How Google Search Plus Your World is Changing SEO

In its simplest form, search engine optimization (SEO) used to be about three things - making your content crawlable, linkable, and usable. Gaining greater visibility on search engine results pages was relatively easy. Depending on your business model, it was also much easier said than done.

Nimble smaller businesses routinely outmaneuvered larger enterprises when it came to securing specific query-relevant rankings in the search engines, especially in Google. Ultimately, relevancy had to be redefined by shifting algorithmic weightings toward trust and authority, and away from feigned popularity and repurposed content.
Now, SEO needs to be as conversational as it is contextually relevant, in order to be well represented in Google's most recent algorithmic shifts. True to form, enterprise level SEO initiatives will have to play a game of catch-up this year in order to reap new opportunities from social search results.

Recent Developments

Google’s search results have been influenced by some measure of social signals for years. It’s only now that the social signals can wholly resonate through Google’s Search Plus Your World release earlier this month.

Google Plus Buttons made their debut in June last year. At the time, experts gave it a bit of a “so what” nod as yet another “me too” social experience. Recently Larry Page announced that 90 million users have signed up to Google Plus since launch. Those Plus buttons are growing in importance.
Google Search Plus Your World is the next evolutionary step in determining what is relevant to personalized search queries in that individuals search results are greatly influenced by their circles of friends.

In Google Search Plus Your World, your friends’ online experiences are more relevant to your personal search results than links and domain authority. This is a game changer from what we all knew and understood about perceived relevancy of public web search results. When you’re signed in to Google all you need do is toggle between the two very different, yet seemingly relevant, search results.

Presumably if you find that your personalized search results in Google Search Plus Your World lack relevancy, you be well advised to start finding some new friends. Not to worry. Google’s been thinking about that too.
Last week Google rolled out yet another new feature for Google Plus that lets searchers start a conversation directly from search results, and contribute to the relevant conversation by way of the Google Plus stream.

It’s not only easier to find people, personalities and pages in Google Plus personalized search results, you can readily expand your circle of influence by adding these people to your circle of friends – and vice versa. All you need do is find the “share box” in your search results and you'll be presented with an opportunity to "join the discussion" about whatever you've searched for.

In Google Search Plus Your World, there is no search without social. Your search queries resonate social signals through personalized search.
Better be careful for what you search for. Oh, snap! That’s right. No one will know what search phrase you used, except you and Google, because your Search Plus Your World results are hidden behind https:// and no keywords will be linked to your search in any analytics programs.

Points to Ponder

While Google Search Plus Your World evolves into a centralized social hub of activity that connects search results with social functions, we must be cognizant of the fact that the search engine will likely be testing algorithms that introduce weighted social search signals into Google's public web search results.

Google search has historically been about finding the best results for the many. Google Search Plus Your World is about finding the best results for you. Now, “you” are the enterprise. That is to say, each individual that uses Google Plus represents a new opportunity to have digital content produced by or about your enterprise discovered and shared among immeasurable circles of friends.

SEO in 2012, be it public or personal, is all about providing content that is worthy of being shared, by links or by circles. Now that the context of the search query is the conversation, relevancy is truly in the eye of the beholder … as long as the people or the publication is beholden to Google+.

original article

10 Google Algorithm Changes That Affect Your Ranking

Matt Cutts written Google makes about 500 changes to its search algorithm every year. This summer Google published a video that gives a glimpse into their overall process, and on 14th Nov they shared a flavor of specific algorithm changes by publishing a highlight list of many of the improvements made over the past couple weeks. List of ten improvements from the past couple weeks by Google:


  •  Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language. 
  •  Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
  •  Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
  •  Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.
  •  Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.
  •  Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
  •  Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
  •  Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
  •  Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
  •   Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

    Google Planned to Shut Down Buzz Service

    Google announced that Google Buzz and several other products shut down by January 15, 2012.

