The WordsManShip

Author: The WMS CEO

  • Viral Marketing: Crouching Opportunity, Hidden Genius

    Supplementing Top Quality Content for the Web with Viral Marketing Campaigns

    Dear readers (I’m assuming there’s more than one), has anyone of you heard of the ‘Dollar shave club’? Type in those words in the search engine of your choice and amidst the page littered with links to the aforementioned club, you might notice a link to a short video. It is of course an advertisement and it wouldn’t find a mention in our modest little blog if there wasn’t something extraordinary in it. This is a video that took the internet by storm sometime in April this year. Suckers for the occasional YouTube rib-ticklers might have heard about it.

    The video was a simple advertisement fashioned comically around a business idea that can be described as nothing less than ingenious. Of course, in truth, it may not be, but the video could definitely convince you otherwise. The video went viral and needless to say, as Aldo the apache might put it, “Cousin, business is just boomin”.

    A Case Study on Viral Marketing

    In any other case, people might have scoffed at the idea and considered it a run of the mill hogwash scheme in spite of the absurdly low investment of one dollar. Perhaps it was the low investment that might have actually made it seem crazy to begin with. But the video made the audiences buy into its craziness.

    And there you have it, a case study on how Viral Marketing can make your website an instant sensation. And in case you’re wondering, yes these are exactly the kind of results that Viral Marketing fetches you. It too has its drawbacks but considering the ruthless competition that you are likely to face, viral marketing maybe the perfect tool in your arsenal.

    The Problems with Viral Marketing

    People usually flinch in the name of viral marketing since it usually means a sudden spike in traffic which few websites can hold on to. Other forms of marketing and SEO are consistent and easy to sustain. Viral marketing on the other hand provides a recognition that slips through your fingers way too easily. There is truth in it.

    The average user has the attention span of a goldfish and there are about a gazillion viral campaigns out there that are tripping up over each other. What are the odds that your campaign might come out tops and stay there? The uncertainty element just looms large.

    But then again, one has to keep in mind that getting noticed is one of the most crucial steps in SEO and content writing. The rest that follows would be predicated solely on the user’s needs and experience with the website. It would be up to you to make the user feel a need that only your business can satiate. Viral marketing can make the horse come to the water. It is up to you to make it drink.

    The Potential of Viral Marketing

    The internet is a complex place. Subsequently, content for the web exists in many radical avatars. The exponential growth that SEO is witnessing has made marketing in the content service and technical writing industry as propitious as it is complex. Content marketing nowadays has evolved as a well rounded confluence of link attraction, social, search, branding etc. in one single force. The competition (and not just for web content writing) is vast and intense. And taking up strategies like viral marketing would be what one terms as bringing a gun to a gunfight instead of a knife.

    Coming back to the uncertainties that one will face, one is yet to figure out what makes a viral campaign really go ‘viral’. What really makes the target audience carry forward the campaign? Perhaps it’s just a wild stroke of luck or maybe the answer may simply be compelling material for advertising that is zany and informative in the right mix. It is a gamble. But you’ll never win until you roll the dice now will you?

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  • Blog-Nip to Deal with SEO Nap

    Tips on How You Can Further Entice the Cogs of the SEO World to Turn In Your Favour

    Anyone even remotely versed with SEO and its various techniques and processes (especially link-building) should by now be well aware of the importance of bloggers. Amassing a respectable blogger outreach has become all the more significant now owing to the various beastly updates search engines are rolling out.

    Acquiring links for your web content through blogs is generally considered better considering that it provides better search rankings and helps build a better brand presence amongst your target audience. Spreading the word, True dat!

    The Age Old Concept of Blogging as a Part of SEO

    Of course, there is nothing new in the concept of improved blogger outreach. Blogs have been an important part of SEO from the very beginning. So naturally there already exist a lot of conventional techniques with which professionals in the industry have penetrated blogs for link opportunities with varying degrees of success e.g. pitching guest blogs, offering branded info-graphics etc. The general aim is to come up with links which seem organic in the site.

