Google Matt Cutts: 25-30% Of Duplicate Content is Okay

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video few days back about duplicate content and the repercussions of it within Google’s search results.

Matt said that somewhere between 25% to 30% of the content on the web is duplicative. Of all the web pages and content across the internet, over one-quarter of it is repetitive or duplicative.

Matt Cutts says you don’t have to worry about it. Google doesn't treat duplicate content as spam. It is true that Google only wants to show one of those pages in their search results, which may feel like a penalty if your content is not chosen — but it is not.

Google takes all the duplicates and groups them into a cluster. Then Google will show the best of the results in that cluster.

Matt Cutts did say Google does reserve the right to penalize a site that is excessively duplicating content, in a manipulative manner. But overall, duplicate content is normal and not spam.

Google Reduces Authorship Rich Snippets In Search Results

The head of search spam at Google, Matt Cutts, has confirmed that Google has applied a 15% reduction in the amount of rich snippets displayed in the search results.

Matt Cutts announced at PubCon a couple months ago that this would happen, saying that the ability to have and use rich snippets may be taken away for low quality sites in the coming months. And this has indeed happened. Matt said this would likely reduce authorship by 15% to only show more authoritative authors.

Cyrus Shepard wrote that the MozCast features tool noticed a drop in authorship and webmasters have recently been complaining about their authorship being dropped out.

New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm

Google has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called “Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far.

Hummingbird is the new search algorithm that Google is using, one that Google says should return better results. Hummingbird looks at page rank of a page, how important links to a page are deemed to be, page quality, words used on it etc.

Google started using Hummingbird about a month ago, it said. Google only announced the change today. Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda. Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words.

Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

But it does not mean that SEO is dead. According to Google guidance are still the same like high quality content, unique content. Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.

Google Cut Off Keyword Data - Moves Entirely to Secure Search

Google has switched all searches over to encrypted searches using HTTPS. This means no more keyword data will be passed to site owners. It appears that Google has cut off keyword data altogether.

Encrypted Google searches don't pass the keyword data through to websites, thereby eliminating the ability to track users by their keyword searches. The biggest impact for many site owners has been not being able to segment users by keywords within their web analytics software.

I was so expecting that. Google wants to generate more and more money from Adwords which means they need to make SEO difficult so that companies can move to PPC to get results.

But keyword data from other search engines like Bing still send keyword data through.

Link based Negative SEO and its Impact

This article is focused on competitor's approach of buying or building low quality backlinks of your website to diminish its rankings in search engines. This is the most common attack from competitors these days. If you found sudden decrease in your website ranking and traffic, then is the possibility that your website suffers with competitors negative link attack. There are many kind of attacks:-

- Buying Low-Quality Links to the Homepage vs. a Subpage
- Single Spam Attack vs. Multiple Attacks Over Time
- Attack on New Website vs. Established Website

The main motive of attack is taking down a competitor website isn't the only motive for building low-quality links to a website. Occasionally, spammers will build low-quality links to help boost the equity of links pointing to their site from your site.

Negative SEO link attacks that are focused on diminishing the organic search visibility of a website tend to be targeted to the homepage, low-quality backlinks tend to point to the homepage. Conversely, negative SEO link attacks that are targeted for boosting existing links on a page tend to appear deeper on a website, low-quality backlinks tend to point to deeper of a website, often areas where there is user-generated content.

So keep in mind when you have new website, you have to take care about link niche. Focus to create heavy Page rank and branded websites relevant links. avoid any kind of submission links in starting, monitor your inbound links at least once a month for the first year of the life of your site.

If you have been impacted by a negative SEO link attack varies depending on your unique situations, then quickly check the scope of impact and hit. Check was your home page impacted or subpages. Check traffic in webtrends, omniture and Google analytics. Check Google webmaster for unnatural links. Keep record of what kind of links created by your team. Disavow spam links in Google and Bing. Submitt for reconsideration request in webmasters.

How to Increase the Profitability of Your Content

Most site owners and businesses know exactly which pages on their site are the most profitable (i.e., the content that drives the most leads and/or revenue). If you run a site and you don't know, then you really should figure it out today.

- Move your top content page higher up in the site structure/ navigation and mega menu so it gets crawled more frequently by search engines and seen more often by viewers. This is a clear indication for all that you give more value to your content.

