Jon's In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

The announcement o the Penguin 3 update worried me, just as it did everyone else, I’m sure. Finally, I think I can safely say that my sites came through fine. No drops in rankings at all.

In fact, a few which I was rehired to work on – after the client realized that SEO isn’t a one-short deal – came back strongly during the change up.

I’m very grateful as even well-optimized, fully ‘white hat’ sites can be taken down with everyone else. Over the long hall, though, I’ve found that those will bounce back, though that time in the wilderness is completely confusing and can make you feel helpless. Hard to explain to the client that if they’ll be patient it’ll return to the levels you were at just a week or two before.

Still, it’s a vindication that well written, intuitive and content-filled websites are the path to enduring success in Google. Write that down.

Search Engine Land has an interesting write up on the possibility of Google’s quality ratings being released to the public. These are the guidelines they’ve come up with through using human testers to figure out what a ‘Quality’ site looks like.

Although they say that these human testers don’t influence rankings ‘directly’, it’s clear that the findings produced from these groups are used in ranking updates and algorithms, including the big Panda update.

It would be interesting to see exactly what they’ve designated as communicating Quality for a website, though much is probably already out there. We know what they want through different pronouncements, answers they’ve given to direct questions and, of course, common knowledge.

Still, the horse’s mouth is the most authoritative one. You can read the article here:

Google May Go Public With Its Human Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Google has announced that they’re literally going deep into businesses to take photos inside stores and some offices. This means you’ve got to start thinking hard about what prospective customers and clients will be seeing.

Your interior must reflect your marketing in detail, although that should be happening already, right? If you’re after upscale clientele, does your inside layout say that clearly? Does your furniture and decor say ‘high income’? It better.

If you have a store based around deals, will the photos capture some of those signs trumpeting your low, low prices? They should if you want to get those discriminating shoppers through your door.

Your offline, in-store marketing has now become part of your Internet marketing, like it or not. Take a hard look at the inside of your establishment. Get fresh eyes if needed to give you a perspective you often don’t have yourself. This is vital.

Internet marketing and real world marketing are converging more than ever. They must be in sync to succeed. If they’re not in sync, you may not be in business.

NOTE: This isn’t automatic. You do the work of getting the pictures done, but it must be performed by a Google approved photographer. Go here to find out more:

Google Business Interior Photos Program  [LINK CURRENTLY NOT WORKING]

Shareaholic, a company that provides social sharing widgets/buttons to websites, has reported Pintrest passing Yahoo to become the 4th biggest source of traffic for its clients.

In case you’re wondering, Google is #1, Direct Traffic is #2 and Facebook takes the #3 spot.

Now keep in mind that Shareaholic’s client base is about 200,000 websites. That’s doesn’t necessarily mean that this is true across the entire Internet.

However, it fits the general truth that social outlets are producing a lot more traffic these days. You need to be there, too.

Does that meant that you have to use every social media and network out there? No, just the ones that make sense.

A lot of businesses don’t necessarily need a Twitter presence, for example. Others do.

Also keep in mind that sharing your content and getting Likes/Votes/+1s for that is being used in Google’s ranking algorithm.

That alone should get you to start taking social media marketing more seriously.

Figure out which social networks make sense for you and your business, how to use them correctly, and start getting social!

First, I should be completely honest and say that there are some differences between the search engines.

They each have their own unique ranking algorithm and inevitably emphasize certain elements and practices more than another. But, that’s not the whole story, obviously.

If you do quality SEO, with quality content that uses your targeted keyphrases appropriately, you’ll usually do well in all search engines. Will you see some variations in rankings? Yes, that’s possible, but….

Overall, though, you can and should be positioned at high levels across the board. Good SEO is Good SEO. The search engine differences are not that great.

One thing to remember is that sometimes Yahoo & Bing are slower to move on new sites than Google.

Not because they ‘reward’ websites at a more leisurely pace, it’s just that they don’t pick up new sites as quickly as Google. That is changing, though.

Do a good job of optimization, or hire someone who knows what they’re doing, and you’ll be successful in all major search engines.

Maybe not as fast as you’d like, but the results will come.

There are SEOs out there who will tell you there’s a certain amount of words or a page length measurement that gets high rankings from Google.

They’re either uninformed or they’re flat out lying to you. Here’s what you should know.

There IS such a thing as too little text or too much.

You know what too little looks like- it’s a page with a lot less content than it needs to have; it says little and it doesn’t give Google or the human visitor enough to understand what the page is about or what to do next. What about too much text?

That can also happen, but it’s more a matter of the sales quality of the page, not the rankings. People only scroll so far down a page before they will abandon it.

There exists a point where content needs to be divided up into more pages to retain the website’s usability and quality. Just a fact of dealing with human beings.

Different pages will need different levels of content. Your homepage will need enough to introduce your site, tell the visitor enough to get them to dive in deeper and sell them a little on whatever it is you do (or sell).

Other pages, like a section with pictures of products, will have less text, maybe just a short intro paragraph to tell shoppers a little about the ‘store’ setup and move them forward.

A page’s purpose will decide the amount of text you’ll need, not a one-size-fits-all number.

