Google Panda And How It’s Changed SEO

SEO has been one of the most important buzz words for web publishers over the past decade.  Getting ranked in Google means free traffic for web publishers, so improving and optimizing a given website for the search engines was essential.  However, Google Panda is here to stay, and it has forever changed the rules of SEO.

For the past 10+ years, Google utilized its PageRank methodology to rank websites. If you had a website about basketball, and you got a link from ESPN.com – Google would notice that your site is a quality site about basketball.  It was similar to a voting system, when a relevant and high authority site linked to you, it would count as a vote.  And the more votes your website received, the better your website would rank.  Of course relevance played a roll, as Google gave more value to sites linking to you which were about a similar topic as yours.  In addition, authority mattered, so one link from ESPN.com may hold more value than 5 links from sports related blogs which weren’t as popular.

Two other major factors that Google considered were unique content and the “Title Tag”.  Google wanted content that was unique and not displayed on other web pages across the internet.  If duplicate content was found, Google would determine which site was the original author of the content, and it would penalize the other sites which had scraped the content.

Google also factored the “Title Tag” as it was a way for web publishers to tell users and Google what the given webpage was about.  This helped Google to organize and rank web pages for given keyword searches.

This methodology for ranking web pages worked, and Google utilized the above methods in addition to several others to display highly relevant search results.  For years, Google results were of a higher quality than all other search engines, which is why Google continued to command over a 65% market share.  However, over the past few years, other search engines such as Bing caught up, and Google wasn’t so special anymore.  At the same time, web publishers became savvy and they figured out ways to sneak into Google ahead of more relevant results.  For example, earlier this year, JC Penny was accused of purchasing links on websites across the web to make Google think that these links were natural and thus a vote for JC Penny’s websites.

As more and more users complained about search results, Google realized it needed to shift, and in came Google Panda. Google Panda is an entirely new way for Google to evaluate websites.  And while Google will still factor in many of the same criteria it has in the past, Google Panda adds an entirely new element to Google’s ranking methodology.

Panda wants better quality websites in its results.  It is less concerned with signals that other websites give it and more concerned with what the actual users think about the website.  Think of Google Panda as an automated way for Google to have users power its search results.  The brilliant part is that it is user powered without the user having to do anything different.  Panda is not only genius, but it makes sense as it should prevent lower quality sites from tricking Google into thinking they are of higher quality.

Panda factors in a wide variety of user signals to help Google determine the quality of a website.  It looks at “Time on Site” as a way to determine how quality of an experience the user is having on a given site.  It looks at the bounce rate, which is a measure of the percentage of people that leave a site without doing anything.  It looks at social signals such as shares and +1′s as a way to see if people are recommending a given webpage.  It looks at page views per visit as a way to see how people are navigating through a given site.

Google also looks at Branded Search traffic which is the amount of people that are specifically looking for a given site. So, if your basketball site is called “Fun Basketball Dude” – and Google notices that an increasing amount of people are searching for “Fun Basketball Dude” as a way to get to your website, that is a way for Google to recognize that your site is enjoyed by users.

Overall, these are “usage metrics” and they signal to Google how users value a particular webpage or website.  In the old days, unique content was important, but Google Panda wants unique content that is also high quality content.  And the usage metrics Google has in place will help it to determine if the content that the reader lands on is truly high in quality.

If you are trying to rank well in Google – I think you should listen to what Google is saying.  Instead of trying to trick Google with Black Hat techniques, utilize Google’s tips which will essentially improve your site while boosting your chance at increased referral traffic from Google.

Compliments: Evan Britton, ResourceWebs Business Insider SAI Contributors.

The Changing Media Landscape – Is There a Solution?

New media has completely transformed the way consumers gather news and information. While it has created many new opportunities, it has also brought about numerous challenges to traditional media and even contributed to, what some consider, dying business models.

Some traditional media enterprises have embraced new media with great success. Others, however, have not had the same experience. One of the biggest blows, if you will, to traditional media has been that consumers have become reporters themselves. We have seen how powerful these reports have been in events involving the Middle East, the death Osama bin Laden, and more.

Today, consumers no longer have to wait until designated times to get their news and information. Not only that, they don’t even have to visit specific news sites to find out what’s going on. News today is easily accessible wherever consumers are.

The big question in all this is, how will media continue to evolve? This is exactly what the FCC and theFTC sought out to do some 2 years ago. When the effort began, it seemed to lean heavily in the direction of saving journalism, namely, struggling media enterprises. In 2010, the FTC released its “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism,” which was received with much criticism.

Since then, the FTC has not been involved with the effort. The FCC, however, recently released its own “Future of Media” report called “The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.” This report was met with both criticism and praise. Most of the criticism came from the left, and the praise came from right wing groups that want to preserve the First Amendment.

