However, shortly after Yahoo Site Explorer shutdown I stumbled across this awesome new competitive intelligence tool I’ve been meaning to tell you about: Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Ahrefs is an advanced competitive research tool that allows you to explore backlinks for any website and also analyze SERP data, similar to the way SEMrush does.

Analyzing Backlinks using Ahrefs Site Explorer

One of the biggest complaints I have with many of the new tools in the marketplace is that they leave out a ton of important information, like they nofollow attribute, which is an essential part of link research.

Not Ahrefs though! This tool puts all of the crucial data on the table for you to use as you wish. Just about everything a professional link builder or hyperlink researcher needs is a laid out perfectly for you on the main page, or is just “1″ mouse click away.

In addition to the tremendous link data provided through Site Explorer, Ahrefs also provides a number of important social metrics, such as Google +1s, Tweets, Facebook Likes and Shares.

Here are some of its highlights:

• Unique Database
• Historical Data (crawl date, links over time, new links, dropped links)
• Link Type (nofollow, redirect, text, image, frame, form)
• Totals (Unique Referring Pages, Domains, IPs, Subnets, TLDs)
• Export to CSV
• Charts and Graphs
• Social Metrics

One of the key highlights for me is the ability to view links that were dropped, and when, by selecting the Lost links tab, then choosing a date. This is extremely helpful for tracking which backlinks my site’s are losing. That way I can dig deeper when I lose an important backlink, and then ask for the link back or consider finding a reasonable replacement.

It’s also useful for finding correlations between dropped links and lower search engine rankings.

Individual links are ordered by Ahrefs Rank, which is apparently a value that Ahrefs assigns to each link source; however, I couldn’t find any information on their site explaining it specifically.

Domain Reports Tool

In addition to Site Explorer, Ahrefs also allows subscribers to add and track a number of websites ongoing. Through Reports you can dig deeper into each website and view additional summary reports and graphs. One of the best things is that it doesn’t use up any of your daily query allowance. Free account holders can track an unlimited number of their own domains and up to 3 competitor websites.

Bonus Tip: You can get even more free competitor link data by signing up and adding a few competitor websites using the Domain Reports tool. For instance, when I was testing as a free account holder, Site Explorer only provided me with detailed information for the first 5 backlinks of the site I was testing, whereas I was able to the see complete details for ALL of the same website’s backlinks using Domain Reports.

Find Profitable Keywords using SERPs Analysis Tool

When I stumbled across Ahrefs I first thought it was another site put together by the folks who built SEMRush – which is a good thing because I love its interface. So, if you’re familiar with SEMRush, then using Ahrefs for keyword research should be a breeze. However, its Serps Analysis tool is so straightforward even a preschooler could probably figure it out.

By using the SERPs Analysis tool you can get an idea of which profitable keywords in your niche are sending the most traffic to your competitors’ websites by viewing the top organic and paid keywords your competitors are ranking for on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Using that data you should then be able to compile a list of keyword opportunities for your own sites too.

Enter a domain name or URL to get:

• Top Organic Keywords List
• Top Paid Keyword List
• Value Estimates (CPC, total cost)
• Keyword Positions (current, previous, change percentage)
• Traffic Estimates (US and global volume)
• Competition
• Last Crawl Date
• Google and Bing Data
• Ad Copy Reports

The one major item it lacked was the ability to search by keyword; however, you can click on individual keywords to get a short list of the top websites ranking for it.

Pricing

Ahrefs offers a basic plan starting at only $49/mo, which is fantastic for individual site-owners/webmasters, and or beginners. None of Ahref’s direct competitors are offering similar plans, which also makes this an affordable option for people like myself who wears many hats in my business and doesn’t have all of the time in the world to be analyzing competitors.

Summary

With over 50,000,000 keywords already, and over a trillion website stored in it’s independent database, Ahrefs looks to be a real player in the competitive research market. The tools are well-organized and simple to use. Its interface is intuitive, quick, and provides just about everything desired by beginners and professional researchers alike.

