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?