Tag Archives: Algorithm Update

Vol. 35: Our New Site is LIVE, Google Panda 4.1 is Now Rolling Out, Fall is Here!

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What’s Happening at Eminent SEO

In case you missed it, our newly redesigned and developed site is LIVE!

What’s Happening at Eminent SEO - ESEO

Last month we broke down the changes for you – if you want a refresher, check it out here.

One of our favorite new features is our Max Swag Shop. Max, our adorable little orange monster mascot is now featured on a number of products we like to call “Max Swag”. In our new shop you can check out the various products, visit our cart, customize and buy your own swag. Who doesn’t want a cute t-shirt or funny mug with Max on it? Don’t see what you are looking for? Ask us – we’d be happy to make a custom design just for you!!

Max Swag Products - EminentSEO.com

Good to Know in SEO (RIGHT NOW)

Google Panda 4.1 is Now Rolling Out…

Normally ANY Google Algorithm update announcement strikes fear into webmasters across the world, but this one might be different!

Pierre Far of Google announced a Panda update on his Google+ page just a few days ago:

“Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week.

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Depending on the locale, around 3-5% of queries are affected.”

From what we can tell this algorithm update is a pretty major one, but it’s hard to say if the estimated 3-5% of queries affected is actually accurate until the dust settles a bit more.

Notice Pier also said that this update is friendlier to smaller sites, “greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher”. If this is true than this update is great news for some of the smaller guys who have been struggling.

Keep in mind that Panda is intended to focus on targeting low quality content and this update, Panda 4.1, is said to add a “few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely.”

If you have seen a drop in rankings over the last few days, then you may have been hit by Panda 4.1. If you were hit, then you likely have a low quality content issue with your site. Some people are saying game and lyric sites might be some of the biggest losers.

Have some additional thoughts on the subject? Share in the comments below.

Need help with a content issue? Give us a ring: 800-871-4130.

September Eminent SEO Social Media Roundup

We tell every client that social is important to any on-line marketing campaign. So, why would we not practice what we preach? Well, we do! We want to make sure our social profiles offer up interesting industry information as well as topics, images, videos and articles that are personal to who we are.

Here are some of our favorite social posts from September:

We love what we do, but everyone needs a break now and then.
“It’s the weekend… this is as dressed as I get!”

It’s the Weekend This is as Dressed as I Get - Eminent SEO

How To Make Bacon Fuel
“It’s #‎TechTuesday and what did we find? A motorcycle that is powered by BACON!”

How to Make Bacon Fuel - Tech Tuesday - EminentSEO.com

If at first you don’t succeed… do a power pose!
“Words from our very own: Jason SanMarco. Who is Jason? You can find out on his bio page here!”

If at First You Don't Succeed Do a Power Pose - Jason SanMarco - ESEO

The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.
“Get to work… be successful!”

Dictionary is the Only Placed Where Success Comes Before Work - ESEO

Max To the Rescue!
“What does Eminent SEO Mean? The answer is on our About Page, on our NEW WEBSITE! Come check it out.”

Max to the Rescue - Superhero Max - Eminent SEO

Everyone Likes A Little Nerd Humor
“Have a playful weekend.”

Nerd Humor - Tech Humor - EminentSEO.com

Every day is a fresh start.
“Another sunrise, another new beginning.”

Another Sunrise Another New Beginning - Eminent SEO

National Coffee Day!
“The morning coffee routine is quite common. The 3D art this 26 year old barista shares, is unique. What a way to start your day! Happy National Coffee Day!”

National Coffee Day - Eminent SEO

Marketing Blog Roundup

Top Red Flags to Watch Out for When Hiring an SEO Agency
Unfortunately this industry is full of a lot of people who think they are experts, but may not have much real world experience. Don’t get burned by an amateur – read this post to find out what you should be looking out for when hiring an SEO agency.

The Importance of Having a Killer Business Blog
Blogging on behalf of your business builds brand awareness, boosts SEO and website traffic, and converts subscribers into leads. Those are just 3 primary benefits of business blogging. Learn how a business blog can benefit your business and why you need this as part of your content marketing strategy.

The New Eminent SEO Website is Live!
It was such a labor of love! From all new content and design to each image alt tag – we left nothing undone! Read this blog post to find out exactly what went in to this complete website overhaul and be sure to share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Everything You Need to Know About Google Penalties and Manual Actions
A lot of people have been hit with a penalty – but they don’t understand the difference between a manual action verses an algorithm based penalization. This post explains the difference.

How to Recover from a Google Penalty
Are you dealing with a Google Penguin or Panda website penalization? Before you give up your domain and start over, read this blog post – there is hope! If you follow these steps, your website can fully recover and even come back stronger than it was before.

Twitter Analytics Dashboard Now Available to Everyone
SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS: Twitter releases the use of Twitter Analytics dashboard to everyone. You can now track your tweet impressions, engagements, and follower demographics. Learn more about this amazing social media tool.

What Does Your Online Reputation Say About You?
Protect your brand from obtaining a negative reputation online. How? Actively participating on social media, monitoring Google alerts, and on-going inbound marketing efforts. Even if you don’t have a negative reputation, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t monitor your positive reputation. Engage with your customers by responding to both negative and positive reviews. Learn more about how to manage your reputation online.

Top 5 Socially Shared Video Ads of 2014
Commercials are being ignored with today’s DVR technology and TV streaming services like Netflix. It leaves companies trying out a new route to increase brand visibility with their ads. That’s why social media is playing a large role in brand awareness today. We wanted to share with you some of the top shared video ads for 2014. Enjoy!

Southwest Airlines Re-brands Their Logo and Overall Identity
When a well-known company chooses to rebrand it can be a huge (and scary!) undertaking! See how Southwest Airlines chose to re-brand their logo and overall identity in this blog post.

See Ya Online!

So long September! We are already into the fall months and dreaming of apple cider, warm fuzzy sweaters and carving pumpkins. Come see some of the Eminent SEO team family’s favorite fall traditions in this recent blog post… and start prepping for the festive months ahead.
Until next time, see ya online…

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Team Eminent SEO

Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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How to Recover from a Google Penalty

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Google Penalty Recovery

If your website has been hit with a Google penalty, don’t freak out yet, there is still hope for your domain. With the right techniques, tools, and people, your website has the opportunity to fully recover.