The data is extracted from the top 2 search engines, Google and Bing, and it proclaims to update its index extremely fast – every 30 minutes, with the most important pages being crawled more often.

If you’re a small business and in the market for a tool like this, then you might want to jump on board now, in case prices go up. Unfortunately, about the time Yahoo! Site Explorer went offline several other tools in the marketplace skyrocketed to a point that seems to high to me to pay for individually. For which I started recommending using a tool like Raven instead, because it combines many of the top niche tools in one place.

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But search engines in 2012 are getting more competitive than ever. Niches that once had next to no competition are now dominated by companies spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars on SEO packages each month.

There are, however, some easy things you can do to your website and blog to help improve your chances of ranking on the first page of search results. These tips could bring you to the first page if you’re in a lower competition niche, and they will certainly help in medium to high competition but in some cases there’s no substitute for SEO work.

1: Build A Natural Link Profile

Whenever you post a link to your website, take a mental note or keep track of the anchor text and where it links to. So many people get caught up in online linking to one page or online linking with one anchor text, and search engines are catching on to this. A natural link profile is critical to ranking on the first page of results for any keyword.

2: Have Natural Content

Never, ever, ever write content for search engines. Yes it might improve your rankings, but your visitors will immediately know that the page was written for search purposes and not for them. This will deliver a lot of traffic which a high bounce rate and virtually 0 minutes on the site, which doesn’t translate into any revenue for you. Always write for your visitors first and the search engines second.

3: Be Social!

It’s important to have a strong presence on social media sites. Social media is likely going to play a larger role in the future in SEO, but in the mean time it can deliver some great referral traffic and help you grow your customer base. There’s millions of users on sites like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Digg, and others, so don’t be afraid to spend a little time everyday posting updates and interacting.

4: Optimize Your Site

When we start an SEO campaign there’s over 100 things we look for in a client’s website to help them rank better. Some things you can do on your own are have relevant URL’s, relevant title tags, and strategic keyword placement throughout the page and in important places such as headers. On site SEO is actually getting more important than ever, but it’s also important not to overly optimize your site as that just looks unnatural and won’t convert well.

5: Rinse and Repeat

You should always be improving and tweaking your website and SEO campaign. Post fresh content, make changes to pages, improve your internal linking structure. SEO is a never ending job, and so is managing and running your website. As soon as you think you’re done, one of your competitors will come out of nowhere and rank higher than you. Always stay on top of your content, links, and overall campaign.

While these tips won’t bring you to the first page in a competitive niche quickly, they certainly will help and could bring you to page one in a low competition niche right away. SEO is becoming more and more difficult and expensive as search engines get smarter and low quality companies drop out of the market. No matter what, make sure you stay white-hat in your SEO practices and only do things that won’t harm your website.

About The Author: Brendan Egan is the founder & owner of Simple SEO Group, an online marketing, small business web design, and SEO firm that helps small businesses improve their web presence.

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So a little while back I decided to implement it on this site to see if I could get it accepted.

I’m pleased to announce that shortly after I published my last post here, my articles are finally displaying a photo and corresponding author information near them in Google’s SERPs.

This works for both logged-in and logged-out users.

It did take a while to start showing up, about a month or so after I set it up.

Way to Implement Authorship Markup

Link Your Content to Your Google+ Profile and Vice Versa

This is method I used.

1. Added a professional headshot photo to my Google profile.
2. Included a hyperlink in the contributor to section on the about page of my Google+ profile that points to my author page on the blog. http://www.seorankings.com/author/Wes
3. Created a link from my author page back to my Google+ profile, with rel=”author” appended to it. https://plus.google.com/116663311902793804492?rel=author
4. Tested my markup using the rich snippets testing tool, and then fixed any errors.
5. Submitted my authorship request using this form.

According to Google’s directions this is all you need to do. However, they also provide this additional tip:

If you’re very comfortable editing your site’s HTML, you can create reciprocal links using rel=”author”.

