Do Social Media Signals Help Rank in SEO?

I have been asked this a lot and I thought it was time to share my thoughts. Before I do, let me present to you what Matt Cutts says about Social Media signals and if they play a role. Well you guessed it, the answer is no. At least from what he says…..

Now let’s put yourselves in his shoes, do you really want to reveal the true works of SEO and any new signals/changes that may help? Of course not! They will spam the hell out of it and make it useless like guest blogging has become over the years. 

If you want to be the  popular search engine, you want to show something we all know is part of SEO, great content. Well what is considered great content? Content that people share and discuss about. Google knows from referall sources where traffic comes from. Even with Share This tools we can see what is or isn’t popular. So for those who think otherwise, that’s fine. I mean Matt Cutts did say it didn’t play a role.

Some interesting findings in my history of this theory was I took two pages with about the same idea and content. I sent one with traffic from referral sources and tactics with Reddit, sharing all my social media channels etc. And the other I just left as is. After about a few days I was able to determine my more popular page was indexed quicker, higher positioned and actually started getting natural comments and shares. Even my rich snippets of authorship were showing. 

For the other content, it was indexed after two days after, no little to any traffic. No rich snippets, and couldn’t be found in the top 10 pages of rankings. So to just say social media doesn’t affect SEO, I can’t say for certain that is true. 

There is however a part in Matt's video that explains in the future he expects Google to be able to better identify who is writing the content and where and place a more importance based on the influence an individual may have. So perhaps Klout score may be some thing to consider as a good source of where you stand. 

 

What kinds of social media signals have you seen on your website or blog? Has the popularity and sharing helped you? Did you see any natural comments or links come to you? Or maybe you feel that social media is just no cooralation to SEO period…. Hey I look at both sides of the fence and totally agree with all the positive and negative thoughts about this.

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New Design for Google Adwords is Here!

I noticed this morning in my Google Adwords accounts that the new design is finally here! Google announced a few months ago about it, and now it is here!

Barry Schwartz explains that, "The new design is aimed at making the AdWords console more unified with the other products, services and platforms Google offers. Google said the new design aims to also make the console  simple and beautiful user experience that helps you get tasks done quickly and efficiently."

I personally like it and it really feels smooth with the transitions of things. The ability to navigate around the platform is far superior than it previously was. Here is an example of the new design:

You probably have not seen the change yet in your account, but expect to see in the next "few weeks" Google says.

To further discuss more on this topic, click here.

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Warning! Top 7 Reasons for a Google Penalty! Run Away!

I am going to be brutally honest here, I am seriously annoyed with this situation on Google’s penalty! I wanted to put together a list of serious causes that your site may be hit with a manual or automatic penalty from Google.

Recently one of the site’s managing has become penalized for the second time….. That’s right the second time! I hope this list helps you so that this may never happen to you personally, or explain better to your cient what may have transpired to their penalty to begin with. Although in usual cases I would suggest to abandon the site instead of constantly trying to remove a penalty. It requires countless hours of work and I hope none of you do any of these, or begin to:

1.       Buying links – This is a tricky and grey area, cause it can and can’t be caught. But one thing is for sure if your purposely buying links to manipulate rankings, then it may catch up to you. From my experiences I would stay away from Web Directories!

2.       Duplicate Content – This one is pretty obvious: Any duplicate content on your site is going to make it less useful, end of story! So make sure content is unique and well-written. Copygator and Copyscape are great tools!

3.       Keyword Stuffing – You have to be real careful on this one. It may/may not help you. The rules aren’t proven at which percentage is the correct ratio, but just be sure to spread and it reads well. Don’t let Google find weird high numbers of keywords on a page.

4.       Too many outbound links – When linking to other websites, make sure it is kept natural. Don’t try to make high quantity of links or swapping with others.

5.       Excessive blocking of robots.txt – This is a flaw I see too common. This can bring an immediate red flag to Google. We understand you may need to do some for legitimate reasons, but don’t overdo it!

6.       Comment spam – Keep a close eye on your comments you are getting. Try to have installed an automatic system on your site.

7.       Spun Content – Oh how much I love when I see this…. This is common and will catch up to you in the future. Be sure to stay away from this tactic, especially if it seems to good to be true. Overall, don’t do it!

There are honestly tons and tons of more other reasons as to why Google penalization may be in place. Rented links, buying tons of keyword domains, 301 redirects, etc….. The best is to stay away from anything unnatural. Put great effort into user friendliness, useability, great content, and more! 

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