In our last post, we spoke about the differences between each penalty that you can get from Google. How you recover from a penalty depends on the type of penalty you have. If you want to save your domain, you need to make sure your website and backlink profile is up to par with Google’s quality guidelines, almost perfectly. Let’s dive into the different penalties and the approach to take in order to bounce back from a penalty.

Recovering from a Panda Penalization

In order to come back from a Panda penalty the first thing you need to look at is the overall quality of your website. Google’s goal is to provide search results that create a better user experience. In order to keep your rankings your website cannot be outdated, have low quality/duplicate content, and/or a poor user experience (high bounce rates).

Improving Your Site’s Quality Score

When you’ve diagnosed that your website has a sitewide or partial penalty due to a Panda update or refresh there are some things you need to do in order to gain back Google’s trust. The goal being a higher quality score.

  1. Rewrite Your Entire Website (or Pages Being Affected): If your content is either duplicate or low quality, you need to rewrite the content to be the highest quality it’s ever been. If specific landing pages are being affected because they are duplicate content, rewrite those pages first. Unique, high quality content is key when time comes to gaining back Google’s trust.
  2. Re-Design Your Website: If your website is being penalized because it’s outdated, then it’s time to re-design/develop your website. You want clean code so search engines to easily understand the content. You also want to make sure your website is providing a better user experience, meaning up-to-date navigation and calls to actions on each page. This may also require a full rewrite depending on how old your content is.
  3. Re-Silo Your Website: Part of user experience is having the right bread crumbs and navigation in place. If your site missing pages or you have pages that are buried deep in the site, it’s a good idea to silo or re-silo your website navigation. This not only helps improve your user experience, but search engine crawlers can understand which pages are more important.
  4. Check for Broken HTML: If you’re site has broken HTML errors, <div> tags, or PHP errors, you need to make sure all of these are fixed. It’s important to perform quality checkups on your site frequently and have your site constantly updated to reduce the chances of more errors happening in the future.
  5. Improve Site Load Time: Another major part of quality user experience is the loading time of your site. How fast does it load? There are tools you can utilize that will let you know if your loading time is too slow and needs to be improved.
  6. Revamp Low Quality Landing Pages: Go through your Google Analytics to determine which pages people aren’t staying on or reading at all. The key metrics when looking for low quality landing pages are: low average visit duration and high bounce rates. Once those are determined, you’ll need to re-design, rewrite, and re-develop these pages for a better user-experience.

To come back from Panda it’s all about user experience and accomplishing what their needs are. Do your web pages offer a solution for your potential visitors? If not, chances are they’re going to bounce off your website and find one that does. In order for Google to believe that your website has been improved to help your users, they will need to see proof, which is in the analytics themselves. Are users staying on your site longer, visiting multiple pages, reading your content, and converting? If Google sees they are, you have done your job. Besides, that’s ultimately the goal for your website anyways, right?

Recovering from a Penguin Penalization

Penguin is all about your websites inbound links (backlinks). The goal behind this update is to reduce the amount of web spam and manipulative backlinks that webmasters utilize to achieve higher website rankings artificially.

Creating a High Quality Inbound Link Profile

With link building today, you want to make sure your backlinks are high quality, just like your website has to be. If your backlinks are low in quality, chances are they are going to be hit with a penalty which can lead to a Google penalty for your website.. Every link placed should be strategically thought out with a clear reasoning behind the link. You can’t just go get any old link anymore! That’s how you will be penalized.

  1. Identify the Links that Are Negatively Impacting Your Site: There are tools out there that can help you identify which links are low in quality or over optimized. Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer are two primary tools we use to identify these links. Once you run a report with these tools – export to a CSV file and focus your attention towards Anchor Texts and Total Backlinks. Calculate in excel the percentage of total backlinks to anchor text ratio. Focus your efforts first towards anchor text links that have a percentage of 2% and greater. The reason you want to focus on these first is because they are probably the ones being penalized due to over optimization. If the primary anchor texts are branded terms then we would look at the sites that have the lowest quality scores linking to you.
  2. Begin Removing Links: After you’ve gone through and identified the potentially harmful links, it’s time to get those removed as soon as possible. In order to get them removed you need to contact the webmaster directly. You can find their contact information usually on the wewbsite contact page or by checking out their WhoIs profile. Remember, these webmasters don’t have to remove your link if they don’t want to. It’s important to be courteous in your email and maybe even offer an incentive. Your goal is to remove all of the negative links you can. Often times Google will not accept your website back even if you only have one negative link still. This can be a time consuming process which is why an incentive may speed things up a bit. Any links that you were not able to get removed have to go through the Disavow tool. However, using that tool should always be your last resort.
  3. Begin Building New High Authority Links: After you’ve completed removing all the negative links, it’s time to start building new links to your site. You want your backlink profile to look as natural as possible. Consider the following techniques to build high quality links:
  • Create high quality content that people WANT to link to – eBooks, press releases, case studies, helpful tips, blog posts, videos, etc.
  • Focus on increasing your social signals with high quality content – giveaways, promotions, campaigns, viral marketing, etc.
  • Submit your website to high quality directories and build profile pages on authority sites, such as Yelp.

When building links, don’t forget to:

  • Diversify your backlink types
  • Use branded anchor texts ONLY – the last thing you should be thinking about is keyword anchor texts…

When dealing with a Penguin penalty, you always have to think “natural” in the back of your mind. If you question a link, chances are Google will too.

Closing Thoughts

Coming back from any Google penalty is extremely time consuming and difficult. You want to make sure you have an SEO expert help you with this process as we know what to look for since we understand Google algorithms. We’ve had the opportunity to help many business owners recover from a Google penalty and regain their rankings. Give us a call today if you need expert help recovering from a Google penalization: 800.871.4130

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Everything You Need to Know About Google Penalties and Manual Actions

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Google Penalty

Google has the power to penalize your website if they believe you’re manipulating their search engine or just plain spamming their index. If this happens you will see a huge decrease in organic traffic, rankings, and/or indexed pages.