    The list of Products Slated for Closure

    Google is continuing its trend of narrowing focus with the announcement of a "fall sweep." In this case, what's being swept away is a number of products that haven't been popular enough for Google to warrant continued support and development. As mentioned above, those products include:

    •     Google Buzz. This is certainly the most noteworthy shutdown, although far from the least predictable. Buzz was introduced in February of 2010 and garnered lots of early attention, but failed to gain traction or long-term support. Buzz will be shut down in the next "few weeks."
    •    Code Search. This niche search tracked down open source code, but both it and its API will be closed for business on January 15th, 2012.
    •     University Research Program for Google Search. This program gave academic researchers API access to search results, but will discontinue on January 15th, 2012.
    •      iGoogle social features. While iGoogle will continue as normal, all features that gave social capabilities will be closed in favor of Google+ on January 15th, 2012.
    •      Jaiku. This social updating feature acquired by Google in 2007 will be shut down on January 15th, 2012.  More>>

    Top 100 Free Classified Sites List

    This best list of top 100 free ad posting websites for bloggers and ad posters is mainly popular in the countries including, US, UK, India, Australia, UAE, Germany,France, Italy, Japan,China, Pakistan, etc.

    The top 100 free ad posting list mostly contains name of those free-classified ad sites that are very popular and largely traffic driven, and they provide good resource for the best free ad posting options and features.
    1. http://www.craigslist.org/
    2. http://quikr.com/
    3. http://gumtree.com/
    4. http://clickindia.com/
    5. http://olx.com/
    6. http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/
    7. http://adsglobe.com/
    8. http://oodle.com/
    9. http://sell.com/
    10. http://classifiedads.com/
    11. http://www.click.in/
    12. http://classifieds.ivarta.com/
    13. http://www.indialist.com/
    14. http://www.digitalbhoomi.in/
    15. http://www.locanto.in/
    16. http://ocala4sale.com/
    17. http://global-free-classified-ads.com/
    18. http://www.bonqo.com/
    19. http://www.classifiedslive.com/
    20. http://www.traderonline.com/
    21. http://localads.rediff.com/
    22. http://www.claz.org/
    23. http://classifieds.bechna.com/
    24. http://www.goforads.com/
    25. http://www.khojle.in/classifieds/
    26. http://www.meramaal.com/
    27. http://www.adpost.com/in/
    28. http://www.indnav.com/Classifieds
    29. http://www.adoos.in/
    30. http://www.classifiedsden.com/
    31. http://www.vivastreet.co.in/
    32. http://www.blogger.com/Adbhai.com
    33. http://classifieds.webindia123.com/classifieds/asp/index.asp
    34. http://adlandpro.com/
    35. http://www.inetgiant.com/
    36. http://www.thisismyindia.com/free_ads/
    37. http://www.vast.com/
    38. http://classifieds.sulekha.com/
    39. http://www.yakaz.com/
    40. http://classifieds.ibibo.com/
    41. http://www.pennysaverusa.com/classifieds/usa/index.html
    42. http://www.indiagrid.com/cgi-bin/list.cgi?dmmy=ok&cat=&subcatid=
    43. http://daype.com/
    44. http://www.salespider.com/online-classifieds-free-advertising
    45. http://ziply.com/
    46. http://classifieds.sify.com/
    47. http://www.adeex.in/
    48. http://www.domesticsale.com/
    49. http://www.whereincity.com/classifieds/
    50. http://www.adsmantra.com/
    51. http://epage.com/
    52. http://www.freeadscity.com/
    53. http://www.recycler.com/
    54. http://www.chooseyouritem.com/
    55. http://www.webcosmo.com/
    56. http://rajb2b.com/classified/
    57. http://www.hoobly.com/
    58. http://www.indyapulse.com/Classifieds/
    59. http://www.freeadlists.com/
    60. http://www.bupio.com/
    61. http://www.bestwayclassifieds.com/
    62. http://wantedwants.com/
    63. http://www.webclassifieds.us/
    64. http://www.dragg.in/classifieds/
    65. http://www.classifieds4me.com/
    66. http://e-classifieds.net/
    67. http://www.boostime.in/
    68. http://www.buysellcommunity.com/
    69. http://classifieds.co.uk/
    70. http://businesslist.com/post-classified-ad/
    71. http://www.askht.com/
    72. http://google.com/base
    73. http://classifieds.yahoo.com/
    74. http://kaboo.com/
    75. http://www.bizmartindia.com/index.php
    76. http://www.bharatpatal.org/indian-classifieds.php
    77. http://postyouradforfree.com/
    78. http://ww1.highlandclassifieds.com/
    79. http://www.loyalmart.com/
    80. http://listings.mid-day.com/
    81. http://bestadforum.com/
    82. http://kijiji.com/
    83. http://citynews.com/
    84. http://livedeal.com/
    85. http://selloutads.com/
    86. http://ozfreeonline.com/
    87. http://worldslist.com/
    88. http://www.kugli.com/
    89. http://subblurbs.com/
    90. http://www.droik.com/
    91. http://kaboo.org/
    92. http://isell.com/
    93. http://iclads.com/
    94. http://itsmymarket.com/
    95. http://postaroo.com/
    96. http://marketplace.sfgate.com/
    97. http://london.kijiji.ca/
    98. http://freeads.biztop.com/
    99. http://freeadvertisingzone.com/
    100. http://economist.com/classifieds

