Google’s Penguin updates started in February of 2012 and have been deemed the “over-optimization” updates because the expressed goal of Penguin was to stop websites from “over optimizing” in the form of poor quality links from poor quality (and unrelated) websites. The way Penguin basically works is two-fold. First, it looks at a website and even pages on a website to determine if they are being over optimized or are spam – does the site or page have repetitive keywords (keyword stuffing) in the content? Secondly, Penguin checks to see if there are too many inbound (and outbound) links with the same or similar anchor text, which is another spam flag. If penguin determines a page, or worse an entire site, to be an over-optimized spam page, the power of that page is significantly diminished as a “penguin penalty” is placed on it. Penguin has always been a manual update, meaning it is not a part of Google’s indexing algorithm process. That is why Penguin updates have been rolled out periodically and the impact is felt by offending websites immediately after an update.

Google announced a “significant penguin update” in March of 2013. More specifically, that update was set to occur on Friday March 15th or Monday March 18th. It seems that this major update did take place, however Google has not confirmed or denied it yet, other than their original announcement that the update would indeed take place. This Panda 25 update integrated the Penguin algorithm into Google’s normal indexing and algorithm process. So, this means Penguin is effectively functioning all the time now, and will no longer need manual updates to integrate Penguin data into Google’s results.

So, while the SEO community was bracing for a major Google update that would collapse clients’ search rankings and change SEO as we know it, all data points to there being no major change to the algorithm, only that Penguin will no longer require manual updates. There is some debate in the SEO community whether this is a positive or negative change, and we believe it is an overall positive for SEO. That is to say, white-hat SEO! The reason we feel this way is if a website does something that negatively impacts their SEO or keyword rankings, it will show immediately in their results, rather than waiting months to get evidence of a penalty. That way, Penguin penalties can be more easily avoided and fixed once they are found.

Submit Digital is fortunate that none of our existing clients have been impacted by any of the recent Penguin updates, which is a testament to the quality of our white hat SEO services. If you believe you may have a penguin penalty on your website, contact us today to discuss how we can help get your website back on the right track.

After Google’s Penguin update, many common link building practices were made unviable, and even devalued the sites and keywords they once promoted.  Many sites that previously had top rankings for their industry keywords found themselves wiped off the Google map because of poor quality links and/or a Penguin “spam flag.”  If you noticed a sudden drop in rankings on or around April 24^th and/or May 25^th, you are probably impacted by Penguin.  Google also sent out unnatural link notices around those dates, so if you received one of those, you definitely have a problem.  If you received a notice from Google around July 19^th, you can probably ignore it because Google admitted to sending out notices on that date by mistake.

This does not necessarily mean you have to rush out and start trying to remove all of your old links.  Removing links is a time consuming and frustrating process that you may not always have to do.  Certainly prioritizing those efforts to remove the links hurting you the worst is a solid strategy.  Deleting links should be a last resort, and not something you should do right away, and definitely not without doing some research first.

There are three reasons to remove links.  The first is if you received an unnatural link notice from Google.  The second is if you have any de-indexed links as these will hurt the most.  The third is if you received a Penguin spam flag, which as noted above, would come in the form of a drastic reduction in keyword rankings on or around 4/24/12 and 5/25/12. Despite which reason you have for removing links, the same approach should be used.

If you received an unnatural link notice from Google, it requires action on your part.  You need to show Google that you did your best to investigate and remove any and all “bad links,” and also show good intent moving forward.  The unnatural link notice is considered by most to be a penalty put in place by an algorithm that requires manual action to remove, which is why responding to the unnatural link notice is important, or your rankings may never improve.

Start your link un-building process by researching which links are causing the most damage, which are links from sites that have been de-indexed by Google and have an N/A PR rating.  De-indexed links should always be removed first.  Be sure to only remove links that are not helping your site or rankings (at best useless, at worst hurting your site).  Just because you received an unnatural link notice, does not necessarily mean all of your links are bad, so prioritize your efforts to remove the worst links first.

If you need assistance with researching your link profile and prioritizing which links to try and remove first, you may want to enlist the services of a professional SEO firm.  The experts at Submit Digital can perform a full site and link profile evaluation to help support you through the process of removing bad links, managing your unnatural link notice, and getting your rankings back by using effective white-hat methods.

Link building is arguably the most important factor for SEO. However, there’s a right and wrong way to build links, as well as good and bad sources. You could also have great links, and a lot of them, but it won’t do you much good if your site isn’t optimized with proper written content, meta-titles, descriptions, etc. So, while link building is important, it’s still just one piece of the SEO puzzle that needs to be managed.

In the not so distant past, link building was all about quantity regardless of quality. The sites with the most backlinks received the highest keyword rankings and authority. Link exchanges, forum commenting, blog commenting, and other links now viewed as poor quality worked extremely well, and were very cheap to obtain. Many overseas SEO companies popped up in India and other countries which would literally build thousands of links per month, and it worked! The game has certainly changed….

Nowadays, these types of poor quality links will most likely end up hurting your rankings, and lowering your site’s overall authority and recognition from Google. The Panda and Penguin Google algorithm updates made these links obsolete, and dangerous. However, that hasn’t stopped SEO companies from offering them, so be aware!

