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Link Shy After The Latest Google Panda Workings
Have You Become Link Shy With The Latest Google Updates?
Link shy – the fear of linking to the wrong website or blog. It would appear the latest Google Panda update of about 2 weeks ago now affected sites with links to various types of websites. Anything that appears unnatural may have been hit.
What types of links should one be weary of?
The ones listed below may be obvious to some but to others they may not be.
- Broken links.
- Sites that haven’t updated in ages.
- Sites or pages that call themselves “links.”
- Sites or pages that may call themselves a “directory” – this one is a very hard one to call. Check relevancy.
- Paid links.
- Article submission websites.
- Affiliate links – must be NO-follow. A follow affiliate link is not good for SEO. A no-follow affiliate link is fine.
Of course you can watch Matt Cutts on this topic too as I have a few times now.
Matt sure does not make it crystal clear, does he? I have received emails from various websites that have asked for their links to be dropped from our sites. After I keep deleting links I thought, why not just get rid of these resource pages on the retail sites? No other retail sites coming up on the first pages in search had them anymore. I cut the cord. Ouch. I’ve become very link shy. Have you?
Is Blogging The Only Way To Get Link Juice Today?
It would seem in many cases blogging is the best way to get link juice. You must be blogging great content and link out to authoritative websites. The old days of link pages are gone. Although I still receive emails from companies wanting to link up. I guess they don’t watch any of Matt Cutts videos or read any information on the latest Google updates. They are not link shy at all! I once did an article with 40 ways to be found online. I’m referring to it today still for our new website.
Google and Facebook Are Not Your Only Source of Traffic 
Just remember don’t rely just on Google or any other search engine or website for your all your traffic. Diversify your links and your website so you can be found many ways. You may rely on a particular site or blog for your traffic and one day that site may go down or shut down. Never put all your eggs in one basket. The same goes for social media, some folks rely just on Facebook or Twitter. It’s good to have at least 3 networks you can go from if something at one changes. Why invest all your time in just one place? And that place changes or goes down what do you do? Being in 3 social networks you can easily switch to the other 2 and gradually add a new one. Of course if you are in 10 social networks it may be overhwelming and you may not be forming any relationships because you are in so many places. I’ve been invited to more new places the past few months and had to pass. I hate to say no but I can only be spread so thin. How about you?
I’d love to know other ways you are using to link up with other quality websites or if you have become link shy of late.
The Ultimate Personal SEO Checklist for 2013
Your Personal SEO
This is the reality of SEO in 2013. Google believes that you are an accumulation of your activities online. When you have a Google profile, you are telling the search engine what you “own” and marking your online territory. It’s your personal SEO. If you have a generic name like Susan Silver this becomes important to distinguish yourself from others. You need to be auditing your personal search results in Google and Bing. I am going to make this task easier by giving you my personal SEO branding checklist.
7 Steps for a Personal SEO Audit
1. Google your website and name.
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Track the results in a spreadsheet. In the picture you can see that I have done a sample search for “Cirquedumot”. I would note the position of each result and what pages appear. This should be part of your weekly SEO review.
2. Log your social media profiles and social networks
Perform a social media audit to find all those apps you signed up for and never used. Delete them if you can, clean up your social media mess!
3. Add Your author archives and social networks to your Google profile
Your Google Plus profile is chock full of personal SEO goodness. Don’t neglect the links that appear at the bottom of your profile; “Other Profiles”, “Contributor to”, and “Links”. In particular the contributor section should link to the author archive from blogs where you have guest posted. This will lead to rich snippets for your guest posts in search, if you have added the “rel=author” tag to the Google+ link in your bio.
On WordPress they take the form http://blog.com/author/yourname. It can also be found by clicking on the “written by name” on a published post, which usually goes to the archive page. This does vary by blog.
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4. Create a Hub for your personal SEO
Your hub is the foundation of your SEO work. This really should be your main blog as building on anything you don’t own is liable to disappear or change their user agreement in an unfavorable way. Make sure that your blog is shareable, usable on a multitude of devices, and links to every important aspect of your online daily life. Keep as much content as you can on your blog. Instead of sharing a pin from Pinterest, embed it in a blog post and share that instead. Always prioritize driving traffic to your hub. If people follow you in other places consider it something extra nice.
5. Create a branding kit
I have a little file folder on my computer. Its contents; avatars, long bio, medium bio, short bio, one sheet of accomplishments, various elevator pitches, and a spreadsheet that lists my best work samples with their corresponding bit.ly links for tracking. Everything you need should always be available only a copy & paste or upload away.
6. Rewrite your social media profiles for consistency
You know a lot about yourself now and you have a branding kit at your disposal. You want to make sure that all your social media profiles point to your hub and contain your top keywords. This will change and evolve over time, do a review every 3 months to update.
7. Tweet only the best things when you self-promote
Automation is great, but using a plugin like Tweet Old Posts is not efficient in my opinion. For one thing, you can only share what has appeared on your blog. What about all those great guest posts that you did? Or that one pin that drove all that traffic back to your website? The spreadsheet in your branding kit should include all the urls that matter for your personal brand.
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I use IFTTT to add these links to my buffer to be tweeted. You see, this means that they are always optimized for timing (another thing Tweet Old Posts cannot do). I never have to touch the tweets again if those times change. I just update my buffer schedule and they still go out at the right time!
Personal SEO, like all work in search, is about maintenance. These steps should get you ready to tackle most of the hurdles you will face optimizing your personal brand. I always say… prepare what you need before you need it.
