Google plans to penalize over-optimized Websites
This post has been updated:
As new information appears to emerge this topic, I thought it best to update my post regarding the discussions.
Matt Cutts is clarifying the intent of his now famous “over-optimization” statements from earlier:
“I think ‘over-optimization’ wasn’t the best description, because it blurred the distinction between white hat SEO and webspam. This change is targeted at webspam, not SEO, and we tried to make that fact more clear in the blog post,” Cutts told me.”
Whether the term “over-optimization” caused confusion, I’m not sure, but it appears perfectly clear to me. When in doubt, follow the guidelines from Google with regard to SEO practices. Targeting your market segments and also ensuring you are making the most of Google’s algorithms are standard and acceptable behaviors. They are tasks that every business needs to engage in with regard to web strategy. Creating spam, false advertising, snake-oil strategy, and other seemingly unethical practices are never appropriate for professional web strategy.
This original post begins here:
Recently at the SXSW conference, Matt Cutts (Google’s head of web spam) made the announcement that they will begin rolling out new updates to handle “over-optimized” sites created by SEO abusers in order to “level the playing field” for those sites that follow the rules. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of detail has emerged yet on what this will entail, but I’m going to assume that most of us “tech folk” aren’t necessarily surprised by this. After all, the massive implosion of shady SEO marketing tactics over the last couple of years has been building up to a very apparent problem: sites that are not necessarily relevant or genuine are outranking real sites with content truly desired by searchers.
Are searches becoming less productive?
Just type in “web developer” into a typical Google search and you will have to dig deep through the search results to find a good web developer. If you are a potential customer in need of a real web development company to create solid web applications, Google searching is not going to provide a relevant answer very easily.
That particular Google search is, for the most part, irrelevant. Google wants to maintain its status as one of the best search engines so it must attempt to clean up this over-optimized web mess that many of these SEO “gurus” have created. Follow their best practices guidelines to ensure your website won’t be penalized as they continue to tweak their algorithms.
Always follow their SEO suggestions
When in doubt, always brush up on SEO knowledge from leading search engines. If you are still confused or simply want to ensure your website is optimized correctly so it stands the best chance to be found by your customers and audience, contact us and we can definitely help. We aim to ensure our SEO approaches are done in line with the recommendations of all standard search engines. We also explain to our clients that our approach is always done ethically and in keeping with the professional behavior one would expect from any business or organization. Let us know how we can help!
Listen to the discussion here:
Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better.
4 Tips to Keep Your Website "Happening" and Noticed
Numbers, data, statistics, trends – the technology sector is experiencing so much change lately that it is sometimes hard to make heads or tails of it. Should you target email promotions to your customers or should you put your resources to other worthwhile efforts like Twitter? And once you figure that choice out, new statistics prove you should have focused on Foursquare and Pinterest. (Just kidding, but you get my point.)
1. Draw them in with good imagery.
The things people are often apt to remember are photos and soundbites. The recent popularity of Instagram shows us just how important photography is for the consumer. Folks always enjoy photography – it’s brain sticky. A large percentage of women are creating Pinterest catalogs of images that catch their eye. Whether or not these websites are here to stay, they prove how valuable a good image still is. Make sure your websites are using photos and imagery in ways that draw the customer in and help them remember your website.
Source: http://littlefriendsphoto.blogspot.com via Christina on Pinterest
2. Keep actively blogging.
According to new Nielsen numbers consumers are still interested in reading blogs. That means, they are still interested in what YOU have to discuss. Take note of recommended blog techniques to keep the reader engaged and not lose interest. Regardless, blogging will still be beneficial to your website.
3. Familiarize yourself with how search engines work.
Remember to become familiar with Google’s recommendations for developing a Google Friendly website. We discussed some dos and don’ts a while back. Be aggressive with your development in terms of adhering to best practices. Don’t be aggressive in turning your website into a nuisance. Basically – don’t be the loud and obnoxious car liquidation advertisement!
4. Engage them
We would assume that regardless of all of the statistics and trends, customers always appreciate feedback from the company they have done business with. Without even quoting statistics, we know technology has brought the customer within closer reach. With their mobile phones, laptops, or iPads, they are one to two clicks away from sending you a direct message via Twitter, Facebook, or email (among various avenues). Participate and engage with your customers!
