3 SEO Tactics That Can Work Instantly!

With so many smaller and bigger changes happening in Google's core ranking algorithm, webmasters are really confused as to which tactics will work right now? Google very recently had the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates that changed the way webmasters promoted their site. Here are the top 3 seo tactics which you can implement right now to get the maximum benefit.

Top 3 SEO Tactics for Instant Benefit

Google Authorship

The first and foremost thing you must implement on your site is Google authorship. Any web content can increase it's chances of ranking high on the search engines if it is associated with a reputable author. Hence, the first step you must take is to implement Google authorship and the second step should be to increase your author rank. More help regarding these can be found below:-

Rel="author" - An Important Ranking Signal for Google?

Content Rewriting

Analyze the content present on your site and make plans for rewriting it. Content must compliment the newly updated Panda and Penguin algorithms. Some guidelines are given below:-

Update and remove stale information from your site.
Remove unnecessary keywords present on the pages.
Make the content more user friendly.
Remove all the duplicate content.
Add images and videos wherever necessary.
Track the loading time of your site and reduce it.
Add internal links wherever necessary.
Avoid exact match anchor text links.

Google Plus Ones

You will be amazed to see the power Google Plus ones can give you. Increase the amount of Google Plus ones for your site and see the difference in ranking yourself. But, make sure to follow genuine and legitimate strategies to increase the social shares and do not buy them.

Have a look at this infographic and get some more ideas -


Via: MediaWhiz.com

(The above tactics do not provide any guarantee in rankings. These are just a few suggestions to make your website more user friendly and Google friendly :))

Also See:-

Google Ranking Factors for 2013
Local Search Ranking Factors
Local Seo and Citations
Free Business Local Listings
Meta Tags 
Tf Idf Score to Increase Google Rankings
5 Most Important Link Building Factors in 2013
How to Plan Your Link Building Strategy?
Link Building 2013
Domain Authority and Google results
How Does Google Applies Semantic Search
Emanuel Update
A Deeper Understanding of Google Knowledge Graph
Latent Semantic Indexing
Facebook Graph Search Optimization
Getting Listed on Search Engines
Universal Analytics

Google Offers Free and Paid Website Satisfaction Surveys

Google has went a step ahead in involving users in rating and reviewing a website by offering both free and paid website satisfaction surveys. This was announced in Google blog on June 27th 2013.

Google Consumer Surveys

Consumer surveys are a way of involving the users in reviewing a website and gathering proper feedback from them in order to improve the overall user satisfaction. Webmasters are provided with the free data of consumer feedback which they can use in improving their website.

How Many Results Can You Track?

You can track around 500 results per month.

How to Start Tracking?

Here is a four step process to start the consumer satisfaction tracking.

1- Get the code snippet by visiting - http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/websat?site=p4xg44vj2ec3u
2- Paste the code snippet on your site just before the closing </head> tag.
3- Click on the received email for confirmation.
4- Start tracking the responses.

Google Custom Surveys

Apart from the free survey, there also exists an option of custom surveys which costs 1¢ per response. You can provide your own questions with this type of survey.

Also See:- 

Become a Google Top Contributor

Google Glass - Your Intelligent Partner that Follows Your Commands

How to Add Ratings and Review Stars on Google Results

Human Quality Raters Do Not Influence a Site Rankings

Google Now Cards to Ease Your Life
Google Expands Your Knowledge Graph
Google Disavow Links
Google Announces Field Trail to Show Results From Gmail and Google Drive
Peek Into Google Data Centers
New Google Search Quality Updates: Page Quality, Location, Proximity Most Important
Deeper Understanding of Knowledge Graph

Types of URL Redirections - 301, 302 and other Redirects

URL redirection means that a single web page content is made available under different url's. Having a complete knowledge of URL redirection is necessary for webmasters and search engine optimizers. This post will provide an idea about the type of URL redirections available and their uses.

Working of Redirects (Image credit:- developerfusion.com)

HTTP Redirects

301 (Used for SEO Purpose)

301 redirect is a permanent redirect and is used when any URL gets changed and moved to a separate location. For example www.example.com is moved to www.example2.com then 301 redirect will help the users to visit www.example2.com even if they open www.example.com.

301 redirects helps in proper passing of the link juice without seriously affecting the search engine positioning of the website.

302 (Used for SEO Purpose)

302 redirect is a temporary redirect when a web page gets available at a different location for some time but the permanent location remains the same. This type of redirect does not passes link juice and trust to the new but temporary url.

303

303 redirects are "see other" redirects. It tells the search engines that the requested resource exists on a different url. This type of redirect does not passes the link value and should be avoided.

304

304 redirects tells the search engines that the requested resource is not modified. Hence these are known as "Not Modified" redirects.

