Google Updates Search Results

On Wednesday afternoon and evening, the Google Penguin 2.0 hit (which I mentioned the other day). I noticed it yesterday morning when I was checking a few rankings. Here's a little news on it with my commentary.

Google Penguin 2.0 Update is Live (searchenginewatch.com)

Webmasters have been watching for Penguin 2.0 to hit the Google search results since Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts first announced that there would be the next generation of Penguin in March. Cutts officially announced that Penguin 2.0 is rolling out late Wednesday afternoon on "This Week in Google".

"It's gonna have a pretty big impact on web spam," Cutts said on the show. "It's a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentinally only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."

...

He detailed that the new Penguin was specifically going to target black hat spam, but would be a significantly larger impact on spam than the original Penguin and subsequent Penguin updates have had.

Google's initial Penguin update originally rolled out in April 2012, and was followed by two data refreshes of the algorithm last year – in May and October.

And here it is, right from the horse's mouth:

Penguin 2.0 rolled out today (mattcutts.com)

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.

Added: If there are spam sites that you’d like to report after Penguin, we made a special spam report form at http://bit.ly/penguinspamreport . Tell us about spam sites you see and we’ll check it out.

Here's Matt on YouTube explaining the update:

He answers someone's question about what to do to prepare for this update and he says that they should be creating good content that people want to share and bookmark. Right there is exactly what Google wants. Pretty simple.

"Can I Copy Text From Other Websites?"

People ask me if they can copy text from other websites to use on their website. I think they ask because they don't want to sit down and write content. They're lazy or maybe just aren't good writers.

First... no, you should never copy text from other websites - you get no benefit and might actually be pushed down in rankings. You can, however, use their copy (text) as a guide and rewrite it in your own words - that's perfectly fine. Do that if it helps you.

Second, I don't think too many people are born good writers but I think there are a lot of good writers out there. It's like anything, at first it's tough but as you do it, it gets easier and easier. You have to work it and pretty soon, it's effortless and maybe even a little fun. There's a sense of accomplishment you get after writing a really good article.

If Your Websites Went Down in Rankings - What Do You Do?

If you were hit hard by the Google update, there are some thing you can do. Again, as mentioned... get writing. Get some awesome content on your website. Take 2 hours to writer an article if you have to - yes, it should be that good. If doing that sounds worse than pulling teeth, then hire a writer - they're out there. Here's more advice:

Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO (searchenginewatch.com)

Is SEO Enough?

As small business owners move through the here we go again feelings to actually decide what to do in response to Penguin 2013, sorting out the truth is paramount. Google is clearly beating the familiar drum with the same core messages:

1. Build a great website.
2. Make awesome content with high end-user value.
3. Visitors will magically appear.

But the reality is that visitors don’t magically come, at least on any reasonable scale, without organized promotional activities. Many excellent websites have died a slow death due to lack of promotion. And this is where the contradictions emerge in SEO, which has demonstrated extremely high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

...

Content marketing: In my opinion, content marketing is the new link building. Earn recognition, social spread, and backlinks by giving away valuable information for free. Excellent content has high audience value and points readers to other resources via cocitation. Video is an excellent form of content marketing that is still under-utilized by small businesses. And newsjacking is an emerging form of content marketing that specifically targets hot news topics for viral spread.

I always say that content is the net you use to catch more fish. The more content you have, the bigger your net is and the more fish (traffic) you will catch. It makes total sense.

Look what I'm doing here in this article... I'm curating content. I've taken content from other websites, linked to it and then added more text to it to give it more value. Gee, this kind of reminds me of writing papers in college... you cite sources and come up with a work of your own. I guess college did pay off!

Conclusion

You might have noticed some changes with Google's results or maybe you're not even checking your rankings and all of this is new to you. Your website's rank matters to your business' success. It's time to start caring about it and doing something about it. We're here to help - you can see from this article and other articles here that we know what's going on with website design and SEO. Contact us and find out how we can help your website rank better with a solid content-based strategy that search engines like Google love. Write a good article once and it works for you 24 hours a day.

-Tony

It's Beautiful Out!

Here in Wisconsin, we put up with a lot of not so desireable weather. That makes us really appreciate days like today. It's super nice out and there are finally leaves back on the trees. The flowering trees are in bloom, too - I love that.

So what does this have to do with your website?

Everything!

Go outside, right now (if it's nice where you are) and take a picture of your building. Now is the time to do it - not in the fall, not in winter but now - mid-spring.

Your "About Us" or "Contact Us" page on your website needs a picture of your building for a few reasons. First, to show that you are an established business with a location - that you're a "brick and mortar" business. Second, so that people can find your location.

If you need help updating your website, let us know - but take that picture!

-Tony

Is Your Website Too Cool for School?

Today I'm reminded of a post from a little while ago:

How You Design Matters
August 24, 2012 Written by Tony Herman

We tend to stay away from all the "latest and greatest" website gimmicks that are out there - meaning, the "cool factor" stuff. We do this because how we look (how Webstix looks) as the website designer is not at all a priority. What matters is how the websites we make work and how well they produce results for our clients.

