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. 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.”

In a new blog post, Cutts stated that the rollout is now complete and affects 2.3 percent of English-U.S. queries, and that it affects non-English queries as well.

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.

Webmasters first got a hint of the next generation of Penguin when back on May 10 Cutts replied to a webmaster’s tweet and he said “we do expect to roll out Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though.”

Then in a Google Webmaster Help video, Cutts went into more detail on what Penguin 2.0 would bring, along with what new changes webmasters can expect over the coming months with regards to Google search results.

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

Twitter is full of people commenting on the new Penguin 2.0, and there should be more information in the coming days as webmasters compare SERPs that have been affected and what kinds of spam specifically got targeted by this new update.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2270007/Google-Penguin-2.0-Update-is-Live

In a recent video Google’s Matt Cutts gave us a sneak peek into what we can expect from SEO in general over the next few months. In that video, he mentions that the webspam team plan to go more “upstream” to detect and clamp down on spam.

That seems like a pretty clear signal to me that tiered link building might be about to get a whole lot tougher. So if your current link building techniques consist of firing up GSA or SENuke X and blasting shed loads of links through to your tier 2’s, it might be time to start switching things up.

#2 – The disavow conundrum

Ever since the disavow tool came out, there have been loads of articles about why you should or shouldn’t use it. The upcoming algo update will be the first of its kind since the disavow tool was launched. Will Google be using all that lovely, juicey data as part of the update? Well…what do you think?

It’s crazy to think that Google would simply sit there, effortlessly collecting all this data about bad link neighbourhoods and various types of sites or groups of domains that webmasters no longer want to associate with, and yet somehow not use that in the update.

As to how they might use it…well that’s another debate altogether. They may not use information about specific sites as part of the update, but how much would you be willing to bet that that data has been analysed and scrutinised from every possible angle? As thousands of webmasters have sat back and handed Google a big old list of all the “dodgy” links they’ve built over the years in a mass panic, we may well find out we have been playing right into their hands all along.

We know that this process already happens when you file a manual spam report to Google. Due to the sheer scale of the problem, Google seem to have opted to review the sites individually before trying to work a fix into the algorithm rather than taking any individual action on specific sites. Perhaps this could be a sign of things to come with all of that wonderfully helpful disavow data we’ve all been feeding them for the last few months.

#3 – Swinging The Balance

The original instance of Penguin focused heavily around the % of exact match anchors a domain had in its backlink profile. Too many links for 1 specific anchor text meant that you were very likely to be considered as “over optimised”. Likewise too much optimised anchor text Vs not enough branded anchor text meant bye bye rankings.

Could Penguin 2.0 see a “tightening up” of those ratios? It’s been said countless times over recent months that Google does seem to love their brands at the moment. So might the update further strengthen that position, with even more preference being paid to those sites with higher rations of branded Vs none branded? We could also see a clamp down on the percentage of exact match anchor text which is considered OK for 1 specific keyword.

#4 – “Put my last quarter on, I play Authority Song!”

First things first on this one…if that header doesn’t mean anything to you, then you my friend have been living a very deprived life indeed. Turn this beauty up loud, and I’ll continue.

Matt Cutts has again said recently that they hope to be able to boost the rankings of those sites who are considered “authorities” in their niches. We may well see this forming part of the Penguin update, as Google look to enhance the SERP presence of those sites which it considers to be of particularly high value to users.

The best way that you can stay onside on this point, is to start to put some real focus and investment into what goes onto your site. This is such a cliché now that I actually feel a tiny bit disgusted with myself for writing it, but content really is king. It’s been said a million times before, but if you don’t have anything unique and valuable to offer to users, then you’re really not giving Google any compelling reason to encourage more visitors to your site.

#5 – Easy Does It

Link velocity has again become a big talking point.

Blasting a big bunch of exact match anchors at a site and then disappearing off down to the pub for a long lunch is the stuff of SEO history (trust me guys, I’m as gutted as you are!).

There’s mounting opinion now that Google have become even tighter at spotting an “unnatural” link velocity spike/trough. A completely natural looking link velocity graph would be steady and reasonably consistent. If your link velocity graph looks more like the Rockys, then this could be like waving a fish to a Penguin.

#6 – Going Social

Many SEOs agree that social signals already have influence over rankings, and that you can expect that to be a focal point of Penguin 2.0.

On the face of it, social signals seem like the obvious next step for SEO. A like or a tweet for example is after all, the upmost endorsement a site could receive from its readers, as it means that the person reading the content has been impressed enough to put their own name behind it and recommend it to their friends.