- Add contextutal links in your top content pages to relevant pages so that user get easily move to other relevant pages of your site.

since a primary goal of most organizations is to grow revenue, they might work to increase the profitability of their top pages with tactics like:

   > Hiring a conversion rate optimization specialist.
    >Using a fantastic A/B tool like Unbounce to test and iterate.
    > Conducting user tests to increase conversions, using an insanely affordable tool.

Tips for YouTube Optimization for Local SEO

1. Geotag Your Video

First, you obviously should “geotag” your video in order to associate it with the geocoordinates of your business location. To do this, go into the Advanced settings for the video within the Video Manager. YouTube makes it simple by providing a search field — enter the address location here and click the Search button. The location is then displayed on a little popup map where you may further refine the location by dragging the pinpoint marker. Once saved, YouTube converts your location information into longitude and latitude coordinates for storage.

YouTube Location Map - Geocoding Videos

It’s grown a little unclear as to how Google uses this information at this point. In the not-too-distant past, these videos could be accessed via a layer in Google Maps, and YouTube offered an advanced option for searching for videos within an area. Both of these options are gone, but the data is still there in the background and may continue to impact whether a particular video is deemed to be more relevant for searchers according to geographic proximity. (The YouTube Trends Map displays the most popular videos on a map, but that seems to be based on the locations of the people viewing the videos.)

Contextually, other things associated with the video might also be considered more relevant for its location area as well. Google may bring this data back to the surface once more, so long as the Video Manager interface continues to collect this data from end users.

2. Link To Your Business In The Description

Include a link to your business website at the beginning of the video description. Now, these links are automatically “nofollowed” by YouTube, but there seems to be ranking value of some sort conveyed from the videos to the business’s local search ranking ability. Perhaps Google transfers keyword associations with the link, while no PageRank is transmitted — or perhaps local citation value is being conveyed, since there is no way of “nofollowing” citations.

3. Include Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone), Part I

Include your business name, address and phone number in the frames near the end of the video (and perhaps your website URL as well). Text within videos can be “read” out of the data by Google’s interpretation algorithms, based on the application of optical character recognition.

4. Include Your NAP, Part II

Actually stating your business name, address and phone in the video’s audio will be worthwhile, since this may be automatically converted into the text transcripts produced by Google’s systems.

YouTube Transcripts

Text transcripts are now automatically generated on YouTube, if the video contains recognizable speech.

5. Utilize The Description Field

Mention your address, city location and phone number in the description text. The description field in YouTube is actually very generous, so while your initial paragraph or sentences should clearly describe what the video is about, you could also include a section after that which provides a short biography about your company (and differentiators that might persuade consumers to choose you above your competition).

6. Tag Your Video

Include your business category name and your location names as tags on the video. The keyword tags have long been one of the “secret weapons” for YouTube optimization, so add in a handful of relevant tags for each video. Tags can be multi-word phrases as well as single word terms.

7. Associate The Video With Your Google Places Listing

You will need to add the video to your business listing in Google Places.

Adding YouTube in Google Places

When adding the YouTube URL in Google Places, be sure to use the full page URL and *not* the shortened YouTube URL provided for sharing — the shortened URL will not work in Google Places for unfathomable reasons.

8. Associate The Video With Your Google+ Local Page

Add the video to your Google+ Local page. Once you’ve added the video there, you and your employees can share the video on your personal Google+ streams. The numbers of shares are and indicator of popularity.

Adding videos on your Google+ Local page

9. Promote Your Video

Further promote the video via your social media accounts, particularly on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+. If you provide the video through all the various channels where you’re promoting your business, potential customers can run across it and view it.  All the various views add up to help your video in rankings. All the popularity measures may not only help the video itself to rank, but the citational value conveyed to your business may help with rankings in local search results as well.

10. if you’ve got more than one video, it’s worthwhile to optimize your YouTube channel with a description, link to your website, and links to a few of your main social media profiles. Google likes videos because people like videos. This has given videos fairly good influence in search. Using these tips to optimize your video content may provide you with a very strong tool for augmenting your local search rankings!

SEO Fundas Infographics

SEO Fundas |

Importance of Creating Branded Social Media Profiles

Social media profiles should be unique and, more importantly, they should coincide with a company’s branding goals. A company should never opt for using standard templates or imagery when customization is an option – and, in most cases, it most certainly is always an option. Instead, consider using logos or other recognizable company branding when creating profile photos, icons, backgrounds, and color schemes.