There's a trap that most website designers fall into. They think that if they create something that's really "cool" for their client, then their client will be really happy with them. Ok, sure - that might work some of the time. The problem is that the "cool factor" wears off - especially when the website isn't paying for itself or making a profit. That's not "cool" at all. They may also find that some of these fancy features don't work in some web browsers or on mobile devices. How is that supposed to be a good thing?

We are sometimes asked to design websites that have this cool thing or that cool thing. This causes us to question what the real goal is. Do they want to be "cool" or do they want to have a website that ranks well and generates sales? In other words, do they value their job?

Problems with "Cool" Websites

Yeah, everyone does want a cool website - we kind of get that. Website can be too cool though.

You see, the more cool stuff you put into it, the more complex it is. The more complex it is, the more there is to break. More things can go wrong. Most cool things are written in a language called JavaScript. It can do some pretty neat stuff, no doubt. It runs on the web browser though. There are several main web browsers out there and they're always coming up with new versions and updates, so there's a very high risk of things not working when you have a lot of complex stuff going on. The technology is getting better with standard libraries/code bases but the chance/the risk still remains high. One bit of code could easily clash with other code. It can be a programming nightmare.

Then bring a mobile website into the equation. Those are different browsers, too. They work differently.

I saw a design recently that a client of ours (who has some graphic design experience) came up with. They wanted a website coded that had hidden navigation. They were making the website visitor mouse over an item in the navigation in order to see what it is - yes, hiding the website's navigation. That's so backwards and so 10 years ago. I couldn't believe they wanted that and we tried to talk them out of it. We explained why it's a bad idea but they were dead set on making their website be cool. I didn't know that making website visitors frustrated was a cool thing to do.

There's also the high possibility that the more "cool" your website gets, the more you're blocking Google from seeing all the great content you have. That'll bring your website rankings down because Google or other search engines might not see it or they might not know how to bookmark pages. You can seriously lose your good rankings by being too cool. Your rankings and traffic could totally tank!

Keep it Simple, Dumb Dumb!

The trend now is simplicity. It's actually called Responsive Design. You've probably seen this already but what it does is actually really amazing (and cool) if you think about it.

The way it works is, the same website template (theme, design, etc.) works on any device. You can even see this work if you change the size of your web browser window and shrink it. The design moves around to accommodate the size of the window. What you get is a design that's more minimalistic but still nice to look at (professional).

Conclusion

In my opinion, doing cool things like Flash animation and all that jazz went out the window 10 years ago. That was the 1990s and early 2000s. It's 2013 now, man! Don't go backwards. Don't wear your 90s clothes now. Update! Simple is better and it makes you more money!

-Tony

Web Help - Website Management Services Prices and Information

When you're searching for website management services, you could be searching for a number of things. It could be a content management system (CMS) or cloud services or even an enterprise information system. Most likely, you are looking for a company to help you manage your website, which means tasks like:

• Updating website content
• Updating website software (patches and upgrades)
• Doing website maintenance
• Adding new users
• Adding new events
• Archiving old content
• Uploading files
• Changing the website navigation
• Fixing website errors and broken links
• Checking for malware and viruses on a website
• Making the website work on mobile devices (a mobile version of your website)
• Search Engine Optimization research and page tweaking
• Promote the website to search engines
• Help with website hosting, domain names and DNS servers
• Posting new content (text and images)
• Fixing old content
• and so forth...

Some people think that once a website is up and running, the project is done and that's all you have to do. They think that from there, the website just runs itself and there's nothing to do. That's very wrong. There's probably more to do once a good website is launched. If you don't do anything, then your website won't do anything and you've just wasted all the money and time you just put into your website.

Serious Businesses Work Their Websites

Companies that want their website to work for them put work into their websites - not just at launch but continually going forward. If you're not promoting your website, adding new content to it, checking it in new versions of browsers that come out or keep up on website software updates (to mention just a few things), then your website will eventually stop working for you. Sure, it might work fine for a little while but soon enough, it's going to need some help.

We live in an online and information-based world now. Your website is people's first impression of your company. There are more mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, etc.) now than ever before. Your prospective customers can look up information about your company from anywhere. People can search for anything anywhere - and you want to show up on that search, right?

Showing up at the top of search engines takes many things working together. Your website must be tuned and optimized to show up well. It needs to show up looking nice on mobile devices, it needs to have landing pages for specific searches and you, of course, need to be actively promoting your website so that you show up before your competition does.

If all of that doesn't sound like work to you, then great - you have the know how and staff to have success on the web.

If all of that sounds like something you don't have time to do or time to learn or have the staff to work on, then you need website management services.

How Do Website Management Services Work?

We've worked out a system to make it very simple for you to purchase and use only what you need. The work gets done quickly and you're quoted on how much time something will take before the work starts.