    Top Five Linking Mistakes You Did Not Know You Were Making

    External linking is an essential part of an effective SEO strategy. It is also, arguably, one of the most challenging aspects. Take a look at five common mistakes SEOs make when developing a linking strategy.

    • 1. Judging a Site's Authority by PageRank Alone:

    Good link building strategies aim at getting a links from a diverse array of websites and as with most things in life, all websites are not created equal. How do you judge a good website?

    The answer is authority. PageRank is a popular metric used to judge a sites authority. However, pagerank can be misleading. It is unclear exactly how a sites pagerank affects a sites position in the SERP. PageRank is also only updated about once a quarter, if that. Don't completely ignore pagerank but be aware of its limitations and use additional factors to measure a sites authority. SEOmoz has two helpful metrics, mozRank and mozTrust. Also look at how humans view a site, start by looking over the comments, user ratings or anything else that will tell you how internet users judge the site.

    Here are some additional questions to ask yourself:

    •    Does the site feel like a trusted site?
    •    Does the site have readers who take the content seriously?
    •    The site has authority, but is it a relevant site to my website/client/topic?

    • 2. Building Links with Only One Keyword or Keyword Phrase:

    The goal of successful link building strategy is a natural link profile. If 1,000 people link to your site it's probably safe to assume that they won't all use the same keyword phrase.

    While most SEOs may know this, if you aren't conscious of it with each link you will, like most SEOs, use your primary keyword as much as possible. Keep track of the anchor text that you are using, make sure that there is a mixture of anchor text containing: brand name, website address, secondary keyword phrases, click here etc. This also opens up the opportunity to link with secondary keywords to interior pages of your site.

    • 3. Aiming for a Billion Links!

    How many links does a site need to be competitive? Your competitive research holds the key to determine this. If your top competitors average 1,000 links, aim for what you need to be competitive. Set your goal number of links 2-5 percent more than your competition.

    This way you can maximize the efficiency of your SEO activities and properly scale your link building techniques. If you don't set a goal number based on competition you could be spending too much time on link building instead beefing up the on page optimization or focusing on social media.

    • 4. Only Link to Your Homepage:

    Attract links to a variety of pages on your site. If you have a good internal linking structure linking to any page will increase the overall pagerank of the system; strengthening all the pages in your website. Additionally, it will help you rank for more keywords and drive more traffic to your site. It also forces you to think of the user; will linking to an internal page provide more value to the target audience for the content.

    • 5 Analyze Competitors Backlinks Who Don't Rank for your Target Keywords:

    Often the top five competitors in an industry may not be the top five sites in the SERP. Conduct a search for your terms, analyze and review the linking activities of the sites that show up in the top five positions.

    For the overall marketing direction it is good to review the on and offline marketing activities of the industry leaders. But only through focused, competitive research based on the most visible sites in the SERP, will you get a sense of what linking activities your site needs to be competitive.

