If you were looking at your site's statistics and noticed a drop in traffic on October 4, there is a high chance that your website was affected by Google's most recent update, Penguin 5.0. This new update, also referred to as Penguin 2.1, has been publicly confirmed by Google on Twitter. According to a Tweet from Matt Cutts, head of Google's Search Quality Team, this most recent update will only affect around 1% of all search queries. Whether this figure is accurate or not, many websites seem to be affected by it, as there are numerous stories going around webmaster circles of people who've had their traffic drop right after […]

Every time Google makes an update to its algorithm, any website, blog or forum dedicated to webmaster issues or online marketing lights up with talk about the topic. We've seen it happen when the last two major updates, Panda and Penguin, have been rolled out. Of course, every time Google changes something, there will be a lot of people who will claim that “SEO is dead.” As we all know, this just isn't true. SEO won't die. It will only adapt itself to the changes that Google makes. But what about Hummingbird? Will it dramatically change the way we do SEO? To answer the question, we need to know what […]

Fresh content is important for search engine optimization (SEO) signals. That's par for the course. That's arguably SEO 101 right there. Many webmasters invest in writers and article creators (formerly article spinners until Google put a stop to article spinning as a viable SEO resource care of the Google Penguin update) in order to reap the benefits of having fresh content each time. Publishing blog updates that include a webmaster's take on the freshest news, topics, and viral videos across the web is a surefire way to attract people to your website, since you're able to keep yourself relevant that way. Content Freshness versus Quality Content Google itself has talked […]

Nobody really knows how Google PageRank works. Everybody uses it, but nobody has the faintest idea how it functions. It's a mystery. However, in terms of algorithms, Google PageRank is most likely the most important one ever created for the worldwide web. With millions of pages developed every day and billions of existing pages as of the moment, scouring the web for good content is a lot more complicated... mind-bogglingly so... than one might think. PageRank is one of the determining factors that Google uses to sift through potential SERP entries every time, which helps ensure that every search is clean and efficient. Decades of Development since the Early Days […]

Search engine optimization (SEO) can now be achieved using social media links as ranking signals. This wasn't the case before, but search engines such as Google are now looking into the viability of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as a means for searching worthwhile content thanks largely to the growing fame of such sites. Of course, it's important to remember that links in general have always been a huge factor in influencing your search engine results page (SERP) rankings. Using links to your advantage is one of the basic tenets of sound SEO application. The Role of Social Media Links in Today's SEO Social media links are the […]