Speaking about the report, Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow with the Technology Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told us the report was a “welcome relief.” He said, “It shied away from the more extreme types of proposals that we had heard some academics put out there in the past.”

The report focuses on the abundance of media and how consumers can access this wealth of information with as little as a click of a mouse, but it didn’t actually call for any drastic recommendations. It did note that traditional media institutes are struggling and that high-quality journalism was hard to find, even in this age of abundance. However, consumers now have choice, which was something that was strictly limited before.

The FCC admits that getting both really high-quality journalism and giving consumers options is a difficult challenge. Although the commission did not provide a solution to this dilemma, it did advise the media to continue experimenting with processes and systems.

Media reform group Free Press strongly opposed the report and called it a “major disappointment.” In apress release, President and CEO Craig Aaron said, “The report discusses many important ideas, but where the FCC actually has the power to help local communities, the agency abdicates its responsibility in the areas.”

Free Press, along with many other media reform organizations, hoped that the report would call for more aggressive policy proposals to ensure quality news and information for local communities.

“If the FCC decides to relax, waive, or ignore its own rules that prevent the formation of local media monopolies, it may temporarily help pad the profits of the large conglomerates, but it will not cure what ails journalism or the media industry,” said Aaron. “The only way to ensure vibrant, quality journalism-and a healthy democracy-is to engage the public so starved for meaningful local news and information today. We hope that this report can still serve as a catalyst for better public policy to address the serious problems the document identifies.”

On the other side of controversy, Thierer said, “There’s an important wall in America, a wall between, if you will, press and state… that wall is rarely breached, and it should not be breached so easily just because there’s a time when the media is struggling in this country, as they are today.”

“This debate has a level of elitism at the margins at times where some people say, ‘You need to eat your greens and find the good journalism,’” he said. “Living in an age of abundance in the Internet and digital world… we can spend a lot of time online – probably messing around, watching and listening to all sorts of stuff, including a lot of nonsense – and not always consuming that which others think is best for us. But the question is, how do you force them to do that?”

He also asks the question, “Do you want a massive bailout of failing journalistic enterprises?”

From a practical standpoint, Thierer believes that if the government begins to impose policy on the media, it will only lead to more policies. While the government could bring some improvements to the media sector, he doesn’t think that it should be able to force what it thinks users should consume.

“Information technology is moving way too fast for our federal regulators to keep up with it,” he said. “We live in gut-wrenching, interesting, disruptive times… some of this experimentation and evolution is just going to have to play itself out… there isn’t any easy answer.”

Do you think the government needs to step in to help improve the media sector?

Courtesy WebProNews

CES: Motorola reveals iPad-rival Xoom tablet

Motorola today revealed its new Android-based Xoom tablet, which the company hopes will dethrone Apple’s iPad in this fast-growing market segment.

The Xoom betters the iPad in some ways–it comes standard with front- and rear-facing cameras, including one that can record in HD, compared with none in the current version of the iPad. It also boasts a larger screen with a higher resolution, supports Adobe Flash, and uses Verizon’s network instead of AT&T’s.

Motorola Xoom tablet 

(Credit: Motorola.com)

It will become the first device to run the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, known as Honeycomb. The operating system supports multitasking and has been designed explicitly for tablets.

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this afternoon that the device will be available in stores in the first quarter of 2011 in 3G form. All of the 3G Xooms “are capable” of being upgraded to 4G later this year, he said.

Jha didn’t announce how much the device will cost and Motorola ended the event without taking questions from reporters.

This will be “the most competitive product in the marketplace,” Jha predicted. (Motorola recently split into two publicly traded companies, Motorola Mobility Holdings and Motorola Solutions.)

The Xoom (pronounced “zoom”) will operate on Verizon Wireless’ network and be upgradeable to 4G LTE in the second quarter of the year, with units sold thereafter including 4G by default. It was not immediately clear if a Wi-Fi-only version would be available, but the companies’ statement appeared to indicate it would not be, and the photos of the tablet show a Verizon logo on the top right corner.

Read more>>>

iPad uncovered!

Would you purchase the all new iPad – perhaps.  But let me ask you this, what purpose would you like it to serve apart from that ‘it looks good’?

People under the age of 40 are and would buy the iPad because it looks good rather than its technical capabilities. For all its supposed interactivity, the iPad is a surprisingly static machine, especially for reading. And for the moment, few other universities are showing signs of embracing it for student use. While it’s true that some electronic book platforms for the iPad allow highlighting (it also looks like you’ve just used a fat neon yellow, blue or orange high-lighter) allow you to type notes, they barely take advantage of being digital.

