Tag: google

HTTPS is now being used by Google for ranking

This is huge news.  Google has finally realized that sites that are more secure should rank higher than sites that aren’t.  And installing an SSL certificate is one way to make your site more secure. So, if you were humming and hawing about whether or not you needed an SSL cert, hopefully this pushes you in the right direction. You can…

New “Manual Actions” Viewer in Google Webmaster Tools

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/08/manual-actions-viewer.html Now it’s finally possible to see if there’s any manual spam actions against your domain.  Just log into Google Webmaster Tools, and click Search Traffic > Manual Actions. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a “No manual webspam actions found” message.  If you do have a manual action, you can then hopefully fix whatever Google is complaining about, and submit a…

A couple interesting SEO developments

Both of these really intrigued me, so I thought I’d share with my followers… How I Hijacked Rand Fishkin’s Blog When there are two identical documents on the web, Google will pick the one with higher PageRank and use it in results. It will also forward any links from any perceived ’duplicate’ towards the selected ‘main’ document. This idea first came to…

How do I remove spammy links from my site?

I hear this question now more than ever before.  The reason why?   Since the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of webmasters (heck, maybe even millions) have received a warning similar to this:  Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://example.com/ Dear site owner or webmaster of http://example.com/, We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages…

I’m scared of Google Analytics

Recently, I’ve began the laborious process of migrating away from Google Analytics on most of my sites.   Why?  Because it is frankly starting to scare the hell out of me. Here’s why: Bounce rate is believed to be a factor used in determining your Google search rankings.  This is a measure of the percentage of visitors the leave your site…

Social Media Myths Debunked

As an owner of SocialAdr, a social media marketing web service, I get the opportunity to hear what people think about different SEO techniques on a daily basis.  Occasionally I learn a thing or two.  But most of the time it’s just plain wrong. Social media involves many people from around the world “talking” about a webpage from many different…

Life after the Google Panda update

Google’s latest major algorithm change, rolled out in Feb 2011, is called “Panda” and was big news for anyone doing internet market or SEO.  Many marketers reported huge SERP drops while a lesser number noticed gains. Rumor has it that the Panda update came about from a focus group that Google held.  They had real humans evaluating actual websites and…