Google Toolbar PageRank Lives On With The First Update In Over 10 Months

Google has updated the Toolbar PageRank values this morning, despite Google’s Matt Cutts implying the update would not happen again within 2013.

The SEO community, discussion forums and social media outlets are lighting up with the news that Google has actually updated the Toolbar PageRank values. Why?

(1) The SEO industry always lights up when the most visible indicator and easiest to see metric of Google linkage data changes.

(2) Because no one expected a Toolbar PageRank update this year.

The last Toolbar PageRank update was over 10 months ago and I predicted, wrongly, thatToolbar PageRank was dead. I was wrong, Google updated it today, 10+ months later and well before anyone thought there would be an update.

Google has implied over the years that toolbar PageRank would go away and has slowly dropped support for the feature in several browsers over the years. Although, Google did tell usToolbar PageRank wouldn’t fully go away, at least not on older browsers that support it.

For more on the importance, or lack-there-of, Toolbar PageRank see our guide on PageRank.

Here is the latest video from Matt Cutts on Google PageRank:

Update: Matt Cutts confirmed the update on Twitter saying the “team was fixing a different backend service and did a PR update along the way.”

On Page SEO Optimization Techniques 2013

Basically, why I choose to write on this topic this topic is because recently, I’ve seen that many people spending lots of money just to optimize their websites but here in this post, you will gain some knowledge on how to optimize a website and, of course, free of cost. So, On Page Optimization is a technical SEO term that refers to the techniques you should use to optimize your website to increase visibility on SERP. You may be asking, how I can optimize my website? What is On Page Optimization and what are On Page Optimization techniques and tips? . So, here I am discussing the Top 15 On Page SEO Optimization Technique.

Before starting this topic, let’s talk briefly what what On Page Optimization actually is.  On page optimization is nothing but implementation of strategies to optimize the position of website in search result with using of particular words and phrases know as keywords. Besides keywords, this includes use of proper heading, quality content, meta description, alt- tags to images, proper SEO tool, bold/italic terms, and many other On Page factors. So, all are discussed here and helps you to improve your position in search results. If you are not getting free traffic from search engines, now is the time for you to optimize your blog.

NEED OF ON PAGE OPTIMIZATION-

• To boost your blog to get a better a Google page rank.
• Targeting long tail keywords,we get easily top ranking in Google and Bing search engines.
• To make your website and posts SEO friendly.

You now know why we’re doing this but how you do you learn to do this?

Top 15 On Page SEO Optimization Technique 2013:

1. Post/Page Title

Whenever some bot or human being visit your blog post, the first thing noticeable is your post title. Blog post/page Titles are one of the most important On-Page SEO factors of a website. Your blog post title should be unique, most attractive and also include the main keywords of that post/page. Try to make short and meaningful title. A Title less than 60 characters is recommended.

Must Read: SEO Changes that should Influence Your Link Building Strategy

2. Optimize Your Post URLs/ Permalink

Optimizing your post URLs or permalink is also one of the most important SEO factors because search engines often present result on the basis of the URL. Basically, I mean if your blog posts look like this, http://electrotechguide.com/?p=456, then it may be rather for search engines bot and also affect your website performance. I mean, your permalink should consist of only rich keywords not unnecessary stuffs like the example shown above or something like that. So, it’s better to customize your blog URL instead of generating random permalink. In WordPress, you can easily change the permalink structure of your posts by visiting page “Settings” tab called “Permalinks”. The most popular format is /%postname%.html and this is highly recommended. It’s search engine friendly.

3. Interlink Your Inner Page

A very important point to note for On Page SEO practice is that every time you write an article, always try to interlink it with previous articles that you have written. This should be at least 2-5 articles and make sure they all are actually in relation with post. Interlinking to your own blog post always helps in increasing page views, improve your position in search search results and also help to reduce your website bounce rate. Through this your blog visitors navigate around your site and help them to find your all content. It’s also your benefits and other. Also ensure you that your site gets properly crawled and allowing the search engines to find your all website pages.

Also see: 6 Effective method to reduce the Bounce Rate

4. Use Your Important Keywords/ Keyword Density

Keywords is probably the most important On Page SEO technique. If you writing a quality article and without using or repeating keywords in relation with blog niche or particular article, then it’s just waste of time. One should not use too many keywords over and over again in an article, it is considered as negative SEO practice according to Matt Cutts. Keyword stuffing can also lead to penalization. Try to use an ideal keyword density up to 2-5% in an article. This is recommended by top bloggers for On Page SEO and also helps to increase your rank in SERP.

5. Meta Description

Every search engines bot always check the specific meta description of your article. This descriptions plays an important role in your website and you should include the relevant keywords of your content. This meta descriptions are used by search engines when visitors find yours website in searches. So, don’t forget to include them otherwise Google bots randomly picks the keywords from starting paragraph. Please note that meta description length should not be exceed 160-170 character including spaces.

