When users click on a search result, they want to be able to see relevant content immediately rather than having to scroll down the page past numerous ads to reach it. With the latest update, Google algorithm will now take into consideration the layout of a web page and the amount of relevant content available above-the-fold in the rankings process.

The page layout algorithm improvement is likely to affect the sites that do not offer sufficient content ‘above the fold’. The search engine giant has clearly mentioned on the Webmaster Central blog that going forward the search rank of sites having their initial screen real estate largely dedicated to ads rather than actual content is likely to slip.

The change is hardly surprising. The popularity of Google search is based on the user experience offered by it. The search engine giant is constantly making efforts to improve the same. SEO experts are well aware of the fact that too many ads above the fold do not result in a great user experience. According to Matt Cutts, the number of sites likely to be affected by the change is small. While the websites offering good value to the users have nothing to worry about, a change of strategy may be required in case of self-serving sites.

Google has recently made a number of changes to increase author visibility. The search results page now displays the name and image of the author along with the content. Writers can easily set up authorship using their email address.

The author information displayed on search results page allows users to find out more about the content creator and enables them to connect with the writer directly.

The information offered on search results page also includes the Google+ circle count of the author, apart from name and image. Users have two options for engaging with writers. They can either comment on the content or add them to their circles from the results page itself. The changes are applicable to Google News as well.

If journalists link their Google profiles to their articles, along with the content the news results page will also feature author name and picture as well as the number of users having the writer in their Google+ circles.

Recently Google also introduced ‘Author Stats’ in Webmaster Tools. The tool enables content creators to find out how frequently their articles are appearing on the search results page. For instance, SEO experts creating informative content on the subject can find out the number of clicks and impressions that their articles attracted using the new ‘Author Stats’ tool.

In order to find out how often users are viewing their content, writers just need to connect their articles with their Google profiles through a simple link or e-mail verification.

One such recent development was Google updating the search function to its social networking site just a few months ago. The function allows users to search through the content available on Google+.

Earlier, the search result pages on Google+ featured four tabs – Everything, Google+ Posts, People and Sparks. After the latest tweaks, the pages feature two different tabs, each featuring a number of options. The original options appear under the first tab. If you choose

‘Everything’, your search results will include content from Google+ posts, People results as well as Sparks results. You can narrow down the results by choosing one of the three content sources. For instance, the ‘People’ option allows you to search for content from particular people. Similarly, you can specifically search for content from Google+ posts.

The second tab allows you to choose content sources for the search. The options under this tab include – from you, from your circles, from everyone. Other than the search itself, the search box has also been tweaked. As soon as you type a term in the box, a pop up window featuring possible Pages and People matches appears.

Another major change in search result pages is the presence of trending topics on the far right. This feature appears on a majority of social networking sites. It can help in increasing the engagement levels at the site. It allows users to check out what other people have to say about the hop topics.

While generating page titles in search results, Google takes into account a number of things. The anchor text in links is one of the signals considered while generating the title of a page.

Now, the emphasis on this signal has been reduced because of less relevance of boilerplate links featuring duplicated anchor text. This will help Google generate titles that are more relevant and specific to the content available on ranking page.

Google has also made a major change in snippets. In order to offer more relevant snippets, more content will now be picked up from the page itself rather than the menu or header.

Rich snippets for applications, which allow users looking for software applications to see details such as reviews and cost in search results, were announced recently.

Google has now expanded application rich snippet coverage. This means that now more such snippets will be available.

Google also made a significant change in the fresh content ranking process. The improvement enables the algorithm to assess the suitable level of content freshness for search terms.

As many as 35% of total searches are likely to be affected by this change. With Google accounting for more than 65% of all searches, staying up-to-date with these changes is necessary for internet marketers.

To understand more about the impact of these and other changes that Google has made to its algorithm, connect with one of our internet marketing  educators.

“Black Hat” SEO companies use spamming techniques to get better ranking on Google. However, they risk the possibility of getting their websites banned from Google. Black Hat SEO is a short term strategy, its not a strategy for a legitimate business.

Here are 7  spamming techniques to avoid:

• Don’t keyword stuff tags or repeat keywords over and over again in your text – For example: 
<META name=”keywords” content=”holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday cruises,holiday”

• Don’t use invisible text  – ie: white text on a white background.

