Isn’t that panda just so cute! I bet it is if your site’s content is rich and unique, but if your site lacks good content or duplicate content you are likely staring at the enemy.

According to John Rampton’s post on Search Engine Journal Matt Cutts, while on stage at SMX, confirmed that the next Panda update will be made this Friday March 15th or Monday the 18th at the latest.  While also on stage he mentioned a Very large penguin update will be launched before the end of the year. You can find the rest of the post by clicking the following URL http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-confirms-panda-update-coming-this-friday/60870

I thought last April’s penguin update was pretty bad so it will be interesting to see the punch this “very large” penguin update will bring. Many continue to say that if you are clean in your link building you should not be worried but lets face it, even the smallest of updates have some collateral damage.

As Google continues to improve the relevancy of their search results it is apparent that Geo-targeting is becoming more and more important. For single region sites, targeting is as simple as selecting a country-code top level domain such as a .ca or .co.uk and ensuring that there is local contact information and even a map. If a generic TLD is used, webmasters can use Google Webmaster Tools to select the targeted region ensuring Google includes the site in the correct Google. The tricky part is when a site is multi-regional, causing some locations to rank while others do not.  To learn more about effectively geo-targeting websites, visit my blog post at http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/effective-multi-region-targeting.html.

Saw this video and thought it was too funny not to share it. Enjoy!

I was reading Sphinn awhile back when I came across a discussion about whether or not unlinked brand mentions help in organic SEO.  The discussion didn’t really go anywhere so I started to think about, and research the topic, as well as the affect (or lack of affect) no follow links have in SEO.

Unlinked Brand Names

In the SEO industry it is common knowledge that part of the infamous search engine algorithms’ is the number of inbound links a site has (the amount of links that are directed to specific site, also known as back links). With the question being “do unlinked brand mentions help general organic SEO?” it goes beyond what is known about the search engines’ algorithm, and therefore becomes difficult to answer.

Immediately it appears the answer is no, because there is no actual link to the site, only a reference, and last I heard references only play a role in local SEO not organic. Without knowing the algorithm it is impossible to say for sure if they do or do not help SEO, but with past experiences, I would have to side with the reasoning that they do not assist in general SEO.

That is not to say that brand mentions are completely worthless when building links for general SEO. It doesn’t hurt to throw in an unlinked brand mention in your link building efforts as they help produce a more natural and less spam like appeal and will provide potential visitors with awareness.

No Follow Links

I have found that no follow links are another debated topic, with some stating that they are completely useless and others stating that they are not useless. I feel they are indirectly useful, and should not be completely avoided.

The fact that search engine crawlers do not index the link (which means no link juice or page rank is passed on to the targeted site) certainly makes it appear that they do not have any use in SEO. But take a second and really think about it, is having only do follow links natural? Nope. To help fool Google into thinking your links are in fact organic you need no follow links to provide some balance.

I am not saying go out and spend your entire budget on no follow links, but if you get the odd one who cares, a link is a link.  No links are completely useless for SEO as even a no follow link can add too visitors’ awareness,   clicks, views, and conversions and even lead to a do follow link somewhere down the road.

I know that many of you reading this have a view on the topic, so please leave a comment.

When I first got into SEO my brain almost exploded. Although it is not a tremendously difficult profession it does take a certain combination of patience, determination, competitiveness, and strategic blood. For those just starting out or for those who simply want a second opinion here is my hierarchy of SEO importance.

1. Analysis
2. Quality of page content
3. Link Building
4. Link/Link Source Variation
5. Patience
6. Take Risks When Needed
7. Never Stop

It is important to have a strong analysis to select the most beneficial (and relevant) keywords and of course the appropriate budget. Now even with the best target keywords, your site will never rank unless it appeals to both search engines and users, this means your site must be optimized as well as contain quality and engaging content. Although quality is key, it alone will not rank a site (if it did I would not have a job), so building backlinks, also known as in-links, is a must. In short find the right keywords, optimize the site for those keywords and build links to the site using those keywords.

To be successful in ranking a term, one might think to simply build a million links using that keyword, makes sense right? Not so fast, see Google will get suspicious if all the links going to one site are all the same keyword (this is considered not “organic”); this is why it is important to vary the keywords used when building links. It is also important to use more than one method for building links such as articles, directories etc. and have unique sources (different directories and different article sites). The more unique sources the more “power” the links have.
In addition to actually doing the SEO work, it is necessary to be patient, SEO takes time especially with new sites, so don’t freak out if you don’t see results right away. Don’t be afraid to take risks when needed, in some cases you will never reach your goal without some risk, so do it!  And finally, at the end of the day, it is important to never stop link building, experimenting or learning.