Latest Digital Marketing Techniques

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At SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced that the Panda algorithm is still being updated roughly every month, but that update is rolled out slowly throughout the month. It is like a Google Dance, but in this case, a Panda Dance.

What happens is Google will run the update on a particular day, let’s say on the 4th of the month. Then Google will slowly push out that impact over 10 days or so throughout the month. Google will typically repeat this cycle over monthly.

Google said in March that they will stop announcing Panda update because they were more of a rolling update. By rolling update, Google means that it is pushed out monthly, but pushed out over a 10 day cycle or so.

Why are we calling it the Panda Dance? Back in the early early days of Google, SEOs were obsessed with the Google Dance. Back then, Google pushed out monthly Google updates, and SEO’s watched the Google data centers to see the rankings dance.

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SEO SPAM techniques are practices and tactics, which are banned and strictly prohibited by search engines, you may find few websites applying these SPAM techniques and having good positions, it doesn’t mean that search engines have allowed those websites, it may be because those sites are not yet caught, I would like to mention one thing here that I’m writing about these techniques to create awareness in Young SEOs so that they can avoid using them, I would highly recommend everybody to avoid using these SPAM techniques.

List of the SEO SPAM Techniques

Hidden Text
Doorway Page
Hidden Tags
Useless Meta Tags
Search Engine Specific Pages
Redirection
Keyword Stuffing
Duplicate Content
Cloaking / IP Delivery
Link farming / Un-natural Linking
Over Optimization
Mini-Site network
Blog / Forum Abuse
Link Exchange / Reciprocal Links
Excessive CSS Playing

1. Hidden Text

There are two types of hidden text, the first type of hidden text is invisible text to human visitors by keeping text color same as background, the second type of hidden text is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers.

2. Doorway Page

Doorway is one of the oldest SEO SPAM techniques, in this technique web pages are developed keeping search engines in mind, they point to website but they are not linked with website that’s why they are called doorway through which website will be accessed.

3. Hidden Tags

There are plenty of tags used by webmasters to perform variety of functions such as “comment, style, noframe and http-equiv tags”. Unethical SEOs use these tags by inserting keywords to them.

4. Useless Meta Tags

There is a huge list of meta tags but search engine spiders don’t read all, using all meta tags probably won’t make your website penalized but it could badly hurt your website ranking, since all those useless meta tags will occupy initial characters of your web pages and search engines gives lot of importance to initially used web content.

5. Search Engine Specific Pages

Search engine specific pages are multiple but similar documents, specially designed to focus the requirements of various search engines algorithms. This SPAM technique is no longer applicable, today search engines are more intelligent and enough efficient to catch this technique.

6. Redirection

Redirection is a technique in which one page redirects the visitors / search engine spiders to another page or domain, redirection is a SPAM technique and it is usually done through JavaScript or meta refresh tag.

7. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is 100% SPAM technique, in this technique bunch of keywords are kept at webpage it may be in anchor link, alt tag or at bottom of the webpage.

8. Duplicate Content

There were days, when you can copy content from other website and keep it to yours and even bring good results in search engines, but search engine are getting smarter everyday. It’s even hard to have duplicate content on similar domain these days, search engines are extremely intelligent to recognize either the content is original or copied.

9. Cloaking / IP Delivery

Cloaking is a SPAM technique, in which one set of information is served to search engine spiders and another set of information is served to visitors, it’s mostly done by IP tracking that’s why it’s also called IP Delivery, search engines don’t like webmaster to treat them different than visitors.

10. Link farming / Un-natural Linking

Link farming or un-natural linking is a technique in which webmaster try to have more incoming links pointing to their domain unethically by FFA or link buying. Search engines are very smart these days, they can easily recognize un-natural linking by link monitoring.

11. Over Optimization

After Google’s Florida update, there is a new term called “Over Optimization” introduced to SEO industry, in that update, those websites got penalized which have excessive optimization. There is no criteria to measure search engine optimization efforts either they are balanced or over, but one thing is for sure and that is excessive optimization or implementation of SEO techniques comparatively than your competitors.

12. Mini-Site network

Google gives huge importance to qualified incoming links to any domain that encourages Black-Hat SEOs to create multiple relevant websites pointing back to a central sales website. The primary purpose of those multiple relevant websites is to win Google Trust and get good PR because they can control everything on all these domains, since they belong to same company and behave as mini-site network.

13. Blog / Forum Abuse

Blog / forum abuse is another SPAM technique, in this technique unethical SEOs try to get link back to their domains by posting their links to blogs and forums, it may be through their signature or through their own promotion.

14. Link Exchange / Reciprocal Links

Link exchange is Black-hat technique in which two or more websites exchange their links to influence Google, these links can be two ways and three ways, and this technique is also called reciprocal linking.