The iPad is and will be a work in progress. After using it for a while you will bump up against its limitations. When you do, you’ll find yourself missing the most utilitarian features of a laptop or PC—the mouse, the multitasking, the word processing.  One thing though, the iPad has to be different enough from the company’s three other revenue streams—computers, iPods and iPhones—as not to compromise their sales.

So for now, the iPad is the ultimate consumer device and primarily meant to consume media and not produce it, hence the lack of printing applications, camera and USB ports.

To iPad or not to iPad?

Marketing on the Web

The WWW or otherwise know as The World Wide Web creates a wonderful versatile, and often misused medium for direct marketing.

Questions to ask yourself should be:  1) Do I have a website? 2) Can I make use of a web based newsletter? 3) Should I be emailing my customers? 4) Do I track my visibility on search engines? 5) Should I be participating in live webinars?

One of the most important points to remember is that you must invest regularly so that you are always changing and improving your online presence.  This type of marketing needs to be a living thing that is forever changing and never allow your site to become stagnant or old.

Here are a few points for you to consider for successful online marketing:

• Select a good (catchy) web address
• Design an effective web page / pages
• Using appropriate on and off page optimisation
• Get your site noticed by search engines
• Purchasing visibility on search engines
• Creating back links
• Offer white pages
• Consider advertising
• Use content as a traffic driver
• Adding human contact like chats or blogs

Tune back in for more exciting tips and tricks!

How influential are webinars?

Have you been invited to join webinars lately?  Did you find them useful?  What are webinars and how do they function?

Webinars can have different purposes, the main function perhaps is training. Here you can have numerous individuals logging on to be educated on a particular subject, another use is a conference, which would be more of a situation to share ideas and then lastly, to market and sell a product or service.

A typical webinar strategy is basically promoting your product to potential users or buyers by holding a free webinar. These webinars should be informative and of good quality content that will be useful to the end user.  You now have the option to sell your product and or service with this type of webinar at the end of the presentation.  By telling your viewers what to do with regards to your topic and then selling your services and or product you help them accomplish their goal more easily thus saving them time and money.

The benefits of such a webinar is that it has both audio and visual presentation capabilities.  Webinars allow for clear presentation of ideas, concepts and products because your attendees can clearly see what you are talking about.

All that is needed is a computer and an internet connection that can handle streaming of both audio and video, because video requires large bandwidth it is recommended that ADSL or 3G is best suited over a dial up connection.

There are tons of free webinars out there for all types of interests, choosing the right webinar for you or your company will depend on the industry you are in, just take the time to google them!

Capturing the moment

Sports photography is one of the few remaining pure forms of documentary photography. The moment happens and it is gone. You either capture it in an image or you don’t.  As photographers, you don’t have the luxury of instant replay – you only get one shot!  Some great sports photographers get to capture tremendous skills and abilities of those who are involved in these games, but they also manage to capture the passion and emotion related to that moment in time.  Some of the best sports photojournalism also tells the story of what just happened.

This form of photography can be extremely rewarding but few people actually make a career out of it.

The best way to shoot movement is to see where most of the action takes place, then take up a safe position and wait for the participants to come into your line of vision or you could do some panning.  Panning is a term commonly used in the film industry where the camera moves across a scene or tracks a moving object.  In still photography, this technique is there to give a sense of speed.

AI Servo mode on most DSLR cameras is a great asset to sports photography because your subject is forever moving and the camera will keep your subject sharp no matter how quickly it is moving.

Share your pics of where you captured the moment!

Canoe polo champs - JHB

The Challenge of Change

I recently attended a talk by a gent by the name of Michael Jackson – no not the dead one and I am not hallucinating!  His entire talk was about the challenge of change and what that means for every day people like you and I.  So, what does that even mean – well, think about it. Everything is changing and it is changing quicker than we think.

This is how Michael told it, he said, “how much we do today, every 24 hours.”

“Every day we do more world trade than the entire year of the 1950′s!  We undertake more research than the year of 1960.  We send more mail than in the year of 1970.  We make more phone calls than in the year of 1980.  We write more e-Mails than in the whole of 1994 and we send more sms’s than in the entire year of 2001!”  Thats an execs of around +8 000 000 000 sms’s per day!

We have to be prepared for change, if we do not embrace change we will most certainly be left out in the cold.  So how can every day people take what Michael is saying and use it to our advantage, by understanding where we have come from and where we want to go.  Nothing is impossible and learn from the mistakes of the past.

Obama says, “Be pro-active and disregard dogma, focus on core competence and responsible actions.  Show accountability and stick to the key business issues: work, cash, health and technology.

How have you managed change or do you still think that the digital era is not yet upon us?

To view The Challenge of Change by Michael Jackson go to: www.theothermichaeljackson.com

To visit Liquid Lemon, please go to: www.liquidlemon.co.za