image(Flickr/Dawn Ellner)

Two of the biggest SEO news stories of recent years concerned the Penguin and Panda updates to Google’s algorithms, which were aimed at improving search engine results by combating spammy black hat techniques and returning higher quality results at the top of the SERPs. While these changes had a huge impact on SEO, they were just tweaks and modifications of Google’s existing algorithms. It appears that Hummingbird, which was silently implemented a few weeks ago, is a much more technically significant, perhaps the most thoroughgoing update since Caffeine in 2010 or even since the algorithms were significantly rewritten by Amit Singhal in 2001.

Hummingbird is estimated to affect 90% of search engine results and is likened by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan to a complete replacement of the engine of search. Continue reading →

image(Flickr/Les Chatfield)

Matt Cutts recently made another of the videos in which he answers questions from the webmaster and SEO communities. This video specifically dealt with the subject of whether “rel=nofollow” should be used with widgets and infographic links.

If one were to judge by the number of questions and confused statements on the subject of nofollow links, it would be a safe bet that Google’s message about what exactly should or should not be passing link juice is not clear to the vast majority of people. Continue reading →

image(Flickr/Andrew Stawarz)

Since the release of Penguin 2.0, many sites have taken a dive in the SERPs. One of the causes of poor SERP performance is an excess of anchor text containing specific keywords.

Back in the old days, one of the main goals of link building was to cultivate as many incoming links as possible with anchor text that included keywords and key phrases relevant to a site’s SEO strategy. In recent years, Google has started paying a great deal of attention to the features of a naturally accrued link graph and penalizing sites with backlink profiles that show signs of being engineered by SEOs.

High quality sites tend to gather links with a diverse range of anchor text. Most linkers aren’t interested in contributing towards a site’s SEO strategy and won’t choose to include keywords in anchor text, instead using site, brand, or author names, topics, and a collection of generic nouns (“article”), verbs (“said”), adverbs (“here”), and so on. Continue reading →

Let’s be honest with ourselves: pop-ups, pop-unders, intrusive Flash advertising, and content-obscuring modal dialogues all suck, both from an aesthetic perspective and for site users.

In modern web design, the trend is towards elegance and simplicity; providing awesome content that’s pleasant to consume is the order of the day. But, we have to make money, and that’s what intrusive advertising is supposed to achieve. The web is growing up, and part of its developing maturity is that serious sites that want to make money from content – particularly bloggers – are tying to look less like the flyers we find under our windshield wipers advertising quack remedies in garish colors and fonts, and more like credible publications.

A key driver in this trend is the growing prevalence of mobile. What’s annoying on full-size screens is a deal-killer on the small screens of mobile devices. Mobile first design is largely responsible for motivating the move to simpler pages. Because screen real-estate is scarce, subtle integration of promotional material that doesn’t detract from the overall experience is essential.

When aesthetic requirements and technological trends clash with opportunities for revenue generation, a fertile ground for innovation is opened up. One of the solutions that has arisen to maintain both elegance and the prominent display of calls-to-action takes the form of minimalist, non-intrusive, but very noticeable message bars. Continue reading →

image(Flickr/ninepennies)

When people hear about SEO hosting, a common query is “Why should I use SEO hosting; surely I can optimize my site for search with any hosting company.” That’s completely right, but SEO hosting has a specific place in the SEO strategist’s tool box. In this article, we’d like to clear up some of the confusion around SEO hosting and help you develop an understanding of what it is and why you might need it.

What Is SEO Hosting?

The defining feature of SEO hosting companies is the number of IP addresses they have available for their clients to use. If you keep abreast of the news in the web hosting space, you’ll be aware that IPv4 numbers are hard to come by. When IPv4 was developed, there was no comprehension of the huge number of devices that would eventually be connected to the Internet. There aren’t enough IP addresses to go around, and so hosting companies often don’t have anywhere near enough to cover all their clients. Continue reading →

image(Flickr/Peter Rosbjerg)

Traditionally, businesses have been broken into units, each of which has a particular area of expertise and responsibility. Public relations handled interactions with the media, marketing was responsible for getting the word out, and SEO for bringing in traffic by any means. Then there’s customer service, sales, administration, manufacturing, and so on. Each a little dukedom with feudal responsibility to its C-Level royal court.

SEO is changing; its role is blurring and stretching beyond the areas that used to be its core competencies: bringing in traffic by technical optimization of a site and link building. Now more properly referred to as inbound marketing, in an age where a web presence is central to any company’s revenue stream, and Google are cracking down hard on tactics they disapprove of, content has moved center stage. Continue reading →