Unfortunately though, many small businesses fail to understand the importance of creating branded social media profiles and will simply ignore this part in the process. This is a huge mistake.

The use of a detailed company bio or banner graphic can do much to attract new community members and even new customers. Additionally, a branded profile will help users who may already be aware of a company, such as its clients, colleagues, and other industry followers, to recognize it immediately when looking for it.

Companies should look to create a unique profile for each of their accounts and do so in a way that best represents their company as well the audience they are hoping to attract. Furthermore, a well-developed profile will help a company showcase the value it provides, which, in itself, creates an opportunity for a bigger, better social community, and potentially new customers in the process.

What To Do If Your Site Was Hit By Panda

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts posted a new video today talking about the Panda update. The question he tried to answer was, “what should a site owner do if they think they might be affected by Panda?”
Matt’s short answer to the question is to make sure to write high quality content, content at the level of published books or in popular magazines.

What counts as a high-quality site?

 Following are the few checkpoints that must be keep in mind to count as a high quality site:-

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Google AdWords Remarketing Tag

Google Remarketing is one of the most effective AdWords features you can use to drive conversions from the visitors to your site. It lets you to reach your website visitors with a fresh message tailored just for them – after they leave your site, you can easily engage wandering prospects and bring them back to close the sale. Your message appears to those visitors as they browse other sites in the Google Display Network or search on Google. It's a powerful way to continue the conversation you began with them on your site.

Getting started with Remarketing

There are a few simple, yet important things you need to do to enable your account for Remarketing.

1. Place the Google Remarketing Tag on all pages of your website site. To get started, you'll need to place the remarketing tag that you'll find at the end of this email on all the pages on your website. You can also find the code in the Shared library section of your AdWords account.

To ensure that all the webpages on your site include the remarketing tag, you should insert the remarketing tag in one place, where it would automatically update all the webpages on your site. Typically you would do this within your webpage template.

Forward this email along with the link to the setup guide in the Help Center to your webmaster or whoever will be adding the tag to your website.

2. Use tag validations tools to ensure proper implementation. Review whether the tag was properly implemented by using the recommended tag tools:

Tag Assistant Chrome Extension Download this tool to verify that you've installed the remarketing tag correctly. Once installed, you can just navigate to any page of your website to see which tags are on the page. Tag assistant will also tell you if there are errors to the tag and offer suggestions on how to fix it. For more information, reference this Help Center article on Tag Assistant.

Tag Validation in AdWords allows you to see whether your remarketing tag is properly firing, provides useful statistics on your remarketing tag and in the event of a problem, shows you common solutions to help troubleshoot. For more information, reference this Help Center article on Tag Validation.

3. Review the Remarketing program policy to find out what you need to include in your site's privacy policy, and which sensitive categories of sites can't use this feature.

If you've already created a remarketing campaign, the lists that are available in your campaign will start getting visitors added to them. You can also create new lists as needed.

If you haven't set up your campaign yet, follow these instructions to get started.

New Facebook for Business Hub Launches With Tips, Tools, Case Studies

Facebook is looking to make it even easier for businesses to market themselves effectively on the social media platform by launching a new Facebook for Business hub. The new hub not only features tools for businesses, it also gives useful information such as case studies as well as announcements and marketing tools.

The new Facebook for business hub is a huge improvement from their previous Business Guide they originally launched in 2011.

Facebook for Business has made a strong impact for business owners who are brand new to marketing on Facebook. The Facebook Basics section details everything from how to set up your Facebook page to how to create useful and compelling content for your audience, and how to view how each of your posts are performing. And yes, it also informs businesses how to advertise on Facebook.

For advanced users, there are plenty of tips and techniques that Facebook is offering, such as help on how to launch of new products, how to build your brand awareness, and how to increase online sales. There's even information on how to convert Facebook traffic into physical in-store traffic.

They have also added a new video library on specific Facebook areas, which they refer to as Facebook Live covering things like performance marketing and driving app install traffic through Facebook mobile.
They also have a very impressive number of case studies available. If you're used to seeing sites with only two or three case studies, you're in for a surprise. Not only do they have many different case studies, you can also filter down the success stories for things that are relevant to how you are trying to market on Facebook.

