Archive for the ‘Google Me Series’ Category

Bending the Web – Our Minds – Reality

I really enjoy keeping a close watch on Google and all the improvements they are making. The apps they have developed are a great help for all Internet users. I’ve been so busy that I have not been able to give Netwoozy anything new lately, but I’ve been taking notes.

There is one VITAL bit of news you NEED to really have sink into your brain. . .

Google Plus is on the raise and it is a smashing way to increase traffic to your websites, blogs etc… and it is a seriously great way to start making money online. Check out the step by step guide and video tutorials here — > Google Plus Video and Step by Step Training Guide

This year in 2011, Google’s Chrome browser jumps ahead of Firefox as the most used web browser 25.69% to Firefoxes 25.23.

Here’s some of the highlights:

The Google Toolbar with a Drop Down Menu

This is a great little addition to your web browser. The new toolbar just takes up the space of an icon instead of an entire row.  You can snag this Google Toolbar here.

Google and Yahoo – Tablet Friendly

Both of these search engines have adapted to the Smart Phone and Tablet. I recently purchased an iPad 2 during Black Friday and was really happy to see Google had done this.

What is shocking to me is that a lot of people in business today have not had a mobile website created for their business. With people using the Internet for local searches it is vital that you have a mobile friendly website as well as basic website for all Internet users.

Bending Technology – TV Becomes Reality

“Samsung has released a video showcasing the potential future look and feel of computer technology, using an ultra-thin and flexible screen technology.”  Read the full story.

It’s hard to believe but Samsung has a flexible OLED touchscreen technology that people will be jumping through hoops as high as the moon to get. I mean who wouldn’t want to own a bendable phone, tablet or PC that you can roll up and toss in a smaller bag. A computer that weights… well, hardly anything.

If you’ve watched the TV show Terra Nova you’ve seen these futuristic looking tablets on TV. I don’t know if those are the real deal or just some special effects, but it looks like it is now a real deal.

Why have 62 Universities gone Google? What about the 4 million companies using Google Apps for business? Why is it that more businesses are joining every day at the rate of 5,000 per day?

Going Ape Over Google Apps

This is some of the recent Google highlights reported by an official Google Apps Marketing Manager, Jeremy Milo.  Let’s consider some of these apps that some have gone Ape… er… Google over.

Introducing the Power of Google Chrome

You can take your SmartPhones, Laptops, and iPads with you, but you can’t always connect to the Internet.  This may be a little bit frustrating at times, but Google Chrome offers a solution.

Working Offline – There’s an App for that!

With Google Chrome you can continue to work offline in Gmail, Calendar and Docs. The thing about Google is the way they integrate everything that is “Google”, making it easy to go from one thing to another.

More Apps to Go Ape Over

So, you log into your Gmail, and you are logged into Blogger too. Plus, there are tons of other apps you can work with using the same account.

• YouTube – You should be uploading and sharing videos on your site using YT
• AdSense – One of the more simple ways to make money online with niche blogs.
• AdWords – Good to have and login to when using G Keywords tool.
• Analytics – A must for tracking the who, what, when, how, and where from your site.
• Blogger – A great social network for aiding in building a powerful blog network.
• Webmaster Tools – Get the SEO tools and advice you need directly from Google.
• Blog Search – Ah yes, this is a great way to discover other blogs that share your niche. Find blogs you can comment on as well as submit guest posts to.

And there’s plenty more.  If you have yet to experience the Google apps listed above, it’s time for you to check them out. These things along with other social apps like Facebook and Twitter are a vital part of driving traffic to your site as well as part of your SEO circle of success.

Let’s see what the fuss is all about for the new Gmail is bragging about. They’ve redesigned it to be as “clean, simple and intuitive as possible.” What do you think?

Here’s the Scoop on the GOOGLE APPS Thingy’s

There are many ways to drive traffic to your blogs. Google’s search engine is just one way. Facebook, Twitter, and social blogs like Blogger are part of the big picture.

I have yet to use Google Chrome. It’s my next task on my list of things to do this coming week.

