negative seo thumbs down

Negative SEO Techniques That Harm

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Negative SEO Techniques That Can Hurt Your Website

Greedy SEO agencies and unscrupulous web masters often deploy SEO tactics that attempt to trick the search engines in the vain attempt to achieve ranking positions. Along with doorway pages, thin and/or duplicate content pages, poor search engine optimization may also use the following negative SEO techniques to sabotage a website:

1. Poor quality backlinks

The first negative SEO technique that people may use is to point a large number of poor quality backlinks to your site. They pay for huge number of spam links and point them to your website. This is intended to negatively affect your site’s link profile so that you get penalized by search engines. Search engines usually penalize sites that receive a sudden rise in backlinks. Since you cannot stop people from sending poor backlinks, you should monitor your site’s backlink profile regularly to identify any spam links. If you identify unnatural links, take down those links or contact your webmaster to do so. If this fails, use Google’s Disavow Links Tool to address the problem.

2. Duplicate content

Duplicate content can attract severe penalties from search engines. Crooked competitors may duplicate your content even before it is indexed. Their intention is to convince search engines that you are stealing content from another original site. Conduct a quick Google search of any sentence from your site in quotes to know if your content is being stolen. Prevent your site from this evil activity by maintaining an up-to-date sitemap. Additionally, include the rel=canonical tag on your webpages to establish you as the original author of that content.

3. Hacking

If your site has loopholes, then it might be at a risk of being hacked. The intention of hackers is to either take your site down or make it impossible for Google to crawl it. Hackers will use the loopholes in your site to add malicious codes or links. Denial-of-service attacks are also propagated by hackers. Hacking can severely affect your site’s ranking. Therefore, scan your website regularly for any changes in the site code.

4. Fake reviews

Customer reviews are important in determining search engine ranking. Your competitors may use fake reviews to bring down your site. Their ultimate goal is to have your site punished by search engines. You can prevent this damage by reporting fake reviews to Google. Additionally, plug the loopholes in your site before they are noticed by other people.

5. Evil crawlers

The speed of a website is important to customers and search engines. A fast site gives its users a good experience. People might sabotage your site by using crawlers to crawl your site continually. As a result, it will become slow to load and use. This in turn will worsen your SEO campaign and also affect your site’s conversion rate.

More Negative SEO Tactics

In some industry verticals, rank chasing is common and does more harm than good to the brand and the business. Frequently city or location pages with duplicate and thin content are created to influence local SEO and local rank. This tactic eventually gets caught up in spam filters and can lead to a significant decline in organic search traffic and a potential for the the domain being banned by the search engines. This is one negative SEO tactic to avoid at all costs.

google analytics

6 Free Tools For Grassroots SEO

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SEO Today Includes Mobile Optimization

In the modern era, simply creating a visually stunning website is not enough. With modifications to the Google search algorithm like Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, attention to detail has become crucial. For business owners that want to forego hiring an SEO professional for over $100 per hour, there are few options outside of learning it themselves. Fortunately, recent changes have put pressure on the market to come up with easy-to-understand software solutions, which can make doing and learning SEO possible at the same time. Below are six free SEO tools you should be using to do your on-site optimization will be enumerated and described for your convenience.

Free SEO Tools For Mobile SEO

google-mobile-testAs mobile SEO continues to grow, the importance of knowing how your website appears to your mobile audience is a priority for success. Adopting a mobile first mentality is key to long term business growth and one recently upgraded mobile SEO tool is from Google. The Google Mobile testing tool  offers an excellent overview of three key areas that impact mobile performance, mobile friendliness, mobile speed and desktop speed. This free SEO tool also makes recommendations for improvements.

Structured data testing tool
In tandem with the mobile testing tool above, Google’s structured data testing tool highlights structured data on your website that can help promote both your mobile and desktop grassroots SEO efforts. Check out this free SEO structured data testing tool here: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool.