There are two primary penalty categories and they include on-site and off-site penalties. When your penalty is caused due to the technical setup of your website, this would be considered on-site. When your website contains dangerous or manipulative backlinks, this would be considered off-site. This is the first thing to look for when you receive a penalty. Is it due to on-site issues, off-site issues, or both?

Now that you understand the primary penalty categories, you need to know that there are two primary penalty types. An algorithmic penalty or a manual penalty.

You’re probably wondering: What’s the difference? What causes each one to occur? Let’s get into it.

Algorithmic Penalties

algorithmic penalty

These types of penalties occur naturally as Google updates their algorithms.

These can be hard to detect as usually there’s not any notification from Google Webmaster Tools letting you know your website has been targeted. The way you will know is a huge loss in organic traffic. Another way to determine an algorithmic penalty is if your keyword positions have dropped tremendously. For example, your website was ranking #1-10 for a number of keywords and all the keywords dropped to #100 or lower. Also, you should always look to see if there has been a recent algorithm update that might have caused the major change.

What Causes Algorithmic Penalties

Two of the primary committers of algorithmic penalties are known as Google Penguin and Panda. Each algorithm targeting different manipulative practices.

Panda – First released in 2011, primarily targeting low quality content sites. If your website contains duplicate content, little to no content (thin content), high bounce rates, or content that has little to no meaning to anyone besides search engines, you could be targeted for this.

Penguin – First released in 2012, primarily targeting websites that are spamming Google’s search results. Over-optimization is a main factor of how Google determines if it’s “spammy” or not. If you’re guilty of having low quality or spammy backlinks, your website could be a target with this update.

Of course any algorithm update can cause fluctuation and changes in your rankings, but that doesn’t mean you’ve been targeted for a penalty. It simply means that other websites are higher in quality or their backlinks are higher in quality. It could also mean that Google has changed their ranking factor determination and now favors other websites over yours.

Manual Penalties

manual penalties

Manual penalties occur when someone from Google has physically reviewed your website and determined it does not meet their quality guidelines. There are two types of manual penalties that can occur:

Site-Wide Manual Action – Also known as a domain penalty where your entire website has been penalized. Google will notify you in Webmaster Tools if your website has been affected entirely and why.

Partial Manual Action – This happens when specific parts of your website or specific backlinks have been penalized – not your website as a whole.

When you see a Partial Manual Action in your Webmaster Tools, it’s worth noting that your website may not be negatively impacted in terms of traffic and rankings. Google is identifying the fact that some your backlinks have been targeted and de-valued.

What Causes Manual Penalties

There’s a list of reasons why Google has reviewed your website and slapped on a manual action. The first thing you need to do is figure out which of their quality guidelines you’ve violated. You can view which Reason (why Google decided to apply the penalty) and the Affects (which parts of your site were affected) in your Google Webmaster Tools under Search Traffic à Manual Actions. Here are the different causes of a Manual Action:

  • Unnatural Links to Your Site – Impacts Links: When Google detects there are unnatural or artificial backlinks. This affects those specific links only.
  • Unnatural Links to Your Site: Google detected there are a large amount of unnatural or deceptive links pointing to your website. This affects your website entirely.
  • Hacked Site: Google has detected that your website has been hacked by a 3rd party and the content is considered malicious.
  • Thin Content with Little or No Value: Google has detected that some or all of your web pages have little to no quality content. Examples of this include: auto-generated content, doorway pages, or duplicate content.
  • Pure Spam: When Google detects that your website is using spammy techniques such as: cloaking, scraping content, or auto-generated gibberish.
  • User-Generated Spam: This type of spam occurs on mostly forum sites. Google will detect that users of your site are generating spam and it’s not being controlled. This usually affects the entire site.
  • Cloaking and/or Sneaky Redirects: When Google detects that your website is serving up different URLs to users and search engines.
  • Hidden Text and/or Keyword Stuffing: When your site has placed hidden text or links to manipulate the search engines including writing in white text on a white background with keywords stuffed in the content that users can’t see. Keyword stuffing can be an example of when there are blocks of text listing cities or keywords that add no value to the user, specifically trying to manipulate the search engines into ranking for those terms. Often times the keywords are completely irrelevant.

Conclusion

When a Google penalty arises, it’s best you take care of it as soon as possible. You don’t want your website to suffer from little to no search engine visibility for too long as your business is on the line.

If your website has been targeted with one of these penalties, the next steps would be to:

  1. Fix the problem that Google is penalizing you for
  2. Submit a reconsideration request

In our next blog post, we will discuss the steps on how you can bounce back from one a Google penalty in more detail. If you’re struggling with one of these penalties, seek a professional to help you get this lifted. Good news is we’re good at this stuff and we’ve helped a large number of websites get their penalties removed.

Call us today to speak with one of our specialists and get back your rankings: 800.871.4130

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Vol. 34: Our New Site is Coming, Penguin 3.0 is Inevitable and Get Your Marketing Reading Here!

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What’s Happening at Eminent SEO

EminentSEO.com Launches a New Website Design

newwebsite

The countdown is on! In just days now our new site is launching!
What have we done?

  • All new graphic design – including a freshened up logo
  • A more modern version of our Monster Mascot, Max!
  • ALL new content (literally every page has been rewritten)
  • All new SEO (that’s right baby!)
  • Added a new resource section with cool information like: SEO Slang, Free tools and more!
  • Added a Shop – wait ‘til you see it, we have lots of fun things to buy
  • Mobile friendly, responsive design – it’s been a long time coming, but you should now be able to access our site from any tablet or mobile device and easily navigate – yay!

If, by the time you are reading this, the new site isn’t yet live, please check back in a few days and be sure to tell us what you think!

Good to Know in SEO (RIGHT NOW)

Penguin 3.0 – Is The Next Google Update On Its Way?
You remember Google’s Penguin Update, right? (If not, we just talked about it last month here:What’s Up with Google Penguin) Well, the speculation of a 3.0 update has turned into hints from John Mueller, the senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, and we tend to take his hints pretty seriously – so, to us, the update is inevitable.