305

305 redirects tells the agents to locate the resource using a proxy. The location field must be specified that contains the URL of the proxy.

307

307 redirects are temporary in nature and are mostly used by web developers.

HTML Redirects

The three most important HTML redirects are given below:-

Meta Refresh

The meta refresh redirects the users to a new page after an interval of predefined refresh time. Meta refresh is not treated well in the eyes of search engines as some of the webmasters use this redirect for cloaking purpose which violates the search engine guidelines.

IFrame

When some other page content is forcefully displayed within an iframe so that it looks that it is present on the original URL, then these type of redirects is known as "Iframe redirects". Most of the search engines considers this as a form of cloaking as may penalize a website.

JavaScript Redirects

JavaScript redirects helps to redirect the users from one location to a different location. Search engines do not follow the JavaScript redirects.

How to Check Which Redirect is Applied on a Website?

There are several tools through which you can check which redirect has been implemented on a site. These are given below:-

http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php
http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/
http://www.webtoolhub.com/tn561352-url-redirection-checker.aspx


Also See:-

Seo Effect of Url's Ending with a Campaign Tag
Google's Take on Site Wide Backlinks
Google Human Quality Raters Do Not Influence A Website Ranking Directly
How to Remove Urls From Google Index
Mistakes to Avoid Using Rel="Canonical"
Easy Seo Tips
Learn Seo - Easy Seo Tutorial
Navigation in Seo
Google Tag Manager

Google Drops Tilde Operator

Matt Cutts recently announced on Twitter that Google has dropped the tilde operator due to less usage. Google always goes with the user trends and drops most of the features that are less used by the users. The tilde operator became the latest victim of less usage.

Here is the tweet shared by Matt Cutts -

@Go_Marcus @DatGuyGabe librarians too. But the feature didn't get much usage at all, yet took up indexing space we could use for more pages.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 27, 2013

For those, who don't know what this tilde ~ operator did, here is a short explanation-

The tilde ~ operator when used with keywords on Google returned synonyms of the searched word. This helped web marketers and search engine optimizers to find out synonyms and increase the keyword base.

Also See:-

List of Google Search Operators
Seo Search Operators

Google Search Tips and Tricks

Getting Listed on Search Engines

How do Search Engines Work

Seo Secrets

SEO Issues That Needs to Be Taken Seriously

Many times it happens that the webmasters completely ignore the seo issues as suggested by a competent search engine optimizer. These issues may affect a site badly resulting in partial or complete loss of traffic if not taken seriously.

Are You Taking these SEO Issues Seriously?

Serious SEO Issues (Image credit:- seospecialist.co.uk)

Robots.txt Issues

Sometimes a secret folder may get crawled by search engine bots and information that needed to be refrained from general public gets cached and displayed in the search results. It may also happen that a high traffic yielding folder may accidently get disallowed due to incorrect directions specified in the robots.txt. Hence, robots.txt is an important file and its issues needs to be resolved with immediate basis.

Less User Friendly Links

Many of the older websites are still using a spammy way of displaying links on their website. These links have been put in order to gain the attention of the search engines and not the user. All these links (mostly with similar anchor text and in areas not necessay like too many footer links or sitewide links) needs to be removed. Links that count high from a user point of view should be given more preference instead of links aimed at gaining high search engine positions. Remember Penguin is roaming and it might catch you!

Also See:- Penguin 2.0 Recovery
                 What is a High Quality Backlink?

Low Quality Content

Content has always taken the most important place in search engine optimization. If your website is having low quality content that is written for the search engines solely for the purpose of ranking higher, then the time has come to either remove it or rewrite it. Create content for the users and give more time on the presentation. If people start spending more time on your site due to the high quality content present on it then it a great ranking signal for Google.

Also See:- What is Good Content?
                 Seo Content Copywriting Basics
                 

Unnatural Backlink Profile

This is a serious seo advice. If your site is having lots of unnatural backlinks then it's time to remove them one by one. More advice can be found here:-

Lower Quality Backlink Profile Asking for Trouble?

Targeting Several Exact Match Domains For Every Location

Google has penalized every low quality sites which were ranking high due to the presence of keywords in
the domain. This was done by the EMD update. If your business still targets several locations with a bunch of low quality exact match domains, then drop this idea immediately. The best way would be to promote a single site instead of promoting several different sites as per every location.

Missing Google Authorship

Anonymous web content is going to get less preference than named content or content associated with an
identity. Google authorship is a great way for Google to reduce web spam. if you have not implemented Google Authorship even today, then do it as early as possible. The sooner you do it, the better it is for your site.

