Weekly SEO news: 30 October 2012
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Many webmasters think that SEO has become more difficult after Google's recent updates. That's not case if you invest your time in the right things. If you want to be successful with your website, there are five things that you should know.

In the news: Matt Cutts talks about reconsideration requests, Google's John Mueller explains the keywords in Google Webmaster Tools and the way Google reviews feedback data, Bing and Google improve their paid search products, and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Five things that you should know about your SEO activities
Many webmasters think that SEO has become more difficult after Google's recent updates. That's not case if you invest your time in the right things. If you want to be successful with your website, there are five things that you should know.

successful SEO campaigns

1. Techniques are continually evolving

Google and other search engines are continually improving their algorithms. Things that work today might not work tomorrow. There is no 'set and forget' in search engine optimization. Either stay educated or use an SEO software tool that is continually updated to work with the latest ranking algorithms.

2. It doesn't pay to game Google

Gaming Google's ranking algorithm requires a lot more work than following best practices and doing it right the first time. Sooner or later, Google will detect all new spam tricks.

Your website will be penalized then, you will lose a lot of money and you will have to invest a lot of time to get your rankings back. If you play by the rules, you will get much better results that last, even if it takes a little longer to get high rankings.

Companies that promise you instant results for little money are lying to you. Like most things, a successful SEO campaign requires time, effort and a good strategy.

3. Your website is the only thing that you can control

You cannot control what your competitors do, you cannot control what Google does and you also cannot control if some startup will release a tool that will change the market in the near future.

Make sure that your website would offer your website visitors a value even if search engines didn't exist. Your website is your most important asset. Treat it as such.

4. The content of your website is very important

Getting traffic is pointless if your website is disappointing to your visitors. Low quality content won't help your rankings. Tell your website visitors why they should use your products or services. Tell them what's in it for them.

Make sure that your web pages look good and that your landing pages have a high conversion rate.

5. Don't be distracted by the latest marketing trends

Pinterest? Cool. Microblogs? Nice. Twitter? You bet. Unfortunately, all of these new marketing trends won't do your website any good if your website basics aren't right. Half-hearted social media campaigns can also have a negative effect. For your conversion rate, it is often better to do one thing right instead of juggling too many balls at once.

Your website will get top rankings on Google and other search engines if you do the right things. Avoid distractions and keep working on your goal. The Top 10 Optimizer in IBP will tell you step-by-step what you have to do to get your website on Google's first result page.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Matt CuttsVideo: are reconsideration requests read by real people?

Google's Matt Cutts answers that question in a video. If your website doesn't have a manual penalty than there's nothing that Google can do because the ranking drop is based on the algorithm. These reconsideration requests are filtered.

All other reconsideration requests are read by real people. You cannot answer to Google's replies but you have to file another reconsideration request. Google's doesn't want to get emails that tell them why they are wrong.


Google: upcoming improvements for Conversion Optimizer and enhanced CPC users

"When you first activate Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC in a campaign, your ad rotation setting will change to 'Optimize for conversions' by default. [...]

All campaigns using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC which are set to use 'Optimize for clicks' will be switched to 'Optimize for conversions.' You can opt out of this update via this form up until November 9th, but you may miss out on getting more conversions by doing so."



John MuellerThe keywords in Google Webmaster Tools do not reflect relevancy

Google's John Mueller explains this in an online discussion:

"The keywords shown in Webmaster Tools are based on the keywords we find when we crawl your pages. They are not representative of how we view your site's relevance in web-search, it is purely a count of words from crawling (so if you see some words there which are common on your pages but which you find irrelevant, I wouldn't worry about it). [...]

For example, if you have a calendar on your pages, we might pick up the weekdays & month names very frequently, but that would not mean that the site is in any 'penalized' because of that. Our algorithms are pretty good at picking up issues like that.

On the other hand, if you see words there that are totally outside of your normal content (eg pharmaceutical product names, if your website isn't about that), then that would be a sign that something's not quite right."



Google regularly reviews feedback data

Google's John Mueller has recently confirmed this in an online discussion:

"If you see search results that you don't find that great, I'd recommend using the 'feedback' link in the footer of the search results. This data is regularly reviewed to make sure that our algorithms are doing the right thing."



Unique landing pages by match type in Bing Ads

"Want to assign a unique destination URL for each of your bidded keyword match types within the same ad group? What about the ability to pause or resume bidded match types independently even if they are for the same keyword?

With Landing Page by Match Type, you'll be able to do both within Bing Ads Editor and our user interface (UI). You can even assign unique params for each bidded keyword match type."


Search engine newslets
  • Quick tip: check the HTTP status code of your web pages.
  • New Bing Ads reporting.
  • Will Google ever lose its crown as the most popular search engine?
  • Google makes over $100 million per day with AdWords.
  • Google launches 'Get your Google back' campaign for Windows 8. This is probably an answer to Microsoft's much improved Bing search engine on Windows 8.
  • Verisign says that Google is promoting its own services over other providers.
  • A new YouTube UI experiment.

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3. Recommended resources

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