Must Read: 10 Best Free SEO WordPress Plugins

6. Meta Keywords

When you write your blog post, to make it even more optimized you should consider good meta keywords which is also known as meta tags. These keywords must be relevant to your content and choose the keywords which are likely to be incoming searche queries or hot searches. Best limit is use just to 3-5 keywords. Though  is is said Google no longer uses it that much for ranking, it’s still advisable to use it anyway since other search engines may still employ it.

7. Use Header Tags like H2, H3

Always use major keywords and main lines in the heading tags such as H2, H3, H4.. It make your posts more attractive and also a good On Page Optimization technique. It may also highlight your post main heading, sub heading and also helps your visitors find your post more attractive and readable and of course engine bots take note of headings. My suggestion is use H1 tag only once as the main title and use most important keyword in it. Don’t repeat H2, H3 tags again and again with same keyword, it may considered as negative SEO practice according to Matt Cutts.

8. Optimize Your Images And Use Alt Tags

Images are also another major source of driving free traffic to your blog. Well, lots and lots of people search for images on Google every minute and if you really want some free traffic, now is the time to optimize your images for better SEO. When you download image, it’s like 43422.jpg, DCS7874, IMG6402 or dsdj76.jpg. By changing the name to something like iPhone-5-iOS-7.jpg or anything related to your post, it makes it more readable to bots and of course, human being. Also include alternate tag to make them more searchable. for eg.<img src=”iphone-5-ios-7.jpg Alt=” Best-iOS-7-ever-made”>.

Must Read: Are Your Backlinks Helping or Backfiring on Your Website or Blog?

9. Keywords In Bold Or Italic And Sometimes Underlined

You can use bold, Italic and underlined styles to highlight important keywords and phrases in your blog post in order to attract attention of search engines. You can also use this to draw the attention of your readers.

10. Canonicalize your URLs

Basically, URL Canonicalization is the practice in which you optimize your blog URLs in order to prevent from duplication. Let me make this clear,  there may be a problem if your blog can be accessed via WWW or without it. Search engines may treat the www version and the non-www version of your site as duplicate content. If not, you have nothing to worry about. If you are using WordPress, you can easily define it by going to General Setting Page. Just enter your Blog full name with or without WWW and save the settings. If you are using some other blogging software, then it is a big problem. How? Search Engines will treat these pages separately and mark them as duplicate pages which is not good for SEO.

11. Post Length

When you write an article, it is always suggested that you make the post SEO friendly and a minimum of 350 words. Of course, post length matters. Search Engines always love unique and quality post but also of proper length. Always try to make posts between 500-1000 words or more than that.

12. Update Your Blog Regularly

If you create a stunning website without lots of interesting categories and content but never update regularly, a day will eventually come when people will no longer visit your website. It is also a part of On Page SEO. So, it’s very important that you update your blog regularly, not necessarily posting daily. I mean, your blog comments, relations with people, means you have to always be in touch with your blog.

13. External Outbound Links

We all know that linking is a key point to perform good on search engines but apart from internal links, it is great if you make links with external website by guest posting, commenting and many other methods. It also help your blog more visible in search engines and on other blogs. Linking with trusted sites help you to gain more credibility and improves your PageRank as well. Note: add rel=”nofollow” to avoid bad links.

14. Keywords Research (LSI Keywords)

To post an article, first thing you should do is proper keyword research and then write. It has always been the best strategy to rank higher and include the Latent Semantic Indexing keywords (LSI) for some better results. This technique is also recommended by great SEO tools like SEOPressor. Now, you can use so many tools for key searching like Google Adwords tool, Google Trends etc.

15. Content is King

Not matter what you do, if your writing skills are unique, of pretty good quality, interesting to read and you post on your blog regularly, then  a day will come when your blog will become known to everyone. Don’t try to copy others, always come up with your own ideas and writing style because Google loves fresh and unique material. Create new things with old stuffs, I know it’s difficult but not impossible. If you want results faster, then follow all above techniques.

After All The Hype That Wasnt An Update You Felt

Around last Thursday we told you about a potential update that we and many others thought had occurred,however this is not to be the case, perhaps we are all dreaming. The update was thought to be on of a big scale, such as a Google Panda update with many people suddenly dropping and gaining rankings with no recent SEO work being carried out, or any website changes at all.

 

A Google spokesperson, however, came out and strongly denied this saying that this was neither a Google Panda Update or any other update as far as they were aware. If you were to look at all the signals, however, you would think completely different with many sites out there actually tracking this “update”. There was immense talk about this “non-update” with more than 40 comments on search engine roundtable all stating that their rankings had been changed in some way.

 

There are three main websites out there which tend to track the Google Updates, MozCast,SERPS.com and serpmetrics. All of these were showing signs of not just any update but a large update.