Which is a bit confusing because they don’t provide an explanation whether this is a necessary step, it just helps, or what. I’m guessing it must just some how make it easier for them to verify which articles are written by whom, because I didn’t implement it on this site and it still works.

However, I did ensure there is a hyperlink on each article pointing back to my author page that has with rel=”me” associated with it, and also a normal link from the author page back to each of the last 10 articles.

That’s a tip I picked up from Yoast on configuring WordPress to work with Authorship.

If all goes well, and you’re accepted, your author information should start showing up in Google’s search results shortly thereafter.

You can do this for multiple sites too.

Some of you may not be able to make edits to your author pages, or source code, so the above process may be difficult for you to implement. Luckily, Google recently provided us with another option that looks a bit easier to set up.

Add Your Name and Email Address to Your Content

This is what they recommend for sites with multiple authors. I haven’t actually tested it myself, so I just copied their directions here exactly.

1. Sign in to your Google profile.
2. Click Edit profile.
3. On the right-hand side, click the Contributor to box, and add all the sites you write for.
4. Next, click the Work box.
5. Click the New contact info box (the last in the list, and type the email address you use for the sites you write for.
6. In the list to the left of the email address you just added, click Email.
7. Click Save, and then click Done editing.
8. Repeat for every email address you want to add.
9. On your profile, click Verify next to the email address you just added.

Google will send a verification mail to that email address. Once you receive it, open it and follow the instructions to verify your email address.

The one major issue I have with implementing it this way is that you’re now exposing your email address to spam bots and spammers. Whenever you use standard HTML to include your email address on a webpage the spam bots will quickly pick it up and add your email address to their database for sale or use.

Needless to say, you’ll likely end up getting a ton of SPAM emails after awhile.

Will Authorship Listings Drive More Traffic to My Site

It’s tough to tell for sure. There are so many variables at play. But I definitely didn’t notice a significant increase in traffic to this website, perhaps a little. However, I’m not positive which day it went into affect either.

I’m guessing it was on the 8^th of February, because that’s as far back as I can view when checking my author stats under the labs section in Google Webmaster Tools.

You can see that my author profile displayed over 27,000 times and received 1000 clicks in the very first week. And that’s with less than 100 blog posts. That’s pretty decent exposure if you ask me. It should be noted that those statistics are only a fraction of the total number of impressions the site showed up for overall. When I checked the search queries section it actually showed several times that.

Regardless of the referral visits, the impact of having my face now in front of thousands of more people, for thousands of industry related search queries, is huge for my brand recognition.

27,000 author impressions = my face in front of up to 27,000 searchers.

I almost always notice which authors show up for my searches, and I suspect many other people do too.

That’s why I recommend setting up your author profile before too many other people in your niche do it.

As soon as everyone starts doing it, it will be much harder to stand out from the crowd…

When you’re setting it up please don’t forget to add SEOrankings to your circles.

Then let me know if you have any trouble, and I’ll see if I can help you out.

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Here’s just a couple of major reasons why.

1. A few years ago Google rolled out an algorithm change known as the “Brand Update”, which affected numerous sites world-wide. Google officially named it “Vince”, but most SEOs refer to it as the Brand Update, after seeing how dramatically the search results changed in favor of brand names.

2. Next there came the Panda updates, which hit a few of my unbranded sites pretty hard.

3. Then more recently a newer version of the Google Quality Raters Handbook was secretly released, further confirming suspicions that manual reviewers are visiting our websites. So when a search quality rater was quoted saying:

“With a recognized brand name like that, it wasn’t hard to determine quality.”

I knew it was urgent for me to take a major step back and view my active projects through the eyes of an average visitor and Google quality rater.

What I realized was I was spending a lot of time on a handful of sites that looked really bad at first glance. They had no logos, no company information, and no reputability to them. Even though they are only project websites, they are making me a few bucks and I had already invested a decent amount of time in them. So I’d be very disappointed if they got dinged, some of them even further, because I didn’t take just a few moments to make them look like they’re for real.

