Google announced a major algorithmic update that primarily focuses on links recently. The new Google link algorithm, just like the previous updates, is very important to webmasters and search marketers because it can help explain the latest changes in rankings and organic website traffic.

Knowing and understanding the new Google link algorithm allows you to identify the adjustments you need to apply to your search engine optimization practices to be able to stay away from penalty and keep up with the competition.

Basically, the Unnatural Link update of March 2012 is the biggest update so far compared to the previous huge updates such as Vince in 2009, Florida in 2003 and Panda in 2011. The previous updates focused more on certain types of websites, the Unnatural Link update on the other hand is all about penalizing websites purely based on the link strategy.

As expected, it has caused huge problems for the sites that are affected. Over 700, 000 websites have received a message from Google or popularly known as the Unnatural Link Notice.

Branded3.Com, a Digital and SEO Agency in the UK, analyzed over 50 reputable websites who have been hit by Google’s latest update. In the course of their study, they have observed the following:

• Once you receive the Unnatural Link Notice in your Webmaster Tools account, a penalty will arrive within weeks
• Branded3.Com noticed some instances where violators received the penalty exactly 21 days after they get the link notice
• In most cases, the penalty is phrased based. This means that sites lose rankings for all keywords related to the ones used in the anchor text of the links Google considers as being “unnatural”
• The Unnatural Link penalty is observed too sharp to be purely link devaluation. Most of the cases show that the landing pages being hit fall lower than they would rank with no links at all.
• Penalty for the worst offenders can be sitewide

Today, Google is asking people to clean up unnatural links. One of the best ways is to contact the person who placed the links to get them removed. If not possible, you can manually email the sites and request for links removal. Removing bad links is a tough job that everybody must follow to be able to maintain and improve site rankings.

The Northern Office – Innovative Marketing helps you by staying up to date to Google updates. This gives you clues on how to improve your rankings and maintain high online visibility. If you need help or advice on search engine marketing issues, please get in touch with us. TNO is an independent marketing consultancy firm based in the Philippines with clients based in Europe, America and Asia. Call us at (045) 499-1082 today or visit our website www.thenorthernoffice.com.

source: www.branded3.com

On page optimization is a crucial aspect of SEO, yet usually overlooked. A well-optimized page can bring a significant increase in traffic. Search engines rank websites mainly dependent on two factors: search terms relevance and web authority. On page optimization helps you empower these two critical factors. Aaron Wall, founder of SEO Book states, on-page optimization is primarily concerned with:

• Choosing the best keywords available to base your pages.
• Convincing search engines that your page is related to your chosen keywords.

Traditional on page optimization techniques don’t work anymore (e.g. stuffing keywords anywhere possible) and it is time to consider new strategies that are applicable today or suffer the consequences.

1. Unique and accurate page titles Webmasters often ignore the value of page title. This is something you shouldn’t take for granted for it is the most important aspect of on-page SEO.  Every page must have unique and accurate page titles as Google lists identical titles as “duplicates”. Google will then index the duplicates as “supplemental results.”

2. “Description” meta tag Second to page titles, this SEO component also helps get traffic onto your site after you are appearing in the results. Google, for example, uses description Meta tag as a snipped for your page in the search results. Descriptions must summarize the content of the page accurately. Same as with writing titles, make sure that descriptions must speak of the content, but most of all make sure they sell the page to the viewer.

3. Search Friendly URLs For better crawling, search-friendly URLs are recommended. URLs must appear friendlier so that users who want to link to it won’t have  hard time memorizing the link. As much as possible, use words instead of numbers. URL's with session IDs and overly long URLs are not desirable.

The Northern Office helps you get ahead of the competition by utilizing up-to-date online marketing techniques that will help you get on Google’s first page in a timely fashion. TNO focuses on online marketing support which involves website hosting target particularly for corporate websites and e-commerce websites. For further details and inquiries, email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

URL shorteners have become more and more prominent in recent years because of shortening services such as "goo.gl" and "bitly."

The increased prominence of these shorteners is associated with the rise of social web, and most specially micro-blogging services like Twitter. This wasn't a huge issue for search engine optimizers, though, since Twitter and other social sdata was almost entirely disregarded by search sites - until recently.

As social search has become more important, so has understanding how SEO works for shared links. In a new Google Webmaster Help video, Google’s Matt Cutts explains exactly how the shortened URLs are treated. Cutts states that almost all shorteners are going to use a “301 permanent redirect” to move the page to the appropriate destination, and that Google will treat any links to that 301 redirect as being a link – for the sake of pagerank – to the destination.

That destination page will also receive the “social promotion” bump for any friends/followers of the original tweeter. Additionally, any other SEO data (such as anchor text, position on the page, and so forth) will be passed on. Cutts is quick to remind us, though, that a lot of additional rules apply in the world of social search. For one, most core pages on sites like Twitter have nofollow tags on any outgoing links. That doesn’t mean that the links are irrelevant, though. Beyond Google’s own social promotion, Cutts states that the links may be found in other pages – such as data feeds – where they will pass on link juice. [via Google Webmaster Help Channel]

Google analytics is probably the single most comprehensive tool that any webmaster can use to monitor the ongoing success of their site.

The fact that it is free does not detract from its overall value. But it is still only a tool; the value comes with the person that knows how to use it. To most people the graphs, charts and figures will give a basic idea of how well your site is doing. What these figures don’t do is tell you where you could improve, what’s working on your site and what isn’t. To find these answers you have to know how to interpret the data.

Where to find the answers? Bounce rate: The best place for many of us to start is with your site’s bounce rate, it’s the easiest element to understand and is often the easiest to rectify. To start, list your landing pages with the highest bounce rate, once this is done put together a list of the keywords that were used to get to these pages. Do the keywords used correspond with what is on the page? Did the searcher find what they wanted on this page; was it clear for them to see?

The keywords used and what the searcher finds on the corresponding landing page is often the highest cause of bounce rate, redesigning these landing pages to focus directly on what the searcher in looking for can have an immediate effect on your site. Other factors that may cause your landing pages to have a high bounce rate is a slow and clunky load time, over cluttered pages, poor navigation away from your landing page, or an unnatural progression away from these pages.

Goal, conversions and funnels: Analytics makes it easy to track your goals and conversion. If you’re not currently tracking these then you are essentially blind as to how well your site is doing. What is important about these elements of Google analytics is not necessarily the completion of the gold, but the steps and pages that led to the conversion.

By reviewing the click paths of any converted customer you can get a much better idea of what convinced them to take the action you wanted them to. Was there something special about the content they consumed or were you running a special campaigns that may have led to this conversion? You will find the answers in Google analytics you just need to follow their click path backwards.

Segments: Looking at the raw data can be a daunting task, aside from the fact that you could be looking at hundreds of different keywords from searches all over the world. It will also be extremely hard to try and discern any useful and actionable data.

To overcome this Google introduced segmentation which will allow you to break your traffic down by segments based on your requirements. If you want to review the search trends of the traffic coming from a specific country it will take two minutes to get a clear picture of this data by creating a new segment.

Site search: Basically site search will tell you what people search for on your site, but once you start to look at the data you will realize that it does so much more than just this, it gives you a clear idea of what your traffic really wanted from your site and what they wanted to find, the question should now be where they able to find it? Looking at the search refinement column and % if it sites exits after searching will tell you straight away if your site really provided them with the answers they were looking for.

Once you start to track your sites with Google analytics the amount of user data that will build up can help you make decisions that will have a positive effect on the future success of your site. Analytics can help you with your content strategy, competitor research, landing pages and the overall conversions of your site. SOURCE