15. Excessive CSS Playing

Excessive CSS playing is very hot technique these days, in which webmaster controls website formatting through CSS. Actually search engine likes heading, bold, italic, paragraph, hyperlink, anchor link tags but sometimes utilizing all these tags can spoil the look of the website, that’s why webmaster control formatting through CSS.

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Here is a list of DOFOLLOW forums. This list was verified a few months ago and the forums below should all still be DOFOLLOW. If you find some that are no longer DOFOLLOW, let us know by commenting on our site. This list is provided by www.SEOFriendly.com – When sharing this list please include a link to our site if possible. Remember follow the forums rules.

This list is NOT provided as a FORUM SPAMMING list.

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Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes. So what do marketers need to know about Google’s Knowledge Graph to power their SEO and search strategies?
There has been a lot of commentary around the semantic Web. The theory is that search results are becoming smarter by distinguishing between words with different meanings. Whether that is true or not largely depends on who you believe and how much stock you place in search engines’ ability to “learn” the wants and needs of their users.
The inception of Google’s Knowledge Graph, which began rolling out in May 2012, has been the driving force behind the rise of the semantic Web.

Understanding the Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is basically a knowledge base consisting of more than 570 million objects and 18 billion facts. Since its inception, search result pages have gone through noticeable changes. These include the ability to distinguish between words with different meanings and a new sidebar feature that provides a snippet of related facts.
Through semantic integration, or the process of matching related information from diverse sources, Google has been able to serve narrower, more refined search results based on what people are searching.
Before the Knowledge Graph, if someone searched for “Kansas,” the results would split between information about the state of Kansas and the band Kansas. The Knowledge Graph allows Google to better associate specific results to the most relevant “Kansas.”

Benefits of the Knowledge Graph

This specificity is great for users. They are able to find what they are looking for much more efficiently without the noise caused by results for words with different meanings.
There is also an inherent benefit to advertisers. No longer do they have to compete with irrelevant search results for valuable search engine real estate. With more refined results, there are fewer pages that can potentially outrank an advertiser’s brand.
The Knowledge Graph offers additional benefits to brands.
It can be manipulated to enhance a brand’s reputation by directing consumers to sources with the most appropriate brand messaging. Additional opportunities come with updating content strategies to take advantage of some of the benefits the Knowledge Graph provides.
Let’s take a look at how a brand can manipulate the Knowledge Graph to help ensure the right message is being displayed about the brand. In order to have a level of control as to what information about the brand is included in Knowledge Graph, it’s important to understand the sources it pulls information from.

Knowledge Graph Sources

The main sources that the Knowledge Graph pulls its information from are Wikipedia, Freebase, and the CIA World Factbook. Information from these sources is often displayed in the right sidebar of Google’s search results for certain queries. Submitting information to Knowledge Base sources opens the ability to manipulate the information that is displayed.
While it’s nearly impossible to submit to the CIA-run Factbook, other Knowledge Graph sources present SEO opportunities to brands.
For example, the Knowledge Graph information about Paramount Pictures comes from Wikipedia. A Wikipedia page offers brands the potential to have some level of control over the information the Knowledge Graph displays on Google. This helps build a positive online reputation for the brand. This can be particularly useful if there are any search engine results that speak negatively about the brand. Having a Knowledge Graph-informed sidebar summary can detract users from seeing those negative listings.
Brands can retain a level of control over the messaging display about it in search results by creating a Wikipedia page. Just remember to carefully follow Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines.
Once a brand achieves Knowledge Graph information in a search engine result page sidebar, it’s important to review the summary content to identify exactly where the information is coming from. This will be useful if you want to change the summary information about your brand. In the example of Paramount, the summary comes from the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page. If slightly different messaging is desired, that first paragraph can be edited within Wikipedia.

Content Strategy

The Knowledge Graph is beneficial to on-site content strategies, especially post-Google’s Panda update. Before Panda, it was typical for content strategies to include developing unique pages around all targeted keywords. In order to rank for two different phrases that have the same meaning two pages would be created, each optimized for one of the synonymous phrases.
The problem is that since the two content pieces are about the exact same topic, the content would be very similar and not have any added value to the user. The fact that the Panda update made this practice essentially obsolete by flagging the similar pages as “thin content” and devaluing them posed a great threat to SEO.
With the introduction of the Knowledge Graph, however, this post-Panda content issue has been somewhat resolved. Because the Knowledge Graph is able to make connections among semantically similar phrases, creating and optimizing a single page provides the potential to rank for all synonyms. This not only allows a site to rank for multiple keywords while staying in line with Panda, but also provides a better user experience because visitors won’t have to read through all the fluff to find the information they are looking for. Therefore, the added benefit could be gained of increased engagement on the website.

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Definition - What does Google Knowledge Graph mean?

The Google Knowledge Graph is a propriety search mechanism that searches, relates, assembles and delivers search results from many different knowledge bases and information sources. Knowledge Graph uses pre-sorted relations between data and related values for its search query. It is based on the semantic search technique. Google launched Knowledge Graph in May 2012.