However, there are some industries where social signals just aren’t very forthcoming. Most B2B websites being a prime example.

To be totally honest, I think the social signals thing is still a little way off from being a viable metric for determining rankings. But that may well change in the future if Google continue to push users towards using Google plus and being signed in like they have been recently.

#7 – Guest Bloggers – Brace Yourselves!

Neil Patel wrote a great post on what guest bloggers should be thinking about in preparation for the update.

There’s no doubting that guest blogging is one of THE major link building techniques in play at the moment. But could an overuse and over reliance on guest blogging end up bearing the brunt of the Penguin?

With Cutts making mentions of further actions on advertorial style links (*cough* Interflora *cough*), you have to ask the question – will paid guest posts be the next logical step? Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment here…is paying a webmaster for his time to post your article (and link of course) onto his blog really any different to an advertorial? I’ll leave that up to you guys to decide and debate in the comments.

The truth is guys, that all of the above is purely speculation. No one outside of Google’s webspam HQ (and I’d bet quite a big portion of those inside of it too) could really tell you what the upcoming Penguin update is going to mean for the future of SEO. The only thing we do know for sure is that it’s coming.

So strap in tight guys, ‘coz this one’s gna be interesting!

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Article source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/penguin-2-0-paniiiiiiiic-or-not/63824/

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has the typical chatter around traffic shifts from Google, ranking fluctuations and discussions around seasonal impact of traffic, including the Boston bombing traffic impacts. There is a lot of smaller chatter around minor updates and ranking changes in Google but nothing serious enough to warrant a standalone post about a real update. Maybe borer line.

In any event, you can read last month’s recap here and here is a categorized listing of the more important Google Webmaster related topics in the past 30 days or so:

Google Update Related:

• Exact Match Domainers: Are You Switching Or Improving?
• You May Never Recover From Google’s Penguin
• Happy Birthday Google’s Penguin Update
• A Google Update Brewing?

Google SEO:

• Google Has Manually Penalized Mozilla
• Can User Generated Comments Cause A Google Penalty
• Google Now Treating 20 ccTLDs As Generic TLDs
• Google: Disavow Links Even If Removed As A Best Practice
• Google’s Cutts Say Search Flux Not Meant To Trick SEOs?
• Does Google Want SEOs To Overreact?
• Google: We Will Index It If It Is Not Spam
• Google: Stop Repeating The Same Keyword Over Over Again
• Google: Don’t Redirect All Mobile Users To A Single Page
• Google: Pushing Hundreds Of Thousands Of Pages Can Raise A Red Flag
• Google Lists 5 Most Common Canonical Mistakes
• I Yield To Google: My Paid Links Are NoFollow
• My Google Reconsideration Request For Removing Paid Links
• My Google Traffic After My Linking Penalty Was Lifted
• Does Google Allow Links Through Customer Discounts?
• Google: You Don’t Want To Dig Yourself Out Of A Hole
• Google’s New hreflang For Multilingual Multinational Sites
• Google: Have Multinational Site Over TLDs? Use hreflang

Google Webmaster Tools:

• Watch Out For Google Rich Snippet Hacking
• Ignore That Last Google Webmaster Tools Notification: Googlebot CAN Access Your Site
• Google’s Targeted Penalty Webmaster Tools Notification
• Google Will Send Notifications To WWW Non-WWW Webmaster Tools Accounts

Google User Interface:

• Google Drops Instant Previews Over Low Usage
• The Google Non-Profit Knowledge Graph
• Google Sub-Sitelinks Are Here
• Google Authorship Snippet Drops More By… Link
• Google Scholar Removes Search By Discipline
• Google: Searches Don’t Use The Related Searches Option
• Google: Don’t Hide URLs In Search Results. We Don’t Like It.
• Google Now Available For iPhone/iPad
• Google Showing “See More Results From…” Less Often Now?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Article source: http://www.seroundtable.com/may-2013-google-webmaster-report-16744.html

Long ago when the Internet was shiny and new, one person called a “webmaster” was expected to manage everything about a website. Design, programming, server and database administration, content writing, order processing, as well as customer service, this left-and right-brained webmaster was a one-stop website shop.

Today there are thousands of Internet job specialties, and the lone webmaster is a mythical creature. It’s like the “rational economic man” that economists used to talk about, but now they acknowledge doesn’t exist.

