Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-29 #theSEONewsBlog
- Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]: We found a boatload of spectacular tech from which to choose this week, and strang… http://t.co/bd8PQMdz #
- Do People Really Want Self-Driving Cars? [VIDEO]: Who wants a self driving car? Researchers at J.D. Power and As… http://t.co/ArFh4l68 #
- Interest in Pinterest Reaches a Fever Pitch [INFOGRAPHIC]: Could Pinterest be the silver bullet for retailers on… http://t.co/at6dCbUi #
- Pokémon Art Tumblr Reimagines 151 Original Characters [PICS]: “Gotta catch ‘em all!” Well, in a real-life game o… http://t.co/NT9IVIf8 #
- Winklevoss Twins Start Up a Venture Capital Firm [VIDEO]: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who claimed to… http://t.co/gLxqKH0d #
- Apple Flirting with Epix for Streaming Video From 3 Major Studios [VIDEO]: As rumors continue to run rampant abo… http://t.co/gJxXQqIe #
- At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Tech is in the House:This weekend kicks off one of Washington D…. http://t.co/kJdPAZoL #
- 5 Tips for Great Content Curation:You’ve heard the buzz word — curation — being thrown around like it’s a g… http://t.co/o5I6RiSz #
Click here to read more updates…
Google Penguin Hits Spam Sites Hard
Google has been updating the algorithm quite a lot over the past 18 months or so. Panda, which isn’t the algorithm proper, but an algorithm filter that Google runs monthly, hit first around the beginning of 2011. Due to its nature, it updates itself and every time it does, there are features that Google reports on a regular basis on the Webmaster Central blog.
Humbolt Penguin at Whipsnade Zoo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But there’s a new bird come down from the north. It was launched on Tuesday, April 24, which Google is calling “Google Penguin.” Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team refers to this update as the “over-optimization filter,” and many sites are seeing its effects. If you’ve been doing anything to “spam” Google, you may not have seen its effects just yet, but it always takes an algo change days to flow through the Web. Keep a close eye on your page positions and your traffic.
Here are some things that may cause you to be a victim of the Penguin:
- Keyword stuffing
- Link cloaking
- Hidden text
- Irrelevant keywords
- Duplicate content
It used to be that Google worried only about duplicate content on your own website, but since a recent Panda update, they’re policing duplicate content that exists on the Web, as well. (Warned ya.)
Check your Google Webmaster Tools account for a message from Google. Recently, they sent out notifications that links pointing to the recipient’s site looked less than normal. So, if you’ve been participating or creating your own link wheels or blog networks, you may have been hit, as well.
What to do about Google Penguin?
Click here to find out what you can do about Google Penguin consequences
Google Drive Has Arrived!
Have you been paying too much for storage/sharing service? Well, on Wednesday, Google came out with “Google Drive,” a less expensive alternative to DropBox and some of the other storage and sharing services.
Here’s a cost comparison:
| Google Drive | Dropbox | Box.net |
| 5G: Free | 2G: Free | 5G: Free |
| 25G: $2.49/mo. | 50G: $9.99/mo. | 25G: $9.99 |
| 100G: $4.99/mo. | 100G: $19.99/mo. | 50G: $19.99 |
| 1T: $49.99/mo. | 1T: contact for pricing | 1T: $15 |
When I first saw Matt Cutts’ Google Plus post about the unveiling, Google Drive seemed to be much less expensive. And it is, if you’re looking for 100G of storage or less. That will hold a lot of stuff! But if you’re a business running multiple websites, you might be better off with Box.net.
Google Drive will work with anyone else who has Google Drive, and Dropbox will work with anyone else who has Dropbox. Box.net is different in that you can only share with a link, whereas Google Drive and Dropbox will allow you to share whole folders with other users.
Another bene of Dropbox is that it perks you for referrals. So, if you refer people at the free level, they add 500M storage for everyone you refer up to 16G of extra space. At the $9,99 level, you get an extra 1G for every referral to that level, up to 32G.
WebSitesLike.org: Find Websites in Your Niche in a Flash
Since Google has cracked down on linking over the past year or so, more and more folks are relying on guest posting on other people’s blogs for backlinks. You probably noticed that I published a guest post yesterday, and was glad to have it. It was well-written, about my niche, and unique to the Internet. Just what the doctor ordered.
No, I don’t like guest posts because I’m lazy. As you know, I’m a professional writer, so I love writing this blog and I’m very picky about what’s posted here. But writing day after day is not just time consuming, it sometimes takes me hours to decide on what I’m going to write about. So, many blog owners love guest posters, and I’m one of them. Not to often, but I really can use the time now and then.
I have to tell you, though, last week was amazing!