I started thinking about the quickest ways to improve them without spending too much time or cash.

And came up with these super simple and effective steps.

1. Get a Branded Logo

It’s amazing how many websites don’t have logos. A logo is almost always the first thing a visitor sees when they visit your site. So why not start them off with a good first impression. It will definitely help your site look trustworthy and established.

Surprisingly, you can get a professionally designed logo done for almost nothing these days. I was able to get a nice one done through Fiverr for only $5 bucks!

That goes for eBook covers and a ton of other great stuff too.

2. Customize Your Subscribe Box

Can you immediately tell when you visit a website that’s using one of those Aweber subscribe box templates? If you’ve been around awhile, then surely you will spot them every time.

When you see one, what the first thing that comes to your mind? Amateurish. Not Serious. SPAM site.

It’s not that I dislike Aweber or their templates, but they definitely stand out like a sore thumb. Because they rarely match up with any website’s theme, and probably look identical to ones you’ve already seen before.

If you’re using one of them, then do yourself a for and go over to oDesk to get yourself a custom box made. It shouldn’t cost you more than $10 bucks. Or you can do it yourself if you want to.

3. Link Your Social Media Profiles

If I’m looking for a service, or any type of information, and visit a site I’ve never heard of before, I almost always look for their social media icon links. They’re usually front and center. But if I can’t find them quickly I usually assume it’s a ghostwriter or scraper website and leave it right away.

4. Add an “About Us” Page

An About Us page is another easy way to brand your website for little to no cost. Whenever you’re serious about establishing your business online, or at least giving the impression you are, you really should at least create yourself a quick About Us page. Simply write a couple paragraphs and include some company information if possible. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

5. Include a Personal Photo

When you include a photograph of your office, staff or yourself, it can really help establish your site as an authoritative resource. Just seeing a photo of what looks like “the company” gives users a warm and fuzzy feeling. There’s a sense that someone is actually vouching for the products, services or information provided there. This can be an extremely effective tool when it comes to converting visitors. Think along the lines of “Social Proof”.

There’s really a ton of things you can to improve a website by establishing its brand. These are just a few things that I’ve done recently, which you can do right away too.

A well-branded website can almost always expect to get:

• More repeat visitors
• Higher sales volumes
• Better search engine rankings
• More pageveiws
• A favorable reputation
• Increased social shares
• More backlinks
• Higher prices
• Trust

And plenty of others too.

So I hope by now you take branding seriously, because I definitely feel a shift in the times, and am certain it’ll continue to get harder to gain momentum online if you don’t have one.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on a company, personal or project website. It will be the best few bucks you’ve ever spent.

So what are some of your best tips for building a better branded website on a tight budget?

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The main point here is that you are in control of what your meta description states and a well crafted statement about the page can increase your clickthrough rate.

Writing a Meta Description

When writing the description it is helpful to think in terms of advertising. What is the user looking for and what will compel him or her to choose your site over the numerous others that will be displayed?  A short and snappy summary of the page with your prominent keywords (they will be in bold text) near the beginning of the description will catch a users eye.

The description should be no longer than 155 characters or you stand the chance of having the message truncated. The meta description allows you to provide the search engine with a meaningful description of your page when they are unable to automatically create one from the page content.

In the SERPs

Meta descriptions are often used when the search engine displays extended site links. It is very important therefore to write a separate and distinct meta description for each and every page on your website. Extended site links are highly keyword dependent, so to benefit most from your meta descriptions your site must have a uniform purpose and your keywords must reflect this purpose. The use of these keywords at the beginning of your meta description will increase the odds that the search engine will use the meta description as a snippet.

Social Media Usage

Meta descriptions are especially important in social media marketing such as Facebook and Google+. If there is no meta description the search engine will usually default to the first sentence used in the article and this will not properly convey what the whole article is about. The majority of marketers on social networks overlook this fact and by creating the meta description you will enjoy a competitive advantage over your competition.

