Humming Bird Algorithm

Google's new 'Hummingbird' algorithm is about queries, not just SEO. The most important element of the changes revolve around how search queries are processed. Instead of simply parsing searches one word at a time, the new algorithm is tuned to parsing questions posed by users, then organizing the results in terms of the most valuable answers to those questions first. Google estimates that some 90 percent of searches are affected. The most revealing thing about Hummingbird is how it reflects an ongoing change in the demands people are making on search engines.

The algorithm was named as the result being “precise and fast.” Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda. Panda, Penguin and other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Think of it again like an engine. Those things were as if the engine received a new oil filter or had an improved pump put in. In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

The main focus was that the new algorithm allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to parsing searches word-by-word), and to identify and rank answers to those questions from the content they have indexed. The most revealing thing about Hummingbird is how it reflects an ongoing change in the demands people are making on search engines. Keyword queries are giving way to longer, more sophisticated questions, driven at least in part by voice searches. The more Google enables such things, the more people expect the results to be useful and complete, so further ramp-ups of this kind are almost certainly on the way. Google's main "skunkworks" projects at this point all seem to revolve around natural-language processing of one kind or another. They're using the data harvested from the Web as a whole to aid in language translation; with Hummingbird, they may well be using the click-through behavior for results returned from questions to retool Google all that much more into an AI that knows at least as much -- if not more -- about the real world than we do.

Matt Cutts: Google Penguin 2.1 is Going Live Today

The Google Penguin 2.1 Algorithm Update Is Here, And It’s Scarier Than Ever!

The fifth confirmed release of Google’s “Penguin” spam fighting algorithm is live. This Penguin update is using a slightly improved version of Google’s “Penguin 2″ search engine technology.

WhatDoes Penguin 2.1 Look for?

It’s likely that Penguin 2.1 looks for everything that the preceding Penguin algorithms have looked for, but it’s hard to say at this point in time. To give you some history: when the first Penguin algorithm was released, no one knew what to expect. As the months passed, certain characteristics emerged that were synonymous with someone who was negatively affected by a Penguin update being released. But what no one had anticipated was that the first Penguin algorithm likely only analyzed and took action on back links pointing to the homepage (or at the very least, only top level pages of a site). This of course wasn’t discovered until Penguin 2 was announced, and Matt Cutts hinted at the fact that Penguin 2 went much deeper into a website than the original Penguin algorithm.

Penguin algorithm is largely targets the following:

• Low quality links
• Spammy links
• Paid links that are not marked as nofollow
• Spammy or black hat SEO techniques
• Article syndication links
• Forum or blog posting abuse (such as planting links within forum signatures, or creating really low quality blog posts on 3^rd party sites, like Blogger, for the sole sake of acquiring back links)
• Large amounts of exact match keywords used within external links
• Large amounts of back links coming from one website (usually referred to as site wide links)
• Widget links
• Aggressive link exchanges
• In fact, pretty much anything listed on the Google Link Schemes Page  which is a part of the quality guidelines set forth by Google

One thing is for certain – Google sure has been busy. With the introduction of the GoogleHummingbird algorithm, their LARGEST algorithm release in over a decade, it is most certain that many webmasters will see some sort of fluctuation with their rankings, traffic and leads. The important thing is not to panic. So we only engage in white hat SEO (also referred to as “best practices” throughout the industry), and only pursue organic link opportunities. 

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Tumblr for SEO

How to Use Tumblr for SEO and Social Media Marketing

 Tumblr is one of those social networks which is often overlooked, but which has tremendous potential for SEO and social media marketing. I myself was slow to adopt Tumblr as a social media platform, but once I started using it I became hooked by its power and simplicity. Hopefully by the end of this post, you'll feel the same.

In this post today I will be covering 1) What Tumblr is and how it works, 2) The benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks, and 3) Actionable advice on how you can use Tumblr for online marketing, including specific content ideas.

Why should I care about Tumblr?