    External linking is constantly changing, but if you focus on building a balanced link profile that helps Internet users find the valuable content on your website then you will come out ahead in the long run. Kelvin Newman wrote a link building book called Clockwork Pirate that offers a complete list of linking techniques and the best way to approach them.

    The Way of Optimize Your Images for Search Engines

    This is post is about the way of optimize images for search engines using Google Image Search.

    What is Google Image Search? It is a search service made by Google to allow users to use images to search the web for any topic of interest. i.e. events, movies, etc.

    Images are not just something that will make your site visually attractive and more appealing to your readers. It is also a way to drive more traffic to a site.

    Nowadays, optimizing images is becoming more and more important in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A lot of people use Google image search to find images for a variety of topics. In Google's webmasters guidelines, they encourage webmasters to use alternative text for the images. The reason behind this is that search engines can't see images.

    Also, highly relevant images show at the top of Google's search result page when it matches the search query that can bring more search engine traffic to a site. See the picture below.

      

    How To Optimize Your Images For Search Engines

    * Use keyword in your Alt text.

    Alt stands for alternative text. This is the most important thing in image optimization. You should include a keyword or phrase that is relevant to the image, but take note that you should not stuff it with keywords that many inexperienced webmasters do and unethical SEO's do to avoid penalties fromSearch Engines. To make it more clear, here's how it looks:

    (img src="imagename.jpg" alt="descriptive text here")

    * Use relevant text around your images.

    Make sure that there is a descriptive text with your keywords relevant to the image and placed it before or after the image.

    * Name your images.

    Instead of going with the original file names that looks like this one g521.jpg, name your images. Let's say you have a picture of Chuck Lidell. You could use chuck-lidell.jpg for that pic. You can use hyphens in the file name, but avoid using three hyphens. Also avoid using underscores as well.

    *  Use anchor text keywords in image links.

    Use a keyword when linking to a specific image instead of using Click to view Full Size. You can use something like Chuck Lidell Training.

    * Make your image folder accessible to SE.

    * Re-upload your images to keep them fresh.

    * Use .jpg as the image formatting.

    * Use Social Site Tag for your images.

    If your images has little or no textual content, it would be more helpful to tag it using social tags like Technorati. It adds more weight to your image to help it rank better.

    * Use reliable photo sharing hosting like Flickr and tag your images.

    It is said that it helps yahoo image optimization.

    These are just some ways on how to optimize your images for Search Engines. Take advantage of these tips to help your site's ranking on the SERP and drive more traffic to your site.

    How to Avoid and Prevent Facebook Spam

    Since Facebook has grown in to the largest social network, it is the best source for spam mails & applications. It is has been a pressing concern for Facebook to eradicate this issue. Thus, Facebook has applied features to tidy up this mess & it's cleaned at least 95% of it. But still they can only control its number but not completely eradicate spam.

    Facebook spam

    Facebook spam is already a given when they log in. They get junk mails, advertisements, fraudulent offers & opportunities which would lure people to click & view.

    Some tips are gathered to help control this issue. To start with, you must know how to identify Facebook spams like links that turn out to be scams. You must avoid getting hooked to these because allowing these links to have the ability to post walls on mate pages make you an tool for spams to increase their range of susceptible victims.

    You will know that these are spams since they offer things which are nice to be true and sometimes they use names of individuals who are unlikely to do their advertisements.

    It is advised to follow Jolie’s instructions in the Southwest post in order to keep away from spams. You try to visit your Facebook privacy settings and go to “Apps and Websites” then you will see a list of the most recently accessed applications from your account. What you do is select the offending application & remove it from your account. You delete messages from that account and simultaneously warn your friends about it.

    Another thing you ought to do is keep track of other people’s advices & recommendations regarding new ways & strategies by which spams could trick you and if you are already aware of this, then you won’t anymore be tempted to make use of their applications. It is important to screen whatever messages or links you have in your account because you might be trapped in a hole of spam.