 

But, as Google have strongly stated there was no update that day or any other day.

Google Confirm Panda Refresh on 21st November

Google have finally confirmed that there was a refresh to the Google Panda algorithm on the 21st November, this is after another spike in talk about a possible Panda update.

This makes sense really, as not so long ago Google told us that there would be an update within the next 7 to 10 days, as can be seen here. However, this update came after one day not the amount of time that Google said but as the saying goes, “the sooner the better.”

This update would make for 22 Panda updates now, the 21st being on the 5th November which impacted about 1.1% of English queries. This update however will only affect around 0.8% English queries that regular users may notice.

Below you can find all of the previous Panda updates that have occurred:

1. Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries impacted; announced; English in US only)

2. Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries impacted; announced; rolled out in English internationally)

3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages impacted; announced)

7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

8. Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries impacted; belatedly confirmed)

9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries impacted; announced)

10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)

11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)

12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)

13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)

14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)

15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries impacted; belatedly announced)

16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries impacted; announced)

17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries impacted; announced)

18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries impacted; belatedly announced)

19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries impacted; announced)

20. Panda Update 20 , Sep. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries impacted, belatedly announced

21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US impacted; 0.4% worldwide impacted; confirmed, not announced)

22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected impacted; 0.4% worldwide impacted; confirmed, not announced)

Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% Of English-Language Queries

Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages.

Including the original Penguin algorithm launch in late April, this is the third update, so we’re calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding the previous 1.1, 1.2, etc. naming scheme, just as we’ve done with the Panda updates.

Penguin Releases So Far

Here’s the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (other languages are also impacted, but we’re using English as a consistent baseline):

• Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1%)
• Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%)
• Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%)

Some Details On Penguin 3

Cutts, chief of Google’s spam team, posted about the Penguin update in a series of tweets. The first said that a Penguin data refresh is on its way and that about 0.3 percent of English-language queries will be “noticeably affected.”

Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: goo.gl/AF5kt— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

He added more info via a few replies on Twitter, like these that mention the update will also impact a small percentage of queries in other languages such as Spanish, Italian and French.

@gfiorelli1it will roll out for other languages at same time. Spanish impact is ~0.4%. Italian impact is ~0.3% of queries. Hope that helps.— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

@glemarchand @gfiorelli10.4% of French queries affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

How Google Determines Percent Of Queries Impacted

For the first time that I’m aware of, we also learn a bit about what Google means when it cites how many queries are “noticeably affected.” In this conversation with UK SEO Rob Watts, Cutts suggests that “noticeable” means “above the fold,” at least to some degree.

@robwattsBasically. Swapping a #10 result for a different #10 result might not be noticeable. Swapping out in (say) top 5 ->more noticeable— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

Google first launched the Penguin update in late April, and even though the company talked about targeting webspam in general, the real impact seems to have been on websites with what Google considers (too many) low-quality inbound links. Prior to today, there was one previous update in late May and Google has promised further “jolts” related to the Penguin algorithm.

 

 

 

Google’s Internationalization SEO FAQ

Did you know Google has an official FAQ, frequently asked questions, document just on the internationalization of your site?

It is designed to help SEOs and webmasters make their sites localized and internationalized while considering the impact on search engines.

In fact, John Mueller of Google supposedly wrote most of the document, which you can find over here.

There are 24 different common questions asked and answered here, here they are:

• What’s the best URL structure for a multilingual site?
• What can I do if a user reaches the “wrong language” version of my pages?
• Google shows the “translate” link for my page in the search results, even though my page is already in the language used when searching. How can I prevent this?
• Should I use character encodings or HTML entities for non-ASCII characters?
• Can I use automated translations?
• Do you support multilingual content in rich media files like Flash?
• Can I use meta tags to specify the language of a page?
• What’s the best URL structure for a multi-national (geotargeted) site?
• Is the server location important for geotargeting?
• Is it possible to geotarget with a CDN?
• Apart from ccTLDs, Webmaster Tools, and server location, what can play a role in geotargeting?
• What can I do if a user reaches the “wrong country” version of my pages?
• I want to target the whole world; what should I do?
• Can I use meta tags to specify geotargeting?
• Can I target different English-speaking countries separately with the same content?
• Can I use “rel alternate hreflang” across domains / across TLDs?
• Does “rel alternate hreflang” replace geotargeting?
• Since this markup can be specified in an XML Sitemap file, should I use separate Sitemap files for each language and location?
• I use “rel-alternate-hreflang” on my pages, why does it sometimes not work?
• Can I use “rel=canonical” together with “rel-alternate-hreflang”?
• How can I check the indexing of my multilingual or multiregional content?
• Can I use non-English / non-ASCII URLs?
• Can I block individual countries from accessing my content?
• Can I use interstitials in some countries?