When is the last time you looked at your backlinks? 
Have you recently really looked at your website backlink index? And, when I say recently, I mean in the last year at least. This update is all about targeting what Google deems as artificial link building. If you think you are safe because you haven’t built links for a while (or ever) I hate to break it to you – but you are NOT safe. The web is a funny place people link to whomever they see fit. Also, spammers have all kinds of weird techniques, such as scraping (stealing) content, syndication and even negative SEO. If you don’t know what you have going on in your backlink index, now is the time to get it checked out.

What to do if you think Penguin 3.0 could hurt you:
#1) You need to perform a complete backlink audit, including:

  • Identify all in-bound links (you can try using free and paid tools – or hire a pro).
  • Evaluate the host locations – are they part of a network or otherwise potentially spammy?? Are they relevant to your website? Does the link serve a purpose or does it appear to be for SEO?
  • Review the anchor text used in these links. No matter how relevant they look, if you have an anchor text trend then all of your links are going to look artificial.

#2) Once you have a complete backlink audit and you have identified the bad, you need to:

  • Start contacting the hosting sites immediately, asking for removals.
  • If you cannot find contact information, the webmaster is unwilling or for any other reason you cannot get the link removed, collect the link location to send to Google using the disavow tool.

#3) If you have received a Google penalty of artificial link warning, once all links that can be have been removed or disavowed, it’s time for a reinclusion:

  • Prepare a letter to send to Google explaining what has been done.
  • Submit the letter and a copy, if possible, of all links that have been removed or submitted through the disavow tool.

#4) If Google responds to your request with additional work to be done, you need to:

  • Ensure you have removed as many links as you can, sometimes this means you have to remove links that don’t appear to be spammy.
  • Review your website internal linking structure and clean it up as well.
  • Review your website content and structure and if you have issues with your site or outdated/duplicate content – fix it!

It is estimated that 15% or more of all English search queries will be affected by the Google Penguin 3.0 update.

Is your site safe?
If you are unsure and want help, please ask. We are experts at this stuff and can get your backlinks in order STAT!

August Eminent SEO Social Media Roundup

Over the last month we’ve shifted away from a monthly social media focus on one area and expanded into a new Eminent SEO Social Media Calendar. We want to provide you, our audience, with a variety of interesting articles, inspirational images and links to industry news.

Here are a few of our favorite social shares from August: 

The Eminent SEO Owners, Chris and Jenny, are ready to welcome a new baby soon! 
“Today we celebrate the Eminent baby to be! All of us are very excited for this little boy’s arrival and now the parents are stocked up and ready to go!”

baby

Another Google Update, Pigeon!
“Get crapped on by Google Pigeon? You’re not alone. Learn what SEO experts are saying about this update in our new blog post! //www.eminentseo.com/blog/local-search-results-affected-latest-google-pigeon-update/”

pigeon

A Tragic Loss
“Today the world lost a legend. RIP, Robin Williams.”

robin

Employee Spotlight: Zach!
Q. How long have you worked for Eminent SEO? 2 years.
Q. What do you do here? Fulfillment manager. I make sure that all work ordered for our clients is fulfilled in a timely manner and that all aspects of the individual campaigns are adhered-to.
Q. What is your favorite industry blog to follow? None, in-particular, but an index of smaller wordpress.com blogs of people in the industry, which gives me a much wider scope on industry related topics.

zach

Employee Appreciation Lunch!
“We love taking time out and getting to know each other outside the office. Today we all went and had lunch at Waldo’s BBQ. It was delish!”

lunch

SHARK WEEK!
Did you know shark week was dubbed the most social programming event to date in 2013 with 4.3 million @sharkweek tweets, nearly 3.4 million video streams and 21.8 million people discussing via Facebook?

sw

Employee Spotlight: Tatiana!
Q. Have long have you worked at Eminent SEO? I have been with Eminent SEO since day 1!
Q. What do you do for ESEO? I am the Social Media Strategist. I help maintain client interaction, build links, build out maps and much more.
Q. What is your favorite social media platform to use? Why? I love using Twitter and Facebook. Twitter because it’s short, sweet and to the point and Facebook because you really get to know your audience and what they like to read.
Q. How has your career at ESEO created value in your life? Doing social media everyday has helped me market my photography, which has been fun and great!

tatiana

Marketing Blog Roundup

Local Search Results Affected by the Latest Google Pigeon Update
From the latest Google Pigeon algorithm update, research shows that realtors and DUI lawyers were primarily targeted. The experts weigh on how this update is affecting local rankings and the changes in the search results. Learn more about this update, who’s been affected, and what SEO experts are saying here

Design Trends For Websites: Coming In 2015
Are you wondering what design trends 2015 has in store for websites? Our graphic designer, Jason SanMarco, predicts 5 trends to look out for in 2015.

How to Use Social Media and Email Marketing to Influence Repeat Business
“The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.” Generating repeat business has a higher ROI than only focusing your marketing spend toward new business. Learn how you can use the combination of email marketing and social media to help accomplish these sales goals.

Creating Pinteresting Conversations with Pinterest Messaging
Pinterest launched their newest feature called Pinterest Messaging where you’re allowed to message current followers about specific pins. This new feature could open up the opportunity for brands to nurture their current followers into becoming leads or brand advocates.

See Ya Online!

Well that does it for this month’s newsletter. Now that the new Eminent SEO site is launching we might have to find a new internal project… look out for some fun contests and giveaways in the near future.
Until next time, see ya online…

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Team Eminent SEO

Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Local Search Results Affected by the Latest Google Pigeon Update

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pigeon update

July 24th, Google released another local search update that has impacted local results. This update is being called Google Pigeon. This update seems to be pretty significant, although it is still very early to tell the actual impact that this has caused local businesses, but it’s definitely something to be monitoring for the next few weeks.

What the SEO Experts Are Saying

According to the article from Search Engine Land, experts are weighing in on what they’ve seen so far with this update. To summarize, this update is amplifying the Hummingbird update which occurred last fall. Arguably, this update is creating a better experience for searchers. Or at least, that’s what Google’s attempting to do.