Missing Social Media Presence

The role of social media in search engine optimization strategy is growing bigger and bigger with every passing year. Your business needs to have a solid presence on popular social media sites like Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc. (See more:- Social Signals and Seo)


Also See:- 

Solving Duplicate Content Issue
HTTP and HTTPS in Seo
Types of Crawl Errors
Working of Rel Canonical Link Element
Navigation in Seo
How to Rank in Google

Conversion Tracking - How to Increase Conversions in Adwords?

You may have set up your Google Adwords campaign and have started receiving the most awaited traffic but alas! where are the conversions? Getting successful conversions from your ads running in Google requires you to implement some tips and tricks. Before we move on to discuss the secrets of getting a good conversion rate, let us discuss what are conversions?

What is a Conversion?

A conversion happens when someone performs a specific task that is valuable to your business after clicking on your ad. This can be sale of a product, registration of an event, subscribing a newsletter etc. These successful events can be tracked in Google Analytics and is termed as "Conversions".

Types of Conversions

Conversion can be of two types :-

1 per Click - This type of conversion happens when a single conversion takes place with an ad within a span of 30 days. Only one conversion per person is counted even if a single person makes multiple conversions after clicking on an ad. Unique conversions utilized this method.

Many Per Click - This type of conversion happens when multiple conversions takes place with an ad. Multiple conversions per person happens with this type of conversion.

Conversion Tracking

Before you start the actual optimization of the Adwords campaign, make sure you have started the conversion tracking process. This will help you to show how many conversions you are getting for your business.

How to Set Up Conversion Tracking?

You need to add a snippet of HTML and Javascript code into your web pages in order to start tracking successful conversions. You can get the code after logging into your Adwords account. For more help, please visit:- https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3207306?rd=1

Benefits of Conversion Tracking

Have a look at this useful video sharing the benefits of conversion tracking.

Secrets to Increase Conversions in Adwords - Conversion Rate Optimization

The little bits of ad enhancement and conversion enhancement techniques are shared below:-

1- Use Ad Extensions

In order to increase the chances of people clicking on your ad. It is important to use ad extensions which are available in the form of location extensions, call extensions, sitelinks, offer extensions, social annotations, seller ratings etc. You can find ad extensions under the "Ad Extensions" present in the "Settings" tab.More information can be found here:- https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3207314?hl=en&rd=1

2- Use Conversion Optimizer

For a complete understanding of conversion optimization, have a look at the video shared below:-



3- Use Exclamation Marks to Improve CTR

Many webmasters and marketers have witnessed an increase in CTR after they have used exclamation marks in their ad title or description.

4- Target More Specific Keywords

Make sure to use specific keywords like those which can increase the chances of conversions. For example  if your store sells "Black Forest Cake" then instead of targeting keywords like "Cake" in your campaign, be more specific and target "Black Forest Cake".

5- Use Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are those keywords that you want to exclude from your ad and restrict your site from being showed up in search results. These keywords do not bring conversions and it is better to exclude these negative keywords from the ad campaigns. For example if your selling something then you might want to exclude the words "free" from your ad campaigns.More help on adding multiple negative keywords can be found here:- https://support.google.com/adwords/editor/answer/30553?hl=en

6- Increase Ad Quality Score

Having an increased ad quality score will decrease your cost per click and directly increase your visibility. This will help your site get maximum conversions. More help on how to increase Adwords quality score?

7- Create Specific Campaigns for Separate Cities

Create city wise campaigns after analyzing the data as to which city is providing the maximum conversions by looking at the adwords dashboard.

8- Use Exact Match Phrases

Instead of opting for broad phrases, go with exact match phrases. This will increase the relevancy of your ad and get more interested people visit the landing page instead of time pass people.

9- Customize Content Network

Google by default, displays all your ad across all their content network sites. This accounts for a large percentage of sites and most of the clicks comes from people clicking on ads displayed on this vast content network. You can customize this content network and restrict your ad to get displayed in some specific sites only depending on the nature of your business.

10- Schedule Your Ads

You may schedule your ads to get displayed at a particular time. This would be the best option if you want to target customers at a particular time of the day or night. First analyze the time when maximum conversions happen and then adjust your campaigns accordingly.

11- Apply Filters

You may apply various type of filters like determining which campaigns are delivering the best results, which campaigns are providing the maximum invalid clicks, ad groups that have not generated any impressions etc.

12 - Create Rules Using Automate

Image credit- Google

Apply automated rules on your specific ad campaigns based on several criteria like changing the budget on peak shopping days, modifying bids based on CTR etc.

