| | | New StepForth Service :: Local Link Building - Only Pay for Results
StepForth Web Marketing is excited to announce an exciting new local link building service with savings of up to $120 - best of all, we guarantee this service.
What are local links?
A local link is a link pointing to somewhere on your website from a directory related in some way to the region(s) where you conduct business. For example, if you owned a toy store in Los Angeles a helpful directory link would be from a section such as "Los Angeles \ Retail \ Children \ Toys".
How can local links help your business?
 As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need in their local area. To respond to this need Google and some other search engines are tailoring search results based on the region you are searching for (e.g. "Los Angeles toy store") or from (results based on your physical location) . If your business services a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines and directories are critical to ensure maximum visibility in today's searches. ( learn more about local search here)
Why this service is a great deal: you only pay for the links we get for you and you can save up to $120 for a limited time!
The regions we service right now: We can provide region-based directory link building for the USA and Canada.
Here is how the service works: of paramount importance, first off, you only pay for relevant local directory links that we are able to get for your site and you determine your monthly budget. Each link costs $10. Commit to a minimum 5 links a month over a 6 month period and we will give you the first 5 links for free, a savings of $50. Or get 12 links for free and save $120 when you opt for the 12 month service.
Simply put, you only pay when we have established good relevant links for you. We will require your permission to proceed if any important directories assess a fee for inclusion. Linking to a paid directory involves 2 fees; a $20 -$40 link fee from us (more work is involved) and the inclusion fee.
First come first served! We can only accept a limited number of clients for this service.
| | How a Google Penalty Can Make Your Site Stronger
Over the past 12 years consulting on web marketing I have answered countless questions but one question I receive often stands out from all; how to remove a Google penalty. The following is an example of a question I received in the past from a person named Patrick:
PLEASE HELP! For the last 8 years we were #1 for a ton of search terms but then my site got penalized by Google because we had overused some keywords. We fixed the issue months ago but my top rankings are all still over the place. Sometimes we get back into the top 10 and we all breathe a sigh of relief, then just a few hours later we are on page 5. What is going on and how can I correct this? We are beyond frustrated!
First, Some Research
In order to answer Patrick's question I needed to find out a couple of things about his website to make my answer more accurate:
- His site has excellent content right now and when I looked at past versions of the site I see the content was still great but definitely had keyword stuffing problems.
Key finding: his site is really well done so I can see why it had top rankings before.
- I took a look at competitors found in the top 10 under several keyword searches that were obviously main targets for his website. After reviewing the backlinks (definition) for each competitor's sites I could see they were all very well entrenched but their content was not up to par with Patrick's site. I reviewed Patrick's backlinks and was surprised to find that he had very few.
Key finding: his competitors have a lot of backlinks than Patrick's site does.
An SEO Tool Note: I use Yahoo Site Explorer for cursory examination of backlinks for my clients and their competitors. For more in-depth research I use OptiLink by Winrose Software (that is an affiliate link) which provides excellent statistics that are very useful for analyzing the quality of backlinks among other things. Here are more recommended web marketing tools.
- I checked the server headers for their home page and other key pages to make sure nothing was outwardly wrong with their server configuration; everything was fine.
- I took some time to surf through Patrick's website and discovered that not all of the keyword stuffing had been removed.
Key Finding: Google may still feel his site deserves a penalty because it is not 100% clean.
My Answer to Patrick
First I will layout why it seems your site did so well to begin with. Your website has very few backlinks in comparison to your competitors who have significantly more. So, as near as I can tell your top rankings were so high because you had built an awesome reputation with Google by providing unparalleled content; I can't find a single competitor that can match the quality of your content. For a long time you managed to stay at the top of your marketplace by continuing to provide great content. Unfortunately, you were over-optimizing the content by adding too many incidences of the same keywords (keyword stuffing) and Google took a disliking to it.
So why is it so hard to regain your ranking stability? Your site lost the glue that kept it competitive when Google penalized it. The glue, in this case, was your site's reputation that was created based on your content which lost its stickiness due to Google's penalty for the keyword stuffing. Without your content advantage your competitors have leaped ahead of you because they have far more links than you have and no ranking penalties (that we know of). Without links and with the Google penalty applied to your site your content hasn't the power it had before so your rankings will fluctuate for an indeterminate amount of time; there is no sure time limit on a Google penalty.
My Recommendation for Removing the Google Penalty
- Remove all of the keyword stuffing on your website. I know it is a large site and this is no small feat but it needs to be done. With your site cleaned and nothing remaining but quality content there will at least be an end in sight to the Google penalty and your site will also benefit from being more readable and usable to a visitor.
- Begin an ongoing link building campaign now - there is no time to delay. Links are another path to building credibility for your website which it sorely needs right now. There is also a good chance that high quality incoming links will act as additional entry points to your website for Google to index your newly revised site and reconsider the penalty.
- Review Google Webmaster Tools and attend to any errors/alerts/warnings that Google has provided. Also make sure to submit a fresh sitemap once the site is cleaned so that Google takes notice of any content that may have gone unnoticed and/or new content.
- Freshen content on key parts of your website with rewrites or additional articles. This will provide positive activity that Google will cannot deny adds value to its index.
- Bolster your Pay Per Click campaigns so they can bear some of the burden during this dry spell of low organic rankings.