You will notice when you search for a local business, a lot of big directories show up in the search results (Yelp, Yellowpages, etc.). This is only increasing with this update, which is why this is arguably a better solution. This pushes local, Google verified, businesses down in the SERPs.

Another big thing that marketers are noticing with this update is the loss the of the 7-pack results. It now seems to change to 3-pack results. This leads us marketers to believe this update was geared to combine desktop and mobile search results. The reasoning behind this change would be because Google wants to limit the amount of local results for mobile users since it’s strictly geared to their location. They don’t want 1,000 realtors to show up when searching for a local realtor. Makes sense.

Some Visuals

Here’s what the search results looked like before and during the update.

Below are visuals for the term “tacos” location in Costa Mesa:

Pre-Update

pigeon update search results7/25

pigeon update search results7/27

pigeon update search results7/28

pigeon update search results(Photos courtesy of: searchengineland.com)

You can see how the results are slowly changing. Let’s take a look at the local pack changes.

When searching for chiropractor Rochester MI, the results haven’t changed much. You can see the pack is still visible here which is good for those local businesses:

pigeon local search results

However, when you change chiropractor to realtor, you can see the local results change very dramatically:

realtor pigeon update results(Photo cred to: brownboxbranding.com)

You can see that there aren’t any local business in the results, but only directories like realtor.com. Which leads us to believe that this update is targeting specific industries that Google thinks is spammy.

Who’s Been Affected?

According to Search Engine Land, spammy industries that have been negatively affected and actually first noticed this change are realtors and DUI lawyers. It seems that these verticals have been removed from the pack (see above images). This means the search results are being saturated with directories instead of actual realtors or lawyers.

Large directories like Yelp and Tripadvisor have had slight increases in traffic since these directories are ranking higher than local businesses. Yelp obviously dominating local search for a while now. If you’re not listed on Yelp with a strong reputation, it might be a good time to start.

The question is, how will this affect other industries across the board? We’re going to have to do some real analyzing during the next several weeks to really get dialed in in the potential positive and negative affects this is going to have on all local businesses.

Closing Thoughts

A lot of questions are going to arise with this new local update. Like, “Will these local updates continue to influence directories instead of local businesses?”. If so, “How effective are local citations going to be in the future?”.

Those two primary questions came to mind after seeing the new search results. It seems that Google is continuing to make the pack smaller which doesn’t leverage as much organic visibility for local businesses. Unless, they’re on the large directories and have a strong presence there like Yelp.

In our opinion, we think marketers should not forget about citations, instead focus more on the bigger directories and building a strong presence there; such as Yelp, Tripadvisor, Google+, etc. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

What are your findings with this Pigeon algorithm update? We’d love to hear what others have experienced so far. Let us know in the comments or email us!

 

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Vol. 33 Eminent SEO Company Updates, What’s Up with Google Penguin and The Regular Marketing Blog Roundup

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What’s Happening at Eminent SEO

eseoThe final designs have been approved, the content has all been written and the SEO is laid out… so you know what that means? The new and improved EminentSEO.com is going live at the end of THIS MONTH! We are so excited we can hardly stand it! Stay tuned for more announcements and fun contests as the day draws nearer.

There are two new faces at the Mesa, Arizona office now every day!

jason

Meet Jason SanMarco, our new full time Graphic and User Experience Designer. Jason has been working with Eminent SEO for many years already so you can imagine how excited we are to (FINALLY) have him on board full time! Jason designs beautiful websites, brand logos, social media profile images and banners, link bait creatives and much, much more. (Just wait until you see the new Eminent SEO site – coming later this month).

diane

Meet DiAne Santos, our new Project Manager. She is our newest edition and already proving herself to be a “Jill of all trades”. She will be helping with the Account Management, social media fulfillment and also the role of Brand Advocate for Eminent SEO. She is super excited for the opportunity and we couldn’t be happier to have her!

Good to Know in SEO (RIGHT NOW)

Google Penguin… Crushing Sites Since 2012

Google Penguin Algorithm Update - Eminent SEO

In case you’ve forgotten, the Penguin update is Google’s algorithm update that punishes bad or “spammy” link building techniques.

The full Penguin History here:

  1. Penguin version 1 happened on April 24th, 2012 – Called 1.0
  2. Penguin version 2 happened on May 25th, 2012 – Version of 1.0
  3. Penguin version 3 happened on October 5th, 2012 – Version of 1.0
  4. Penguin version 4 happened on May 22nd, 2013 – Called 2.0
  5. Penguin version 5 happened on October 4th, 2013 – Version of 2.0
  6. ?

With 5 updates in just over two years the SEO community is surprised we haven’t had another Penguin update yet, I mean it has been almost 10 months! But nadda.

The thing that scares webmasters and SEO’s about Penguin is once you’re hit it’s a HUGE process to fix the issue and get reincluded with Google. This is NOT a job for an amateur. In fact, if you don’t know what you are doing you are potentially stuck with this penalty for years to come.

So why no new updates? Here are a few speculations:

  1. Google is still working on a data refresh – I mean, updating an algorithm is NO JOKE!
  2. Some think that updating the algorithm too frequently actually makes it easy for turn and burn spammers…. Hrm, not sure we totally agree, but I guess.
  3. They are satisfied with the last version. I mean, sites are still getting hit, so why fix what isn’t broken (so to speak).

I personally think it’s a combination of all 3, but I wouldn’t put ANYTHING past Google.

So, now what?

Since it doesn’t look like Google is letting up any time soon, those that are hit need to seek out real help or run the risk of seriously hurting their business. If you bank on organic website traffic and you are experiencing a penalty, you need to hire a professional STAT. And when I say a professional, I mean us of course.

It’s a process, but we have successfully gotten link penalties lifted and sites reincluded multiple times now, so we know what it takes and we are ready and willing to help! Just give us a call: 1.800.871.4130.

