With Google’s introduction of its spam-fighting algorithm, Google Penguin, many websites have suffered from both short and long-term positional drops in search result pages and hence traffic. As Rand Fishkin states on his edition of Whiteboard+, Google Penguin is focused on punishing devalued links from manipulative link profiles, rather than trying to improve the quality of search results.

Worried that your site could be deemed Penguin-like and possibly be unfairly hit with or without warning? Don’t fret the fury of the Google Penguin update until you uncover your SEO errors with these quick tips to clean up your site.

1. Delete. Delete. Delete.
Remove any web spam or spam-like techniques from your site. Examples include keyword stuffing, hidden text and links and duplicate content that is used to manipulate search results.

2. Naturalize Your Anchor Text
Analyze your website’s anchor text (the visible text showing in your links) using SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic or Google Webmaster Tools. This will make sure that your anchor text is distributed as naturally as possible. You can do this by exporting the data to reveal if there are any spikes on exact match keywords and then make changes as necessary to even out results.

3. Balance Your Link Profile
Don’t waste your time and money pursuing poor quality reciprocal linking, buying links or submitting your site to SEO-friendly directories. Need some ideas for “white hat” methods for link building? A few include blogging, creating link bait like infographics or other visual content, press releases, sponsorships, social media and of course, content creation that goes beyond a blog, such as, surveys or case studies.

There is no quick fix to recover if you have been negatively affected by Google Penguin. But if you make conscious efforts to know your industry and your customers, you can easily avoid common SEO mistakes that give over-optimization signals. Remember, now is the time that the right search marketing strategy is more important than ever, starting with quality as your top priority.

If you are a webmaster who feels that their site shouldn’t have been hit by Penguin, submit your inquiry to the Google’s feedback form.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a simple text file that resides within the root directory of a website. The purpose of this file is to help search engines understand which content you would like them to illustrate to users within the search engine result pages (SERP’s) and which pages they should ignore. Google and Bing pay very close attention to this file, reason being, they do not want to potentially share information on websites which their webmasters have specifically requested be ignored.

Example: You are about to enter a building and on the front door reads a sign saying, “Do not enter the first door on the right upon entry – this area is strictly forbidden.” Knowing that you are only wanting to reach the top of the building for a brilliant view to take a quick shot with your camera, you adhere to their request. Google is doing the same thing when their spider enter a site to do a crawl. They look for two critical files; a sitemap.xml and robots.txt. The sitemap XML is a file which illustrates all or most of the pages within your site, as well as the last modified date to assist Google with a quick link to the majority of your content you want visible to users of search engines. Prior to running through all the links within the sitemap.xml file, the crawlers check to see whether or not there is a robots.txt file and which pages (or rooms of your building) they are not allowed to enter.

This file is extremely powerful and the search engines respect the directions given within it. However, many people make a few mistakes which often times prove to be extremely costly.

In order to allow Googlebot or other search engine crawlers to index your site, a simple command within a robots file could look like the following:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
or
User-agent:*
Disallow:

This, in essence, is telling all robots or crawlers that the whole building is fair game.  Crawl away and take all content you interact with back to your indices to share with your users.

On the other hand, if someone includes:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This tells the robots that you do not want them to enter the building at all. You are basically adding a “no-entry” sign to the front door of the building with a “Trespassers will be prosecuted…private property” comment. So why would you ever use this? Most webmasters when developing a new site, develop a pre-production environment for testing purposes and to experience the site on the web or for sharing the new design and functionality with a client prior to rolling it live. That being said, they do not want the search engines viewing this test site or sharing it with the world quite yet…hence adding the “disallow everything” comment to the robots.

This causes problems for many site owners or developers, because it is a simple text file within the root directory and not dynamically updated via a content management system (CMS) or eCommerce platform. Developers will often times “unknowingly” publish all pre-production files live. It is at that time where the robots file (Disallow: /) moves its way to the root of their new live site. I have personally experienced this on numerous occasions by clients who come running to us believing their domain received a serious penalty from Google and we need to help them immediately, as they cannot find their new site in Google. As an SEO, there is always a quick checklist each of us has developed to run through while analyzing files like these to verify that nothing has been implemented incorrectly.