• Don’t use “machine generated” pages -  We had 2 prospective clients last week having ranking issues. Both were using machine generated content to build their sites out to 30-40,000 pages. Your just giving Google a reason to penalize you.

• Stay away from hidden links or hidden text – See if you can find the hidden link in this web page (http://foxtagandlabel.com/) to “Rentex.com”.

• Don’t participate in link farms -Before you add your website to a directory, check out the page on which your listing will appear. If there are more than 100 links on 1 page, don’t bother adding your site unless its Yahoo, Best of the Web or Business.com

• Do everything in MODERATION – Black Hat SEOs generate a huge volume of links in a relatively short period of time, so don’t go crazy with any one tactic or you risk being lumped in with the bad guys.

• Don’t link to “bad” neighborhoods -You can tell a person’s character by the friends they keep. Google looks at outbound links in the same manner.

Make sure to read Google’s Terms of Service http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html before before moving forward with your SEO strategy or contact us  if you feel you have been penalized and need help getting re-instated with Google.

Best practice is to write for your audience first and then optimize the content so that it will get indexed by search engines. Here are 10 key tips on how to write web content that your visitors can easily consume.

• Focus on web content for potential buyers – Write about the benefits your products can bring to your visitors and how your products can solve their needs.
• One keyword phrase per page – Don’t try to jam in 8-12 keyword phrases into a single web page or article. Use one keyword phrase and a few variations of that phrase.
• Add your best content above the fold – Make sure your call to action or your best content is above the fold so visitors don’t have to scroll down to find it.
• Include a call to action – Provide a clearly visible call to action, whether you are asking for a phone call, fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter.
• Work with bulleted lists – Visitors like to scan pages for headlines. Bulleted lists are short reads and provide pointed information.
• Use compelling words – Use words that compel customers into responding – Search Engine Workshops has a great list of muscle words.
• Avoid long paragraphs – Use short paragraphs so your readers can scan the content quickly and stay engaged in your article.
• Use news related items – Pull topics from the news in your industry. Your audience is already searching for the info, why not provide it for them.
• Keep graphics to a minimum – Use graphics to draw your visitors eyes to a p
• Read your copy out loud – If you read your copy out loud, you will quickly see if it flows properly. If you can’t make it through the article, neither will your visitors.

So now that you have an idea on how you should write web content, later this week I will give you some ideas on generating content on a consistent basis.

In fact, every Thursday morning I meet with 20 local business professionals in Oakville, Ontario and the first question they all ask me is, “What should I be doing with social media?” Social media just seems so much easier than dealing with Adwords or hiring an SEO company. In reality, if it was that easy, B2B companies would be taking it more seriously.

In a recent survey by Accenture, only 7% of companies surveyed said that they were heavily involved in social media while 9% were not using social media at all. So what is stopping social media from pushing through the envelope?

Resources – Most companies try to “fit” a current employee into the social media sphere.not realizing the volume of additional work attached to the position.

Skills – We receive several “social media” job applicant resumes per month. They all look great on paper but when we check out their blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter accounts, we can see that would still require a lot of coaching.

Tools – Using the proper tools to measure its effectiveness can be expensive.

Budget – If you are already spending money on PPC or SEO, adding Social media to your toolbox may be stretching your finances.

Awareness of Benefits – Most companies are doing the same old tired strategy of feeding their blog posts into social media sites and thing that that covers it. There is so much more to it.

Thinking of starting a social media campaign? Give us a call for a free consultation including a competitive analysis.

Most of the time we are running on autopilot, making sure our work is getting done and
that attention to detail is being paid. Sometimes we are so focused on the topic at hand, we may overlook the bigger picture and that is why its great to have partners to share their awareness of what is happening in such a fragmented marketing world. Staying on top of the latest trends in so many fields is next to impossible to go it alone and do it correctly.

This week,we saw a couple of new items in the PPC arena.Well one is definitely new and the other may be what is on the way. The image above comes directly from Google and demonstrates Google’s intent to deliver ads at the bottom of search results, further squeezing out organic listings. Here is Google’s take on this new strategy.