Techopedia explains Google Knowledge Graph

Knowledge Graph is primarily designed to provide much richer and related search results to the end user. It works by presenting data from sources it already has information about. This information is stored in the form of interrelated graphs around millions of different data entities.

For example, a Google query for the word "Chicago" might have different meanings for different people; the searcher could be looking for information on the city, the band or the movie by that name. Knowledge Graph will present all major categories/types of the search query based on acquired knowledge. Once the user selects the key semantic term, the Knowledge Graph will present the information that is most searched or most likely to be the type of information the user might be looking for. Based on semantic information, Knowledge Graph will continuously analyze and present results that are most relevant to a human user over time.

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here are many webmasters and SEOs believing right now that Google has released an update to their Panda algorithm late yesterday.

We’ve reached out to Google to confirm or deny the Panda update, as we’ve done 24 times previously; but this time, Google told us they are unlikely to confirm future Panda updates since Panda will be incorporated into their indexing processes.
It would not be surprising if this was indeed a Panda update since Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, did say at SMX West that a Panda update will be rolling out this Friday through the weekend. Matt then said although an update is expected this weekend, don’t be surprised if you don’t notice it because the Panda updates are going to be more integrated and less noticeable in the future.
I am not sure if this last push was the last manually updated Panda refresh or if it is already fully integrated into the normal Google indexes process. I think this was Google’s last manual push and they will, from now on, most likely not do manual pushes of the algorithm in the future.
The last Panda update we had confirmation on was Panda #24, so this one would be coined Panda version 25.

Here are all the releases so far for Panda:
Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 20, Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced)
Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

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Matt Cutts Announces Google Updates At SMX
On March 12, 2013 Matt Cutts head of web spam at Google, announced a panda update coming Friday March 15th or Monday March 18th in 2013. This will produce Google Panda Update #25. A suspected panda update may have occurred this past week as many webmasters were in webmaster world chatting about how many things have changed in the SERP’s.

Also announced is that the search quality team is currently working on a major Google Penguin Update coming very soon. This is regarded as a major update as many websites will be affected. This will produce the Penguin 4 update we have been waiting for.
March 11, 2013 Changes
Changes that occurred included sites like yellow pages ranking above original sites that have a link from the yellow pages website. I noticed this as well in some niches and sites like yelp and yellow pages ranking above sites that should be ranking above these somewhat “directory” websites. Doesn’t make much sense at all that Google would rank a “directory” type-site above results that deserve to be there. Especially because Google de-valued links from directories in the past.
Other changes include websites stealing images and ranking above websites that were the original creator of the image in Google image search. This should definitely not be happening and seems to be an error on Google’s part in their image search tools. Seems like they are still toying with this image search algorithm as many changes were recently made to the whole display of this portion of Google search.
One more noticeable occurrence during this time period is that webmasters noticed websites with stolen content ranking above originators of this content. Another big no no for Google as they defend that the originator will always be rewarded over the copier. Well this doesn’t seem to be the case and is very unfair, as originators should always be rewarded for their hard work in producing original content.

Link Networks Being Manually Targeted
Big announcement last week that Google is manually targeting link networks and really cracking down hard in 2013 on these types of sites. Many adverse affects will happen if your site is getting links from these link networks. Even if a site that links to you that is caught for having a link on these networks will affect your site as well. Be on the look out for link devaluation to your site and fix it accordingly with high quality links. Matt Cutts explain that these penalties are for clear cut cases and that webmaster guidelines are very straight forward in what is expected from a website.
Google Quality Raters
In other news Google has given insight to its quality rater system. This is where real live people grade websites in accordance with user experience. It is said to not have a direct affect on algorithms, but is used when pushing out Google updates to an extent after the web spam team reviews it.
Website Advertorial Penalization
Prior news releases mention that major sites have been penalized for using advertorials in their content. This goes to show you that the Google team is on top of all aspects of spam and to do things right as you may get caught.

Latest Digital Marketing Techniques

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Friday, 14 June 2013

Google’s Panda Dance: Matt Cutts Confirms Panda Rolls Out Monthly Over 10 Of 30 Days

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

SEO SPAM Techniques, Be Aware of Black-Hat SEOs

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

List of DOFOLLOW forums.

Friday, 22 March 2013

How to Leverage the Knowledge Graph for SEO

Understanding the Knowledge Graph

Benefits of the Knowledge Graph

Knowledge Graph Sources

Content Strategy

Thursday, 21 March 2013

Google Knowledge Graph

Definition - What does Google Knowledge Graph mean?

Techopedia explains Google Knowledge Graph

Monday, 18 March 2013

Google Panda Update 25 Seems To Have Hit

Google Update March 2013 Panda Update & Penguin Update Coming Soon

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