    Modern Challenges Plaguing Bloggers

    However, the internet being the rapidly evolving entity that it is has quickly rendered these techniques hackneyed. I do not mean obsolete in any way. These techniques still work. But they have been rendered hackneyed mostly due to over-usage resulting in the saturation due to competition that quickly accompanies popularity of a technique.

    In any business, it is all about staying one step ahead of the competition. And on the internet, the competition moves vast and mobilizes in multitudes. It is this competition that makes link acquisition more intense and results in lower response rates.

    The following tactics may help you in giving an edge to the strategies and techniques that you may be currently employing for expanding your blogger outreach. These aren’t complete and will surely be followed by more tactics in further entries.

    Be an Enterprising Blogger Yourself When Pitching For Guest Blogs

    The blogging community takes care of its own. Bloggers are more likely to entertain business opportunities with other bloggers than a website’s online marketing team. This is not virtual nepotism. It’s just that fellow bloggers would understand the problems encountered better and therefore it would easier for the two to reach an arrangement. This holds true, be it the content service industry or technical writing industry.

    Here’s the deal, bloggers understand the value of their sites and blogs in matters of link building and branding campaigns which means that having some credibility of your own as a blogger will definitely help your cause.

    Installing Authorship Mark-Ups and Engage In Social Media

    A basic thing that many industries have to understand is that the tech savvy will always trump the plain-jane websites of internet yore (Yes-Offense, writers of India). The Darwinian natural selection in SEO exists in the form of authorship mark-ups and social media. For e.g. Google + mark-ups, Author tags etc.

    This will help you make connections with your link targets and help build long term relationships with the site administrators. You might want to start with compiling a list of blogs that you can approach for such alliances.

    Trawling through social network websites might also fetch you a few contacts. You can go about it by requesting bloggers for guest blogs.

    Quid pro Quo

    Actively involving yourself in their blogs might help you coax bloggers in staying active in your site/blog (A technique, most useful in SEO blogs). Regularly provide ideas and assure them that you’ll bring in readers. Offer compelling and click-worthy titles and actively respond to forums and discussion. Keep it in your head; you scratch their backs and sooner or later they’ll scratch your back too.

    Provide incentives…other than SEO that is

    You can give away e-books as well as free merchandise to a select list of your blogger associates. This has disguised advantages. Consider this, if the e-book contains links to your website, they’ll perhaps help disseminate it further. This may occur if the administrator decides to publish the PDF file.

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  • Flair for Writing…Why Does No One Care?

    In The Long Run, YOU Should…

    Sounds like angst doesn’t it? Truth be told, it might be too. Who nowadays bothers to sweat over great content and prosaic meaningful phrases when all you need is Search Engine Optimization? Isn’t this what half the cyber world (especially content service and technical writing industry) has debased itself to? Pages and pages of repetitive drivel linked to fraternal clones of the same poppycock.

    ‘Pablum Picassos’ or ‘Problem Picassos’?

    The established technique is to just stuff the pages with adequate number of anchor-texts and voila, the page scores a vast horde of traffic which will lose itself in the maze for a little while, only to exit the page and never return again.

    Cue in a professional team of ‘Pablum Picassos’ (‘Pablum’ means something that is ideal for infants, possesses no flavour and is, in essence entirely devoid of anything original) and their article spinning (among other processes) paintbrushes adept at producing a humongous load of sibling pages and content for the web and you have in your hands a pitiful excuse for a website which even SEO can’t salvage.

    The Comfort of Convenience in the Rat Race

    But that is the general outlook isn’t it? Quantity over quality, for whoever earned more by writing less? It is a practical approach indeed. And if your strategy is trumping your competition depending on quality content rather than SEO, then of what use is the latter? In an ideal situation, a writer would be able to generate quality content in quick spurts of time.