Also See:-

Adwords Bidding Tutorial
Steps to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns
Basics of Google Adwords
Difference Between Clicks and Visits
Determine a Keyword's Overall Worth
Custom Variables in Google Analytics
Universal Analytics
Goal Flow in Google Analytics

Google Answers All Queries Related to Penguin 2.0 Backlink Removal and Penalties

Google has recently shared a blog post answering all queries related to backlinks and reconsideration requests. This will clear most of the unanswered queries of the webmasters affected by the Penguin updates who were waiting for an official response. Here is a summary of what was answered along with further guidance on how to proceed?

1- When Should You File a Reconsideration Request?

A reconsideration request should be filed only after you have received a manual penalty notification in the Webmasters tools. You can file a reconsideration request from the Google Webmasters console. You must file a request only after you clean up your site or backlink profile which were going against Google Webmasters guidelines.

The request should not be filed in case of an algorithmic update.

Here is more help - How to write a reconsideration request?

2- How to Check the Quality of Backlinks Pointing to Your Site?

You may check all the backlinks pointing to your website using the Google Webmaster tools. After logging in, move to Traffic -> Links to your site and you will see all the links that Google has discovered until now. You can get an idea of the sort of links being generated for your website. Make sure there are no unnatural links pointing to your website.

More help-

How to build natural backlinks?
Link Farms
Link Churning
Penguin 2.0 Recovery Guide
Paid Links are a Violation of Google Guidelines

3- How to Clean up Your Link Profile?

Cleaning up your link profile requires time and patience. A proper analysis of site backlinks is required followed by link removal by sending requests to webmasters and using the disavow tool as the last resort.

More help-

Low Quality Link Profile Asking for Sure Trouble?
How to Use Google Disavow Tool?
What Exactly is a High Quality Backlink?

4- What is the Time Taken to Process Reconsideration Requests?

There is no specific time given by Google in this regard. However, most of the requests are processed in a few days. More help can be found here:- Google Webmasters Forum and Google Help Articles.

Also See:- 

Google Working on Providing Samples of Unnatural Backlinks
How to Create Backlinks that Google Loves
Seo Secrets
How to rank in Google
Are You Making Your Website Vulnerable To Future Google Updates
Battle of Ranking Continues

Best and Worst Times to Post on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media Sites

Being active on social media networks is required for a brand to gain exposure and feedback from their potential and existing customers. Knowing the best time to post on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and Pinterest can give your shared story a real boost in visibility with an increased travel time and overall life. It is interesting to note that every shared story on social media sites has its own life and travel capacity. If a story receives maximium shares on several profile then it will having a greater travel capacity and enhanced visibility. On the other hand, if the story receives maximum comments then it will have a greater life as people stay in touch with the story and make it more visible.

Best and Worst Times to Post on Social Networks

Facebook

Best -     1PM to 4PM
Worst -   8PM to 8AM

Twitter

Best -     1PM to 3PM
Worst -   8PM to 9AM

LinkedIn

Best -     7AM to 9AM or 5PM to 6PM
Worst -   10PM to 6PM

Google Plus

Best -     9AM to 11AM
Worst -   6PM to 8AM

Pinterest

Best -     2PM to 4PM or 8PM to 1 AM
Worst -   5PM to 7PM

Also See:-

Social Signals and Seo
Social Media Business Demographics
How to Create Compelling Content That Generates Social Shares
Measuring Social Media ROI
How to Start a Social Media Campaign
Social Media Widgets for Websites
Social Media Etiquette Do's and Dont's
Social Networks
List of Social Media Sites
Social Media Tracking Tools
Top 5 Social Media Tools

Natural Links Counting High! Google Pushes for User Sharing of Sites

It's not about links anymore. Google has recently updated their help document on how they rank websites and replaced the words "increasing the number of high quality sites that link to their pages" to "creating high quality sites that users will want to use and share". This indirectly indicates the declining importance of links and increasing importance of social shares especially Google Plus Ones. This news was published on seroundtable.

Now, the game is gradually moving towards Plus Ones. We have already witnessed a lot of sites getting good ranking on Google simply because many people have recommended it using Google Plus. This is indeed a great ranking signal for Google in order to judge the quality and popularity of a webpage. Instead of depending upon algorithms for determining popularity on the basis of backlinks, Google is slowly moving towards a community based approach where it will weigh sites according to the number of social sharing and recommendations.

This does not means that backlinks will not count at all. Links are indeed a primary factor for ranking and will always remain a valuable metric in order to judge the importance of a webpage. Getting backlinks from high quality and authority websites will always help but, the point to note here is that, only links will not help. You need to increase social shares, citations and brand related references. This is possible only if you are true to your business and serve your customers well. There are no shortcuts to it. (Thanks to Matt Cutts! :) )

Here are a few guidelines that needs to be followed

1- Create a site for the users so that they like it and share it on their social media networks.
2- Enable easy sharing of your web content by implementing social sharing buttons on your site.
3- Create a local Google Plus page and encourage customers to like your brand. Encouraging does not means buying shares. Don't do that.
4- Try and increase the number of quality links to your site.
5- Increase the number of brand related citations that includes either the brand name or the company address. Complete references along with brand name, address and phone number are most valuable. These are an important alternative to links.
6- Encourage tweets, pins, likes, plus ones etc. These are all acting as strong signals to find sites that are loved by users.
7- Implement Google Authorship and start increasing your author rank. Content shared by genuine authors receive the maximum shares.



