Why I Love Matt Cutts
Like a mom. 
No, seriously, Matt spends a lot of his time giving great answers about SEO questions as they pertain to his employer, Google. And he’s very clear in his answers and some people ask really DUMB questions. So, before you watch this, understand that I totally respect the guy, but Sam Applegate of Applegate Online Ltd, made this hilarious mash-up.
Check it out:
Fun stuff, eh? Love ya, Matt!
Interesting Social Media Stats for 2012
Today, I bring you some interesting stats from TalentHQ. They did a study of different social sites, and the stats they give are the what they obtained from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. What you see here may be slightly out of date; however, the data is interesting, especially for marketers. When you see it compiled this way, you may change the way you think about advertising.
| 500 Million accounts | 175 Million tweets a day | 11 new accounts created every second, over 1 million new per day. | |
| 850+ million members | 31% check in once a day | 425 million access via mobile | |
| 10.4 Million users, faster growth than any site – ever. | Retaining and engaging 3x better than twitter “was” | 80% of users are women, 60% have attended college, 50% have kids | |
| Google+ | 90+ million users | Avg of 6 minutes on site | g+ button is served 5 billion times a day |
| YouTube | 4 billion videos viewed, every day, 1 trillion is 2011 | 800 million users per month | Auto speech recognition tech translates video and captions into 43 languages |
| SlideShare | Largest social “content” network | 400,000 new presentations uploaded per month | Top 200 web sites |
| 161 million members | 4.2 billion searches in 2011 | 22% of traffic from mobile (last week of March) | |
| Foursquare | 23 million users | 2 billion check-ins | Users and check-ins have doubled in 6 months |
Source: The Latest Social Media Stats For 2012
Talent HQ included other stats about Google and Mobile, plus more on each site listed above. The link above will take you to the actual report. But look at that!
Did you know… Click to continue reading about social media in 2012
What’s Worse a Manual Google Slap or an Algorithmic Slap?
Webmasters are still going bonkers over the latest smackdown from Google, as we discussed yesterday. And guess what? Like Panda, Penguin is something that will be applied again and again. This wasn’t a one-time smack. If yours was one of the websites hit by the algo shift, at one time or another, it’s important to understand whether you were smacked because of the algorithm or because some human person came to your site and decided that you weren’t following Google’s rules.
The BBCi Pandas (Photo credit: Bods)
Either issue isn’t good, but there are things you can do.
First, if the smackdown came because of the algorithm, Matt Cutts says that you can fix it and when your site is crawled again, Google will know that things are back on track and re-classify your site automatically.
But… if the smackdown was because a human decided you had a spammy site going and leveled you, there’s not much you can do. That is, until the penalty runs out. In the following video (I know, it’s not Thursday, but hey… this stuff is important.), you’ll see Cutts describing what happens.
Basically, if you were doing something like keyword stuffing, you’re toast for let’s say a period of 90 days. However, if you were doing some javascript cloaking magic to direct Google to one site and visitors to another — you’re toast for much longer. There’s really nothing you can do, unless you FIX the problem, and then apply for reconsideration.
Check this out:
Click here to watch Google’s Matt Cutts’ video:
Did Google’s Penguin Freeze Your Site Out of Search?
All over the Web, folks are crying over the recent updates at Google. Yes, they were massive. First, it was linking schemes and the blog networks were obliterated with one change. BANG! You’re dead. Not only were sites removed from the SERPs, but some were even removed from the INDEX! That’s bad mojo, my friends. Not being listed at all in Google was the kiss of death for some because they were relying entirely on search for their traffic. Dumb move.
Penguin (Photo credit: ChiaLynn)
But just when people were done figuring out the newest Panda filter updates, BANG! again, and people were screaming and tearing their hair over the Penguin — the “Over-Optimization” update to the algorithm. People were emailing me and saying things like, “It was there yesterday, and now, I can’t find my site ANYWHERE.”
Hmm… Could it be that you were over-dressed?
Yep. There is such a thing as over-optimization, and for the very reasons I gave about SEO Pressor being a questionable plugin, if over used, too much SEO can be a very bad thing.