    In reality of course, ‘ideal’ hardly comes to fruition. The fight is for greater content and heft in numbers than in the matter presented. Seriously, where did all the creative writing disappear to?

    Like Everything Quality Great SEO Content Is Rare

    What good SEO content usually does is make your moderately written page more conspicuous in the web world; which literally translates to greater SERP’s with search engines. This would mean that audiences would give your page a dekko.

    Great SEO content would have audiences not only check out your website, but pull in more people to do the same and have them returning to your site on a regular basis. This spike in traffic too is one of the factors which influence SERP’s. This is exactly the difference between a mundane con job and a true creative yield of a hard work. This would automatically raise the variety of content and subsequently the value of your site.

    Credit Search Engines for Promoting Flair for Writing

    Search engines are gradually growing more and more sophisticated in their search processes and therefore require more than just a simple barrage of anchor-texts so as to properly get you content really out there. So, where does flair for writing figure in all of this?

    To regular readers, it would come as no surprise that we can’t get by one entry without having to mention the importance of great and unique writing. A signature style in writing and the sort of material presented cab make your pages more alluring. Remember, a truly readable write-up goes beyond the traditional concept of essay writing. The trend of identifying the writer through the article has steadily faded in the SEO industry and all the materials have neatly mashed in to an impersonal ball of instructions and guidelines.

    Presenting your material with a recognizable style of writing makes the reader identify and set apart your site from all the insignificant web-goop that he comes across daily. This will undoubtedly generate greater return rate and back-link generation. Your website will, over time, gain popularity and amass a multitude of loyal visitors. In a sense, that’s half the purpose of SEO achieved by you isn’t it?

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  • Fool Me Once, Shame on Me

    Fool me again and I will write an article about it, instead of mending my ways!

    Recently, in one of the blogs in the ever readable SEOmoz blog, there was a post which clearly stood out in the page littered with acutely jargoned titles. The post was neatly titled, ‘Don’t like snake-oil? Stop buying it!’ and did display all the exclamations and question marks firmly in place.

    The blog was about certain pieces deriding SEO as nothing but daylight hoodwinking. The ‘snake-oil analogy’ was firmly apt. Think about it; can an industry that is worth billions, in anyway be a complete sham? If it were, wouldn’t the various industry heads have ousted it by now?

    Salesmen Selling Snake Oil under another Name; Quackery in a Different League Altogether

    The blog went on to dole out tips on how to stay clear of fraudulent SEO service providers that do something but end up claiming something else entirely. The measures that should be taken are already competently listed in the above link itself and are worth a dekko for any SEO client. However, the interesting fact about the piece was that its focus was not black-hat techniques.

    Black-hat techniques are of course a big blight on the content service and technical writing industries. But since search engines are already systematically disposing of websites employing such techniques, experts and professionals offering such techniques are hardly worth sweating over. These are, of course, technical details, and anything that is in binary always finds itself a solution one way or another.

    What About The Other Shady Practices That Website Owners Have To Deal With, On And Off Cyberspace, In Equal Measure?

    Sure, SEO is complicated business. Perhaps this is the motivation for all the SEO tricksters out there. The SEO process has so many ins and outs that they can wheedle themselves out with any excuse for their lack of performance. Similarly, they can talk themselves into looking good when all they have done is made up the content numbers on the internet.

    Even so, the fault is squarely placed on the client who expects great results without investing any time, effort and money in the process. It is a phenomenon that a lot of SEO administrators have to deal with. The poor results churned out by these administrators could be because they are clueless about SEO, are overburdened with work or are just plain lazy. We won’t place ourselves on a moral pedestal and chastise them. It’s quite understandable. Why waste our time and energy on something that the clients can do way better than us?