Before we get too far, let me provide some stats about Tumblr which should help put things into perspective:

•     130.5 million blogs on Tumblr, as of August 2013
•     28th highest traffic site on the web according to Comscore
•     300 million unique monthly visitors according to Yahoo
•     50% of Tumblr users are under the age of 25
•     53.5% of Tumblr visitors are female

The benefits of Tumblr


So now we have a better idea of what Tumblr is and why it's important, but what are the benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks and blogging platforms? There are 5 key benefits: 

1) Dofollow links
2) Great content discovery
3) Content testing ground
4) Microsites
5) Branding

[Source: moz.com/blog/how-to-use-tumblr-for-seo-and-social-media-marketing ]

The Value Of Quality Link Building In SEO

            Quality link building involves getting inbound links to increase the overall SERP positions of not only your website’s homepage, but also your deeper URLs.
           Simply exchanging links indiscriminately with other webmasters and bloggers, although this creates lots of noise, it does not necessarily generate any great SEO value for you. In order to engage in meaningful link building exercise the placement of the links should be voluntary and only between related sites.
        The external links that you have on your website should add value to your existing content. If you design websites but don’t provide SEO services than it makes perfect sense to recommend to your visitors some quality SEO websites and online resources. Similarly an SEO company can link to a website or websites that provide a search engine friendly website designs or the websites that contain useful web designing tips and tricks.
       Indiscriminately Exchanging links with all sorts of websites can actually have to be
counterproductive because the search engines can penalise you for linking to websites that have a
bad “reputation”.
         When you have lots of quality inbound links it conveys to the search engines that your website contains really valuable information and hence it should be ranked higher for the related topic. Even when you link to other external websites and if those websites contain trusted information then too your website earns higher rankings.
         So always remember, when it comes to exchanging links the quality matters far more than the quantity.

Cookies in Google Analytics

Cookie is a text file which is used to store information about a visitor, his preferences, location and other details.

There are two types of cookies:

First Party Cookies

First party cookies are issued by the website being visited and only the website which issued the first party cookie can read the cookie.

Third Party Cookies

Third party cookies are issued by the website(s) other than the website being visited.

Analytics uses First party cookies.

Persistent cookies are the cookies with expiration date. They remain on your computer even when you end the web session or close your browser window. They can be read by the website that created them on return visits. 

Temporary cookies are cookies without expiration date. They expire as soon as you end the web session or close the browser window.

Google Analytics can set following five first party cookies:

_utma (unique visitor cookie)

_utmb (session cookie)

_utmz (Campaign cookie)

_utmv (visitor segmentation cookie)

_utmx (Google Website Optimizer cookie)

All of the Google Analytics cookies are persistent.

New Google Adwords Keyword Planner- Keyword Tool has Expired

Few days later. Google announces to close external Ad keyword tool. If you search for Keyword tool in Google, it is replaced and redirected yo Keyword Planner Tool, a new method/tool to estimate the keywords.

Previously, all can access the tool without logging into their accounts, but for a new Keyword planner tool it is mandatory to login into your existing or creating new account.

New Keyword Planner Tool

 

Changes Occured After Introducing Keyword Planner

No Match Type Data
Keyword matches like Broad, Exact, Phrase are not existed in Keyword Tool. You can get only exact match volume form this. To know other match types, you must add the keyword idea into your account.

For examples if search for Iron Man 3, you get the same information (data) on all Exact, Broad and Phrase keywords. But, here you can estimate the traffic considering like no: of click, cost etc.

Device Estimator
By this new Keyword Planner, you get specific keywords and visitors happened from devices like desktops, mobile, tablets etc. It is calculated based on average no: of visitors coming from the related devices. Google announces that it is working on this feature.
Local & Global Search Volume
Here after you can't estimate what is is local search and global searches for your keyword. These 2 columns are merged and replaced to Average monthly searches. You can get data specific for entire country, state, city and location etc form Keyword Planner. Note: You can still get Global monthly searches

Ad Share
This has been replaced to new column called "Ad impression share", to know all the potential impressions happened for a particular keyword.

Google Search Network
This column is replaced by network option with in the targeting settings. To get the entire search network data and information click on option called "Google and search partners" from the wizard.

Search Share- This is permanently expired/retired.

Approx CPC (Search)
Previously you get the approximate CPC for particular keyword in search network. But here, it has replaced this with Avg. CPC. You can get more accurate details from average Cost-Per-Click which you had previously get from Approx. CPC.

Local Search Trends
This column is expired in Keyword Planner, Of course, you can still get this information from Local Monthly Searches. You can get the search volume trends by downloading the historical statistics from Keyword Planner.

 

SEO Tactics That Are Worth Your Time in 2013

Look at any list of current SEO strategies and it will be immediately clear that the #1 tactic relates to content. In my last column on law firm SEO tactics to avoid in 2013, I concluded that more than anything else, we need to ensure a “regular flow of original content (and deep links flowing into that content)” and to “make good choices: on publishing, building audiences, coding, classification, proper description, and most important, connecting with people.”