- Be patient. If you do everything I have noted above you are in a great position to succeed and your site will be stronger than ever before.
By applying these recommendations you will very likely discover that the Google Penalty was more a blessing than a curse because your site will come out stronger than ever before.
Is your website suffering from a Google penalty? If so, feel free to drop me an email and we can discuss your situation.
by Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
| | Bing / Yahoo Deal's Impact on your SEO
With the recent deal made between Bing and Yahoo one must ask them selves, what impact will this have on my search rankings. In this case, it may have a significant impact - at least eventually.Let's assume that all legalities are settled, and everything goes ahead as planned. What we will eventually see is a full transition of Bing results displayed when one does a search over at Yahoo. This will have the effect of there only being two major search engines out there, Google and Bing. Yahoo algorithm based results as we know them will cease to exist (at least on the organic level).If your site has good Yahoo rankings now, and this is something you want to maintain, the only way to do it is to beef up your Bing rankings to be as good as or better than Yahoo. Not to panic however, you have some time. Some are speculating that it could be as long as two years before Bing results start appearing at Yahoo, so there is no huge rush, however, that said, 2 years can come and go rather quickly.My recommendation at this point is to start to make the move to improve your Bing results. Previously Bing was often overlooked due to their incredibly small market share of less than 10%. With the Yahoo integration, those results could affect as much as 30%, or even more if Bing really takes off - suddenly that market share is high enough to make these results really worth while.One thing you don't want to do is jeopardize what you have in Google. While technically it is possible for Bing to some day rein as champion over Google, I wouldn't hold my breath - even in the off chance that this does happen, it won't likely be in the near future.by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO
| | Google Caffeine Update to be Given in Measured Doses
On Monday Google did something out of character by announcing a pre-release viewing of a major update to their algorithm they nicknamed Caffeine:
For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.
The sandbox URL for the new update is http://www2.sandbox.google.com - Check it out and see if you notice any difference with your rankings. Please post any interesting findings as a comment on this article.
So, this article would not be complete if I didn't include Matt Cutt's take on the Caffeine update. WebProNews' Mike McDonald conducted a video interview with Matt Cutts a day after the news on Caffeine broke.
Reasonable Assumptions
- Google is releasing this update to elicit user feedback, in part, to prevent another Florida Update debacle; where a landslide of algorithmic changes near the Christmas season caused an outcry from website owners.
- As Matt said the update will be rolled out slowly which, from a website owner's perspective, could be good news. After all, a measured roll-out can make it easier to determine the ranking factors that change and will allow you to adapt if need be.
- The tone of Matt's interview suggests there will be some targeted fallout. For example, he noted "if you have good architecture you will not have to worry about Caffeine"...
Look out for some future posts where I will link to various findings from myself and others who are testing the new architecture.
by Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
| | Caffeine Update Affects Local Organic Results
It seems Google's Caffeine update includes some significant alterations in their local search organic ranking algorithm.I whipped up this screenshot side-by-side comparison for you to see the differences between the Caffeine Sandbox on the term "Vancouver car sales" and the current live Google results for the same term. Please note that if you click on the image you will be taken to a MUCH larger version without the mark-up so you can see the results more clearly.- Oddly the results showed that the current local ten pack are unaffected by the changes - at the moment.
- Note that I did a number of similar regional searches with the same altered organic results - this appears to be a constant.
Google Caffeine Sandbox Results vs
Regular Google on a Local Search
Unfortunately, I do not know at this time what ranking factor has changed to create such an alteration but hopefully this will prompt more people in our great industry to delve into the matter. I will let you know if I discover anything more.What is your educated guess on the ranking factors at play here? If I had to guess I would say that local search citations, which play a significant role in rankings, are being counted differently based on stricter criteria. I know that is a vague statement but perhaps that will set off an idea or two for someone smarter than myself in the realm of local search. by Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
| | The Net Reality
Top Worst Passwords of All Time: Interesting, clever and predictable findings. Here's a link to the 500 most common passwords as compiled by Mark Burnett. No wonder hackers are so successful. (Caution - some words may be considered offensive.)
1,000 Free Song Downloads: Rick Broida from Crave reports that music marketing site ReverbNation is offering a no strings, no software to install, and no DRM 1,000 free tunes. Sponsored by Microsoft the tracks are available in both M4A and MP3 formats. Another free site source noted is Amazon.
The American Textbook Accessibility Act: ZDNet's Christopher Dawson writes an intelligent article on the need for a universal standard for e-book accessibility. Some excerpts,
I'm working on a story to actually assess the state of development among big-name textbook publishers and will have more soon on that. For right now, though, it's quite clear that we have a very long ways to go. While a lack of content is a major issue, perhaps a bigger issue is the lack of standards via which the content can be disseminated. Obviously, DRM is a serious problem for textbooks. Copyright aside, though, there are currently around 30 formats in which e-books are published.Frankly, there is only one that I see that makes a lot of sense right now. EPUB, developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, is open, XML-based, and can grow as our needs increase. Even this format, though, needs traction with major publishers.E-readers like the Kindle have been built and the textbook publishers have not come. Not by a long shot. Build a standard around which an ecosystem of hardware and software can grow and I think you'll see content following very shortly thereafter.
By Bill Stroll, Sales and Marketing Manager
| | | | | | | | Top Web Marketing Articles from StepForth
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