Apparently, I do.
I sift through trillions (well, hundreds) of announcements, articles, and blog posts to find the ones that you might want to be aware of, especially if I feel they could impact your online business traffic generation.
In the spotlight this week:
- The year in Google SEO thus far;
- soft Panda update – good news;
- the best use you can make of the recent Moz rankings is to actually read them;
- Matt Cutts ranks for “Payday Loans”, plus he’s off the grid for a month – find out why;
- wish upon Yahoo! – inactive email wishlist is now active;
- thumbs down to the new Gmail inbox;
- new NSA sharing options;
- and more.
Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.
At TrafficGenerationCafe.com
404 Not Found Errors: Do They Hurt Your Site?
404 Not Found errors happen to everyone – even to Google.
However, that does not mean you are less traumatized when you find the sneaky buggers on your Google Webmaster Tools crawl errors page.
Let’s take a look at what 404 not found errors are, what they are not, and how serious of a problem they pose to your site.
You’ll also find my collections of the funniest and fun 404 pages around the web [Slideshare presentation].
SEO
“Softer” Google Panda Update
Last week, Google confirmed a Panda update was pushed out, one with a softer touch, as Google said “more finely targeted.”
With that, good reports of increase in search engine traffic started to pop up.
And here’s one from Traffic Generation Café:
Good to see the upward movement; it’s been a while since Google has graced me with search engine traffic.
How did you do?
2013: The Year In Google SEO So Far
Not that you missed out on anything (other than a few downturns in search engine traffic), but if you want to catch up on the SEO happenings of 2013 thus far, take a look at this post at Marketing Land.
Moz.com 2013 SEO Rankings
It seems like there’s a lot of misguided talk about this year’s preview of Moz.com SEO Rankings (the full report and data set sometime later this summer).
I like it how +Mark Traphagen put it:
I’ve seen many people drawing conclusions about “what ranks now” from the image that got shared with the post.
Unfortunately, what few realize unless they bothered to open and read through the original Moz post, is that the chart below is graphing the data from the guesses of the SEO’s as to future likely ranking factors.
If you don’t know that, you could really go off on some very wrong conclusions.
So… take a look at the Moz.com post yourself, then read Mark’s further thoughts on what the report shows.
Matt Cutts Ranks for Payday Loans
I am not sure what “payday loan gadgets” are, but if you are looking for them, you’ll find Matt Cutts ranking #1 for the term.
Speaking of which, Matt’s latest post indicates that he’s off social media for 30 days.
“I realized that I didn’t mention this widely: my current 30 day challenge (July 2013) is not to read any news or social media. So no Twitter, Google News, Techmeme, Google+, Hacker News, Reddit, Imgur, etc.
So if you’re wondering why I haven’t replied to a question, that’s the reason. I might still share a link if I run across something interesting, but I’m trying not to read any social media or news.
Why am I doing this? I find it to be a useful challenge. I’m crunching on a bunch of stuff and really wanted to get my head down and focus on some projects. I did this challenge in January 2013 and got a ton of stuff done.”
Don’t you sometimes wish you didn’t have to be on social media for your business to function?…
Social Media
The Most Active Content Sharing Platform
According to Gigya’s recent social media report, Facebook remains the leading platform for content sharing.
Google+ is clearly trailing behind with only 2% share.
If you ask me however, that 2% is all quality and I highly recommend you join me there.
Facebook’s New Privacy Rules
…and here’s one for the road…
source
Marketing This & That
Yahoo! Opens Wishlist for Inactive Names
Yahoo announced a new username wishlist tool today that allows existing Yahoo account holders to put in claims on up to five inactive usernames.
There’s no public list of the inactive names; you just provide your top five choices and, if any of them are inactive, you might be in luck. Yahoo will notify “winners” on a first-come, first-served basis in mid-August.
New Gmail Inbox
Personally, I am not a big fan of the new tabbed Gmail inbox, and here’s one more reason to like it even less: in-line ads that resemble regular emails at the top of your Promotions tab.
These new native-style ads function as paid-for-placement email messages, and essentially circumvent standard email marketing practices. The ads do have a shaded background and ad symbol to differentiate them from the other promotional emails and newsletters users have to actually opt-in to (theoretically, at least).
(source)
Good thing they make it easy to disable those tabs and organize our inbox however we’d like to:
Google Q2 Earnings
Just in case you are wondering, Google just released its earnings report for Q2. The company missed Wall Street estimates, and it’s stock is headed downward.
Larry Page, CEO of Google:
“Google had a great quarter with over $14 billion in revenue – up 19% year-on-year.
The shift from one screen to multiple screens and mobility creates tremendous opportunity for Google. With more devices, more information, and more activity online than ever, the potential to improve people’s lives even more is immense.”
(source)
Google Glass – Hacker Heaven
Hackers are proving it’s possible to re-engineer Google Glass in any number of creative ways.
And in the process, they’ve put Google in an awkward position: possibly attract millions of consumers or completely spook them off.
Thus, Google keeps changing their TOS to ban this and that, but it surely isn’t stopping anyone from building whatever apps they wants.
Some of the latest creative software built to work with Glass:
- facial recognition;
- taking pics with a wink of an eye (making it more inconspicuous and easy for someone to take a photo);
- even hijacking Glass if you trick someone into taking a pic of a malicious QR code.
More on the story.
2013 NSA Prism Scandal in Pictures
Ever notice the warning when opening Chrome Incognito window?
More:
source
source
source
source
More NSA fun at KnowYourMeme.com.
Tool of the Week
Create an Infographic (Free)
Agencies can charge $1,000 or more to create an infographic.
However, a hefty price tag is no reason to miss out on the treasure trove of website traffic that can come with an infographic – designing your own infographic is totally doable.
Introducing Piktochart - intuitive, friendly, with 7 free themes to choose from. More themes and features are available with professional packages starting at $29/month.
Hat tip Kristi Kellogg at BruceClay.com.
Thank You
To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.
Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.
Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:
Now That You Started Making Videos Here’s How To Get More Views on YouTube – Ileane Smith at basicblogtips.com
The Word is that I’m Going to Release a Special Training Course – Mauro D’Andrea at blog-growth.com
Penguin 2.0 – My Status Update #3 – The Google Free Fall – Kim Castleberry at just-ask-kim.com
Soft Google Panda, AdAge P150, Neverwet, HTC One and S4 Giveaway, Speedlink 29:2013 – Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
The domain name minefield – Dom at cleanpagedesign.co.uk
Use Twitter To Boost Your Blog’s Search Engine Visibility – Jane Sheeba at probloggingsuccess.com
The Insider’s Guide To Making People Click Your Links – Kapil at latestcrunchs.com
Also, a huge THANK YOU to my Triberr “Other People’s Influence” Automatic tribe for sharing my newly published posts with your Twitter followers.
These awesome folks automatically share Traffic Generation Café blog posts via Triberr, helping me reach more people than I could ever reach on my own while providing their Twitter followers with quality content and, by doing that, commanding respect in their respective niches AND getting even more followers as a result.
Win-win, I’d say.
If you’d like to join my tribe, we’d love to have you. Just click on the banner to go to Triberr.
Want to learn about Triberr? Read this post:
Triberr: Your Step by Step Guide to Being Heard
Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!
Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!
To an even better next week,