The best link building opportunities come from relevant websites with relevant content and high page rank. The days of cheap mass-link building on irrelevant sites are over. Google looks at relevance and domain authority of incoming links and attaches much more importance to them. If you’re optimizing for “ripe oranges” you are going to want to build links from websites about oranges, fruit, food, or other relevant factors. Look for websites with the highest PR possible, because those will be the most valuable. The incoming link should be from a page with relevant and unique written content, as that will further increase the value of that link.

Having trouble building effective links for your website? Contact us today to learn more about our high value link building process we perform for our SEO clients.

We’ve discussed the importance of on site content in previous blog postings, and I’ll get into some more in this post. Along with external links, social media, and site traffic stats, on site content is one of the key factors in a successful SEO campaign. When we say “on site content” we mean specifically the written content on the homepage as well as category pages.

Written content is critical because Google values it much higher than it ever did previously so it’s important to have proper written content, especially on ecommerce sites which are notorious for being light on written content. Ever since the Panda update in early 2011, written content has become critically important on site, as well as in off-site link opportunities. In order to get the proper recognition and authority from Google, you should have unique relevant content on your homepage, and all category and sub-category pages, and specifically the category pages that you are targeting for SEO.

Another important point to consider with ecommerce on site content is the product descriptions. Very often, the same products are sold on multiple websites with the same manufacturer product descriptions. Google picks up the product descriptions as duplicate content across the different sites which could hurt your rankings and SEO. The best-case scenario for this is to re-write all of your product descriptions so they are sure to be unique across all websites selling the same product. This is of course time and resource intensive, but good things never come without a cost, and if you want to stay ahead of your competition, this is one way to make sure you do.

As part of our SEO services, Submit Digital identifies the proper category pages for each keyword targeted, and then writes unique content for your website. Once that content is written, the client approves it and we then post it on the website to begin getting immediate traction… “immediate” in the SEO world being the next time Google indexes.

We already discussed the importance of organic keyword results for ecommerce businesses. Another area of Google that ecommerce businesses should optimize is their Google shopping results, also known as Google product search. By getting your products into the Google product search results you will increase your exposure to potential customers. If a customer is searching for a specific product, they may end up looking at Google shopping, and if your products aren’t listed there, you have no chance of securing a sale. There are a couple ways to submit your products to Google shopping, the first is a product feed by using an XML file, FTP, or Google Merchant Center. The second way to get your products into Google shopping is to use the Content data API for Shopping, which can be fully integrated similar to other Google data APIs. This method is more technical and difficult to set up.

Not only do your products need to be listed in Google shopping, they need to be competitively priced in order to compete within that space. Consumers are more and more price conscious these days, especially when Google shopping lists out all of the available options and prices with the ability to sort by price, etc. Many times when customers are searching for a brand name product, they don’t care where they get it as long as they get it for a good price. Unfortunately price plays a large role in the success of Google product search, so if you hope to make sales with Google shopping, your pricing must be competitive.

The third piece of the Google shopping puzzle is getting your producs to rank high on the first page of results. The first thing to consider is obviously that you have to have the exact product in Google shopping. If someone searches for “Brand X Product Z” you need to have that set up. The next thing to consider is your website’s overall SEO which plays a large part in how your products are ranked. The last, and arguably most important aspect of Google shopping product rankings is the number of reviews (positive reviews) your products have. Google accounts for the product reviews on many different review sites, and considers that data when choosing which items to display first.

Organic keyword results are the bread and butter of search engine optimization, although, effective methods of how to improve your keyword rankings have changed quite a bit over the last year or two. That doesn’t change the fact that ecommerce websites simply must have some good organic keyword rankings for their industry and products if they want to be competitive, make sales, and stay in business! The difference between a keyword ranked in the 11th position to the 3rd and especially the 1st position can often mean a tremendous increase in traffic to your website. Conservative estimates say about 18% of keyword traffic clicks on the 1st search result, while more aggressive estimates say closer to 36%. That traffic, of course, then becomes opportunities to create sales for your website.

Speaking of turning traffic into sales – this is a very important aspect of making your ecommerce business successful. No amount of SEO or top rankings will make you successful if you have a terrible website that is ineffective at securing sales. You obviously need products that your customers want, at competitive prices, have a simple checkout process, and ideally something to keep your customers coming back for more. That could be a customer loyalty program, great customer service, niche products, contests, promotions, and many other things. Use your imagination and think through how you can turn your existing sales into additional future sales.

So now we all know and understand that having top positions in Google is a necessity to running an effective ecommerce business, and getting there is another story. There are many schools of thought on the best way, or the most efficient way, to increase a particular website’s keyword rankings. If you ask ten SEO experts you may get ten different answers. The truth is it really depends on each specific website and its current situation. There are so many factors that contribute to keyword rankings that websites must be looked at and strategized individually. There are four main areas of focus that most SEO experts agree contribute to a website’s keyword rankings, and they are, in no particular order: on-site optimization, social media presence, external linking, and the site’s traffic results (e.g. traffic to site, click through rates, bounce rates, etc.). These four points will be discussed in more detail in a future blog.