So – there’s not perfect amount of words that will set you up for ranking #1.

Just be sure you have enough text to at least guide the visitor, get them oriented, plus give the search engines enough to serve their purposes as well. That’s the perfect amount of text.

Like me, you probably see webpages that obviously are trying to cover all the keyphrases bases, especially on their homepage.

It’s clear they’re trying to hit at least 5, 10, sometimes more keywords by stuffing the Page Title, Headings and text to the breaking point trying to get them all in there.

Unfortunately, you’re doing more harm than good. Here’s why.

There are 2 big problems with this strategy. First, it pushes you to keyword spamming, which can get you a penalty from Google.

You won’t be banned from Google, but you are telling them to keep you in the basement, away from those Page 1 & 2 listings you need to survive. Why would you do that?

Second, it dilutes your keyphrase targeting. A lot. Instead of strongly positioning yourself for Keyword A & Keyword B, you’re throwing the kitchen sink at them.

You don’t have room on any one 1 page to truly focus on more than 1 or 2 keyphrases. Especially in a competitive industry where you need to be on your SEO game.

Stick to that rule of 2 keyphrases to be focused on each page. 1 page can’t get your ranked for every keyword you’re after. It’s just reality.

SEO is a game that must be played conservatively in some ways and this is one of them. Less is more in this strategy.

Use less keywords, get more rankings.

It sounds so tempting doesn’t it? Just turn over your off-site SEO to an automated service and submit to hundreds of directories in minutes, even seconds.

What you’re really doing is begging Google to penalize your site & keep it from ever ranking. It’s like putting a brick wall in front of your store entrance. Here’s why.

Google has been looking more and more at your links lately. In fact, the latest ranking algorithm update added even more restrictions to this part of SEO.

They want natural links, not factory produced ones. What does that mean?

It means they need to see link text that varies, not the same keyphrase or 2 over and over. Unfortunately, if you use a Mass Link Submission service, that’s exactly what you get.

Even though that’s exactly what Google doesn’t want. It’s like doing negative SEO on yourself. Why would you do that?

Another problem – Mass Link Submissions don’t necessarily pick out quality directories, which is where you want to be. Even if there are some in there, you’ll find many that you don’t have a chance of getting into.

They’ll submit you to directories for Women-Owned businesses, for businesses based in Israel or for specific industries, like Travel or Construction.

If you fit these requirements, you just might get a link. If, like me, you’re not, you’re paying for rejection.

Who cares if you’re submitted to 100s of Directories if 25% to 50% of them will never list you business. SEO has to be done smart.

Especially as the search engines have become more and more discriminating, detecting the old SEO tricks that used to work and now only get you in trouble.

Mass Link Submission is a dead end. Raise your SEO game now or watch your site sink. It’s that simple.

I still see SEOs, including some well-known ones here in Hawaii, pushing Keyword Density as a key to rankings.

They claim to analyze pages and then craft incredible SEO content that has the perfect amount of repetitions of a keyphrase to catapult you upward in the rankings.

Unfortunately they’re selling outdated and even blatantly wrong ‘search expertise’ to their clients.

It’s absolutely true that you want your keyphrase(s) to appear on a page, and in key places. However, the days of reaching a point where the search engines register a Jackpot and lift your rankings are long gone.

So what do successful, knowledgeable SEOs do?

For years now, quality SEO copywriting has integrated terms that have the same meaning as the keyphrases you’re targeting.

For example, if your keyphrase is ‘Honolulu Car Sales’, you’d also see in the text phrases like ‘Deals on autos in Honolulu’ or ‘Oahu car deals’. It’s about copy that is natural, not stuffed.

If you don’t believe me, then you should listen to Matt Cutts, Google’s official mouthpiece about rankings and best practices for search engine optimization.

He recently made clear that the Google bots also take in account those synonyms for your keyphrases when ranking sites. They want to see variation, not endless repeating of one phrase.

In fact, he made it clear that there was a point where they considered it keyword stuffing if they saw the same collection of words over and over.

In short, they want well-written content, not the equivalent of a piano playing the same note again and again.

So if an SEO tries to sell you on Keyword Density, it’s time to look elsewhere for someone to handle your search engine optimization.

It’s your business we’re talking about – Remember?

A lot of SEOs and website owners who think they’re in the clear may be in for a hard slap in the face. Google has made it clear that the Penguin ranking & penalty update is far from over. Not only that, there’s a big wave coming in that will shake up things.

Official Google mouthpiece Matt Cutts made this clear at a recent big SEO Conference when asked about whether this latest update was settled in; he made it clear that it wasn’t. Not by a long shot:

“…we’re still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact.”

Other sources have used less diplomatic language so the search world is preparing for something big to come down the pike.

The targets of this update are the link spammers, the kind of SEO practitioners who leave vague comments on blogs with a link to their sites. Something that worked very well for a while, but, like most optimization ‘tricks’, is now being countered as Google gets smarter.

It will be interesting to see who gets caught in this and, unfortunately, some will be innocent victims. If you’re on of them, be patient. Eventually things will clear up and get settled. For now, let’s all keep our fingers crossed.