Unfortunately, that is not the only way in which you could block a search engine from serving up your content with the SERP’s. You could also have written the wrong code within your meta name=”robots” code within your page source.

Meta Name=”Robots”

The meta robots field within the header of your source code serves a similar purpose to that of the robots.txt file with a few exceptions. Contrary to the robots.txt file, this file does not act as a “no-entry” sign. Search Engines are still able to crawl the page, however, you are now telling them whether or not to index the page. That being said, depending on how you communicate this to them could mean different things at times.

For example: If you wanted to tell Google that you did not want a page in their search results, you would simply add:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex“/>

This tells Google that I don’t care whether you like the content on the page or not (obviously it was not blocked within the robots .txt file), I do not want you to show it within your SERP’s. The difference between this route vs. using the robots.txt file, is that it is just a guideline to the search engines and not a blockage. For the most part this will be obeyed, however,  there are times where Google may still include the page within the SERP’s if it has received significant inbound links. While this is rare, it still happens.

Another feature of the meta robots that webmasters use are “follow” and “nofollow.” What do these mean? These are used to tell Google and Bing whether to pass authority or relevance to the links on the page. These attributes were originally developed to help block “link juice” flowing out of your site to spammers who have tried to leverage your comments section to drive anchor text links as exact match inbound links to their sites. Adding the “nofollow” to your page or backend code of your comments will in essence tell the robots that you do not want them passing any votes from you on this page to all links within the page.

There are four types of meta robots implementations:

<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,nofollow”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

“Index” refers to whether or not you want the robot to include your page within the search engines. “Follow” refers to whether of not you would like the relevance or “vote” of the links mentioned within the page to pass to their link destination.

Why would you ever use “noindex, follow”? There may be a time where you have a resource that you want to keep private from the world, however, you may have given it to a few people to access the valuable links within it. You are now telling the search engines that you do not want them indexing this page within the SERP’s, however that you do want them to pass the trust and relevancy of your “link juice” to the pages linked to within that page.

Additional Meta Name=”robots” that are commonly used include:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp,noydir”

Each are comprehensive site directories that search engines often times use to replace a meta descriptions on a page with the descriptions of your site from each of these sites.
ODP – Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)
YDIR – Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com)

Keith Suppes joined Zeon Solutions as a Web Solutions Architect. Before moving to Zeon’s Milwaukee office, Keith was working at The Grand River as a System Architect for the Magento and the Sitecore practice. At Zeon, Keith will be involved in the Software and Mobile practices.

Scott Kush joined the Zeon Solutions Sales team and will be responsible for Business Development on the east coast. Scott comes with knowledge of the manufacturing sector and the Ad Promo space.  He also has significant selling experience.

Welcome to the Zeon Solutions team!

It started yesterday when I learned that Google is giving users the opportunity to block PPC ads from specific domains in their search results. Last year, Google gave the ability to block specific search results and sites but much of this was changed with the launch of “Search Plus Your World.” I understand the concept, especially from a user point of view: you shouldn’t have results appear that you hold absolutely no interest in ever checking out. And even from the point of view of the advertiser: if someone is never going to click my ad, removing their impressions will only help increase my clickthrough rate.

Then this morning I was doing a search for Redbox and came across an ad that allowed me to join their mailing list before clicking through to their site:

I remember reading that Google started testing this feature sometime last month, but now that I see it in my own searches I understand the potential impact more.

This lead collection not only elongates the advertisement providing more SERP “real estate” to the advertiser, but also makes the lead completion simple for the user. In addition, Google is showing that they will pair this lead collection function with sitelinks leaving the possibility for larger ads open. Imagine if those sitelinks were enhanced…

Jai Verma has joined Zeon Solutions as the Project Management Office Manager (PMO Manager). Jai brings solid PMO management experience, as well as technical expertise through his educational and professional background. Jai has worked at Deloitte, Northwestern Mutual, WE Energies and FIS (Metavante) in various technical and PMO roles. Jai is leading the PMO team and the Project Managers in our Milwaukee office. We are excited to have Jai join our team and take our PMO processes to the next level.