    Knowing What You Want and How Much Investment Is Needed To Realise Your Own Visions

    Spending money quite often saves it too. But your responsibility, as the client, doesn’t end there. The onus is on you to educate yourself about the process that you are delegating to someone, at least, to an elementary extent. Why, you ask? How would you know what you want out of your workers if you know very little about it yourself?

    So what will get you your money’s worth? The answer for that in the SEO world is usually a spike in traffic and high SERPs. Then again, readers somewhat versed in the art of SEO would know that it would be the wrong answer. One has to be reminded that SEO as a process goes beyond the concept of SERP’s and web-traffic. Again, as the saying goes; if you go to Disneyland, you don’t spend the whole day on the Materhorn.

    And the truth is there are whole lot of legitimate enterprises out there which will provide great services. But again, you wouldn’t be able to use them to their full potential lest you know how. Calling a spade a spade, money is not the only investment in this business.

    And those blindly seeking results will most probably barter ‘snake-oil’ and stay oblivious to it.

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  • When Link-Building Is Hardly Enough-II

    The Booster Dose for Link Building Darwinism

    The following tips are in continuation with an earlier article in which we dealt out guidelines that might help elevate your web-traffic and SERP’s. Not unlike the strategies and advice doled out in the previous article, the following tips will be the shot in the arm your websites needed when link-building doesn’t deliver the results you were expecting.

    Remember, these strategies are applicable for all forms content for the web and do not just pertain to technical writing and content writing websites. After all, who doesn’t need SEO?

    Provide a Steady Stream of Content

    If you are regular reader of this blog, you might find this atrociously repetitive, but a website needs to provide its user with great content (a point that has been done to death in SEO articles, specifically ours). In an earlier tip in the previous article, we may have mentioned the generation of strong content. Of course a few web-posts over long intervals can get you only so far. You have to churn out content at proper content in short spurts.

    The relevance of a website is predicated on the extent to which the content can satiate the users’ needs or, at the very least, entice the audience’s interest, who I may remind you have the attention span equivalent of a gold-fish. The only thing bringing them back to your website maybe a reasonably steady stream of content moderately pertinent to their needs

    Of course just creating content and posting it in an obscure space in the web-world will hardly get you anywhere. Do take care to spread the word around parallel to it. That arguably does raise your workload (might do you some good to hire outside help if your plate is full) But this is one sure fire way to raise the relevance of your website.

    Fix All Technical Snafus on Your Website

    One thing that you might want to remember is that while user experience is important, numerous factors may escape the users’ notice, yet contribute to their overall experience significantly.

    The upgrading your URL structure is a simple process and will greatly help your website. You might also want to fix all the crawl errors in your websites. It would also benefit you to block spiders from pages which search engines don’t find too relevant for e.g. Print-friendly pages. They might not seem too significant but will nonetheless marginally improve your websites relevance. You might also want to fix title tags, meta-descriptions, h1 tags as well as alt-tags.

    Website administrators and writers in India, take note.

    Identify Advanced Traffic Targets

    Yes, this may sound like link-building, but it goes beyond it as well. Well researched marketing tactics form a firm base for all the link-building you may want to indulge in. Taken that you are adequately satisfied with the SEO committed to you page.

    Tactics like Landing-page testing; page retargeting will help you steadily introduce changes to you website. This is specifically new design elements and ads. This is a good step for Conversion Rate Optimization. A new Landing-page testing method that’s steadily gaining prominence is to serve different pages for different users based on new-IP addresses visiting your website. This way, one gets to test the reception of the changes in different variations.

    Administrators should also regularly monitor their Pay-per-clicks and configure them according to changing traffic.

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  • Don’t Kid Yourself; Smart Doesn’t Mean Quick And Easy!

    Seriously, don’t kid yourself

    We at the WordsManShip.com swear by a dictum; Working smart trumps working hard. The statement is however, often misconstrued. Working smart simply means driving up efficiency by putting in lesser effort than what is required so as to obtain either the same or a marginally greater output. To reiterate; we want greater efficiency. However, this in no manner means that we eschew hard labour.

