SearchRankings.Net recently received a copy of an email Google sent to one of our clients. In the email Google explained to our client that they had detected unnatural links pointing to our client’s website. Here is the actual email message. Our client’s URL has been removed to in order to maintain privacy.

Google’s Warning Shot

[Message start]
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to www.abc-123-xyz.com (fake URL)

Dear site owner or webmaster of www.abc-123-xyz.com,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
[Message End]

This was of great concern to both our client, and to SearchRankings.Net. Was Google getting more aggressive? Did something else change? Why are they now sending out warnings? So many questions, so little time.

Google Slap

In the old days, if Google thought you were up to something, they just slapped you. A slap usually meant you lost most of your important rankings, and you could drop 50 spots in the search engine. 50 spots in Google is Antarctica of the search engines. In really egregious cases, Google could ban your domain name entirely. We are proud to say we have never worked with any client that has ever dealt with a complete Google ban. As a matter of fact over the last 5 years, less than 5% of the search terms we have worked with ever lost rank. Are we magicians? Maybe in with Google? No, you just have to know what you are doing, and make sure you understand the difference between a good link building campaign and a bad one.

So has Google decided to advance from “Silent Ban”, to more of a “Warning Shot” company? We were about to find out. In our client’s situation, we went through all the backlinks we could see on the website. We ran them through our relevancy and quality score analyzer (fancy way of saying SEO specialist manually reviewed every link and every website), and we removed any link that could be seen as questionable. Then we ran into something even more interesting. We found several websites that linked to our client’s website, that were not placed. These were natural links, but they came from websites, that thought they could build up their own PageRank, by linking to our client. Unfortunately these natural links hurt our client’s website. We ended up working for about a month contacting webmasters and in some cases ISP’s to get webmasters to remove links from their website. Most webmasters took our link down when we requested it, although a few delayed the process, and a few more we had to tell Google we tried to remove, but we were unable to contact the webmaster.

Google Amnesty or The Pelican Brief?

Google has used links as the primary measure of determining a websites value, rank and relevance since the search engine first made the Internet. It has constantly refined its algorithm and its processes in order to deliver the best information to the users of its search engine. The problem is, as soon as someone figures out what it takes to rank, someone else will figure out how to get it, and how to sell it. Google still did a good job of eliminating a lot of the garbage and spam from the Internet, but the service was still available. It’s important to note, there is a big difference between a qualified SEO Consulting Company, who will audit your website, make recommendations and find high quality, relevant links, and a link broker who just sells links. read more

SearchEngineLand.Com recently published an info-graphic of The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.  It’s one of the best graphical descriptions of both the results and consequences of website optimization I’ve seen.  It focuses on all the things I talk about every month, SEO Fundamentals (HTML & Architecture), Content, Links, Social Signals and Authority (Trust).  The graphic speaks for itself, and is leading my team to create a few similar info-graphics to further explain how SEO really works.  For example, we get questions every day, about what a backlink really is.  After publishing a ton of content on backlinks and videos about how they work, we still get questions about backlinks.  We will post the info-graphic as soon as it is ready.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

Another frequently asked question I, “do backlinks really work, or do they work like they use to?”  The answer is yes, Google was born on links, and unless they decide to turn into an all out social signals and recommendation engine, it will always use links to define website popularity.  The difference between links in 2012 and links in 2005 is website quality and relevance.  7 years ago it was very difficult to judge website quality, and relevance, and even harder to index the enormity of the web.  This is why changes to the Google Algorithm were annual.  These days changes can be weekly, and Google has the ability to index new pages within days.  Just type in “The Google Freshness Update” into Google and read about how Google is ranking new unique content above sites without fresh content.

Evergreen Your Content

Speaking of adding fresh content to your website, SearchRankings.Net has been working hard this month to build out a newsletter, update its social profiles and build out a new knowledgebase of SEO Answers to help visitors to our site.  We plan on rolling this out during the first quarter.  We will be testing all this new content and we are excited to see how it affects our overall PR, and our organic SearchRankings.  Stay tuned for new information being published more frequently at SearchRankings.Net

Search Engine Optimization has come a long way.  It was almost 13 years ago when ‘alpha.google.com’ first entered the World Wide Web.