Indexation

A meta description in general is one of several meta elements that provide search engines with information that helps the algorithm index and categorize the page. They are not visible to the user as they are part of the HTML document. In the 1990′s they were essential to search engines in ranking a page but as webmasters learned ways to gain an advantage through keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO techniques search engines gradually started looking to other criterion in search technology.

Today meta elements have a far less effect on determining ranking of any given page as search engine robots have become more refined in sniffing out spamdexing and keyword stuffing.

The search engines of today use a variety of criterion to establish page rank such as:

• Freshness
• Quantity and quality of content
• Number of links from related websites
• Technical precision of source code
• Click-throughs
• Page views
• Relevance
• Uniqueness

The search algorithms of today are constantly changing and evolving but this does not mean you should disregard older aspects of page development. At the very least a well written meta description will be a sign of quality and technical precision in the eyes of search providers. These two criteria do play a part in ranking and will set you apart from those who are looking for the fast track to the top.

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Actually, it’s really easy to get your site in front of millions Christmas shoppers within just a few minutes, even if you’re not offering any Christmas specials this year.

For some of you it may be too late to search engine optimize your website for Christmas, but it’s definitely not too late to create a page for New Years and other Holidays in the future.

Basic Website Optimization Steps for X-Mas

1. Copy your best-selling product or service page and name it {product or service}-christmas-{current year}.extenstion(html, php, etc.)
2. Change the title tag to include “Christmas” and “{current year}”. Ex.: Hot Apple iPad 2 Deal Christmas 2011
3. Modify the Meta-Description to include the word “Christmas” and “{current year}”
4. Update the page heading to at least include the word “Christmas”
5. Add an XMAS related stock photo or colors to the page
6. Update the page text to include “Christmas”, “{current year}” and other relevant seasonal keywords
7. Write a related blog post and link it to your new page using at least the product or service name and “Christmas” in the anchor text.
8. Share the new page on your favorite social media sites

I realize this post is probably a bit late for many of you to fully take advantage of Christmas, but it’s really fairly effortless to immediately start receiving X-Mas traffic to your site from the search engines. You can follow these simple steps to optimize your site for New Years as well as many other holidays in the future too.

If you’re able to offer special pricing or terms specific to your holiday page, you’re definitely going to increase your conversions. But if not, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be able to take advantage of all the seasonal deal shoppers too.

If you have the time and want to make a lot more sales, simply repeat this process for each of your best products and services.

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Tactics for XMas and New Years

When you have more time or run a site that depends on seasonal shoppers, here’s some tips for skyrocketing those holiday pages in the SERPs so that you can maximize you holiday search traffic.

Follow the steps mentioned above, plus:

• Redirect last years holiday pages to this years to get any previously earned link-juice flowing to the right pages. i.e., 301 redirect your iPad 1 Christmas 2010 holiday page to your iPad 2 page for this year.
• Write a guest post on a related site linking it to your new holiday page
• Locate and advertise with a related site that allows DoFollow banner ads and link the banner back to your new holiday page
• Link to your holiday pages from multiple other locations on your site using seasonal and other keyword variations in the anchor text
• Update any forum signatures to point to your new holiday specials page
• Share it on Google+
• If it’s a really good deal then Digg it
• Write a Squidoo lens or use your other favorite article sharing website to promote and link back to it
• Write a press release about the special offer and link back to it. There are several free press release websites.
• Bookmark it
• Update your company’s Google Places business page to include your holiday offers
• Create a sponsored online classified ad

And so on…

The key points to remember are updating your title and description meta tags, use keyword variants in the anchor text of any backlinks, writing relevant page headings, and creating sufficient unique page text.

By starting with your top-selling product or service and writing a quick blog post you could literally be raking in the sales this holiday in under an hour!

It can really be as simple as that.

Have some organic search optimization tips to share for the holidays?

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Google Analytics for iPad

Google Analytics is the premier web analyzer for blogs and other websites. If you need an app that will give you up to date stats on your blog or website, Google Analytics is the app for you. This app will give you charts and stats through reports to the iPad’s full screen mode. The standard version will give you ten data rows. If you want more, you can upgrade to the fully featured version at around 7 dollars.