    This is true for any industry, even the SEO, content writing and technical writing industry. As the old cliché goes, there is little getting around hard work. Working smart in many ways can be equally sweaty and greasy. The difference is in the results one strives for.

    Shortcuts, Loopholes, Green Blooded Hobgoblins and Leprechauns

    Pretty much everyone is looking for shortcuts and loopholes to get work done faster and few even succeed. Cyberspace is littered with articles which guarantee higher SERP’s and quick SEO. They provide that one simple trick which would have your website’s traffic skyrocketing, with little regard for any of your website’s content and strategy.

    Question yourself, are you that presumptuous to believe that in an industry sprawling billions of dollars, your one trick can get around the vast hordes of internet geniuses that are employed in it? How are these any different from the penis-enlargement ads or million dollar lottery ads flashing on the side of your screen? Or, for that matter, green blooded hobgoblins and simply green leprechauns?

    These tricks can hardly fetch you a coherent long-term strategy for sustained success. Worse, these are the very same tricks that might lower your SERP’s or discredit your site. And these are the same tricks search engines are cracking down on. Not unlike fads, these tricks eventually too are identified by search engines, only to get replaced by purportedly new Penguin-Panda-proof tricks. Fool’s gold if there ever was any.

    Secrets of the SEO Universe and SERPs

    Here’s the frosty truth about content writing and service content; no matter what tricks you employ, you cannot sustain success without anything coherent to offer to your audience. At the risk of repeating ourselves, the emphasis is always on content. With nothing good to offer, you don’t interest your audience and, in turn, search engines. And no amount of page rank sculpting, blog comment spamming or spun article submission can change that. (Instead of Googling these terms, how bout you Google ‘How to write an article’, instead? Might actually do you more good.)

    Trickery Leads to Trepidation and Sincerity Returns Success

    Yes, we understand that it’s a daunting task to build excellent content. We understand that it takes a lot out of you to revamp your whole website and fix those flawed codes. And most of all, we understand that it is spirit crushing to get the word going about your website and almost never stopping to rest. But down the road you too will understand.

    You will understand that people flock to your website because they like what they see and not because you conned them in to clicking another link which has pretty much the same content as your last page.

    You will understand that it is only because of this reason that users will return to your site and high-authority sites will take notice of your website’s pedigree.

    Finally, You will understand and sigh in relief when you see your competitors website disappear all of a sudden from the top of the SERP’s to page rank oblivion, while your website is on a steady climb up while the search engines bump out the bogeys. All this only because they tried to find ‘leprechaun tricks’, while you confidently soared with your genuine, high quality content.

    Now, that is Smart!

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  • When Link-Building Is Hardly Enough

    A Lesson in Link-Building Darwinism

    As search engines grow more and more radical in their functioning, SEO too has undergone great many transformations. Coming up with one technological innovation after another (the current apotheosis of which stands in the form of Google’s Penguin algorithm), search engines have systematically proceeded in making SEO more sophisticated, one step at a time.

    The content service business now not only involves a lot or processes and factors but added to this, it’s also become more competitive owing to greater interests shown by brands and sites to generate greater leads to their business. The SEO world hardly seems like a place for Darwinism, but adapt to survive is fact of life as is the fact that the creatures with the sharpest tools will be the ones to weather the change.

    Link-building as a process is one of the primary tools of SEO. The practice is imperative for content writing services since it not only helps sites procure better search rankings but helps search engines determine the value of a site. As the practice becomes more competitive, the smaller players in the business (especially the writers in India) are many times left in the lurch in spite of acquiring quality back-links over a long period of time. It goes without saying, with changing times, changing one’s methods and strategies is a foremost necessity.