Alpha.google.com

I don’t know if the term Search Engine Optimization or SEO even existed.  Search Engines were created and expanded by our need to find information.  More than a decade later, Search Engine Optimization is a requirement if you want to show up online.

The web is still wild; I wonder how many businesses had phone lines 100 years ago after the phone was first introduced.  Corporate websites didn’t really take off until the last 90’s so we aren’t even 20 years from the introduction of a corporate website.

Yellow Pages To Reviews

15 years ago, if you wanted to find a company to provide a service, you looked up the category in the Yellow Pages, and if it was 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM in most places you could call the company and ask questions.  Today we call that a Search Engine and the corporate information is now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the World Wide Web.  After you gathered your information, you might ask a friend or colleague who they use for whatever product or service you were interested in.  Today those are called Ratings and Reviews, often times submitted by people you may not know, but trust none the less.  You can reach out to your social network and ask the same question.  I was at a conference recently, and someone tweeted out a question about a book they were thinking about buying.  The author of the book saw the tweet come through and told the person to “Buy The Book!”  How’s that for marketing. read more

Here are a few interesting pieces of information for your review.

• There are approximately 1.2 billion active PC’s in the world today.

• There are approximately 3 billion active smart phones in the world today.

• The iPad is not a PC.

• Is your message, brand or website ready for a landscape dominated by new devices?

• Will your message get lost amongst all this change? How long can you wait?

I purchased my first iPad earlier this month, and I’ve been amazed at how different the iPad is from a typical laptop or tablet. I was recently at a presentation and heard the statistic about PC’s vs. Smart Phones. Let’s look at some of the ideas that have started to take shape this year, as well as a few that may be more prevalent next year.

The PC is definitely on the way out, new devices are being designed to provide a better user experience (thank you Steve Jobs R.I.P.), instead of more PC related functionality in a different form factor. We only had to wait 10 years for someone to get the whole tablet concept right. As devices improve, your business has to understand the new devices, and how they will change the way we work. More importantly you need to understand how the new devices are going to change the way people communicate, interact, shop, read, and watch TV and movies. I know it’s been said before; “this changes everything.” This time they may be right.

It’s not simply changing your PC based website to look better on a mobile device or platform, it’s understanding how your product, service or brand is going to be able to communicate with the “New Consumer”, in a more interactive and engaging way. read more

I recently read an outstanding white paper written by members of Omniture, and SearchMarketingNow about integrating the New Digital Team. I highly recommend this white paper, here is the link to the Omniture website, if you would like to download the white paper.

Here are a few of the highlights, as well as my own interpretation of the best practices for your marketing plan.

First, understanding your data is as important as dominating the search results. Second, the more you understand about all website traffic, the more reach or lift you will have with them. Most important, how all your teams communicate and then collaborate with each other, will play a significant factor in how successful your Search Marketing Campaigns will be.

Here are a few highlights from the white paper:

- It is now estimated that Paid Search, now represents the largest portion of online advertising budgets according to Internet Advertising Bureau. I guarantee all the SEO’s just perked up.

- It is estimated that SEO drives 75% of traffic, but only receives 15% of the marketing budget, whereas PPC (Pay Per Click) receives 80% of the budget, but only generates 25% of the the traffic.  I would argue that if you understood your data and your analytic’s, you could raise the qualified traffic from PPC.

- SEO is largely seen in most companies as an “IT Function”, whereas PPC is seen as a “Marketing Function”.  As long as there is outstanding communication between both departments, they can both be successful, but that’s not often the case.  That can leave both dollars and efficiency left on the table.  As the landscape continues to get more an more competitive, you will need to centralize your Search Marketing.

Much more from this beneficial white paper, but I will need to read through and analyze each section in order to pull from it the most beneficial information.  Please contact us, if you are interested in a quick review to determine if your Digital Team is integrated.