How about you? Do you use Google Chrome? What do you like about it?

Has The Panda Dealt a

Critical Blow to Article Networks?

As of Feb. 2011 Google introduced quite a few changes within it’s ranking algorithm, calling it the Panda update.  Over the next few months these updates caused quite a stir online.

Many people becoming quite angry and upset at the loss of their rankings. Others confused and lost over how to adjust the new Panda algorithm.

The main goal of the Panda algorithm was to weed out poor content such as seen on content farms.

Over the past week or so I’ve been giving this Panda algorithm a lot of thought. My main goal was to figure out exactly what it is that makes this Panda tick.

There is one particular aspect of the Panda algorithm that has stuck out in my mind. It is the connection I see between content farms and article networks.

What are content farms? Content farms are sites that contain content for the wrong purpose. Their purpose is to satisfy search engine algorithms in order to reach a high ranking result.

I mention that it is the wrong purpose because a site’s content should have a far more honorable purpose. One that is geared toward providing useful content for the visitors not content to please mindless search engine algorithms.

My blog, Netwoozy, has never been a content farm. I personally write each post and I’ve never written the content for the sole purpose of making a search engine happy. However, I have been guilty of using Article Networks. And if content farms are bad what does this mean for article networks, which in fact produce poor quality content that is posted to content farms?

Are Article Networks Content Farmers?

Now let’s take a closer look at article networks. What is the purpose of an article network? To post your articles to other blogs. This doesn’t sound like a bad idea. However, what types of blogs are your articles posted to?

Basically, a high percentage of blogs within these networks are content farms. Now have not subscribed to every article network online so I do not know  if every one of them is full of content farms.

However, I can tell you that the majority of articles written and submitted to these networks are written by freelance writers, most of whom are paid very little. Writers who are paid $3.00 to write an article that takes 20 minutes to write are simply rewriting content found from other article directories.

This is not the type of content that makes the Panda happy.

The result?

The majority of your articles are landing on content farms. You may even been subscribing to these networks in order to get “fresh” content daily thinking that if you post a new article everyday it will improve your rankings. But “fresh” content doesn’t mean Panda approved content. And fresh content can harm your website if it is considered poor content.

Therefore, if you are submitting articles to content farms…

Are You Guilty by Association?

If you’re standing with a group of people who are known drug dealers, what will people looking on think about you? Will they assume you are a drug dealer or perhaps an addict? If you’re not either of these two types of people, would you feel comfortable being associated with them?

So, how do you think your backlinks will be viewed if the majority of your backlinks come from content farms?

Perhaps it’s time to rethink where we post our content.

What do you think?

Related Posts:

Anchor Text Strategies, Hurling Day for the Exact Match

Part 1 – SEO Panda Update

Part 2 – Thinking Outside the Panda SEO Box

Boosting Your SEO VIA Articles

If you post articles to blogs, and you use WordPress, it’s quite easy to find where those articles have been posted by enabling Trackbacks. Trackbacks are found in your Comments section. Trackback show the URL of where your article was posted by connecting your keyword anchor-text to your website.

Wherever your article is posted on another WP blog, you can go to that blog and then post a comment and social bookmark it as well. This boosts linkjuice of the page where your links are.

Typically, what post 1 or 2 comments on that blog. On the page where my article was posted, I’ll make a comment on the article but the URL I promote is not directly to my site. Instead I’ll promote another URL, like perhaps a video I’ve posted in Youtube, or another article posted on another blog, site or article directory.

Posting Comments – What Links to Boost

In addition to the comment on the page where my article is posted I will look for another article on the site and post a comment on that page that does link back to Netwoozy.

This process can take about 30 minutes a day depending on how fast you work and how many blogs you want to visit for this purpose.

Article SEO – Using Social Bookmarking

If the blog has any type of social networking buttons, I’ll use those as well. I will click on TweetMe, FB Like button, and other social bookmarking buttons in order to help boost the page on that site where my article is sitting.