    The following strategies might help such sites put up a steady fight against their competitors:-

    Analyze Your Competitor’s Links

    Competitive intelligence will help you identify your rival site’s strengths and weaknesses. Compare your own links and content with theirs and try to ascertain where they may be lacking not to mention what your own page’s infirmities are. The emphasis should be on gauging the amount, value and impact of these links to their rankings.

    Increasing the Relevance of Your Page

    When one speaks of Web Content Service, one usually means web CONTENT service. If radical link-building doesn’t help your cause, increasing the bearing of your content might be the straight-forward route of climbing the SERPs. After all, considering the criteria search engines have their eyes set on, relevance of content best serves the interests of the users and in turn theirs and yours.

    Make the data in your page more comprehensive. A long-winded entry will not increase the quality of your page. Try to add more details about the subject and spruce the page with important video and audio links. Adding pertinent internal and external links might also help your cause.

    Bring About Greater User Interaction and Activity

    Social signals and dynamic user activity in a page add to the authenticity of the page and act as digital pheromones to those web-trawlers or ‘spiders’ as they are referred to. All forms of user activity, vis. blogs, comments, testimonials, social shares on social networking sites will help to do this. (Such initiatives are conspicuously low in many Indian websites)

    This can be done by starting online discussions, offering the users to sign-up for your newsletters and RSS blog feeds, providing internal links in your page etc. This will ensure that users stay longer on your site and keep returning to it. But do take care that these do not in any way hamper the user’s experience

    Make Your Page Titles Catchier and Generate Strong Internal Links

    Search engines measure their own SERP’s for high converting pages. It doesn’t matter how high or low your page is placed within a search if it can catch the eye of the reader. The titles should not be stuffed with keywords and at the same time should adequately explain the content of the page. A brand marketing and established authorship for your site puts you in a better advantage.

    The same applies for internal links. Catchy titles increase the odds of the user to explore the link. And if the promise delivers well, consider the user hooked.

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  • Google Penguin Update: Just Smile And Write Boys!

    Helping All SEO Animals Avoid the Flying Kicks of the Penguins

    In internet years, it’s been aeons since Google rolled out its new algorithmic scourge that is the Penguin. But for bloggers who are yet to get around it, we at The WordsManShipwould, in continuation with our earlier blog posts, like to relay some tips for you to escape from getting ‘Pecked by the penguin’. These tips would be generally more helpful for bloggers who are in the “over-optimization” game since it is those that the Penguin has tackled in an organized drive. Despite the months of its release Google is yet to rectify these snafus and therefore it would help to keep an optimistic mindset about the next turn of events.

    We at The WordsManShip do not, in any way, endorse black-hat techniques, but until Google is able to perfect its algorithm (which undoubtedly will mutate into a much radical avatar), these following tips might help the website owners to sustain their Link-building techniques.

    While these tips may not provide a sure-fire guarantee to raise your web-traffic, they may act as useful guidelines for content writers to keep intact the current traffic in their sites, with or without the Penguin.

    Try To Maintain the Uniqueness of Your Content: Even With Links

    In their drive to provide higher SEO for their websites, administrators (especially those in technical content writing) tend to do what is termed as “over-optimization”; one of the results of which ‘exact-matches’ in terms and key-words or even links for that matter. The Penguin trawls for exact-matches in websites. As you may have concurred the meaning from the term itself, exact matches tend to get identified as spams and manipulative signals. The usage of which would include:-

    • Exact matches in Anchor-Text
    • Surplus use of Exact-match domains
    • Over-stuffing of Key-words

    From all the news and opinion that is being circulated, these three given factors are somehow being targeted to devalue the over-optimization that is rampant in the SEO world. So, websites are advised to stay wary of using these techniques to maintain their SEO standing or at the very least not get devalued.

    Monitor the Spam Links in Your Own Page

    Every website is bound have its own ratio of good links and bad links on its pages (the same is applicable for back-links as well). This is a phenomenon most website owners are familiar with. The higher ratio of good links will obviously assure you a greater traffic and ranking for your page. This is particularly important for those involved with technical content writing.

