Category: Search Engine Optimization

It should be clear to anyone with more than a passing interest in search engine optimization that it favors long-term planning and hard work over easy, short-term gain. If you need any proof of this, you need look no further than last year’s Penguin 2.0 update and how hard it hit websites that used questionable (yet effective) optimization techniques like paid links, content networks, and link schemes. What’s one thing all those strategies shared in common?

They were easy. They required minimal work on the part of the webmaster and gave immediate returns.

As I’m certain many of you are already aware, Google recently acquired Deepmind, an artificial intelligence firm with a focus on machine learning.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the corporation is looking to augment its new army of robots with better intelligence (all the better to kick off the machine uprising with?).

After all, this purchase came directly on the tail end of a flurry of robotics acquisitions, of which Boston Dynamics was the capstone. And while smart robots could certainly be in Google’s future, that isn’t the reason Google bought the startup.

See, what a lot of people appear to have forgotten in light of Google’s recent innovations and inventions is that it is, at its core, about search.

Writing can be pretty rough work, and putting together a piece of quality content that’s both properly search-optimized and valuable to the reader can be a very tall order.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could simply take a single good piece of content and turn it into a hundred pieces or more without having to put in any extra effort?

Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of having to pay a hundred writers, you could simply pay one and sell the same piece a hundred times?

Actually, that’s entirely possible – and completely inadvisable.

The only constant in search is change. Every time you think you have Google figured out, they switch it up again. The search engine giant kept the SEO world guessing in 2013 by changing their algorithm over five hundred times, a trend that will most likely continue this year. It’s important to stay a step ahead, so in that spirit, here are five bold SEO predictions moving forward in 2014.

Conversational Search via Natural Language Processing

In 2013, Google made most keyword data private. Many saw this as a war on keywords. Currently, the “Not Provided” rate is 82%. Experts anticipate this number will reach 100% by June.

In the continuing saga of big companies implementing SEO strategies that get them a spanking, Rap Genius has had its SERP positions wiped out by Google.

Rap Genius is a lyrics site that allows its users to comment on lyrics, explaining and analyzing their meaning. The lyrics industry is a cutthroat niche, with a large number of sites fighting it out for the top SERP positions.

Rap Genius stands out among competitors. Its site quality and insightful commentaries are excellent. However, the company’s owners apparently disagreed. They implemented a link-building strategy. Even a novice SEO would have called it unwise.

In an uncharacteristically forthright blog post, Matt Cutts, head honcho of Google’s webspam team, lashed out at the practice of guest blogging. Apparently infuriated by what is probably the millionth automated spam email from low-grade online marketers offering to produce content for his blog, Cutts seems ready to go to war with guest bloggers.

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.”

If you haven’t already, you should check out the post to understand the nuance of his position. Of course, a backlash is already well underway, with many apparently having missed that nuance.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of ASEOHosting.

Are you not getting the volume of search traffic that you feel you should or could be getting? There might be some very simple reasons why.

According to Google engineer Matt Cutts, there are some basic SEO mistakes that many webmasters make. Here are those mistakes along with some suggestions to fix or avoid them.

Client Behavior

Think about the typical process by which a customer chooses a company to do business with. In many cases, they pull out their phone; do a quick search with Google, on a social media network, or on a dedicated review site like Google Places; scan through the results, and pick a business with the best reviews.

Even in a street full of coffee shops and restaurants, customers no longer choose by wandering along and checking out the atmosphere or perusing the menu.

Both of those factors will be trumped by a smartphone and a set of bad reviews. Everyone checks reviews before making a purchase more significant than a few dollars.

However beautiful your site and however compelling your content, all of that effort is wasted if users hit the homepage and can’t figure out where to go from there.

Poorly conceived site architecture is responsible for increasing bounce rates and lowering conversion rates.

And, if you think that you have trouble with shoddy site architecture, spare a thought for poor Googlebot, which is nowhere near as smart as the average user and is tasked with making sense of it all.

Since Marissa Mayer took over at Yahoo!, many of its properties have been revamped. Flickr is no exception. Flickr now has a much nicer interface.

Browsing millions of hosted images is now a pleasure. You can look for inspiration. Or find a picture to add visual sparkle to a blog post. The limitations on photographers for storing images have changed. This has brought back many who left for competitors. Because of this, more images are being added now. This is more than in the last few years.

Studies prove that images help user engagement. This has SEO benefits. It also greatly aids social media exposure. Flickr is a treasure trove. However, bloggers need to be aware of a few pitfalls. Business bloggers, in particular, should know these before snagging images. They might want to use them to liven up their posts.
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