8- Increase your circles as this will help your content to travel far and receive even more shares.

Also See:- 

New Google Ranking Factors
5 Points Every Seo Must Follow
Seo Secrets
Link Baiting
Google Search Quality Updates
Social Media Widgets for Websites
Create Viral Facebook and Pinterest Images
Social Branding
Top 5 Social Media Tools

Top Facebook Plugins for WordPress

Not a considerable time has passed since the launch of the Facebook. None of the individual could have imagined that this networking website which was opened with the intention to provide a common platform for the friends and peer to interact and stay in touch can turn into a business networking zone. Apart from business, Facebook can even help the WordPress blogs owned by the individuals in gaining popularity. There is no dearth of the Facebook Plugins which can aid in integrating the blog with the Facebook page. To make the readers aware of the glory of such plugins, I have compiled a list of some of the most stunning Facebook Plugins for WordPress that one should not miss!! Have a look:

Best Facebook Plugins for WordPress

Facebook Connect:

Many of the bloggers consider the task of bringing the Facebook on the blog a tedious task. But with the advent of the Facebook Connect plugin, one can easily bring the Facebook to the blog. With FB Connect, one can integrate the blog with Facebook directly.

See more here

Social Locker:

To explain the social locker WordPress plugin, one should imagine a bunch of powerful social buttons with a locker placed in a bottle. Through this plugin the user is provided with the option to lock a particular content on the web page, which can be opened only once the user clicks on any of the social buttons such as Tweet button, FB button, Google+ button etc. This way one can gain more likes, traffic and tweets.

Download Social Locker

WP4FB WordPress FB Plugin

This is one of the coolest of the WordPress FB plugin which aids in making as well as maintaining the FB pages by taking the help of WordPress. This plugin can also aid in controlling the manner in which the content will be viewed by the visitors and even what content will be visible.

Read more here

WP Easy Social Hover

The Easy Social Hover plugin allows the users to create more powerful and engaging images by adding the multiple hover effects with the help of the Social Networking Sgaring button present in it. This way the image can be shared with a great style and flair through the FB share, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Purchase Social Hover

Facebook Photos

With this plugin, the users gain a real and fun way to show their FB photos on the blog without any hassle. This plugin saves the users from the fuss which one usually face when uploading the images or the pictures.

Download Facebook Photo Fetcher

Facebook Walleria

The Facebook Walleria is an amazing WordPress plugin through which the users can embed a large number of FB objects to the website. The Facebook graph is used to pull the information in relation to the Albums, Feed, Photos, and Comments in a great style.

Read more here


Also See:- 

Facebook Graph Search Optimization

Free Facebook Cover Photos
Make Facebook a Part of Your Search
Best Seo Plugins for Google Chrome
Best Seo Wordpress Plugins
Facebook Voice Messages

Social Signals and Seo
Measure Your Social Media Influence
Seo Content Copywriting Basics
Seo Secrets
Seo Tutorial

Local Seo Guidelines - How to do Local Seo?

Local Seo has become a major success factor for local businesses. With Google becoming a major source of traffic for local business leads, local seo is slowly and gradually becoming an unavoidable marketing strategy for local business owners. Here are some guidelines that would help business website owners and search engine optimizers to do local seo more efficiently.

Local SEO Essentials

(Image Credit:- Arcanemediasolutions)

The factors mentioned below plays a major role in getting your website ranked well on the Google local search results.


Presence of Keywords in Local Business Listing Title

The local business listing title must have the targeted keyword. But, make sure, you must not over do it or otherwise there are several penalties waiting for you. Just the presence of keyword is necessary not repeated mentions. A specific example is given below:-

Here, a search for "Electricians in Dothan al" returns the following local results. Note the presence of keywords - "Dothan" "Al" and "Electrical".

Presence of Brand Name and Location (City Name) in Local Business Title

For a local listing to remain in good terms with search engines as well as the customers, it is important to keep the business name (brand name) in the title of the local listing. Also include the city name in the title as specified in the example above in order to get even more better visibility.

Presence of Locally Optimized Google Plus Business Page

To add an additional promotional factor, create a local Google Plus business page and optimize it as per the niche of your business including your main website reference from the page.