    Make Your Site Feel “Un-SEO’d”

    The convention goes that if a site feels like it’s been SEO’d then most probably it is. A good quality interface for your website assures a user of its uniqueness and may also provide a greater scope for good back-links. Plus, all things considered a user-friendly interface is always good for the website in the long run, given that a long run is what you are aiming for.

    Sites like Amazon, SEOmoz, Zappos provide a user-friendly interface. And it is this same convenience in browsing that makes users come back to these websites and thereby strengthen these brands.

    Modify Existing Links That May Be Harmful For Your Profile and Acquire Solid Links for Your Sites

    Before the Penguin makes you harried, we assure of the fact that the update still has a lot of loopholes that you can benefit from. Although it’s slowly getting up to speed, it still targets pages and sites that conspicuously flout a certain benchmark in quality.

    Acquiring good links will help you cover up the existing bad pages that you may have acquired. These links will help build a stronger presence for your traffic and furthermore, it will greatly help you acquire better traffic.

    Build More Solid Content and Connect Them with Affected Pages

    Publish more attractive articles for SEO in your site that will generate social signals, and then internally link them to the pages that are designated with your keywords that display signs of being stricken by low-traffic (irrespective of whether it’s been affected by the Penguin or not).

    It would further help to explore options in content marketing, because it can certainly bring more positive results to your site from both SEO.

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  • Google Penguin Update II: How to Evade the Supersmart Penguins

    Penguins can dig out of zoos, hijack huge ships and apparently snuff out websites using black hat SEO techniques…

    In the previous installment of the Google Penguin update series titled, ‘Google Penguin Update I: The Ins, the Outs and the Inbetweens’, we focused on what the Penguin update is and the kind of impact it has had on the internet world. We specified that the Penguin update targets websites that employ black hat SEO techniques or spamming methods for SERPs.

    However, we did not exactly specify the various black hat techniques that the Penguin update has actually targeted. The reason for this was simply that Google does not reveal what its algorithmic updates target and we did not know. Fortunately, one person does know as he has researched into the subject and we will just focus on what his findings have been. This person is Glenn Gabe of G-Squared whose original post can be found here.

    Onward then. According to Glenn Gabe, websites employing five specific SEO practices have suffered the most. On the basis of the findings of his analyses, here is our advice to webmasters looking to either fix the damage from the Penguin update or evade its flappy clutches altogether.

    Avoid Paid Links At All Costs

    Google has been against paid links for a long time now and it seems to have finally killed the concept entirely. The Penguin update finds it easy to pick out paid links for any websites. This is particularly easy for Google if the paid links are using exact anchor texts and are on websites that are especially full of sponsored links.

    Automated Comments Programs Will Get You in Trouble

    All the websites that took a beating through the Penguin update had a variety of things in common and one of these was comment spam. Comment spamming is very common amongst internet marketers as it is an easy and effective way to get backlinks. This is not the case anymore because of the Penguin update which will keep a tab on websites that get unnatural links though this practice.

    Links on Questionable Websites Will Make Your Website Questionable

    Most people believe that a guest post is a good thing for the website. This is true but only if the guest post is on a blog that is reliable. Regardless of whether you are aiming for SEO blogs, technology blogs or any other kind of blog to put your guest post on, the integrity and quality of the blog will be important. In essence, do not just distribute guest posts with abandon and actually analyze the blogs where your guest posts are going.

    Article Marketing Websites Will Give You No Juice

    SEO blogs of various types and people who are series experts in writing content have been harping on this since the Panda update came out. In other words, the Panda update weakened the quality of article marketing websites and the Penguin update has now killed their use entirely. Expect to see such link farms shutting down in a hurry very soon.

