you people will definitely get benefitted by this blog. Wait for my next blog-post :)