A Fully Verified and Relevant Local Business Listing

The local business listing becomes your main showcase when you are promoting your site locally so verify it carefully, choose your main business address, correct pin code, correct business name, correct phone number etc. All these matters a lot in making your business stand genuine in the eyes of Google.

Business Presence in Local Business Directories

The presence of your business in local business directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Super Pages, White Pages, Yahoo local listing, Bing local listing, Merchant Circle, Local.com, MapQuest, Insider Pages etc.

(See a full list here:- Free Business Local Listings)




Enough Local Citations from Authority Resources

Local citations and references of your brand name along with the business address is important. The more citations your business has from authority sources like Chamber of Commerce increases your chances of ranking highly on the search engines with respect to local keywords.

Number of Positive Local Reviews

Google takes into account the number of reviews that people leave in your local business page. The more reviews (of course the positive ones), the better is the chances of ranking. A little piece of advice here, do not try to add reviews from your side in order to manipulate the results as this won't do any benefit. Instead, try and improve the quality of your service and encourage your customers to share feedback on your main business page. If the customers talk good about your business then Google knows which business to rank higher!



Fully Accurate Business Listing

The listing which you will create must be accurate with full and complete details including address, phone number, photos, videos, website etc. Complete and accurate listings are preferred by Google.

Google Authorship Verified Content

Considering the new Google ranking factors for 2013, it would be a nice idea to implement Google Authorship on your website. Site associated with a true professional profile will add more trust to the website and increase it's chances of ranking. It is important to have better understanding of Author Rank while promoting your website. A better author rank will ensure high trust with Google.

Schema Microdata

Schema vocabulary can be a nice way to help the search engines process the content present in your web page in an easy manner. Specifying the postal address on your web pages using Schema microdata will surely add extra local relevance to your web pages.

Authority of the Website

Apart from the locally relevant factors, the basic search engine ranking factors like the domain authority of the website is important. The higher the domain authority of the website, the better are its chances of ranking.

Page Rank of the Website/Webpages

Page Rank is still a value factor for Google. Hence, having a high Page Rank optimizes the popularity factor of your site.

Number and Quality of Backlinks Pointing to the Website

Quality and relevancy of backlinks pointing to your website increases it's authority and makes it easier for your website to rank well on Google.

Lots of Citations in Terms of Brand (Business) Name and Business Address

Citations (references) of your brand name along with your business address and phone number as mentioned in the business page are good factors holding a decent value in local rankings.

(Please Note:- The above factors can be assumed as the major local ranking factors but this does not guarantees local rankings. Google ranks websites based on over 200 ranking factors so the above guidelines can only help in improving local seo but cannot guarantee rankings.)

Also See:- 

Local Search Ranking Factors
WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder
Free Seo Tools
Rank Watch
Local Seo and Citations
Location Relevance System for Local Seo

Now You Can Use #Hashtags on Facebook

Facebook recently announced in their blog the support of hashtags. This was an important feature that was missing from Facebook but thanks, now the user can use the hashtag functionality in the similar manner as they use on Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Google Plus etc.

Image Credit- Facebook

Hashtags are really useful to help people share and discover great content on Facebook easily. You can search using hashtags on the search bar and discover niche conversations. Here is what Facebook says -

"Starting today, hashtags will be clickable on Facebook. Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion. "

Also See:- 

Internship in Google or Facebook

Graph Search Optimization

Facebook Graph Search
Facebook Voice Messages

Facebook Introduces Dedicated Pages for Couples
Create Free Facebook Cover Photos
Make Facebook a Part of Your Search
Facebook Voice Messages
50 Seo Tips
How to Track Facebook Likes in Google Analytics

Difference Between SEO and PPC

As far as online content development jargons go, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) play a huge role in internet marketing tactics. As an introduction to the uninitiated, a search engine uses algorithmic calculations to decide the ranking of a certain website or webpage on the search list. It is an unpaid or organic process which can be affected by using both SEO and PPC.

Considering how search engines work, the actual search terms or keywords are typed into a search engine preferred by a target audience. SEO affects the visibility of a website by editing the contents of a website. It can be used to change the HTML and associated coding of a webpage to increase its relevance to specific keywords entered by a user in the search engine. It also works by inserting backlinks, or inbound links, to the website in other web pages.

SEO Vs PPC (Image credit:- unbounce.com)

PPC, on the other hand, is when a client pays a certain amount of money to a search engine to increase the visibility of a website. Advertisers pay the search engine a certain amount of money when people click on ads which direct the traffic to the webpage of the advertiser. An advertisement, or banner ads, is a common way of displaying an advertiser’s website. These are also called sponsored links or sponsored ads, which appears when the user enters a certain keyword.