So why do open source e-commerce (OSC) program makers keep pretending that their new users will master all these diverse skills? Most potential new e-commerce users today have no previous technical knowledge, and what’s more, they don’t want to learn it. As Will Rogers once said, ”everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”

Those new users stumbling through your support forum today are the lifeblood, the future of your OSC company. They grow into your loyal established fans. How well your company does in a year or two depends on how well you treat your new users today. So here is the reality about the biggest potential market for your open source e-commerce program, the non-technical new user:

1. Ninety percent of US Internet users do not use Ctrl-F to find a word on a page. So how are they going to find what they need in your online documentation?

2. Over seventy percent of users don’t start by using site search. They click links. So they cannot search your online documentation for what they need. Site search is attempted only after the user fails to find what they want by clicking links. By then they are already frustrated.

3. Users don’t understand your technical jargon. They are baffled by technical terms like “directory” “dialog box” “screen” or “field.” So they can’t search your forum or knowledgebase or FAQ, because they don’t know the word they need. It’s a Catch-22. Never use a technical term when a simpler term will do, like “folder” or “page” or “box.” If you absolutely must use a technical term, please explain it clearly.

4. Users don’t read – they skim. At best, they read only 28% of the text on a web page. If the page is dense with words, they read even less. So they won’t read your online documentation. Besides, your documentation is probably out of date. Right?

5. Now you’re starting to understand all the obstacles new users face and why installing your program is beyond them. They can’t set up a MySQL database or use your so-called “Install Wizard.” They want you to do it for them or to use a one-click or Quick Install Manager. Why pretend that your average user can do it?

6. Your users do want to try a demo of your current program. Your demo is out of date, right? How many versions out of date? That’s killing your program, just killing it. Please update that demo.

7. Users don’t want to learn a wiki or a knowledgebase. Wikis are jarringly incomplete and loaded with jargon. And what the heck is a knowledgebase? It involves a combination of search (which they don’t do), understanding jargon (which they don’t), and finding something on a page (which they can’t do). It’s a poor excuse for not attending the needs of your actual user.

8. Users don’t know the #1 rule of programming is to “always back up!” And even if they did, they don’t know how! Any tool you provide needs automatic backup and version control.

9. Users can’t even update! They need automatic updates! And the automatic update needs to automatically back up first.

10. They can’t install an extension. They don’t want to install an extension. They are willing to pay to have the extension installed for them.

11. No, they won’t RTFM (read the … manual) either. Most book buyers never try your program. They buy it to scope out how difficult your program is without investing the time to learn it. You should consider the book as part of the sales cycle, not just support.

12. Most users are lost and scared in your technical forum where the response to everything is, “just edit this line of code.” You need a safe user forum specifically for administrative questions, and keep the techies away from it.

13. They don’t want to submit a ticket. They know your games… you are just going to ask cryptic questions until they go away. Then you will mark the ticket closed for customer non-response.

14. Most users don’t understand the difference between a web host and a hosted solution. Or even a browser. Seriously. And a cloud solution? It’s somewhere in a, uh, cloud. It’s out there on the Internet somewhere.

15. Just in case you don’t get the picture, they don’t use FTP, they don’t know what an HTML Editor is, most don’t know what WYSIWYG means except that is NORMAL.

16. Finally, to cap it all off, most users don’t even realize how unskilled they are. So they will blame your program for problems that they caused themselves. Like not having automatic backups, version control, and updates. They will be angry, and then they will go to a program that does offer these things.

It hurts me to admit this, but most potential OSC users today don’t even know what open source means. They don’t know the difference between Open Source and a hosted solution. And ouch, they don’t even care – they just want it to work.

So much of this can be automated, there is no reason to keep pretending that your customers want to do it manually. Reality can be painful. The number of e-commerce choices continues to expand, and the pool of technically-adept users continue to get ever-smaller. Adapt to reality, or go the way of the rational economic man, and the webmaster.

MORE INFO:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/

http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-tips-based-on-research-studies/

Category: Open Source eCommerce |
Tags: Magento, Shopping Carts and Platforms, Business Development, osCommerce

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Article source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/blogs/post/1035-The-Painful-Truth-About-the-Non-Technical-New-User

Similar to Mozilla’s penalty and BBC’s penalty, Sprint was penalized for user-generated content spam on a portion of their site that was open to anyone to post links and content.