Get Google Analytics through iTunes.

WordPress for iPad

Do you have a blog or website that uses the WordPress theme? WordPress For iPad is one of the best resources for changing a link or even posting a new article to your blog. If you are the kind of blogger that loves reading comments by their readers, this is an excellent app to have. This will also allow you to change keywords on a whim if the competition drops for a certain trending keyword.

Get WordPress through iTunes.

SEM Calculator

The SEM Calculator is essential for SEO because it allow a user to analyze every aspect of their marketing. You have the ability to work with your impressions or Cost Per Action campaigns. If you use Adsense or affiliate marketing on your blog, this calculator can give you information on what campaigns are working and what campaigns aren’t working.

Get SEM Calculator through iTunes.

Website SEO Analyser by Koozai

There are a lot of website analyzers on the market, but Website Analyzer by Koozia is one of the best. This app will give you all of the information about your site’s inbound links and the on page factors of your content. This is also a great app for checking the inbound links and domain information for any of your competitors.

Get Koozai through iTunes.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a great app for people who use social media as backlinks for their websites or blogs. If you are using social media to promote your sites, you can use the HootSuite app to link all of your social media profiles together. This gives you a link between Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Having all of your social media profiles linked together is one of the best ways to build backlinks and get traffic to your site.

Get HootSuite through iTunes.

SERPS

Would you like to know how your blog or website is stacking up online? SERPS gives you an easy way to check your page rank from your iPad. This is a fairly limited app, but it definitely serves its purpose when you need to know your rankings on the fly.

Get SERPS through iTunes.

Analytics HD

This is not a free app, but paying for it is a great way to get more detailed reports than Google Analytics will give you. Analytics HD gives you more options for charts and graphs than the standard Google Analytics. This app is also designed for the resolution output on your iPad so you will get better coloring throughout the graphs. This app is offered for 4.99 in the App Store.

Get Analytics HD through iTunes.

Kindle

Do you love reading ebooks about SEO, Internet marketing or the latest trends in the industry? If you had a Kindle in the past, you can transfer all of your Kindle based ebooks to your iPad with this app. Since the Kindle uses a special format, you normally would not be able to read through your Kindle based ebooks. Kindle is offered through the App Store for free through Amazon.

Get Kindle through iTunes.

Dragon Dictation

Do you need to post a new article to your blog or website but don’t have the time to type it out? Use Dragon Dictate to dictate the article directly to your iPad. When you first set up the app, you will need to read through a paragraph in order to allow the app to get used to your voice. The calibration will take you about 20 minutes. Once you have completed this, you will be able to dictate notes or a whole blog post using your voice. This is a free app offered through the App Store.

Get Dragon through iTunes.

DropBox

Dropbox is a great app for storing data on a cloud server. Cloud servers have become popular for computers, but with the implementation of mobile broadband, iPad users can now take advantage of it too. If you have been working on a post and want to access it from another computer, use DropBox. Setting up your own cloud server through the app will take you a couple minutes. Don’t confuse this for an offline backup because there is a limit to the amount of data storage you can use. This is another free mobile broadband app from the App Store.

Get Dropbox through iTunes.

What’s your favorite SEO app for the Apple iPad?

Article written by Spencer Hogg from the mobile broadband site Broadband Expert.

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This update to the search algorithm focuses on rewarding websites that offer fresh content. Not surprisingly news websites did very well, some better than others but we will get to that later.

News Sites and Other Winners

News sites generally update their content by the day, hour and some by the minute. Celebrity news and gossip sites have also done well by the same reasoning.

There is more to the Update than just freshness, based on results of a SearchMetrics analysis. Brand names like Coke, Hotels.com and Dominos.com also gained in visibility or ranking after the update even though they don’t update their content any more than the average website.
It is possible that recent information on product releases or product reviews may have had something to do with it.