If you were slapped by the Penguin, here’s what to do:
- Look at your page (whichever page suffered, if not all of them, but I’m guessing it will be your homepage).
- How many times did you use your keywords on the page? You can find the density by simply copying your page and plugging it into http://Live-Keyword-Analysis.com, which is a great way to test the density of any page or article.
- If the density is much over 2%, I’m guessing you have too many keywords on your page. Nobody really knows what the density quotient is for Google’s algorithm, but I’ve always stuck to around 2% and keyword stuffing has never been an issue for me. (Keyword stuffing was one big thing that the new update addressed.)
- Get rid of the keywords and replace them with synonyms wherever possible. You can do it right in that LKA blank so that you can see the impact as you change things.
Click here to read more about what you can do to beat the penguin back…
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-05-13 #theSEONewsBlog
- Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson Offically Steps Down [UPDATED]:Update: Yahoo has officially announced Thompson is n… http://t.co/tFIUNCny #
- Apple Drops 4G Branding From New iPad:Apple is changing the way it’s marketing the iPad + 4G, dropping the 4… http://t.co/hBNZGXmZ #
- The History of Social Recruiting Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]: Digital recruiting has certainly come a long way in s… http://t.co/BsDegTx4 #
- I added @kylebattis as one of my influencers on @klout. Who influences you? http://t.co/L6nDxUDq #
- I received +K in internet marketing from @Kate_AllisonTDN, thanks! http://t.co/5nleoYHT #
- Google’s Happy Mother’s Day Logo (2012 Edition): Google has a special animated logo on their home pages worldwid… http://t.co/wTbOw9Hl #
- Answer Your Phone While Skiing With These Neva Ski Poles [VIDEO]: Salt Lake City-based Anthony Griesel spent the… http://t.co/YIMkLAtF #
- 20 Sites Every Cool Mom Should Know: Whether or not they’ll admit it, all moms aspire to be hip. In 2012, that m… http://t.co/aqnqkQ02 #
- 9 YouTube Cooking Channels That Will Make Your Mouth Water: Put away those frozen meals and start cooking like a… http://t.co/1FakZ6fk Read More…
Google Chrome Now Offering Language Training?
Have you ever thought you wanted to learn a new language, but just couldn’t pony up the expense for Rosetta Stone? I know I have. I mean, I learned Spanish in high school and college — 5 years worth, and guess what I remember? Un poco. I mean, I can usually undertand, if people speak slowly and clearly, but I live in Florida and so many times I’ve wished that I was fluent.
I’m not sure this new Chrome extension will do that for you, but check this out:
Cool, non? I mean, it would sure help me as a refresher, and maybe it can help you, too.
Not sure what it has to do with SEO, but it was so interesting, I just wanted to share. Oh, and it IS Google. They’re coming up with new cool stuff all the time. So, get this extension at the Chrome Web Store here: http://goo.gl/F2Zms Enjoy!
UpDowner.com: Get Some “Not Provied” Keywords Back
I was over at Google Webmaster Tools today, checking on stats for this blog. As usual, I make sure that my sitemap is working, that there’s no malware running, see how Google Plus is doing, and a few other metrics that I feel are important. One of those is “sites linking in,” of course, and sometimes, I find interesting information there. I’ve seen UpDowner.com before and think I checked it out, but it has so many links to my site working now, I figured I should give a look based upon the new guidelines from Google and their narrowed brows at spam linkage.
UpDowner.com is a metrics site, somewhat similar to Alexa. However, the information you can get there is quite different. Here’s one of the charts it provides:
This shows that my blog’s reach has been steadily increasing (which I’ll totally take) and is on the list of “Fastest Growing Sites,” as I’ve increased readership by 1,700 folks in the past 90 days. The site also gives you information about your bounce rate, page views per user, and the time folks spend on your site, once they arrive. This is pretty much all stuff you can find in Google Analytics, right? Not terribly impressive.
What makes it worth checking out is this:
Learn why UpDowner.com might be worth checking out…