July Photo A Day: Office Fun

For July we decided to focus on stuff around the Eminent SEO office, summer fun and cool office spaces. Below are a few of the fun pictures we shared in the month of July (you know, in case you missed them):

Here at Eminent SEO we’ve been trying to update our office space with new and inventive ideas. What makes a cool office space?

office

Max hopes you are enjoying your summer! What fun things have you done so far?

max-summer

Employee spotlight: Renee
How long have you worked for Eminent SEO? 1 year, 2 months!
What do you do here? I am the Manager of the Blog Department
What’s your favorite part of working at Eminent SEO? Getting to show my creative side.
What is your favorite blog to follow? The blog I like following best is okdork.com/blog. Noah Kagan is amazing! He keeps things super interesting while still being informative and innovative regarding all types of things from marketing to life!

renee

Be in love with your life, every minute of it. – Jack Kerouac.

jack

Employee spotlight: Lacey
How long have you worked for Eminent SEO? 4 months.
How long have you been in the industry? 6 years!
What do you do here? Educate others about digital marketing, write blog posts, manage PPC campaigns, on-page SEO and lead nurturing.
What is your favorite blog to follow? I don’t have one favorite. I like whatever can influence me to be successful and educate me.

lacey

Love this idea of bringing the outside in. What a great way to spark creativity and create a calming environment!

outside

Employee Spotlight: Kirstin
How long have you worked for Eminent? 5 years next February
What do you do here? Account Manager/Jack-of-Most-Trades
What is your favorite industry blog? Ours. It usually has all the good stuff from all over anyways (oh, and Moz too!)

kirstin

Don’t just go to work…go to work and be AWESOME!

awesome

July was pretty rad.

Marketing Blog Roundup

How to Effectively Sell SEO to Perspective Clients
Winning SEO clients isn’t difficult when you understand SEO and the show your prospect the value that they will gain. How many sales people have you hired that couldn’t close SEO deals that used the excuse “Nobody understands SEO?” You need to understand SEO in order to sell SEO. Period.

8 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid During a Website Redesign
Doing a website redesign? Don’t make these SEO mistakes that could cost you your rankings and organic traffic.

How to Master Pinterest for SEO
A lot of us marketers are utilizing Pinterest for much more than just social media marketing, we’re using it to increase organic rankings and traffic as well. Pinterest is a necessary social network to utilize for SEO and here’s how.

Inbound Marketing: The Most Effective B2B Marketing Solution
We think inbound marketing is the most effective B2B marketing solution out there. Why? Because it helps build long term business relationships, it’s more cost effective than outbound marketing and actually provides value to your potential customer.

How to Optimize Your Social Media Efforts
Social media plays a huge role in marketing, but it’s 100 times more effective when it’s done properly. Learn these optimization techniques and take your social media marketing efforts to the next level.

5 Increasingly Popular Social Networks to Consider for Marketing
We all could use more visibility for our website content and blogs. Social media sharing is a great way to increase your content visibility and potential direct clicks, but isn’t there more than just Facebook and Twitter? Here are 5 up and coming social networks you should check out.

5 Online Branding Tips That Will Help Crush Your Competition
Branding is often times overlook in online marketing strategies. These 5 marketing tips help you leverage your brand for dramatic increases to brand and website visibility, which in turn leads to quality leads and conversions!

See Ya Online!

Wow, is it just us or did July just fly by? Now it’s time for kids to go back to school and the weather to start changing. We hope you enjoyed your 4th of July. What are you looking forward to in August? We are looking forward to (possibly) cooler weather and the launch of our new website (so exciting!).

Until next time, see ya online…

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Vol. 32: Google Updates, Travel Dreams and Your Monthly Marketing Blog Roundup

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What’s Happening at Eminent SEO

july4We are still working on the new Eminent SEO website design. It’s turned into a larger project scope than we originally planned. You know how these things go. First you want new design, then you realize you need fresh content, that leads to updated SEO and from there you need to rethink the entire website strategy. So, that’s just what we are doing! The initial designs are done and they are looking pretty snazzy! We can’t wait to share our new site with you!! Until then… enjoy our blog and never miss an update by following us on your favorite social platform. We are always on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Good to Know in SEO (RIGHT NOW)

“Google My Business” is Here

Just weeks ago Google announced the launch of their newest tool set/application “Google My Business”. So, what is it?

This suit of tools is intended to act like a one-stop shop for business owners to update their business information, read and respond to reviews, add or change photos and use Google+ (including the local place page/map section). This means any businesses currently using Places for Business (we still call this Google maps) will be upgraded to Google My Business.

One thing we’ve also noticed is that Google My Business gives you a much easier to use dashboard with integrations such as updating your Google+ URL, sharing a status on your Google+ page and key performance insights, which it didn’t have before.

If you’re an AdWords Express user this also provides you with a better understanding on how your business is found on Google through important trends like what the users are clicking on and where they are coming from.

The Android and iOS mobile apps are already available.

Introducing Google My Business (Video)

Google Drops Google+ Profile Photos and Circle Count from Authorship in Search Results

Although Google is calling this a “minor” change in the search results, anyone who’s worked hard on their Google authorship may not see it that way. Just a few days ago Google announced that they are dropping the profile photo and circle count from the search listings where Google Authorship is assigned to a listing.

Pulled from this Search Engine Land post by Barry Schwartz, here is the new design verses the old one:

NEW (No image, no circle count):
new

OLD (Author image, name+ circle count):
old

Note – Google Authorship has also been updated in the news results. It still contains a profile image, but it’s much smaller and the circle count has been dropped from there as well:
authorship

This rollout applies to desktop and mobile results.

To us it’s clear that the removal of the profile and the circle count will reduce the amount of visibility for the post. Why would Google do this now? What do you think?

June Photo A Day: Travel Dreams

It’s summer here in Arizona so you know what that means…. It’s HOT as H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks and all of us here at Eminent SEO can’t help but dream of all of the beautiful (and possibly cooler) places we could travel to this summer. For the month of June we shared our favorite travel destinations, below are a few of the highlights from the last month:

Mellifont Abbey is a ruined 12th-century Cistercian monastery near Monasterboice in County Louth. What a beautiful place to visit!
mellifont

Sunrise over Llanganuco Valley, Cordillera Blanca, Peru. What a beautiful place this would be to wake up in!
peru

London’s calling!
london

This is what summer in Norway looks like?! Sign us up!
norway

Beautiful design and modern elegance make up the Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
malaysia

Check out this dazzling double rainbow at the falls in Skogafoss, Iceland! Amazing!
iceland

What is your favorite vacation spot? What are your travel plans for this summer?