Google Panda Update 20 Released, 2.4% Of English Queries Impacted

Google has confirmed with us that on Thursday, September 27th, they released a Panda algorithm update – this would be the 20th Panda update and thus we are naming it Panda 20. This is a fairly major Panda update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries and is still rolling out.

Late Friday afternoon, Google announced a exact match domain update that removed the chances of a low-quality exact match domain from ranking well in Google. But over the weekend, many non-exact match domain site owners noticed their rankings dropped as well. What was it?

Google confirmed that they pushed out a new Panda algorithm update that isn’t just a data refresh but an algorithm update. Google told us this “affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

There is more to come with this update, where Google promises to roll out more to this Panda algorithm update over the next 3-4 days. Here is the comment Google’s Matt Cutts sent us after asking about this update:

Google began rolling out a new update of Panda on Thursday, 9/27. This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update. A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).

The sad part is that there are many sites affected by either this Panda update or the EMD update and it is hard to know which update you were hurt by. For more on this concern, see The Return of the Google Dance.

Panda Update History

We’ve had a string of updates since then, as follows, along with the percentage of queries Google said would be impacted:

1. Panda Update 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 2.1, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 2.2, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 2.3, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 2.4, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 2.5, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 3.1, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 3.2, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 3.3, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 3.4, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 3.5, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 3.6, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 3.7, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 3.8, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 3.9, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 3.91, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 3.92, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Google Panda Update 20 Released, 2.4% Of English Queries Impacted

Bing: 33 Percent Of Google Users Will Use Bing More After ‘Bing It On’ Challenge

It’s been almost a month since Bing launched its Bing It On campaign — a sort of taste-test challenge comparing Bing’s and Google’s organic search results.

And now, after an independent survey of about 4,700 people who took the challenge, Bing is touting how it’s changing the attitudes of many testers:We asked for people’s impressions of Bing before taking the Challenge and then after they completed it. What we found was 64% of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s web search results. Over half of the people surveyed indicated their impression of Bing improved after seeing Bing’s web search results next to Google’s. Additionally, of people who identified Google as their primary search engine, 33% said they would use Bing more often after taking the Challenge and 17% who found Bing more favorable after taking the side-by-side comparison said it revealed flaws in Google’s results.

It’s certainly positive news for Bing, but the obvious question is whether the Bing It On challenge will actually move the dial for Bing’s U.S. market share. Survey takers are often guilty of saying one thing — i.e., “I’ll use Bing more often” — and doing another.

As Bing admits today, search habits are hard to break. Even though Bing’s market share is at an all-time high right now, it has a long way to go to catch Google.

Bing also says that its Bing It On challenge has had five million visits, but didn’t say how many followed through on taking the challenge. The challenge will continue and Bing says this is “just the start” of its efforts to change what it calls “the Google habit.”

Google Issues Crack Down On The Low Quality Exact Match Domains

Over The Weekend Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam fighting team, announced that they will be rolling out a small algorithm change, this new algorithm change will reduce the amount of low-quality ‘exact-match’ domains showing up so high up on search engines.

 This was first told to the general public over twitter, the post can be seen below:

Cutts has said that this will only affect around 0.6% of English-US queries to the point where it is noticeable, Cutts also added that this update is in no way related to the Panda or Penguin updates. Panda being a Google algorithm filter aimed at fighting low quality content and Penguin aiming to fight web spam. This should come as no surprise to you as Cutts said a couple years ago that they will be looking at why exact domain matches rank so well, when in some cases, they really shouldn’t.

Considering this it is likely that over the coming days you will see a shift in the search results. Especially when it comes to those sites that are ranking well based on there being an exact match domain within the search results. For those of you who may be reading this wondering what exact match domains are, the time to stop worrying is now. These exact match domains are domains that match exactly for the search query. For example, if I sold squirrel feeders and owned the domain name: “www.squirrel feeders.co.uk” this would be an exact match domain.

This by no means, means that those website’s out there who are using keywords they hope to rank for in their domain names are now doomed. It more means that the change aims to target the low quality sites out there that might be riding on on the basis of exact matching, rather than having any well thought out SEO or designs etc.

Google Updates Structured Data Testing Tool

Google announced they have renamed the rich snippets testing tool to the structure data testing tool and have have improved the rendering of the rich snippets, cleaned up the user interface, and added in many new languages.

The tool is still located at google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets but was renamed to better fit what it does (all structured data, not just rich snippets).

Google also updated the tool adding:

• An improved display in rich snippets in the testing tool to better match how they appear in search results.
• The brand new visual design makes it clearer what structured data we can extract from the page, and how that may be shown in our search results.
• The tool is now available in languages other than English to help webmasters from around the world build structured-data-enabled websites.

Here is a picture:

Forum discussion at Google+.