On the Merits of Blogging
Dave Winer has a great post over on Wired’s Web Monkey blog regarding the evolution of blogging. I found this passage particularly astute:
Anyway, even if I was invited to participate, all I would do is post a pointer to this blog post. Because here I own the editorial tools and can make them work any way I want to. There is no 140-character limit. There’s no problem getting a permalink. I own the archive. Sure if you want to participate it’s a bit of work, you have to set up a blog somewhere. That’s okay with me. For a little bit of work you get a whole lot of freedom. That’s a good deal.
I whole heartedly agree with Dave’s sentiment. The Web is built on links, content and the relationships created by these entities. It’s one of the primary foundations in getting ranked by search engines and getting discovered by real people.
Social media platforms are fantastic communication tools, but ultimately the majority of their usage revolves around sharing content created by folks who run their own websites. Running your own website gives you ultimate control over your content and as Dave says, that’s a good deal.
So keep curating websites, keep blogging, keep designing, keep developing and keep sharing! All these things make the Web what it is.
Return on Investment (ROI) for your Website
Everyone nowadays “knows how to create a website”, or so they say. What they are really telling you is that everyone nowadays knows how to download or use free publishing platforms, install them and a few plugins, put in a few tweeks on a theme and determine they have created a website. Technically, they have created a website but what is the end goal for the site?
When you are a business or organization requiring profits or services to be collected, delivered, or computed through a web presence, then you must come to terms with how to get the most return on your website investment. Having a cousin chop-shop together a web site is most likely no longer a wise choice. Hiring a designer with eye catching online web imagery may seem a great idea initially, but that should not be your only criteria for a web developer. Hiring an SEO shop that claims to be able to churn millions back in revenue for you if you follow their advice at some point starts sounding like a snake-oil sales pitch.
What do you need?
Realistically, you need all of those items listed above, and more:
- You do need a reasonable and realistic price-point for a website investment, you need eye-catching streamlined design, and you need SEO skills to make sure you stand the best chance possible to compete on the internet.
- You need a professional to put all of it together combined with solid code and architecture to ensure the whole engine is actually going to run on well-estimated server loads and other network related determinants.
- You need someone who understands how to develop your web project to be compatible with web accessibility standards.
- You need someone who can ensure your website is rendered smoothly on mobile devices and someone who knows how to develop your project with validated HTML5 and other various current standards.
- You need a user experience expert (our new-ish industry job category) to develop the website to create an experience that guides the visitor through every twist and turn with ease.
Is your website doing the job you are paying for it to do?
Smashing Magazine has put together a Google spreadsheet to help develop a method of calculating the return on investment for a website. It is always good to revisit the goals and ROI of a website and understand its performance.
“The intention of the calculator is to help project managers, designers and developers start thinking about and planning for revenue as early as possible in a website’s lifecycle. By planning and setting goals, we are better able to evaluate how we work. If a website is costing a lot of money and eating up a lot of resources, then terminating the project and spending the resources elsewhere might be best.”
We have our ambulance-chasers too.
You obviously wouldn’t hire an interior designer for a house without having an architect and building firm professionally develop the entire structure! I frequently read many “advice” articles online discussing how one doesn’t need a professional, you can do-it-yourself online, you can find a local dude who is not going to charge hidden fees, and other misleading notions. Remember the old adage, “you get what you pay for”. The web development profession is like any other – we have our ambulance-chasers too.
Are you getting results?
When you search for a really good web developer, make sure you truly understand your website budget and what a website should accomplish for your particular business. In today’s very mobile and fast-paced web-based environment, your online presence is an investment and should be taken very seriously. Long gone are the days of novelty web projects that will magically bring in revenues – the competition on the web is now fierce. How do you understand the return on your website investment? Are you getting out of it what you paid for or could you have achieved greater results with a more robust package?
VIDEO: Google Explains Canonical Source Factors
via YouTube
A few months back I wrote a piece called Beating the Content Scrapers and Web Rippers which looked at various methods for getting your content indexed before the scrapers had time to vacuum up your work. I recently came across and wanted to share this Google Webmaster video series which touches on many of the same subjects covered in my original article. If you missed my article back in November or just want a quicker overview, have a watch through this three minute clip.
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