    Reevaluate All Incoming Links to Your Website

    In simplest of terms, the incoming link profile of your website is crucial for the Penguin update, irrespective of whether you have been writing content of great quality or not. Therefore, if you have seen your website suffer because of this release, then you should look to reevaluate your incoming link profile in extreme detail so as to pluck out and remove all bad influences.

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  • Google Penguin Update I: The Ins, the Outs and the Inbetweens

    The panda from Kung Fu Panda… the Penguin from Madagascar… what’s next? The mouse from Ratatouille?

    The panda in Kung Fu Panda was a blubbering fool initially but, with a few tweaks and modifications, he became a world beater. A person would have to be blind or completely out of the world of SEO to not see similarities between the Panda in the movie and the Panda update of Google. The story, unfortunately, is the same with the Penguin update of Google.

    Penguins in the movie Madagascar were an overconfident lot who kept making mistakes but never admitted to them. The Penguin update from Google, according to many SEO experts is a big, fat mistake that Google would not admit to. Or is it?

    Understanding What the Penguin Update Is

    Writing content or buying content is an intrinsic part of online marketing. However, the content, whether purchased or self composed, needs to be of high quality and this is exactly what Google has been trying to enforce with its previously released Panda update and the recently revealed Penguin update.

    While the Panda update was the carrot in that it focused on rewarding websites with great, unique and innovative content, the Penguin update is the stick as it aims at punishing websites and web pages practicing the fine art of spamming or over optimization.

    In conjunction, these two algorithm updates from Google are supposed to encourage webmasters to follow the “quality guidelines” specified by Google. Google, with respect to its recent algorithm update, stated that the modifications are aimed at reducing the rankings of websites that tend to violate the specified guidelines from Google. In other words, all webmaster employing black hat SEO techniques will suffer from this update.

    Was the Penguin Update Effective?

    The big question, as is obvious, is simply if the Penguin update was successful. In one sentence, the jury is still out on the Penguin update. Now, it is likely that you are wondering that how can Google, the demigod of search engines, mess up. Well, the answer is that it has not.

    The algorithm changes that Google has made have ended up doing exactly what they were made for i.e. punish the web spammers who target SEO more than high quality content. The problem is that the Penguin update has not gone down well with webmasters who have been writing content of high quality but have also been using these black hat SEO techniques.

    The Plight of Webmasters Using Great Content with Spamming Techniques

    As is obvious, these webmasters make noise on the fact that they are writing content of high quality, which, according to them, means that they follow Google’s quality guidelines. The majority of these webmasters are niche website owners. Niche websites are websites with a single objective of making money. Even though there are niche websites that are genuine content providers, the majority have been using spamming techniques to get Google ranks and visitors.

    Needless to say, Google’s new algorithm changes have pinpointed these websites and snuffed them out. While the intention may have been good from Google i.e. to promote writing content of high quality or people who buy content from serious professionals, the fallout is that certain high quality websites have taken a beating as well.

    Websites that have taken a beating despite writing content of good quality have most probably suffered this fate because some part of their SEO strategy includes spamming. This could be spun content distribution, blog comment spam or even link purchases.

    Madagascar Penguins Had Multiple Movies, Penguin Update Will Have Multiple Revisions

    As mentioned above, the jury is still out on the Penguin update of Google and the reason for this is simply that there would be multiple tweaks and modifications to it in the future. The Panda update took time to become relatively perfect and so will the Penguin update. One can expect a number of updates or refreshes to the Penguin update in the following few weeks.

    In fact, owing to the hullaballoo that many webmasters have made on forums everywhere and the sheer number of complaints that Google has received, the search engine giant has come forth with a special feedback form. Google has, basically, provided suffering webmasters with a lifeline by asking them to fill up this form if they think that the Penguin update has hit their websites wrongly.

    Genuinely wronged victims will fill up this form and may even get some relief but it would also be safe to assume that, of the number of people who are actually making noise about the Penguin update, only a small percentage will actually fill this form. Only time will tell how many umbrages were genuine and how many were feigned.

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