The obvious difference between the two is that while the traffic generated by SEO is free, the traffic coming from PPC is paid. But making a choice between the two involves a number of different factors: the target of the website, whether the website is promoting a product or a service, the reputation of the search engine and finally the cost of promoting a website.

PPC involves spending a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on a link and the expenses might run into a four figure amount or more. SEO, on the other hand, is free and traffic can be generated by the content of a website. But being free does not guarantee results. It takes a lot of time to get a high ranking from a search engine, whereas paying for a sponsored link might generate traffic faster. But even that is no guarantee.

The choice depends on the size of the advertising budget. The daily spending limit can be set to a minimum of $5 to $10 a day or even $100 a day, depending on the budget. But SEO is also a practical choice since it can generate 5 clicks or 50,000 and while costing nothing.

SEO is a good approach to promote a website on a shoestring budget. But if a little capital is available, PPC is a good recommendation. In case of competitive industries, results pages with certain target keywords are dominated by authority websites, which are nearly impossible to displace. In such cases, paying for traffic via PPC appears to be most sensible.

But an even more powerful tool is to combine PPC and SEO.

Also See:- 

SEO Vs PPC Comparison Infographic

Steps to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns

Basics of Google Adwords

Why Seo is Still Favored by Organizations
Adwords Quality Score
Complete Seo Tutorial

New Google Update for Spammy Queries Started

New Google update targeted to wipe out spam in niches like payday loans has started. This update would be spread over months rather than days, so you cannot expect to see all the updated changes soon. The real change would get reflected in 1-2 months. So, stay tuned for that.

We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries. See 2:30-3:10 of this video: goo.gl/ufCiH #smx
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 11, 2013

Here are some updates that happened recently -

Penguin 2.0 Update
Next Generation Penguin Update
Panda Update Rolling and Will Continue to Roll
Google Panda Update 24

Here are some discussions and coverage related to this update -

Google Goes After ‘Payday Loans’ And Other Spam With New Algorithm Update

A New Google Update Targeting Money Keywords

New Google Update or is it all Screwed?

Google Targets Spammy Queries, Bad Mobile Sites with New Ranking Updates

Google Payday Loan Algorithm

Custom Variables in Google Analytics

Custom variable in Google Analytics allows you to define and track custom user interactions other than those already provided. Custom variables allows you to track the user activity in your site as per your own needs.

How to Set Up a Custom Variable?

You will need the following code in setting up your own custom variable -

_setCustomVar(index, name, value, opt_scope)

Custom variable accepts four parameters given below:- 

Required Parameters

Index - This is the slot for the custom variable and contains a  numeric value ranging from 1-5

Name - The name of the variable is defined here.

Value - The value of the variable is defined here. 

Optional Parameter

Opt_Scope - Page level, session level or visitor level interactions can be defined here.

Example of Setting Up an Ecommerce Custom Variable

Suppose, I am the owner of an ecommerce website and I want to track the number of visitors who are interested in viewing the "Electronics" section of my website. I will set up a custom variable to track this interaction using Google Analytics. 

_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',
          1,                   // Custom variable is set to slot #1.  Required parameter.
          'Category',       // Name for your Ecommerce store content categories.  Required parameter.
          'Electronics',           // Sets the value of "Category" to "Electronics".  Required parameter.
          3                    // Sets the scope to page-level.  Optional paramete.
         ]);

Also See:- 

How to Create a New Dashboard in Google Analytics?
Google Makes Improvements in Real Time Reports
Difference Between Clicks and Visits
Understanding Goal Flow in Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Multi Channel Funnel in Google Analytics
Regular Expressions on Google Analytics
Search Queries in Webmasters Tools
Google Data Highlighter
Seo for E-commerce Websites
Seo Tutorial
Stop words in Seo

Author Rank is the New Page Rank

Author Rank can be said as the new Page Rank for Google as the search engine giant has started to put a lot of emphasis on authorship. With the motto of moving from "strings to things", Google has started to rate web pages based on the author profile and author rank, hence having a solid author rank would help your web pages to rank higher up on the search results.

Author Rank + Page Rank = Dual Ranking Benefit (Image credit - ericnagel.com)

What is Author Rank and How is it Calculated?

Author Rank a.k.a Agent Rank is a metric that is assigned to every author based on the contributions, social popularity, industry popularity, social circles, number of plus ones the content receives, the quality of the content, the number of quality backlinks or mentions the content receives etc. This metric is huge and takes into account many individual factors. The time has come for Google to analyze and rate web pages based on the author rank of the contributor and in future too, growth in this area is certain.

(Information obtained from  Agent rank Patent by Google)

Why is Author Rank Important and How ?