Similar to BBC and Mozilla, Sprint went to the Google help forums to seek advice and it seems like another friendly webmaster was able to some advice leading to the Sprint Community forum. It seems like users are able to place links that are not nofollowed in their community and thus Google has to do something to ensure those links that are not vouched for, do not impact their search results.

It appears that Google may have applied a very granular penalty to a specific page or pages of the Sprint Community forum.

If you remember, with Mozilla, Google only penalized a single page and with the BBC, Google only penalized a single article.

The issue still remains, it is hard for webmasters of large sites to pinpoint the problem area on their site. Even if webmaster help, without Google giving the webmaster the specific page with issues, they can spend weeks or months trying to figure out all the problems with their site. Of course, I am sure Google wants webmasters to step back and review their whole site for spam loopholes but not all webmasters and companies have budgets for such large audits.

That being said, Google has not yet directly responded to Sprint in regards to this webmaster notification. It is unclear if Google will respond or not.

Related Stories

• Google: That Mozilla Penalty Only Impacted One Page Out Of 22 Million
• Google Hits Mozilla With Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content
• Google Sends BBC News A Manual Link Penalty Notification
• Google Says No Comment On Why Interflora Was Penalized
• Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For “Browser” After Sponsored Post Penalty
• Google Now Reports “Practically 100%” Of Manual Actions
• Official: Google On How When Ranking Penalties Are Removed
• Google Reminds Webmasters: Selling Links Can Lead To PageRank Penalty
• Matt Cutts On Penalties Vs. Algorithm Changes, A Disavow-This-Link Tool More
• Got A Google Penalty? A Workflow For Managing Google Penalties
• 90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings
• iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations
• Google Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com – Just One Of Several?

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: Webmaster Central | Top News

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here.
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Article source: http://searchengineland.com/google-sprint-penalty-160167

Thanks again to Panda, Penguin etc, it seems many webmasters are panicking about links they have obtained in the past, or have been pulled up by Google as a result of over-zealous link building. 

As a result, we are receiving many more link removal requests than we ever used to, ten or so in the past couple of months. 

To be frank, these requests are annoying, and I’m also a little put out that they see this blog as a risk to them. Chris Lake touched upon this recently and, as he says, ‘a lot of folks seem to have a bad case of The Fear’. 

I thought it was worth exploring this issue in more detail, so I’ve asked a few SEO experts for their views… 

When I contacted the SEOs here, I did show them a specific example, which was a link left in a comment on a three year old post.

The request was annoying, since I had to hunt out the link myself, all wasting time. I haven’t removed it yet by the way. 

As the comments suggest, there is a theoretical risk that refusing such requests forces people to use the disavow tool, and that a number of such disavowels around one site may be a signal for Google. 

While we are inclined to say no to these requests, as we have never added links to reasons other than relevancy or providing credit for sources, this ‘threat’ has to be considered. 

Why are we seeing more of these link removal requests? 

Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations Director at LBi:

Site owners will be seeing more link removal questions because Google is getting very aggressive about discounting poor quality links and is increasingly transparent about it.

Combine this with the knowledge that ‘a link is a link’ was a popular expression among SEOs for years, although thankfully not all of them. The result is a situation where there are many poor quality links, placed by people paid to help SEO and now either scrambling to recover or being paid to remove other agencies old links.

That’s still not the full picture. We’ve seen huge, trusted sites that probably have never engaged in any rule breaking SEO attempts receive these warnings.

For example, the BBC webmaster team picked up such a warning. I believe it’s now entirely possible for big brands to receive link warnings when they have never actively done anything wrong.

In these cases the links in question have been generated simply because the site in question is run by a big brand.

Rishi Lakhani, Online marketing consultant:

Paranoia, and whats more, Google MAY be highlighting these, not as a reflection on Econsultancy, but on the type of link building these companies are doing.

In this specific instance, the link you highlighted, is a redirect. Previously used by them to rank for ‘search engine optimisation’. Most likely they now have had a penalty for using a redirect to rank, and are trying to clean up the redirect domain links.

If it would be me, I would just remove that redirect, and for an SEO agency to approach you in this way, its pretty daft.

Nichola Stott, Owner at themediaflow:

In January and February of 2012 alone, Google sent over 700,000 “notice of detection of unnatural linking” emails to webmasters and didn’t stop then.

Essentially the emails warn that Google has detected that the site is using manipulative practises to build links, designed to pass PageRank. If the warnings are unheeded the site in question will then be hit by a penalty shortly after.

Webmasters with unnatural links in their backlink profile are warned that they should take steps to remove such.