Screaming Frog SEO Tool
Screaming Frog is a tool that is basically free to grassroots marketers as well as professsionals in the SEO game. The software is only “basically” free because it allows for 500 scans before you have to begin subscribing. For a person only handling optimization on a single business website, this is equivalent to free software. The program itself scans your website and allows you to see things you are missing or elements you have duplicates of. Areas of analysis include such elements as:

  • Titles
  • H1/H2 Headings
  • Meta Descriptions
  • Meta Keywords
  • Images/Alt Text
  • Internal/External Links

Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools are another free SEO tool offering from some of the major search engines. There is no separation between pro and amateur, though, so using them really is free. Because their algorithm changes have had the most drastic effect on SEO in recent years, most people tend to focus on Google specifically. However, Bing has a webmaster tool that is far more exhaustive and informative and even includes file size, load time, and compression analysis that Google lacks. This is not to say that one is better than the other, just that both should be used for their unique strengths.

Google Analytics

free-seo-toolsGoogle provides analytical tools meant to provide tracking data for visitors to your website. While proprietary tracking systems are available, Google is the industry leader and provides their service for free. The data provided allows you to take an in depth look at just what people are doing when they reach your website. Using Google Analytics can allow you to pinpoint weaknesses and exploit strengths with little more than the addition of a single line of tracking code to your website’s HTML. Analytics allow you to track:

  • Demographics
  • Behavior
  • Browsing Platform
  • Conversions
  • Mobile

On Page Content Analysis
The days of targeting misspelled keywords to gain an edge are gone. Obvious spelling and grammar errors are ranking metrics, and remarks by Google’s Matt Cutts as well as Bing’s Duane Forrester confirm it. You should be making an effort to spell and grammar check every piece of web copy you place on your site with your word processor’s built in tool. There is also a plethora of websites out there that provide textual analysis for word repetition, and SEOQuake is an add on available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera that shows the highest frequency words for pages you already have published. Checking for repetition can help you weed out accidental keywords and highlight overuse of keywords you really are targeting.

Use Free SEO Tools To Help You Optimize Efficiently

Getting SEO right on your website is no easy feat, even once you have been doing it awhile. However, using a few free SEO tools that are at everyone’s disposal can yield much more insight into what you need to do than you might expect. There are tools out there that charge large sums per month for use, but until you can internalize and use the tools listed here there is not much reason to switch. Most of the advanced tools tend to employ more complicated ways of looking at the same data and are often designed for SEO professionals. Get your grassroots SEO marketing started with the free SEO tools listed above.

local seo

Advertising On Google Maps

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Plant Your Local Business on Google Maps Today!

If you’ve ever driven through a busy business district, you have probably noticed a lot of creative signs that are meant to catch attention. In a very similar way, local businesses can catch a customer’s eyes by planting their virtual signposts on digital maps. In fact, logos and pins on these online maps can even connect map users to current promotions and other kinds of relevant ads found on Google Maps and local search.

One of the largest and most popular providers of these types of map advertisements is Google. Since local searches have become an important way for companies to market, it’s worth knowing about this innovative source of local search advertising.

Why Google Map Ads Drive Local Businesses Success

local seoAccording to the company, ads on maps could appear on mobile and laptop versions of Google Maps. At the same time, the company has made it clear that they unveiled this kind of advertising with mobile users in mind. When their spokesman introduced this new part of the search network, he mentioned that local and location-based searches had grown more than any other kind of searches. As a result, local, location-based Google searches account for about 30 percent of total searches.

The company included Google Maps as another platform in their search network in order to take advantage of the popularity of their mapping system. In addition, Google released the news recently that the number of mobile searches had finally overtaken the number of searches performed on desktop and laptop computers. Thus, these ads provide a good way to target nearby customers who are searching for local businesses.

How Advertising on Google Maps Can Help Local Businesses

When a user searches for a certain kind of business in a specific location, companies that participate in the program can have both a company logo and pin that highlight the location on the map. When these pins and logos get clicked, the system will bring up more information about a business.