This could also be a form of SEO content strategy going forward (product reviews).

The SearchMetrics analysis is based on keywords and not traffic gain or loss.

Purpose of Google’s Freshness Update

The Freshness Update is Google’s first step in developing an algorithm that can differentiate between specific search terms, that require up to date information (or a specific date) and general search terms.

For some webmasters who have relied on link popularity in the past the update could pose a serious problem. They would obviously have to consider changing their SEO strategy to include higher quality, fresh content.

Safeguarding Your Website

1. The best way to safeguard against this and any future updates to the Caffeine algorithm is to make sure your site only has high quality content that is relevant to your website’s purpose.
2. Keep your ads to a minimum and keep them out of your users face– there is nothing more frustrating to users than an annoying and distracting advertisement.
3. Keep your main content front and center, above the fold and easily distinguishable from your advertisements.
4. Not to mention keeping your website maintained, check to make sure all your links work properly and make sure your copyright date is no more than two years old.

That being said, take advantage of some of the web analytics software on the market to help you find which pages your users like and dislike. The software can keep track of things like number of page views, bounce rate and exit rate.

Another safeguard against deranking is to make sure you have enough content on the page to satisfy your user. Thin content of 200 to 300 words that does not adequately cover a subject is a major no-no in Google’s eyes.

Look at the webpage from the user’s point of view. The Caffeine algorithm is also getting better at picking up duplicate and spun content and nothing will get you barred from Google quicker than plagiarism.

How to Really Benefit from the Freshness Update

Earlier I mentioned that some news organizations profited from the Freshness Update while others did not.

It seems there is a certain amount of bias in the algorithm that favors membership in Google news. So if you are a news provider joining the network may be prudent. The most unfortunate loser affected by the Google Freshness Update are small businesses. These businesses set up their website for the benefit of their customers but do not update it on a regular basis or have the branding of a large corporation.

However, there are a few things a small business can do in the near term to take advantage of the change. Basically what it boils down to is providing new content and when you upload that content ensure that it is properly dated, preferably beneath the title of the article.

A small business can also create a blog on their website that will be continually updated each time a blog or comment is posted. A forum could also be useful for some small businesses; as well as a question and answer page and setting up a social network. Adding your own social news section is also a viable option for most small businesses and you will receive updated content each time a story is posted.

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But have you ever had your rankings fall off the grid after major Google update? Or even worse yet – had a web site penalized before?

Well I have!

And unfortunately it can happen to you too…

So I’m gonna share my experience with you in hopes it will help you avoid getting hit negatively by a Google Panda update and fix your site if you do.

Google Panda Update 2.5.2

Most recently I had two sites hit hard by a “minor” Google Panda Update, which was update 2.5.2 on October 13th, 2011.

And it’s a bit unfortunate because it’s already costing me an extra $1,000/mo or so.

I first noticed the significant drop in traffic on one of these top AdSense supported websites, and was quick to attribute it to one of the many testing changes I had been making over the last couple of weeks. However, after checking another AdSense supported site I immediately recognized the destruction of that site’s rankings too.

Luckily it hadn’t affected any of my other active websites though. Coincidentally, none of them are supported by Google AdSense either…

Which is actually one of the many benefits of running multiple websites – you have a much better chance at identifying “real” algorithm changes and ranking factors than you would if you were only working with a website or two.

Plus you’re business isn’t demolished when you’re hit by one of these updates either.

But getting back to what happened here, and since I was “lucky” enough to have two websites hit by the exact same update, it allowed me to compare the two sites and identify some existing patterns.

Recognizable Patterns

Potentially negative patterns that immediately stood out to me:

• Both sites were primarily supported by AdSense
• They had 3 or more ad units each
• Not a significant number of backlinks
• Aren’t the most aesthetically appealing
• Informational only
• Less than a year old
• Directory / list type information
• Low subscriber count

With a few other patterns I’m considering too. But I think one or some of these in combination is the primary culprit.