In addition, quite possibly partially informed by data collected in the mass clean-ups that have occurred, Google has continued to de-index identified link farms and networks and of course has now created an algorithm (Penguin) to detect and demote sites that currently benefit from an artificially inflated backlink profile.

Are the ‘webmasters’ in question being super-cautious or is it possible that links from our blog may be causing problems for them? 

Andrew Girdwood: 

It is always good to be cautious and SEOs should always use the word ‘may’. The links from Econsultancy that are marked ‘nofollow’ are unlikely to be a problem.

However, if a site is marked for a warning because it has a disproportionate amount of links in relation to other signals (social, etc) or in terms of quality then the site in question may well be able to address the balance by trying to get Econsultancy to drop the backlinks. 

After all, a link in a 2009 archived blog post is far more likely to be mid-quality than high-quality and it’s certainly not fresh. We can only speculate as to which exact signals are analysed by Google in determining whether a link passes muster or not.

That’s why modern SEO needs to be multi-signal SEO.

Rishi Lakhani: 

A bit of both, but in the latter, your links arent hurting them per se, its the way they built those links.

Nichola Stott, themediaflow:

In many cases it may not always be the webmaster that is involved in the clean-up activity.

Many link-sellers and building agencies have evolved their business model to offer their service in reverse, so a small fee per link removed as opposed to link placed.

In many cases those involved in the manual removal process will not have the technical/analytical skills to identify which of the links are causing the problems. In the case of Econsultancy I’d say that those approaching you are ill-informed.

What is the best way to identify links which may be seen as dubious by Google?  

Andrew Girdwood: 

If there’s any history of paid links, chase that first. There’s very often a paper trail even if it’s just PayPal receipts.  

After that then you need to have some SEO knowledge to assess sites. It’s unlikely, for example, that nofollow links from a site that ranks well are dodgy compared to links from a scrape blog network.

There are some tools to watch. There’s Link Detox from Cemper and LinkRisk for example. 

James McCann, Head of SEO at Search Laboratory:

The best way to determine whether or not a link is toxic, is to look at it and ask yourself whether or not it adheres to the webmaster guidelines on links.

Scaling that process up for domains with large link numbers can be a problem though. It’s best to get as much link data as possible from webmaster tools, Open site explorer and Majestic then sort by domain authority, trying to wean out the spam.

This can be pretty cumbersome though which inevitably (as you’ve probably seen) could lead to some people throwing the baby out with the bathwater or sending removal requests to non-offending links.

Nichola Stott, themediaflow:

This is ridiculously easy: is there a genuine reason for that link to be there?

If there’s a piece of content which contains a link that relates to the theme of the content, and leads to a page which offers additional information or further context then that’s a perfect reason.

If there’s a piece of content about dog-friendly beaches, which has a footer sentence that states “get your holiday insurance from [Company Name]” then there’s absolutely no reason for that to be there as it has at a best, a tenuous relationship to the content and goes off on a tangent.

People will often state that footer links are to be avoided like the plague, which is largely true but then if a website links to their host “hosted on a [Company Name] server” then again that gives a genuine reason for that link. 

At the broader end of the scale there are tools which can help identify large volumes of “toxic” links using data signals, such as the Link Detox tools.

How do you think bloggers and other sites should respond to link removal requests? 

Andrew Girdwood: 

I think bloggers should treat each request on its own merit. I know some bloggers determined to make a living off blogging and who wish to be treated as a business.

These bloggers should consider link removal requests as a business request but very much keep in mind that the action is necessary because they, the blogger, might have let standards slip.

Or it might be because some foolish agency is doing a mass mail via a WHOIS look up script on a spreadsheet of all links on pages with PageRank less than two.

I really think bloggers should avoid charging for link removal. Imagine if Google started to record those blogs too. You could end up being listed as a blog known for selling links and for charging for their removal.

That said, as a blogger I can see the frustration with someone trying to meddle with your editorial.  Sometimes it feels appropriate to ask for content to replace content.

Bloggers and site owners really need to consider the relationship with whoever is making the request and consider the merits of the favour. Do it and earn a favour? Refuse it, save some time but risk burning a bridge. 

Rishi Lakhani:

If it was my blog? I would tell them to piss off.

However for many sites, if you go in a disavow, you never know how Google will treat that info, and if too many have you in disavow maybe one day in the future you will have a problem. 

Nichola Stott, themediaflow:

Personally I would delete these requests on sight, (unless you are selling links of the “holiday insurance” type example above).