Cheers to a stress free and an SEO friendly 2013! Have you checked your own personal SEO out yet?
Using Webmaster Tools To Find Holes In Your Keywords
Webmaster Tools Can Help You Find Holes in Your Keywords
Do you often check out your Google Webmaster Tools? I do check daily for my retail websites. I use it mostly for broken links (Under Health, Crawl Errors) but lately I started to look at the keywords info section and learned some new tools within them available. An eye opening experience for me and maybe you too?
How often do you log in to your Webmaster tools? Of course it is the first step to finding out more information about your website or blog. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. I don’t get in often to mine for Inspire to Thrive as I do for the retail websites. When sales go down the more I go and check out what could be happening. The same if your traffic stops coming to your blog, right? See the 3 great reasons to check your webmaster tools out below.
The part that intrigued me was the Queries with Change. It is under Traffic, then Search Queries. This part was new to me. It’s right next to the basic tab. Have you seen it on yours?
Now what really opened my eyes and bells going off for me was the results for Halloween Scrubs – the search query dropped for them 100%! Not surprising since it is November but made me realize how often things may change in search. So it is time to plug some of the holes. On the holiday page I still had the keyword Halloween, no more today! Just holidays and Christmas are relevant.
So what does this mean for you with your Webmaster Tools?
- You should log in often – at least weekly if not monthly to your webmaster tools.
- You should scroll through many of the pages for the search queries and see which keywords have changed either in queries or in the average position.
- Change some of your keywords and meta to make your page position better and to reflect what queries have gone up.
- Make a list of all your pages keywords and description titles. It will be a great reference tool for you when things change with keywords as they will.
- Don’t forget to check your keyword density too when you do make changes.
When is the last time you checked your keyword changes in Google Webmaster tools?
Backlinks Can Give Your Website Authority
The Mysterious Backlinks
Backlinks can be mysterious to many website owners and bloggers. You really don’t have full control over them. You may write the best quality content but you will still need backlinks to get page one on Google from search.
Just what are backlinks?
- Incoming links from another website.
- Websites that link to you with follow or no follow attributes.
- Also called inbound links – in case you hear that terminology and are not sure – it is one in the same word.
- Links from another website that can point to any page of your website from any page of their website.
- Backlinks should not be bought – even back in 2005 Matt Cutts spoke about buying them and that they do you NO good.
How Can You Generate Backlinks to Your Website or Blog?
- Participation in Communities – If you visit other blogs, forums, etc. and participate and they have an interest in yours they will link back to your website.
- Teach – If you can teach something in a post that is valuable – others will link to your post and share it with their friends and colleagues.
- Giveaway your own product – a product or service like an eBook, or a new plug-in or app.
- Videos – Making your own video that provides valuable content or unique content. Some people prefer watching videos vs. reading posts.
- Debate – Have a debate on your post – sometimes writing a bad review or debate about it can generate a lot of back and forth to your post.
- Social Media – Sharing your content via social media is another way to generate links to your site. Creative headlines can help expedite this tactic.
- Newsletters – If viewers have your newsletter in their email that links to your site they may link to your website for that information.
Why are backlinks so important?
- Backlinks are one of the top ways to be found on Google
- They are the building blocks of SEO
- Spiders crawl the web via links – the more links to your site the more authority your site has and will show up first in search
How Many Backlinks Does Your Site Have?
Do you know how you can check your backlinks? By using Google Webmaster Tools you can see how many links that are going to your website. Go to Traffic and then to Links to Your Site. You will notice changes from time to time as some link more or some link away from your site. It’s a great way to know who links to you. There is now a newer feature that shows you your latest links too. See screenshot below:
What other ways do you get backlinks to your website or blog?
Is Your Websites Seniority A Major SEO Factor?
Does A Websites Seniority Play A Role in SEO?
I had been doing some research on competitive websites since the Google Panda and Penquin updates and found many on page one of search for the best keywords but they did not follow Panda or Penquin guidelines. Many had way too many keywords, titles that were over 70 characters, etc. But one thing did stand out: Their sites were old. Their websites had seniority over ours.
Many websites had keyword densities that were well over the recommended 3%. Yet their website ranked #1 in Google search. (for a popular | difficult keyword to rank for). Several did not have any alternate text on their images.They too ranked on page #1 of Google for the difficult keywords. A few had no sitemaps. A couple even had very lengthy url’s for their website’s name. It got me thinking: Does seniority play a role in a website’s ranking?
I am beginning to think so. I think a websites seniority is an important factor. And other reason for many people not to give up on their websites or blogs. Too many people quit at about a year or so. Newer websites really need at least 2 years to rank well. (Unless there is not much competition in your niche, or if you are a celebrity) You may rank well in the very beginning. But after a few months boom, down you go. It is an uphill battle from then on. But then one day your seniority starts to creep up and you’ll start ranking. Of course you must be updating your content with quality stuff – not just trash to update.
Is The URL Of Your Website/ Blog An Important SEO Factor Too?
I also tested a few other websites too not just ours. You can ask my friend over at Eurobeads. I had used the SEO Quake to run some experiments. Another important factor we found is to have the keyword in your URL – your site’s name. Something I did not really do here but I’d like to rank for the word Inspire one day. I have a way to go, some of the websites on page one have been around since the 1990′s. It will take time to gain some of my websites seniority there.
I just watched a video over a SEOMoz where they disagreed back in 2011 that a websites seniority makes a difference in rank . (A very informative video to watch too) They believe you can accelerate your website or blog faster and better. An interesting concept too.
Do you think your website or blogs seniority plays a role in SEO?