Outsourcing – How to Leverage Your SEO Efforts

You can also pay someone to do this for you. I would highly recommend you train the person to do this work exactly as you want it to be done. A lot of VA blog posters have poor grammar, bad spelling, and are lazy. So, you’ll need to follow up on their work to be sure you’ve hired the right person for the job.

Anchor-text Strategies

Exact Match VS Match Variants

For many years the strategy for anchor-text linking has been to create an exact match for the desired keyword phrase to rank well in the search engines. This exact keyword phrase would then be used over and over again within all areas of SEO, both on-page SEO as well as off-page SEO, for backlinking hypertext and anchor-text links.

Over time, these methods had to be tweaked here and there to keep up with the changing of the search engine algorithms. However, little change was made regarding anchor-text links.

In 2011 Google introduced the highly intelligent Panda algorithm, with an ever- increasing content evaluation IQ. The goal of this algorithm is pretty simple: to deliver the best user-friendly search engine experience while obtaining the most relevant as well as beneficial results.

There has been a lot of speculation and rumor about how to rank well in the search engines during these changes. However, if we want to know how Google’s new Panda thinks, the best way to figure things out is to go directly to the source.

Matt Cutts – Anchor-Text Variant Strategy

Matt Cutts is one of Google’s representatives who assists webmasters in understanding what they need to do in order to make Google’s new Panda algorithm happy. I was reading one of his blog posts today about how to write useful articles and within this article I found a wonderful gem of information.

Pay attention to his little bit of advice regarding keyword anchor-text links:

“I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases.” Matt Cutts, Writing Useful Articles that Users Will Love.

This helps us understand where our thinking should be when it comes to creating SEO content, anchor-text links, and on-page SEO. Exact keyword phrases repeated over and over again are not what this new Panda algorithm has been trained to look for. Rather than stuffing our SEO content with the exact keyword phrase that we are trying to rank, according to Matt, we should be using partial phrase matches along with keyword variants.

For instance, we might write an article with the title “Organic Gardening Tips for Newbie’s.” In the article we can use a variation of that keyword phrase, such as; gardening without chemicals, organic gardening secrets, tips for gardeners, etc…

Each of those keyword phrases is a variant on the targeted keyword phrase that we want to rank. The overall content of the article as well as the title can help the search engine understand that our site is all about organic gardening.

When writing articles, your keyword anchor-text no longer needs to be an exact match. Instead, the combination of your keyword variants along with your on-page SEO will help your site rank well for a wide variety of keyword phrases, including your targeted keyword phrase.

If we really think about what Matt said in that one little comment, we will come to understand that we no longer need or want to be focused on exact phrase matches or any type of keyword phrase stuffing. Rather, our focus should be on consistent variants of the keywords that we want Google to give a high-ranking position.

Comparing the Old Exact Match with MC Recommended Anchor-Text Variants

Back in the Day, Exact Match:

Organic gardening in the title tag, organic gardening in the h1, h2, and h3 tags, organic gardening in the alt image tag, organic gardening mentioned 2% to 4% throughout the content, and organic gardening anchor-text links in the side-bar, footer, and header.

And Today, the Panda Way:

Organic gardening in the title tag, gardening tips in the URL, h1 – gardening without chemicals, h2 – organic mulch tips, h3 – simple tricks for a healthy garden, alt image tag – best organic practices, and so forth.

As you can see, this new way of thinking about anchor-text linking is quite liberating. When someone types the keyword phrase, “Mom blue jacket”, with the old-school thinking we’d have to toss out using correct grammar in order to get that specific keyword into the article.

Today, we can easily add in that phrase by a simple variation, “My mom needs a blue jacket.”

I am sure that using the exact phrase match in some of our anchor-texts will still have a positive impact on our rankings. However, if we are not developing our SEO strategies so as to include well rounded variants of the keywords that we want to rank well, in time, it could possibly do more harm than good.

And if we are true forward thinkers, we’ll understand that the great Panda is learning to think more and more like a human being. And the more we conform to the new wave of SEO, the better our sites will fair with each and every Google Panda update.