In the spotlight this week:
- SEO Ranking Factors galore;
- new Google update and 60% loss of search engine traffic at Traffic Generation Café;
- pingback vs trackback;
- Google+ turns 2 and celebrates with a few cool plugins;
- Google Reader alternatives, including the new Hootsuite Syndicator;
- Google sues IRS;
- and more.
Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.
At TrafficGenerationCafe.com
WordPress Trackbacks & Pingbacks: How to Use Them For SEO & Traffic
A definitely must to understand pingbacks, trackbacks, and how to use them on your own blog as well as use them to bring in traffic from popular blogs.
Here’s a little taste:
WordPress Trackbacks: The Power of SEO and Web Traffic at Your Fingertips from Ana HoffmanSEO
SEO Ranking Factors 2013 – SearchMetrics
SearchMetrics has released their Ranking Factors – Rank Correlation 2013 Study for Google USA.
The main focus of this study was to answer the question:
What do web pages that are well-positioned by Google have in common and what distinguishes them from lower ranking pages?
What factors are playing (and how big) a role?
Top highlights of 2013:
1. Keyword domains and keyword links have lost relevance
2. Brands are the exception to many rules
3. Social signals continue to correlate very well with better rankings
4. Good content is always important: it comes to quality!
5. The number of backlinks remains immensely important
6. On-page technology remains one of the basics
(click to enlarge)
Notice Google+ taking the top spot – no surprise here.
If you are still on the fence about G+, read my recent:
Google Author Rank: Are You Too Late?
And don’t forget to add +Ana Hoffman to your circles; I am a big fan of Google+ and will be happy to show you the ropes:
SearchMetrics has also put together this awesome inforgraphic to sum up their findings:
(click to enlarge)
SEO Ranking Factors 2013 – Netmark
And here’s another set of SEO Ranking Factors; this time from Netmark.com.
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Quite a different picture to say the least. As a matter of fact, many of Netmark’s findings fly in the face of everything we’ve known about Google’s latest changes.
You can learn more about Netmark’s methodology they used to come up with the data here.
Quite honestly, they lost me at:
If you can figure it out, all the more power to you…
Here’s what Netmark had to say about their SEO Ranking Factors 2013:
These are the ten factors from our study that showed the highest correlation to ranking well on Google. We were a bit surprised to find that off-page factors still had a much higher correlation to rankings on Google than on-page factors. In addition, it was interesting to see that even with Google’s EMD update, an exact match domain to the search query is still the factor that has the highest correlation with rankings.
Google Update Underway
It appears that yet another Google algo update is on its way - one that will be rolling out over a “multi-week” timeframe, according to Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts’ tweet:
The tweet went out in response to a question about why some of the search results looked spammy.
Matt replied saying, “Yup we saw that. Multi-week rollout going on now, from next week all the way to the week after July 4th.”
According to Search Engine Land:
It is unclear exactly what this is an update for. Is it in response to an update on the PayDay algorithm or maybe the softer Panda update? We asked Matt Cutts and Google to clarify but Google won’t clarify.
Search Engine Traffic at Traffic Generation Café
Just to give you a benchmark as to how Google updates can affect quality sites, here’s the screenshot of my search engine traffic pre-Penguin 2.0 (in orange) and post-Penguin 2.0 (in blue):
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As you can see, my organic Google traffic is down almost 60%.
Social Media
Happy Birthday, Google+!
Google+ is 2 years old now.
Naturally, many social media news this week rotated around it.
Google Plus = Future Social Ebay?
A few days ago, the Google File System Blog reported upon a new application from Google, which it referred to by the name Google Mine (as in, “it’s mine,” rather than as in Google mining more information about your life).
The post tells us that the app allows you to be pretty active about posting your belongings.
As you can see, the service lets you enter a lot of information about your objects.
For example, you can change the status of an object to “lent”, “given away”, “got it back”, “lost it”, “had in the past”. You can post videos about the object, write reviews, add it to a wishlist and maybe others can buy it using Google Shopping. You can also check popular items and the items others have shared.
You can read more about this application in Bill Slawski’s
Google Plus as Tomorrow’s Social Ebay?
New Google+ Plugins
Google announced the launch of new Google+ plugins for websites, including a new follow button, a new badge for communities, and updated badges for pages and profiles.
New Badges for Pages and Profiles
You already saw my +Ana Hoffman badge as a call of action above; here’s what it looks like when setting it up:
You can design your own Google+ badge here.
The New Follow Button
The Google+ Follow button is a standalone plugin that — as you might expect — lets visitors follow you from your site. It’s nice and compact, so it integrates easily with your existing social buttons.
The New Community Badges
Community managers have been asking for a way to attract members across the web, so today we’re introducing badges for Google+ Communities. These badges are highly configurable, making it easy to match your site design.
Marketing This & That
Google Reader Alternatives
Like it or not, Google Reader is closing its doors in less than 2 days – July 1.
I hope you are not waiting to the last minute to transfer your feeds to another service. If you are, here’s a nifty table from MarketingLand.com to give you an “at a glance” view of some of the available alternatives.
Or take a look at my Slideshare presentation:
Goodbye Google Reader, Hello 10 Google Reader Alternatives from Ana HoffmanHootsuite Syndicator: Google Reader Alternative
If you are an avid Hootsuite user, this just might be the best Google Reader alternative yet.
The company just announced the launch of HootSuite Syndicator, an app that brings RSS into the Hootsuite dashboard.
There’s a new version of HootSuite’s “Hootlet” Chrome extension that supports RSS feeds, and lets you add them as streams in the HootSuite dash.
For a tutorial on how to use Hootsuite Syndicator, head over to Kim Castleberry’s:
HootSuite Syndicator Tutorial – An RSS Reader For Social Media Managers
Google Sues IRS
I don’t know about you, but I’d be too scared to breathe in the direction of IRS.
Not Google.
Apparently, this is the second time this month (following PRISM), Google is taking on the U.S. Government.
According to Bloomberg, the Mountain View, CA-based technology giant is suing the IRS over an $83.5 million refund it says it deserves, claiming it was improperly denied a deduction over an AOL-related stock transaction, dating back to 2004.
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:
The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up (Issue #7) – Kimberley Grabas at yourwriterplatform.com
Fetching Friday – 21 Marketing Links for June 21st – Kristi Hines at Kikolani.com
Backlinks and Reconsideration Requests, Instagram Videos, WordPress 3.5.2 – Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
Friday Recommendations: Link Roundups for June 21, 2013 – Joseph Adediji at bloggingtipstoday.com
6 things you should do right now instead of creating more content – Dan Norris at wpliveninja.com
WPCP 010: Milestone Episode – time to celebrate! – Kim Doyal at thewpchick.com
Social Media Automation – William at blogtomedia.com
Four Guest Blogging Tips to Land on ANY Blog – Ian Mason at iblogzone.com
6 Tips For Learning Google Analytics – Luke Clum at infotrustllc.com
Small Business Ideas For Women – Gurwinder Singh Bhinder at protechnologyblog.com
International SEO Checklist [Traffic News 6/26] – Nick Stewart at nickstraffictricks.com
Fetching Friday – 22 Marketing Links – Kristi Hines at Kikolani.com
Blogging Insight Of The Week: Blog Post Round-Up – Peter at ubersteward.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,
COMMENTS ( 1 )
posted on 31 October at 18:35
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