This additional information can even include search ads with current specials and other related advertising. These features help focus attention on these businesses and increase the chances that a customer will call or walk in the door. Of course, the additional information also includes basic details like a phone number, operating hours, and driving directions. In this way, AdWords integrates with Google My Business listings.

How Grassroots SEO Can Use Google Map Ads

To qualify for Google Maps advertising, follow these steps:

  • Enable the location-extensions feature within Google AdWords.
  • Ensure that the business listing within Google My Business has been filled out accurately.
  • Target locations for the advertisements.
  • Set bids for locations, and notice that these bids can even increase when searchers move closer to your location.
  • Create keywords that are likely to attract customers to your business.

Google offers pay-per-click ads on maps. Pricing includes charges for various kinds of actions that searchers might take. For example, a click charge could apply to a user who clicks to get directions to your store. As with other kinds of AdWords ads, it’s fairly simple to monitor the campaign’s performance within the system.

Will Ads on Google Maps Benefit Your Local Business?

Many businesses rely upon local search marketing in their grassroots SEO efforts to bring in new customers. If a potential customer searches for the products and services that you offer with Google Maps, these advertisements should get their attention. If you offer relevant deals or other attractive marketing within your advertisement, you’re likely to draw customers in. Google has made it easy for both small and large local businesses to get started with this innovative kind of local marketing. While different kinds of companies might have different success rates with these ads, they seem worth testing as a way to take advantage of local and location-based searches.

seo wireframe

Build A Better Blog With Quality Content

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Befriend The Panda – Create Quality Content

Many legal blogs have seen a decline in impressions where these types  sites that have more dynamic blog posts than static practice area pages. Often the quality of posts are of lower quality than the more focused legal static pages. Blog posts suffer from low quality content,  citing  pop or legal news with recent celebrity divorces, or local traffic and police information like car accidents or recent arrests frequently resulting in duplication of content across many online properties.

Panda quality guidelines frown on these types of low quality posts. The lower quality content also trips the quality algorithm filters with poor engagement signals, high bounce rates and little time on site. For example a high profile New York law firm has this type of site profile:

  • 1987 internal URLS
  • 81.7% have a 100% bounce rate
  • 65% of the bounce comes from blog pages
  • 25% of the blog posts have a 0% CTR

Not that there’s anything wrong with an 81% bounce rate or anything if you don’t mind being excluded from search results. Recently, Google is simply de-listing hundreds of these posts from search results.  Early adopters of blogs that generate multiple blogs posts per week of suspect quality are at risk of getting caught in these ever strengthening quality filters. These blogs are definitely sending the wrong signals to the search engines.

Be Friends With Bots!

Add into this mix the bad SEO tactic of robots.txt blocking the tags. It is not uncommon to block tags via robots.txt, but doing so creates a very negative search engine problem.  This tactic is deployed to keep bots from crawling tags to lighten server loads, but creates a negative SEO environment because having links on pages that people can see, but forbidding the search bots access to the same data sends a signal to the SERPs that something dark and mysterious is happening behind closed doors.  Search engines reward transparency and dislike “hidden” content. Blog tags are used throughout sites in various ways that can include:

  • Cloud tags
  • Category tags
  • Tag bar on side navigation
  • Tags within each post
  • Tags archives page
  • Tags on month/year archives
  • Tags within schema code

When the blocking is excessive, it appears to a search bot that  a “dark web” is being created behind the wall of robots.txt blocking. Again, not a good way to signal quality to the search engines.

blockedurl

How To Fix A Bad Blog With Grassroots SEO

1. Don’t block the bots. Transparency for most bots is a good thing. Sure some folders may need security, but it’s best to let your blog and site be crawled. You can control what is and what is not seen easily with a robots.txt file.  An example for WordPress might be something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Disallow: /*~*
Disallow: /*~
Disallow: /wp-*
Disallow: /comments/feed/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