Quite seriously if a site is in the process of cleaning up a dirty profile they should be grateful to know that they have actually managed to attract good quality links somehow.

I can understand that as a blog the fear may be that your linking page or whole domain may feature in a disavow tool, but what do you think happens to that data? Do you think that Google just takes each site to include in a database of link networks without any due diligence.

Such data takes some time to process and evaluate and is almost certainly informing the next iteration of the Penguin update, just as data from human quality raters helped inform the Panda algorithm.

Is this something Google’s link disavow tool should be used for? 

Andrew Girdwood: 

The industry seems to be embracing the link disavowal tool. This means Google’s getting value from it and is likely to lean on it more. This is the typical Google approach.

Just as it’s possible that links from safe but archived content might contribute towards skewing the balance of signals a site has it is also possible that frequent mentions in the disavowal tool would be harmful to a site. This is all “may” and “possible”. 

The last I checked Google was indicating that sites mentioned in disavowal lists would not be flagged.

As a blogger, I’d still prefer to have the option of removing a link and reducing the risk of being mentioned in the disavowal request.  

My bigger, current, consideration is of third party lists being produced which attempt to call out blogs to disavow and avoid in the future (and by refusing to remove links bloggers could end up on those) as such lists would harm the blog’s chances of being included in contests, freebies, competitions and other social media projects by brands.

Nichola Stott, themediaflow:

I would recommend using the disavow tool for links that are clearly unnatural and when a direct approach has been ignored.

Article source: http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/62743-how-should-publishers-respond-to-link-removal-requests

According to Matt, these are the most common mistakes to make and can be easily avoided when you first get started on SEO.

So here goes….

Mistake #1: Not having a crawlable website. If you make your good content really hard to find, then Google can’t crawl, index, and rank your content.

Solution: Watch the video below for Matt’s suggestion.

Mistake #2: Not including the right keywords and phrases within your website’s content.

Solution: According to Matt, it helps if webmasters think about what keywords and phrases searchers are going to use to find your website/business. Those are the words that should appear throughout the content on your site.

Mistake #3: Webmasters are focusing entirely too much on building links. Their focal points should be on creating quality content as well as marketing.

Solution: Rather than thinking of link building as the bee-all and end-all of SEO, you should focus on making something compelling – a reason people will really want to use your website.

Mistake #4: Webmasters are not using proper descriptions and titles. The purpose of your titles and descriptions is to entice viewers to want to click your link and visit your website.

Solution: Watch Matt’s video below for his suggestions on creating correct title and description tags.

Mistake #5: Not reaping the benefits of all the SEO and Webmaster resources readily available on the Internet.

Solution: Matt highly recommends that webmasters consider following Google’s videos and blogs. It is also suggested that they engage in conversation on the Google forums, and try using resources from other search engines like Blekko’s link tool and Bing Webmaster Tools.

You can watch the full video of the SEO mistakes below:

Article source: http://blog.ineedhits.com/search-news/top-5-seo-mistakes-according-to-google-140612467.html

For Who?
Advanced CommonSpot Training is available for everyone who has already been through CommonSpot Basic Training and wants to know how to do more advanced features and have a better, in-depth understanding of how CommonSpot works. 

When
See the schedule in the right-hand column on this page

What’s Covered
Advanced Training works with static webpages and elements/widgets. It doesn’t cover anything new with News/Events or Faculty/Staff, which are the database-driven portions of your department’s website, and are updated via their “pop-up” data managers, though the Rich Text Editor is also used in these Managers.

• Rich Text Editor
  • The Styles/Formatting Menus
  • Inserting Tables
  • HTML View and Tag Menu
• Page Layout Elements
  • Bookmarked Content
  • Tabbed Content
• CommonSpot Menus
• • The Blue and Gray Menus
  • Breadcrumb Reports Utility
  • Left-Hand Slide-Out Menu
• Registering External URLs
• Online Forms

RSVP
Please RSVP to webmaster@uwsuper.edu to reserve your seat for Advanced Training. Seats are limited – first come, first served. Basic/Intermediate knowledge of CommonSpot static webpage authoring is required.

Goal of Advanced Training
To provide you with knowledge on how to put advanced content on your department’s website. Explore advanced Rich Text Editor concepts, and to improve your confidence when working with static CommonSpot webpages.

Article source: http://www.uwsuper.edu/webmaster/training/index.cfm?tabId=2&tabGroupId=535156