Ritesh Keskar has joined Zeon Solutions as a Program Manager. Ritesh is part of the newly created centralized Project Management Office (PMO) team. Ritesh brings a multifaceted skill set of Project Management, Business Analysis, Development and Quality Assurance experience. Before he joined Zeon Solutions, Ritesh was working with Kohls where he led a company-wide deployment of Google applications. In his 12+ years of experience, Ritesh has worked with large companies like Northwestern Mutual and IBM Global Services. Ritesh is taking ownership of all the projects under the Software and Mobile practices.

Renee Girard joined Zeon Solutions as a Search Engine Marketing Specialist. She is a recent graduate (December 2011) from UWM where she received a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and a certificate in International Business. Renee will be executing the day-to-day operations of both organic and paid search.

Welcome to Zeon Solutions!

But then I thought about it more.

At the same time that Google is known for pushing out AdWords ads and making money, it is known for working hard to give its users the best possible searching experience. In fact, when I explain PPC to people unfamiliar with the medium, I have told them that the paid ads on Google can be more relevant than the natural results (assuming the advertiser is doing a good job). Now, I understand that is a strong statement that some may disagree with…but for now, at the very least, it can be agreed that paid ads can give just as relevant as search results as found in the top organic listings. And if that is the case, Google’s AdWords ads are helping the user experience, rather than hurting it.

In the screen shot above, when searching for “mac power cord,” yes – Google gave me only ads above the fold on my laptop screen in the SERP, however it gave me plenty of options for buying a cord which is what I was out to do in this search. Then, in this screenshot below, a website is giving me information on Mac power cords but it is buried in ads – not what I was out to do in this search:

Keeping all of this in mind, I revisited the “Page Layout” algorithm update. Google is penalizing the websites for being top heavy in ads, not because of the amount of space the ads are taking up, but because of the negative impact it is known to have on a user experience. If that is the case, and if PPC ads can be helpful to a searcher, then I suppose Google isn’t being too contradictory at all…so bring on the PPC real estate and say goodbye to websites with more ads than useful content.

Cassy joins us with great paid search experience as well as some web development and quality assurance testing. As a senior search marketer, Cassy will be responsible for delivering best practice deliverable material, industry thought leadership, and drive efficiencies within our internal processes in alignment with current team members.

When not monitoring quality score and average cost-per-click bidding strategies, you can find Cassy playing video games (Zelda) or hopping into the nearest shark cage for a quick swim with her ocean pals. Clearly thrills don’t stop there as the only reason she tried sky diving was because it scared the heck out of her.

It is great to have you on the team Cassy. Welcome to Zeon!

-Ross

…Organic visits by keyword that is. That’s right; my favorite medium hasn’t skipped a beat in all of this. Looking at paid traffic in Google Analytics and drilling down to the keyword level is just as visible as it ever was. Regardless of whether a searcher is logged into their Google account, Google Analytics is still providing visibility to the keywords one searched if it resulted in a PPC ad followed by a clickthrough. After all, advertisers paid Google for the word.

This idea brings up a few questions…

• Is PPC going to become an even more practiced form of advertising and driving traffic as it continues to not only provide numerical metrics to the advertiser, but also relevant keyword data that now is difficult to find elsewhere?
• Are search marketing professionals and agencies going to need to ramp up their PPC experience in order to prove their value as internet marketers all together?
• Are SEOs going to rely on statistics and insights from PPC analytical data to get ideas on keywords that may be covered with the value, “(not provided)”?

I’ve always felt that I cannot create or manage a great PPC account without SEO insights, and I’ve always preferred to implement and manage SEO initiatives with PPC insights.  Organic searcher keyword data can provide more insights to my PPC expansion than a given keyword tool. And matched search queries from AdWords has shed light on a searcher intent I was unaware of several times when analyzing a specific page in regards to organic optimization. However, I know there are plenty of other SEMs – and website owners – who do not feel that both practices are necessary. If this hasn’t started to change already, we’ll just give them a few more months of “(not provided)” to analyze.

The other holiday event at the Zeon Solutions’ office was a white elephant gift exchange on Thursday, December 15th. Each employee brought a random gift worth approximately $10, wrapped it and placed it under the tree. At 4:30 p.m. that day all the employees gathered around the tree in anticipation of who would choose their gift. As the game went on, a few gifts were “stolen” and most walked away with a neat surpise. Treats were also provided by Zeon’s C.I.A.