Marketing Blog Roundup

Algorithm Update Alert! Google Panda 4.0: The Good and The Bad
Google’s latest Panda update impacted a large number of websites negatively. Don’t be one of them! We think there are positive possibilities that could outcome from this update, as well as negative. Have you experienced backlash from this update or a positive increase in rankings?

Stop Trying To Track Keyword Rankings. It’s Dumb.
Still think tracking your organic keyword rankings in Google is a good metric? Well, this post is for you. Read this funny and insightful blog by our CEO Jenny Stradling.

Landing Page Optimization Checklist: Key Landing Page Must Have’s for Higher Conversion Rates
Struggling with which elements need to go on landing pages for higher conversion rates? Or are you just in need of a reminder? This blog post will give you the run down on the elements you should not forget to implement in your landing pages while entertaining you at the same time – enjoy!

5 Social Media Metrics to Track
Questioning which social media metrics to track to grow your content strategies? Here we provide you with what we believe are the most valuable social media metrics you should be tracking.

How to Brand a Product
Branding a product is similar to branding a business – however, there are some big differences. Get some invaluable tips to help you with branding and marketing your next big thing!

See Ya Online!

Whoa! A lot has been going on this last month! Soon it will be July, do you have any big plans to celebrate the 4th? All we can think about is cooler weather – you’ll probably find us in the pool, inside where there is AC or somewhere with an iced cold beer.

Until next time, see ya online

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Algorithm Update Alert! Google Panda 4.0: The Good and The Bad

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Google Panda 4.0

As you’ve probably heard, Google launched a new algorithm update known as Panda 4.0 on May 20th. Panda was originally released in the beginning of 2011, and has been providing data refreshes ever since impacting websites that have overall poor content quality. This new update isn’t just a refresh, it’s an algorithm change that has impacted 7.5% of queries which isn’t going unnoticed.

The Bad

Let’s start with the bad. Your website will be negatively impacted if any of the following factors occur:

Duplicate Content: Your website has content that is also visible on other websites that wasn’t published by you first. Also known as scraped content. There can also be sitewide duplicate content which means your website has internal pages that have the same or very similar content, ecommerce category pages that aren’t properly canonicalized, etc.

Low Quality Content: This term is pretty general in terms of Panda. This algorithm is going to look at the overall quality of your website in comparison to the large number of sites that are competing with you, as well as these factors:

  • Doorway Pages – internal website landing pages that are only meant for search    engines – not visitors. These are usually keyword stuffed landing pages that will rank high in the search results for a specific array of keywords, but have absolutely zero value to a visitor who lands on it. They are strictly there to manipulate search engines.
  • Thin Content – content that lacks originality. Mostly happens on affiliate sites where product descriptions are copied, and don’t add any original content to override the duplicated product descriptions. Original content should always overpower anything that is duplicated. Don’t only rely on affiliate content. Thin content can also be defined as pages that only have a couple lines of content. Make sure your content provides value and has weight on each landing page.

Over-Optimization: This is where Panda is going to look for pages that contain over usage of keywords otherwise known as keyword stuffing. Don’t stuff keywords in your meta data or within your content.

Bad news is, if your website currently has any of the items listed above, you have a chance of being negatively impacted by this update or penalized by Google. Don’t think that just because you haven’t been impacted this time, you won’t be in the future. Panda 4.0 is only the beginning of more updates where the algorithm is only going to become smarter and continue to evolve.

Here’s a few sites that have been negatively impacted due to Panda 4.0:

  • ask.com > -50%
  • ebay.com > -33%
  • retailmenot.com > -33%

The Good

The good part of this major algorithm change is the fact that websites will be rewarded with higher rankings that already contain high quality content. If you’ve seen an increase in organic traffic and rankings since this update occurred, chances are you’re already doing something right. There’s a lot of talk going around that smaller business websites will be rewarded from this update. About time!

Best Practices for Producing Quality Content

Always Write Original Content

Don’t ever think it’s okay to simply copy and paste content from other websites. Your site will be penalized for doing this! Your website should provide detailed information about your product or service while keeping conversion in mind. You don’t want to bore your potential clients with a bunch of mumbo jumbo content. Provide original content that will educate them and show the difference between your company and your competition. What makes your company so special?

Don’t Stuff Keywords into Your Content

Keyword density is an outdated SEO technique. If you’re still stuffing keywords into your content, it will trigger Google to thinking your content sounds unnatural and you can be penalized. Keep your content sounding natural with a variety of keyword variations.

Produce Fresh Content That’s High Quality

There isn’t any calculated formula as to how often you should be producing blogs, eBooks, or videos. What you want to keep in mind is the quality of the content you’re publishing. Does your content hold sentimental value or are you just producing content because you want Google to keep crawling your website? I hope the answer is that your content is producing some sort of value. To do this, create a monthly editorial calendar that have blog topics in mind. If you have enough topics to write 2 blogs per week, do it! If not, once per week is fine.

Closing Thought

Since Google is going to continue to release large updates such as Panda 4.0, it’s highly recommended to always keep your readers in mind first, then the search engines second when writing content online. Quality over quantity. Offer value in your content to readers because in the end, it will help your rankings if your readers are sharing your content naturally.

We hope this article helped you understand the basics of Panda 4.0. Have you been targeted by this update? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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Vol. 31: A New Site Is On The Way, Panda 4.0 Is Here, Monthly Marketing Blog Roundup

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What’s Happening at Eminent SEO

responsive

For months now we have been working on a new site design, content, SEO and mobile development of the Eminent SEO site. It’s almost ready and we can’t wait to share it with you! With the new site launch we will also be launching some other fun surprises. Stay tuned for more!

