As we all know, Google is the powerhouse when it comes to the world of search engines. Despite the growth of Bing in the past few years, Google is still the dominant force, and the latest algorithm update released recently caused quite a stir in the SEO world. The ‘Panda’ update was meant to downgrade the power of low quality spammy sites and content farms stealing others’ content, however it ended up affecting millions of sites in both good and bad ways. Generally it has helped a lot in improving the quality of search results returned by Google, but it means that there is now a new focus for the SEO world. This update and the subsequent tweaks (upto Panda v2.4) was one of the widest reaching updates, affecting over 10% of global search queries. Here is a quick reference guide to some of the do’s and don’t of SEO since Panda was rolled out worldwide:

- Simple things
The Panda update brought about a bigger emphasis on on page elements, but some simple ones. Make sure spelling and grammar are all correct, adverts are not intrusive (better yet not there!) and your code is nice and clean (use the W3C validator to check). These are all things that should already be there on a well designed site, but are sadly lacking in many…

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The Anchor text linking to your targeted page tells the search engines what the page is about. If the links are pointing to the targeted page using a particular keyword then the page must be a relevant source of information with reference to the anchor text.

But having hundreds of links linking to the page using the same anchor text is not a great idea. It worked very well in the past but now it is a good strategy to vary the anchor text so that the links look natural.  A link profile consisting entirely of the exact match links doesn’t look natural and is easy for Google in the future to degrade the value of a huge proportion of your link profile in one fell swoop. With the Google Panda update a partial match is much better than an exact match for the anchor text.

So what is partial match?

If your keyword phrase was Mac balloons then some partial anchor text that you could use would be: Mac has the biggest balloons; Balloons for parties; I love balloons etc. So if you are building 100 links for the keyword then use some exact match anchor text and a lot of partial match. This way you will have bigger broad tail and long tail queries that you can rank for. You should get the more traffic. The most important – the ranking will not fluctuate or dip easily as these links will have longer long-term value, and it is just going to deliver you a better and natural looking link profile.

How do you Vary Anchor Text?

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Image via CrunchBase

Putting your website at the top of Google’s results is the Holy Grail for anyone in internet marketing and search engine optimisation. Of course it depends on the quality of your content on the website you’re trying to optimise, your link building activities, reviews, social media presence and all the things we know we have to do to create a White Hat campaign which doesn’t get penalised by Panda Farmers or have a bad reaction to Caffeine.

But of course there is a way of guaranteeing you get to the top of Google’s results pages which requires little more than intelligence, wit, an idea for a story and a video camera or phone.

People forget that Google will put videos which match your search terms at the top of the SERPs as they’re usually rather blinkered by the notion that you need content and lots of back links to really be doing SEO. While that’s true enough, if you can produce a good video to go onto your site which brings richness and authority you’ll find that you’re getting more traffic than you ever had before.

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Image via CrunchBase

Today, the easiest way to start your own business is to develop a website through which you can sell your product or service. It’s becoming less and less necessary to have a high street presence and far more important to have a website through which you can conduct ecommerce. Since the internet has everything you can imagine, and many many things that you couldn’t, and every kind of retailer, from multinational conglomerates to artisanal individuals making their goods in their living room vying for your attention you need to join them. But how do you go about it?

Do you want something tailored or off the peg?

Today many SMEs run on WordPress, it’s a very easy to use CMS which is free at entry level yet can be paid for so that you can have your own .com. It, and its competitors are both extremely powerful and flexible as well as having cost benefits which beat bespoke websites. Going with a bespoke website might be necessary if you have very specific needs but the costs are high and can put you in the position of having to rely solely on your developer for any changes that you might need to make in the future. If you do need to go with a specialist developer make sure they use a well recognised software package so that if you need additional work done and your original developer isn’t available you won’t have to seek out the only other person in a 500 mile radius who knows how to program it.
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Image via Wikipedia

Is this playing on anyone else’s mind at the moment?  Personally I haven’t seen much of a drop on many of the sites that I have or currently work on.  Could it be because my link building abilities are out of this world?  I doubt it, although I always tried to do the right thing, and I don’t think that I have built links from link farms or what not.

Now the main reason I am posting this is not to discuss the link farms, because I believe that Google are in essence doing the right thing by cracking down on this sort of [Enter Profanity].

I am curious why people are talking about spinning tools and their distributaries? Sorry but since when did spinning become link farming?

Read more about Google’s Farmer Update

Best things in our life are free of cost. Same is the case with this strong marketing tool of blogging. You can do more than just post and read, when it comes to blogging. Content is the focus of all articles that makes first time or regular visitors coming back for more.

You can write about the latest and the most interesting topics, but if it is not placed in the right place at the right time, nobody would come to know about it, except perhaps your close friends. You have to write for the masses and bring it on the front screen for them to read it and like it. From writer’s point of view:
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First and foremost this is an article off the back of one posted on Fresh Egg, and I decided that I would put my direct spin on it.  I did actually contribute an idea to the Fresh Egg post, but I do have a few other views on the matter.

Firstly Bing has only really started to make a presence in the US.  I refuse to believe that anyone in the UK or elsewhere in Europe is finding that the receive 10% of their Organic Traffic from Bing.  In fact I believe that it would be closer to 2 or 3%, which isn’t exactly ground shattering.  I think it is difficult for us to make a judgement at this moment on whether or not Bing is going to fly into the Market.

The Quote that I made was “Bing isn’t going to succeed in this market unless Google fails”.  It sounds a little pedantic I know, and I actually believe that sometime in the future Bing will begin to gain a slice of the search engine market share.

Anyway I am getting ahead of myself, and I think it is important for us to understand why this is becoming a hot topic particularly around the SEO world.  It might not have quite such a representation among the general public, and I think that this is where some SEO’s are getting a little “lost in their own world” feel free to quote me on that.

An excerpt from the Fresh Egg post in my own words:

“Google is a household name, nobody says “type it into the Search Engine” everyone suggests Google”.  Bing is a relatively unknown entity, and Google has become the search engine of the world.  It is safe to say that other entities have made their way above Google in other countries, Baidu being one of them, but in the UK and US Google is king and will be for some time to come.

I think that the market needs a new contender like Bing to become bigger and take a larger share in the industry, it would be good for both companies if this happened.  However this isn’t going to happen for a long time, this I can almost certainly guarantee.

The only way that this process will be sped up is buy Google screwing things up further than they already have (which is another post entirely).  If they introduce more paid avenues into the searches and neglect the Organic results further, they could find themselves in a world of hurt sooner than they think…  Alta Vista ring any bells?

Sorry Bing, you are also represented by a company that doesn’t exactly have the greatest history with, ummmm… all of their products.

Related articles

• Facebook and Twitter Affect SEO, Confirmed by Google and Bing (seome.me)
• Bing is actually taking the time to map the insides of malls – We are serious [TNW Microsoft] (thenextweb.com)
• BING BETTER: 21 Search Tricks You Need To Know (huffingtonpost.com)