I stand by those words. The bottom line is that content drives search traffic; this has never been truer than in 2013. Beyond the publishing of useful, targeted, and high-quality content, though, there are still some behind-the-scenes aspects of SEO that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Clean Up Your (Google Places) Act

In what many web folks are hoping is the light at the end of a very long and treacherous tunnel, Google recently announced that it has begun to roll out an improved dashboard for business owners to administer their Google Places for Business pages. Google promises that the new dashboard is easier to use (which wouldn’t take much); that changes made through the new dashboard will go live sooner; and ultimately, that there will be better integration with other Google products such as local Google+ pages, AdWords Express, and Google Offers. Business owners will receive an email when the new dashboard is available to them – but only time will tell whether this is truly an improvement over the current setup.

It’s surprising how many law firms haven’t got “the basics” right yet. Ensure your Places business listing is claimed, filled out and accurate. Consistent descriptions for “the NAP” (firm name, address, and phone number) are critical, along with your website URL, contact email, categories and description, hours of operation, payment options, languages of service, and confirmed location of the pin marker on Google Maps. You’ll get extra mileage out of adding photos and videos, as well.

Firms will also want to consider merging their Places record with their corresponding Google+ local pages. If your firm is already sharing news and blog posts, photos and videos, etc. on Google’s social network, it’s well worth your time to connect that engagement with your local business listing.

Stake Your Authorship Claim

Ever notice how sometimes you’ll see small author headshots next to their content in a page of Google search results?



This is thanks to Google’s Authorship markup. But what are the practical benefits? For starters, users have reported that implementing Authorship markup results in higher clickthrough rates, and recent research agrees.

Matt Green and John Van Bockern of Ethical SEO Consulting wanted to know the impact of media snippets on clickthrough rates in search engines, and determined which factors were most important for consumers searching for a personal injury lawyer. There were two very interesting conclusions: First, having any media snippet next to your search record will produce a greater number of click-throughs; and second, “authorship snippets” actually had a higher click-through than “video snippets”.

In Copyblogger’s list of 10 reasons why writers should claim their Google Authorship markup, trust-building is cited as another key benefit.

“The recognition that you have a Google+ account and a headshot beside your search listing is going to separate you from the faceless content creators. David Gould said it best: “For users, this reinforces the idea that the result is reputable: this link isn’t just the result of robotic SEO manipulation, but rather it’s from a human being who we can learn more about. Knowing that at least some minimal verification has gone on creates a trust factor with the user.””

Setting up Authorship is fairly straightforward. Each author needs a Google+ profile, a byline on the website embedded next to the author’s content (and that matches your Google+ profile name), and a high-quality headshot. Once these things are in place, there are two ways to verify the claim: the author either needs to have an email address from the domain on which their content is hosted, or needs to set up reciprocal links to and from their Google+ profile.
Authorship markup is proving itself to be a powerful search signal — and one that’s entirely within the reach and control of individual authors. Smart lawyers will take full advantage of it.
Mobile Visibility
Mobile considerations are a particularly hot topic in the web world these days — and for good reason, considering how commonplace tablets and smartphones are. While it shouldn’t take a Google directive to push law firms to employ a responsive web design, Google does factor “mobile friendliness” as a quality signal that can impact “how search results are delivered”.

The search impact aside, let’s review things a little further. Why else should you employ a mobile responsive design? Two factors worth your consideration:

• Simplifying Contact: What happens when potential clients try to find you on their phones or tablets? Responsive designs help firm websites make it easy for clients to make contact — through clear and eye-catching calls to action, yes, but also through touchable telephone numbers and email addresses (using the tel: and mailto: schemes).
• Don’t neglect the principle of content parity. Web designer Brad Frost says: “It’s a myth that mobile users don’t want to do everything that desktop users do.” So go ahead and optimize the format of your various content-types. Just don’t alter the delivery, or make content unavailable.

Even massive website traffic is useless if visitors aren’t able to quickly find what they need when they arrive at your site. This is especially true for mobile users, and worth considering when designing your “user experience”. Someone on a smartphone, for example, is more likely to be en route to your office and needing directions. Highlighting information like this on smaller-screen devices … that’s just simple common sense.

Google thinks so, too. Search engines have always looked to measure website quality, and a part of that process is gauging whether a website “works” for its users. Google can detect those qualities within your website’s code, so law firms should expect their websites to be measured against those signals.

Conclusion

Even among many law firms today, there’s an unfortunate and outdated understanding of “what SEO is”. Few people think “SEO” when they hear about faster delivery of web content, or responsive design for mobile devices, or linking published content with authorship markup, or syncing up a firm’s numerous local business listings. These are, however, very common issues that currently define a law firm’s relationship with Google. For firms looking to maximize their search exposure in 2013, many will do well to consider how they are “feeding” the three inputs above.