Yeah, simple... and smart.

Here at Webstix, we're often complimented on how well our system works and how good our people are. If you put in a website maintenance request, you won't get 100 questions back wondering what to do. If we understand what you want done, we'll go ahead and quote it or, per your request, just get the work done pronto! We know you don't have time to waste explaining things in great detail or you could just do the work yourself probably. If we do have questions, we'll ask them, of course - we don't want to do it wrong. If we happen to do it wrong, we'll fix it.

Here's the process:

• You send in your request
• We quote the work
• You approve the quote
• We do the work and report back to you within 24-28 hours (or sooner)

You can even bypass the quote if you want and authorize a certain amount of blocks (a block is a half hour of time - explained below). Typically if we've been working with you and you have blocks in your account and it's less then 2 blocks, then we'll just go ahead and do the work so that it's done quickly.

How Much Does Web Management Cost?

We break up our time into half hour blocks. We call them "Maintenance Blocks." You can use that time for whatever you need done. If it's a quick question and you're already a client, we might not even charge you anything for that.

The more Maintenance Blocks you pre-purchase, the better pricing you get - here's a quick breakdown:

• If you buy 1-5 blocks (1/2 hour to 2.5 hours), there's no discount - you're paying our normal hourly rate of $115/hr.
• If you buy a 6-pack of blocks, then you save 15%.
• If you buy a 12-pack of blocks, then you save 25%.
• If you buy a 24-pack of blocks, then you save 30%.
• If you buy a 48-pack of blocks, then you save 35%.

Find out more about our Maintenance Blocks Pricing here.

We Want Your Satisfaction!

We know that managing a website isn't something most business owners know how to do or do well. The last thing you want to do is try to do it yourself and then months later find out that people using a certain web browser can't view your website because of something that was done with a website update. As in life, there are some things you just leave up to the experts.

If something we do is not done right, we'll fix it and make it right. Enough said.

We want your business for years to come. We want you to be so happy about what we've done for you that you'll tell others. That's our standard.

Why pay just one person/one employee a semi-outrageous salary to do work on your website when you can hire an entire time for a fraction of that cost?

We're offering something that makes sense, is smart, is simple and something that just works. You need the work done and we're here to help!

-Tony

Google is Changing Their Search Algorithm Soon

Happy Monday Morning, Everyone!

There's usually one big update a year. Google does a big change to their algorithm where they clean out certain types of websites that were trying to gain the system. Google actually does 500 or more a year (over 1 per day) but there is usually one big update per year and it's usually in the spring. The next big update, dubbed "Penguin 2.0" (or "Penguin 4.0" - the search community looks at it differently) is expected to hit in the next few weeks:

Google’s Matt Cutts: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away (searchengineland.com)

In March, Google’s chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update — keep waiting. It’s still a few weeks off. Along the way, there’s some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin 2 or Penguin 4. It’ll be Penguin 4, in how we reckon things. Let’s dive in.

There was actually a smaller update last week that happened but it wasn't "the big one" as some people were thinking. That means this next one is even bigger.

Google's Major Penguin Update Coming In Weeks. It Will Be Big! (seroundtable.com)

This has sent shockwaves through the webmaster and SEO industry over the weekend. We know the next generation Penguin update is a major revision to the existing one. Matt said the previous ones were minor updates. To take you back, we had an update on May 24, 2012 and October 5, 2012. Matt said on Twitter that those were more minor, he would have named them 1.1 and 1.2 and that Google is naming this new update version 2.0.

We are calling it the 4th update to Penguin, but yea, this is expected to be huge. We past the anniversary of the Penguin update and many SEOs and webmasters have yet to recover.

Why Does Google Do This?

Google does these updates so that they give out better results when people do a search. That's their #1 goal. I saw a lot of commercials over the weekend about the "Bing Challenge" where you do a search and decide which results you like better. Bing is coming on strong and Google needs to keep up. Also, there's the new Facebook search and that's where everyone is (on Facebook). Google needs to adapt to keep up.

Also what happens is the Internet Marketing/SEO community figures out what works with Google and what doesn't. There's a lot of money to be made with the top search results. Google tries to get the results that shouldn't be at the top off the top by looking for patterns in what these websites do to try to reach the top (black hat/gray hat techniques).

What's Going to Happen?

It's kind of fun to watch Google algorithm changes go through and see everyone's reaction. Yes, many people are devastated. Others are happy, though. We just have to wait and see.

What we do know is that Google wants:

• Very good, original content. Thank "bookmark worthy" content.
• Social signals - this means mentions of your website showing up in places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social bookmarking websites.
• Genuine interest in the topic your website covers.
• Links to your website. I put this lower on the list because this is getting more and more difficult to manufacture. They want authentic links.
• They want to see this good content published regularly.

We'll wait and see what happens with this one but we just wanted to get the word out that it's coming. The best thing you can plan to do is write some awesome content for your website and keep doing that over and over. If you don't, your competition will.

-Tony