German “Ancillary Copyright” Law To Go Into Effect, Imposes Limits On Search Results

According to a report from IDG News, a “toned down” version of an earlier, more restrictive “ancillary copyright” law has been published in Germany and will go into effect in August.

The ”ancillary copyright” rule was proposed in August of 2012. In its initial form it would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items — essentially a “link tax.”

The law was pushed by German magazine and newspaper publishers who see the internet and Google in particular as the cause of many of their subscription, readership and revenue challenges.

The original law did pass the German parliament but a compromise was later negotiated to allow search engines and news aggregators to display “single words or very small text excerpts” at no cost. Anything beyond this would be subject to the publishers’ “exclusive right to commercialize” their content.

There is no “fair use doctrine” in Germany. Fair use is effectively what allows Google to exist and withstand copyright claims in the US.

Using this law as its basis, German publishers hope to establish a licensing marketplace for their content. When the law initially passed the European Publishers Council issued a statement saying the following:

The European Publishers Council (EPC) welcomes today’s decision by the German Bundestag to approve an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers’ content will no longer be able to do so without permission. The “Leistungsschutzrecht,” as it is know in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers’ content . . .
The new law will only apply to those companies who exploit commercially third party content such as content aggregators and search engines. The proposed provision signifies no change at all to possible uses by other users, or for consumers, bloggers or companies and associations who may use links or cite passages of published content.

News publishers can now demand that search engines and other providers of such services that aggregate their content, refrain from unauthorised forms of usage. These companies will need licences for such usage in the future.

The EPC believes that this law will help establish a market for aggregator content. New innovative business models can now be built based on legally licensed content.

While search engines and news aggregators in Germany will be able to show some third party news content (“single words” and modest “text excerpts”) there hasn’t been any precise definition of how many words can be shown: a fragment? a sentence? more than a sentence?

As the statement above indicates German publishers contend that even in its diluted form, the new law gives them near total control over their content. We can probably therefore assume there will be some initial litigation or attempted enforcement action by publishers to compel the narrowest possible interpretation of “text excerpts.”

Another Google Update. Confirmed

Over the past few days, the Webmaster and SEO community have been discussing significant shifts, fluctuations and updates in both the Google rankings and traffic patterns they have seen from Google’s organic search.

Is this the clear sign of another Google algorithm update? I think YES....

I discussed with plenty of webmasters and brand owners, all confirmed it. All found significant change in their keywords ranking (either UP or Down). But majority of webmasters who are doing neat marketing found happy with this update.. Good News !!!!

Well it is yet not confirmed by any Google mate.. 

According to Barry,  Google would not confirm. Instead, they gave him the boilerplate response, “We have nothing to announce at this time.” They of course added, “We make over 500 changes to our algorithms a year, so there will always be fluctuations in our rankings in addition to normal crawling and indexing.” This is nothing new; Google often will use this response when discussing matters of algorithmic changes or updates to their index.

Webmasters confirmed it. They all waiting for Google Stamp on it.. 

Good Luck...........

How To Search Like A Spy: Google's Secret Hacks Revealed

The National Security Agency just declassified a bulky 643 pages research guidebook called Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research (PDF) that doesn't appear all that interesting. That is, except for one section on page 73: "Google Hacking."

"Say you're a cyberspy for the NSA and you want sensitive inside information on companies in South Africa," explains Kim Zetter at Wired. "What do you do?"

Well, you could type the following advanced search into Google — "filetype:xls site:za confidential"  to uncover a trove of apparently private spreadsheets. 

How about an Excel file containing Russian passwords? Try: "filetype:xls site:ru login."

Declassified information being what it is, though, some of the search tips can appear a little dated.

And even if keyboard espionage isn't really your thing, the document contains a number of practical tips anyone can use to become a better Googler:

* Adding a tilde (~) immediately before a term will search for its synonyms. For example: "Scary ~animals" will also search for "scary creatures," etc.

* Repeating a word will help you find more relevant hits. For example a search for "java coffee coffee coffee" will cut down on the results about the programming language.

* You can use Google wildcard (*) to replace a term in a query if you don't know exactly what you're searching for. For example: "Sacramento is the * of California."