Author Rank is extremely important if you want your web pages to rank higher on Google. Implementing Google Authorship is necessary as it helps Google to "stop web spam for free". After you have implemented Author Rank in your website, your next step would be to increase the value as well as relevance of your Author profile. Author Rank gives you the power to rank for your own site as well as on other website based on the power of content written by you as your profile adds up to the power and makes the web pages rank higher up.

UPDATE: Google NO Longer Supports Authorship.

Hence, you can take it in this manner- if you are able to get many high Author Rank authors to write for your website then you have the best possible options for getting your web pages ranked highly. This is straightforward, take it or leave it.

What About Page Rank?

Page Rank is still important as it judges the web page on popularity basis. Hence, I am not saying that Page Rank is not important and you must make every effort to increase your website's Page Rank. But, the thing is, Author Rank has emerged as one of the most useful metrics ever.

Moving From Page Rank to Author Rank

Google is slowly moving from Page Rank to Author Rank and there are many facts that support this fact. Web content that are written by reputed authors are already ranking higher on Google. Sites having less Page Rank but having content written by highly popular authors are ranking higher, just for the sole fact that this signal related to the real world and helps Google to correctly evaluate the content present on a web page without worrying too much about web spam.


Also See:- 

Rel = "Author" - An Important Ranking Signal for Google
Seo for 2013
What Exactly is a High Quality Backlink
New Google Ranking Factors
Google Ranking Factors
Local Search Ranking Factors
Local Seo and Citations
Free Business Local Listings
Meta Tags 
Tf Idf Score to Increase Google Rankings
5 Most Important Link Building Factors in 2013
How to Plan Your Link Building Strategy?
Adding Ratings and Review Stars on Search Results

Rel="author" - An Important Ranking Signal for Google

Matt Cutts has revealed in a video that rel="author" is an important ranking signal for Google right now and also for future. Google Authorship is a great way to stop web spamming and identify genuine authors who actually wrote the content. The individual pieces of content gets ranked based on the author rank and the page rank/domainauthority of the website where content gets shared. Hence, implementing rel="author" gives you dual benefit for ranking your content both on your website and some other website where you are an author.

Here are some of the important points discussed in the video -

1- Revealing your identity helps Google to stop anonymous spam and makes web a more cleaner place.
2- Individual reputation of the authors (a.ka. author rank) helps Google to identify the authority, importance and genuineness of the shared content.
3- Web Spam is greatly reduced as people are less likely to spam using their individual author identities.
4- It becomes difficult for the spammers to hide in some anonymous corner of the web.
5- People get a chance to rank on the basis of authorship and their content instead of just their own websites.
6- Still the rel="author" is in the process of improvement so keeps your eyes focussed on this major ranking signal for Google.
7- rel="author" supports the Google philosophy of "moving away from strings towards things" (Remember- Knowledge Graph?)
8- rel="author" goes a long way in helping to improve the search experience.

Now, it's time to have a look at the video about Google authorship being an important ranking signal for Google-




Also See:-

Domain Authority and Google results
How Does Google Applies Semantic Search
Emanuel Update
A Deeper Understanding of Google Knowledge Graph
Latent Semantic Indexing
Facebook Graph Search Optimization
Getting Listed on Search Engines
Universal Analytics
Learn Seo Step by Step
Google Tag Manager
Google Sandbox effect
Google will Continue to Support Toolbar PageRank
Search Engine Optimization or Search Experience Optimization

Internship in Google or Facebook? Compare Your Choices

Looking for an internship opportunity in Google or Facebook? Well, the path is tough and a few smarter ones are able to make it. The infographic shown below provides an excellent choice to decide whether you must choose search engine giant Google or social media giant Facebook for an internship!

Google vs. Facebook Internships infographic

Resources to Start Now - 

Start a Test for Facebook Internship
Google Students YouTube Link

Meet The Students

How I Got An Internship @ Facebook from Ilan Dee

Other Useful Links

Google Hiring Process
Careers at Facebook

Also See:- 

Google Offices in India
Indians Working in Google
Google Search Tips
Google Knowledge Graph
Best Seo Interview Questions
Useful Seo Tips

Yahoo Search Gets a New Design

Yahoo search engine has got a design that matches the theme of Yahoo home page. This new and modern design has been introduced in the web search US. This new design puts the search results up and centre. Yahoo has also improved it's speed and this design is much faster than the previous one. This was announced in the yahoo blog.

I was really impressed by the page speed. The search results are displayed higher up and the various menus have been put above the query box.


Also See:-

Yahoo New Homepage
Getting Listed on Search Engines
List of Search Engines other than Google
SEO Tutorial
Google Knowledge Graph
List of Search Engines other than Google
Bing Social Sidebar
Optimizing for Bing