User-agent: Adsbot-Google
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://domainname.com/post-sitemap.xml

Another robots.txt example might be:

User-agent: *
#Global Rules – START
Disallow: /content
Disallow: /data
Disallow: /modules
Disallow: /Disclaimer.shtml
Disallow: /E-mail.shtml
Disallow: /Error.shtml
Disallow: /Error-Espanol.shtml
Disallow: /Gracias.shtml
Disallow: /Thank-You.shtml
Disallow: /mt-bin/
Allow: /content/images
Allow: /content/css
#Global Rules – END

#Site Specific Rules – START
Sitemap: http://www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml.gz
#Site Specific Rules – END

2. Promote quality content. Start by classifying the blog posts. One quick way to process this assessment is to start by running an analysis of your content by highest bounce rate and shortest time on page. These are often the most troubled content pages and posts.  Review them, are they good and no action needed at this time, or are they poor and need to be removed? If they are questionable, can they be corrected?

Sometimes its as simple as combining several short similar topics into one or two longer higher quality pieces of content. Another option to improve the content quality might be to rewrite the first and last paragraph and add semantic phrases into the header tags (H1, H2). This refined and refocused content can provide a boost to overall site quality.

3.  Promote socially. As the content improvements are made, send a fresh set of eyes there with links from social posts when appropriate. This is a nice way to send new signals about content quality improvements.

By paying some attention to on page analytics, it’s not all that hard to monitor your SEO efforts. A small focus on content quality will bring big benefits for both your audience and your website metrics. Make sure that you include content KPIs in your grassroots SEO strategy, it will reward your brand over the long term.

mobile optimization

Create Mobile Friendly Content

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Is Your Content Mobile Friendly?

Does your content mirror mobile user behavior? Do you develop generic all encompassing content for your website or do you create mobile friendly content as well? There are industry benchmarks indicating mobile users searching with a high volume of branded terms that include location or activity based keyword modifiers. This search query behavior does vary from common desktop search that leaves out many of the branded terms. Sources below. This is yet another compelling reason to consider creating mobile friendly content specifically for your mobile audience.

mobile optimizationThe theme for mobile optimization success is to keep it simple. Keep the code simple, keep the design simple, and keep the content simple. To counter the difference in mobile search, it is imperative that your mobile SEO strategy accounts for these differences with tactics and techniques that include location and or activity optimization. Most importantly, make your mobile friendly content easy to find.

Think Fast and Short For Winning Mobile Content

Make sure that your mobile content is not blocked by robots.txt.    If you are all good there, then audit your mobile search critical content to verify that it supports location or activity optimization. Let’s use the example, “Bike Shop, Portland”. If you are targeting a mobile audience for this phrase, begin with a focus on speed and shortness. When possible, deploy short form  factors to the URL of the landing page, the page title, and the meta data. Think about the mobile platform that will display the results, does your page provide concise relevant content to the query and will it render in a readable format on a mobile sized screen?

Microformat Your Mobile Content

A great way to promote your location, category or time sensitive information, is to apply microformatting standards to your content. Terms may vary but, microformat and semantic markup use strict standards to enable your online content to be parsed and repurposed by search engines, browsers and apps. Depending upon the search crawler in use, these bots can recognize the micro-formatted code and provide your encoded mobile content in ways making it easy for your mobile audience to engage and utilize on their mobile device. The application of micro-formatted mobile content helps promote your site as mobile friendly and mobile focused. Additional microformat information can be found in the sources listed below.