First, I find out that this blog was selected for Cision’s Top 100 Social Media, Internet Marketing, and SEO blogs and that we came in at #17! That really made my Wednesday.
But then, I got a request for that guest post from Lorne Fade that I posted Tuesday and the infographic request for the post you saw on Monday. That request gave me more to write about, which is always good, and if someone contacts me with a killer idea, I’m all about that. I don’t approve every guest post I get, though, and I certainly don’t write about every idea. Yet, these two things were bomb.
And then, the third cool thing that happened was that I got a request to check out this website called “WebsitesLike.org,” which brings us back around to the topic I started (sorry, I digressed) — guest posting. Anyway, I checked it out, and was quite pleased with what I found.
Click to find out why WebsitesLike.org will save you time…
Is Google Moving Towards a More Localized Placement System?
seo block (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Search isn’t just about “generalized” search anymore. Today, local search is every bit as important, if not more so, but as we move to our tablets and smartphones, it’s definitely a consideration. In the following guest post, my colleague from Toronto, Lorne Fade, poses the question:
Is Google Moving Towards a More Localized Placement System?
*****
Rankings have always been the elusive goal for any SEO worth their weight. Manipulating the search results by growing a site with quality content and quality links has been a mainstay for SEO for the past 5 years at least. But something is amiss, things are changing shape at Google and in order to stay ahead of the curve you need to adapt and react to the changes. This is where my theory behind “Localized SEO” has come into play.
Local SEO in the broad sense is ranking for a target keyword with an added geo-location in order to capture traffic from a specific locale and market your niche to exactly those people in your geo-target radius. But what I am referring to is more of a grand scheme of localized SEO based on search results for users that are logged in. It happened about a month ago, rankings dropped and we started to analyze the link graph to try and find out what was going on. The findings are definitely interesting and at a bare minimum provide some insight as to what is going on behind the scenes at Google’s ranking kitchen.
Cooking up a #1 ranking used to be easy if you were targeting a broad term in a geo-location, however this is not true anymore. Rankings cannot be bought and must be earned through hard work and delivery, I am a firm believer of this. After doing some analysis of various link graphs for my competition, I started to notice a trend with the incoming links for my competitors.
Click here to read more about Google’s shift to local search…
You Really Don’t Need an MBA
I graduated from college in 1974. Yeah, yeah… I know you may not have even been born then. 
But ever since that time, I’ve wondered whether an MBA would have been helpful to me. As a professional writer, I realized that I didn’t even need my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Math to write the books I did, though I suppose you could say that my education played some part. Yet, I didn’t have to show editors my diploma to get them to publish what I wrote. They didn’t care if I was a college graduate or a high school dropout. They cared only that I wrote well and could finish a book to the quality they desired.
But when I started in banking — way back right after college, I figured an MBA couldn’t hurt, but felt that I just couldn’t take the time. I was already married, working and well… An MBA took 2 years or even 12 months in an accelerated program, and I was like 29 at the time! I had all the time in the world! And still, for years, I’ve wondered why I never took that further study on. I figured I could have done sooo much better. But then again, maybe not.
Somewhere in my mind I just knew that I didn’t really need an MBA. To be an entrepreneur, nobody looks at your sheepskins. And if you’re running your own business online and don’t have your own platinum-plated MBA, I’m guessing you’ll be glad to see this infographic:
Created by: MBAOnline.com
So, why would a site called “MBAOnline.com” create such a thing?
Click here to find out why MBAOnline.com isn’t what you’d expect…
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-22 #theSEONewsBlog
- Google Grew Their Own Earth Day Logo: Google has a special Earth Day logo that flips through the various cycles … http://t.co/Dgvag7zi #
- Norway Massacre Survivor Does Reddit Q&A:Anders Behring Breivik, the shooter behind Norway’s July 2011 massa… http://t.co/vlDSzkjQ #
- William Shatner Takes His Millionth Twitter Follower Out To Dinner [VIDEO]: Following William Shatner on Twitter… http://t.co/IcRFgsrv #
- Why Mr. Sato Took on the 1,050-Piece Bacon Burger [VIDEO]: A man walks into a Japanese Burger King and orders a … http://t.co/3oKQPByk #
- How Social Media Gave the UFC a Fighting Chance [INFOGRAPHIC]: The UFC 145 combat contest happens Saturday night… http://t.co/TeN6aej0 #
- Parking Panda Helps You Find, Rent & Rent Out Parking Spaces:The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique … http://t.co/0s0rPin8 #
- Mobile Advertising: 5 DIY Tips for Small Businesses:When it comes to digital advertising, small business o… http://t.co/FyOORSlc #
- An End to Wireless ‘Bill Shock’? New Site Points the Way:Just in case wireless companies such as Verizon an… http://t.co/i8neNOuD # Read More…