Although I’ll admit these sites would probably be considered lower-quality by most people at first glance, one of them has been “naturally” linked to quite often as great reference source, and both of them provide the most up-to-date, comprehensive information in their respective niches.

In addition to that, here are some other positive aspects:

• Content is completely unique (passed Copyscape)
• Very relevant to the top queries they’re showing up for
• Thick with textual content
• No “spammy” links

What’s funny is the sites that are now showing up for the top queries aren’t nearly as relevant as the ones that used to, but are seemingly more authoritative and generally have less ads on them too.

Which I’m not sure how that necessarily improves user-experience, since they’ll now have to dig through several more search result to find the most current information on these topics, but I guess that’s for Google to figure out.

Getting Back to Normal

Although no one besides the folks at Google can be certain why this has happened, what I can do is share with you what steps I take to get these sites “back to normal”.

Yes, I’ve read the million other articles telling me what it could “possibly” be, but most of it’s just the same old stuff people have been saying after every update since the beginning of time. I couldn’t find many “real” examples of what someone did to revive their site after a Google Panda update, and I don’t want to just regurgitate the same old speculative information to you.

Rather, I want to share with you what “really” happened, “known” patterns, and “actual” improvements and / or changes made.

So here’s what I’ve done so far: I’ve gutted them of their AdSense code, even though Google keeps emailing me there is still room for more ad placements on my sites. Gave both of them a logo, and completely redesigned one of them – moving it from an UGLY static HTML website to a WordPress site with a much nicer customized theme.

Enough time hasn’t passed yet to know whether these changes will have any affect or not, but I will definitely post future updates regarding the progress of them so you can get a better idea of what I did and what you might want do if you ever have to deal with this issue too…

But what about you – have you been hit recently by one of the Google Panda updates? Were you able to get your site “healthy” again? What did you do?

Would love to hear your experience and thoughts.

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Don’t worry, I’ll keep the recommend resource list light because the last thing I want to do is have you thinking you have to run out learn a bunch of new tools.

Here are some great ways to lighten your daily load:

Automate

Many important search engine optimization tasks can be done for us automatically using some handy tools. You can schedule them to run, report and email automatically, or run them manually when you need them to.

Common SEO tasks that can be automated:

• Website Auditing
• Rank Tracking
• Traffic Reporting
• Link Partnerships
• Competitor Tracking

SEO related items that can be automated to:

• Lead Generation & Nurturing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Monitoring

Although I’ve never used them, I wanted to provide you with ONE tool that can automate the highest number of these tasks for you, and came up with HubSpot. They can run a bit on the expensive side, but do offer an all-in-one solution that could end up saving you substantially more time and money in the long-run. However, SEOmoz is a much more affordable alternative and possibly better overall solution for most SEOs. Otherwise you can check out some of the other SEO tools and resources I’m familiar with and recommend.

Outsource

Even though the popularity of outsourcing is growing, I think many small business owners still struggle with the thought of doing it. Especially when it comes to SEO. I used to think there is no way I could outsource search engine optimization. because I definitely didn’t have time to be training anyone, and I didn’t feel comfortable they were going to keep mine and my clients’ websites out of trouble.

Although I think these are very legitimate concerns, here are some tasks that can be easily outsourced by transcribing your processes up front and passing them along as simple guidelines to follow.

• Competitive Research
• Link Building
• Website Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Content Creation / Blogging

SEO related tasks that can be easily outsourced too:

• Brand Management
• Tech Support
• Lead Generation and Nurturing
• Graphic Design
• Website Development
• Video Creation
• Social Media Marketing

Actually just about anything can be outsourced in today’s Internet age. When I finally learned to outsource projects it was the single best thing I could ever do for my business. The quality of my services actually improved because I wasn’t trying to “do-it-all” myself. Websites like oDesk have made it super easy for me.

I recommend starting with the items that are easiest to outsource first, then moving on to the ones you like the least. This will help you run a successful business that allows you to work on the things you love most.

What are some ways you’ve been able to simplify your business?

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