Silo Mobile Content

Now that you have made sure that your mobile code is clear, take the next step and make fast and easy to understand. Similar to the way humans process and read mobile web pages, search engine crawlers tend to read the same pages rapidly and value the way the information is presented at least as much as the mobile content on the page. Site architecture is mission critical for mobile success, simple navigational hierarchy is the optimum way to proceed. Don’t forget that your mobile users usually have a different agenda when they are on your mobile site, they don’t need to be bogged down with to many links to click to get to the information they are after. Remember that your mobile visitors want to complete tasks quickly and easily, so your navigational structure for mobile must make this possible. This is commonly referred to as task oriented responsive design. So keep it simple, page titles, headers, micro-content and images should be short, concise and aligned to both your business objectives and visitor goals. This is an excellent way to promote mobile friendly content and a positive mobile experience. #mobilefriendly #mobileSEO

Sources:

  • http://www.accuracast.com/search- daily-news/mobile-7471/uk-local-mobile-search-rankings/
  • http://www.google.com/intl/ en/press/zeitgeist2007/index.html
  • Microformat information: http://microformats.org
  • Mobile compliance guideline information: http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/

Mobile Optimization – Location Factors

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Mobile optimization: Location Variables That Influence Mobile SEO

Mobile optimization location variables are one set of factors that make the mobile experience different. The vast majority of searches performed on mobile devices are task completion driven or location specific; and Bing, Yahoo and Google continue to refine their mobile search results to generate a more positive mobile experience that accounts for this time sensitive search behavior. Understanding that these mobile queries have constraints from device screen size, OS platforms, predictive search, and the browser search bar limits, it’s not a bad idea at all to make results more readily accessible to your mobile audience.

Some of the top performing searches on mobile include the phrase “near me” such as; “restaurants near me,” “pizza near me,” “auto repair near me,” and “lawyer near me.” Google has even recently suggested including “near me” in active Adwords campaigns with a click to call extension because these types of mobile searches deliver excellent ROI. Learn more here

Important Mobile Optimization Variables

mobile-seo-tacticsMobile users are driven to task resolution as quickly as possible, and speedy results leave less time for a deeper dive into browser results. This means second page results suffer and are rarely viewed. The enhancements to mobile predictive search functionality as mentioned above, strive to deliver quick accurate results using *location* and *category* biased search parameters in the algorithm. These mobile location variables are only one way that mobile search differs from desktop search. Account for these variables in your mobile SEO.

Screen Size Drives Design Layouts

Mobile devices have smaller screen sizes than their desktop counter parts and this directly impacts the size of the browser search bar and the returned search engine results page. The major search engines compensate for these challenges by altering the results page layouts into new location-based and category-based designs. This criteria bolsters the need to correctly deploy micro-formatting to all location content and whenever possible to schema.org category content as well. Learn to use micro-formatted content to your advantage and represent your brand in the best light possible to your mobile customers and clients. Embrace and use structured data to push your site up the mobile ranks.

The Many vs The Few

Yet another unique mobile seo variable includes the mobile browsers themselves. Laptop browsers have standardized themselves over time and consolidated into a few major platforms like Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Mobile search browsers are numerous, and they remain a “Wild West” of offerings, with multiple features and options with little standardization. Add in the many apps that incorporate “in-app” search functions, and it becomes clear that new search parameters are needed to provide the best search engine results.

Ranking For Mobile SEO
What mobile SEO conversation doesn’t have a reference to rank? Add up mobile browsers, mobile user behavior, predictive search,  results page mobile designed layouts, page speed and location and category algorithm bias, and it becomes evident that mobile page rank is different from desktop / laptop search. These new mobile search dimensions “urgency,” “nearness,” and “category”  are key elements in mobile search relevance.

Awesome mobile optimization begins after “normal” search engine optimization ends. Mobile search engine optimization starts with the assumptions that your site has an established baseline of clean code, architecture that invites craw-ability, search guideline compliant and your content is high quality. Only then can you factor in the mobile variables that take advantage of the current algorithm biases that help your brand be competitive in the mobile space. Continue developing your mobile SEO strategy, with a standards compliant site featuring markup for location and category. All of your mobile users will love you for it!

#mobileoptimization #mobileSEO