Here is another interesting image that includes “link text” in the content of an Adwords ad. It might have been an error or it might be a trial that Google is playing with to see how it affects the click through rate (CTR) in Adwords ads. I would bet that it would increase the CTR substantially.

Well, we could complain about how SEO continues to get squeezed or we can continue to be aware of the big picture and look for new opportunities to help clients moving forward.

Feel free to share with us your latest discovery in the Googlesphere or social media world.

This Connection is Untrusted – When you clicked on the domain name url, you were greeted by the following message, “You asked Firefox to connect securely to (pullingmyhairout.com) but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure.” You can imagine the concern of having hundreds of visitors see this message when trying to visit your website. We usually see this type of error message when a website is hosted on the same ip as hundreds, if not thousands of other domains.

In this case, we simply contacted the hosting company, advised them of the issue and within a couple of hours, the “Untrusted” splash page disappeared when you tried to surf to the prospective clients website. Most hosting companies already know that there is an issue and its not just with your website, its an issue with hundreds of websites that they host. It doesn’t always happen that quickly but the key is knowing where to start the investigation.

Massive Decrease in Traffic – We get more of this type of call since the Panda update. A recent website we looked at had over 40,000 auto generated pages. This type of tactic had its day but sooner or later, Google catches up to you and you get bounced from the rankings. More often than not, if you have been adding garbage content to your website over the past few years, your website took a major hit from Panda. Its the old theory (GIGO), garbage in, garbage out.

Here, using Google analytics, we picked out the forty or fifty of the best pages on the site (traffic, conversion) and PageRank and then re-built the site in WordPress. Of course, we maintained the same urls where possible and 301′d (permanent re-direct) others but only after completing an in-depth site review.

Banned from Google – We rarely get a call in this circumstance because usually websites that get banned are owned by black hat webmasters and they know what the issue is right away. However, occasionally, a prospective client unknowingly uses a black hat technique, outsources their search engine optimization to an amateur seo company or unknowingly hosts their domain on the same ip as thousands of suspect websites and gets banned simply for their association with a “bad neighbourhood”.

In one case, we reviewed the website itself as well as outside influences only to discover that the webmaster had 3 websites on the same IP and one of them had been banned earlier. Its like dominos, once Google bans one of your sites, they start looking for more:).There is not much we can do it this case except contact Google and try to find an empathic person behind the blue door.

However, there have been occasions where we take over a suspended website, fix the issue (usually removing spammy content or internal linking) and then asked Google to reinstate the website through the owners webmaster central account.

There you have 3 uncomfortable issues that we handled this past week. If you have seen similar issues or have come across problems that you have solved or been unable to solve, drop a comment, we would love to her about them.

Forrester research recommends integrating search and display media for three reasons. Firstly, the convergence of both efforts is fast, smart and efficient. Advertisements on the Web, such as ad exchanges and supply-side platforms, can financially access unique audiences. Traditional search marketing vendors also purchase and optimize search and display media, thus securing a number of partners needed for online media management for their clients.

The convergence of search and display media not only saves money, but makes it. Efforts include an increase campaign results through a variety of channels, reduced buying paths, and a decrease in convergence time. Additionally, search and display media highlight customer insights by uncovering their interest and intent information that shapes a company’s strategic plan.

To begin convergence both media, Forrester advises to first target display ads based on relevant search query data. It further advocates creating coherence message across search and display efforts. This includes aligning creative banner ads with search ad copy, but not in a closely related manner. One way is to manually craft deviations that support display images or messages alongside key groups of search keywords. An active ad generator, such as Tumri, is useful.

Another way you can begin to utilize search and media display is to facilitate communication between paid search and display teams. Message and tactic harmonization is the most simple and effortless way for paid search and display personnel who work together throughout the campaign process.

After completing these steps, marketers need to measure their results. Forrester advocates for a combination of paid search and display information into a single report. Marketers who perform these endeavors have a more holistic perspective on search and display convergence. Tracking conversion rates through a single ad server will remove the task of counting identical conversions over and over again.

Implementing an attribution model is another way for tracking metrics. Modeling the influence and correlation search and display media have on each other and their end outcomes is a better approach than the traditional strategy that tributes the final marketing effort responsible for a conversion.