May Photo A Day: Tech and Gadgets

For the month of May we decided to have a little fun and share some of the coolest tech and gadget products we have found online. We know you love nerd and geek friendly gadgets, so here is a collection of a few of our favorites:

The 4-Port Lego USB Hub is pretty cool and made by the Danish LEGO company:

lego

Breffo Adventure Camera Kit – Introducing the ‘Octopod’ that essentially grips anything with its rubber-coated metal legs whilst attached to your camera via a screw-mount. A handy solution for taking group photos without having to require the help of strangers:

breffo

If you have a Bluetooth, you can have a virtual keyboard made by Brookstone:

bluetooth-keyboard

Wake up in style and start the day with a BANG with the Gun Alarm Clock:

alarm

Can music be touched? Yes, the designer Jackson McConnell made this type of speaker which can show waveform especially for hearing-impaired people to help them enjoy music in a particular way:

speaker

Do you have a favorite tech gadget? Share with us in the comments!

Google’s Latest Update: Panda 4.0

Matt Cutts of Google spoke at the Search Marketing Expo last March and said that Google was working on what would be the newest Panda update. For smaller businesses this might actually be a good thing as Matt said it is a softer and friendlier update for small sites and businesses. Google has been known to rollback drastic algorithm updates that have had a huge impact to website rankings resulting in dramatic losses.

In addition to this update “softening the blow” for smaller websites, it also is said to “lay the groundwork” for future iterations.

matt-cutts

Big sites however still seem to have been negatively impacted and some of them in a HUGE way! For example:

panda

Webpronews.com attempted to provide a comprehensive list of losers and winners, you can check out the full list here.

So, why the losses? Panda is all about the quality of content. Unfortunately some of these giant websites have a slew of user generated, scraped, duplicate or otherwise lower quality content – and that is exactly what Google is targeting.

If you are concerned at all about Google Panda our advice to you is to take a careful look at your existing website content. Is it poorly written, outdated, taken from another website or low quality in general? Yes? Then it is definitely time for a content update.

Marketing Blog Roundup

5 Reasons to Hire a Website Marketing Company
There are a lot more than 5 reasons, but we’ll start there. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider hiring a professional web marketing company to manage your site and online marketing campaigns.

Effective Ways to Market Your Small Business Online
A lot of small business owners don’t have the time, money or know-how to market their business online. Here are some effective ways for you to market a local business online without breaking the bank.

How to Generate Leads Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn can be a powerful marketing tool when used correctly. These tips will help you get started on marketing your business using the growing social network.

5 Ways to Increase Social Media Sharing
If you are writing great content but it’s not getting a lot of visibility, check out this post. By leveraging some of these techniques you can dramatically increase your content social sharing.

Traditional Vs. Digital Brand Marketing
We aren’t here to say traditional marketing is dead, but for many businesses it is slowly fading out. Learn the differences in offline and online marketing and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

See Ya Online!

That’s it for this month’s edition. Can you believe it’s almost June already? Where does the time go?

Until next time, see ya online

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Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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The Lowdown on Google Hummingbird

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Google Hummingbird

We find it ironic that Google has decided to take beautiful, friendly animals names and turn them into scary (sometimes devastating) algorithm updates….

*sigh*

With names like Panda, Penguin, and now Hummingbird, Google’s clearly showing a pattern. But, the pattern you should be more concerned about is that with each Google update, Google’s is drastically changing the way they serve up web results.

What’s Changed With Hummingbird?

To put it in perspective, Hummingbird is said to be the largest Google algorithm update in a decade.  It affects more than 90% of searches worldwide (according to Search Engine Journal), whereas Penguin affected only around 3%.

Some ways it affects search include:

  • Knowledge Graph is Improved – Knowledge Graph is a database of 570 million objects and 18 billion facts about various people, places, things and how they are connected. This system was designed to increase search relevancy and to give direct answers to searches at the same time.

Now, Knowledge Graph has been extended so that if you search on a query like “Tell me about impressionist artists,” you get to see a complete list of who they are and their famous works.

  • Better Semantic Understanding – “Semantic search” refers to the idea that Google attempts to understand the main concept behind a search query, not just find the exact words or variations thereof that a searcher typed in. Hummingbird is a leap forward in Google’s ability to understand what a searcher is really looking for.

Practically speaking, if you do a search on “the nearest restaurant in Los Angeles,” the Google of old would have returned results matching “restaurant” and “Los Angeles.”  However, the new Google knows that what you’re really looking for is a restaurant close by. So, instead, it’s going to return a result for a restaurant in Los Angeles that actually is nearby. And, it’s going to let you know exactly how far away that restaurant is.

Hummingbird Is Really All About Mobile Searching

In large part, Hummingbird is all about one current drastic change in search: the increase in mobile searches.

The mobile search page is now much simpler, optimized for touch navigation and results are now clustered on cards which makes it easier for mobile searchers to focus and click on them. It’s also no coincidence that when announcing these new updates, Google did so using mobile technology to illustrate their point.

Finally, mobile searchers are more likely to use voice search to ask questions, so it’s timely that Hummingbird focuses on understanding those questions and providing all the information necessary to answer the question.

What Should Businesses And SEOs Focus On With Hummingbird?

Now, more than ever and especially as search continues to evolve, it’s critical for businesses to identify their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and build content focused on long-tail keywords that answers their customer’s primary questions and concerns.

Oh, and don’t forget about variations…. “restaurant” might be interpreted as “diner”, “café”, or “food” even.

If historically you have done well with a specific keyword, consider expanding your targets into similar variations. Just because your website is optimized for “restaurant” and that is your top keyword phrase that doesn’t mean that in the future you might lose out to competitors who have done a better job including “restaurant” keyword variations.

Get creative. Know your audience and expand your content and offers.

The sites that can implement this strategy now will end up with the best organic traffic in the future.

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Jenny Weatherall

CEO, Business Consultant, Researcher and Marketing Strategist

Jenny Weatherall is the co-owner and CEO of Eminent SEO, a design and marketing agency founded in 2009. She has worked in the industry since 2005, when she fell in love with digital marketing… and her now husband and partner, Chris. Together they have 6 children and 3 granddaughters.
Jenny has a passion for learning and sharing what she learns. She has researched, written and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics, including: SEO, design, marketing, ethics, business management, sustainability, inclusion, behavioral health, wellness and work-life balance.

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