NASHVILLE, TN – On January 10, 2012, Google introduced “Search, Plus Your World,” SPYW for short, which allows users to see tailored search results when they’re signed in to their Google+ accounts.

Here’s what this means for you, as a user of Google. If you have a Google+ account and you stay logged in (as I do most always from my home computer), you should see your information across the navigation bar at the top of your page. Once you type a query into the search bar and hit ‘enter,’ if you have any personal results (such as acquaintances posting relevant topics on Google+), these will show up. For now, the search results aren’t commingled. If you look to the right of the screen, there’s an inconspicuous little toggle button where you can select “Show Personal Results” or “Hide Personal Results”. See the full explanation straight from Google’s blog.

Even if you aren’t logged in to Google, you’ll still see Google+ results on the right side of the page. In a small box, Google is promoting Google+ content under a People and Pages headline. Here, content is featured from Google+, including personal profiles and business pages, which is an incentive for people to use Google+.

Rand Fishkin, the CEO of SEOMoz.org, an SEO expert featured in a recent post about the importance of producing quality content, weighed in about Google’s SPYW on his blog.

“It’s my opinion that if [it] continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it’s been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers,” Fishkin says.

Fishkin also believes that marketers who don’t use Google+ are missing out on a huge platform, as Google is promoting its social application, Google+, through this new search feature.

Get Google+

If you don’t have a Google+ account, get one. As SEO Expert Ali Husayni tells us, Google+ pages for your business are absolutely essential.

“It’s a real step in the right direction. Initially, they said that they weren’t going to add that component, but they needed to have it from the get-go,” Husayni says.

Now that Google integrated SPYW into people’s searches, Google+ is even more crucial. For example, if I search for the term bicycles, and one of my friends on Google+ bought a bicycle from Bob’s Bike Shop and +1′d the store’s page, then Bob’s Bikes will show up in my personal results. As much as people like reviews, a review from someone you actually know usually goes further than a review written by a random person online. How do we know a random review isn’t one written by the business owner to promote his own business? It’s a given that we trust information more fully from people we’ve met and have a connection with.

Update Your Profile

If you have Google+, now is a great time to make sure your information is up-to-date. Since Google is pushing Google+ profiles to the top for users that are signed in, you want your content to be fresh, relevant, and accurate.

Get Your Customers Talking on Google+

Make it easy for your customers to find you by posting your content to Google+. Include a +1 button wherever you have other social networking buttons, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest links. Consider holding a promotion, such as “add us to your Google+ circle and you’ll receive an exclusive coupon code.” Having an incentive for your customer will bring your brand to the front of their brains, and having them add your Page to their circle or +1 you will be vital in their future Google searches.

For this new integration of Google+ into search results, Google is forcing us to get personal. Now’s the perfect time to be friendly in person and on the web. Having a strong SEO presence on your website and on your Google+ can help push you up to the top of the page.

Popularity: 3%

TAMPA, FLORIDA — On Friday, we told you about why you might have lost your Google ranking after the Panda update in 2011.

Image Courtesy of GeekBlogOnline.com.

In the second installment of our two-part series, we’re sharing some helpful information on how you can tweak your site and hopefully restore your ranking. We’ll also discuss when to give in and hire a professional SEO web services company.

If any of the factors we outlined in our previous post describe your situation regarding lost Google rankings, fixing the problem is doable, says Ali Husayni, who develops SEO marketing plans for clients.

First of all, as we’ve said repeatedly through the years, you must write fresh, quality and unique content on a regular basis, as Husayni emphasizes. Search for your content online to make sure other sites are not stealing from your site. Simply copy a phrase, put it in quotes in your search box, and see what results you get. Let’s say you find that people have, in fact, copied your content. What then?

Mickie Kennedy, founder of the press release distribution company eReleases, offers some great tips:

Reach out to the blogger or the company that you feel has swiped your content. In a professional manner, explain that your material is copyrighted and they must remove it from their site or pay you for it.

Report a Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation. The DMCA outlines penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. A simple Google search will provide you with a template to complete and sent to the offending party’s hosting provider.

Notify the offending party’s advertisers. Telling the advertisers about the offense could cause them to pull their advertisements and affect the blog’s revenue.

“Hitting someone in the pocketbook can be effective in getting your point across,” Husayni says.

Call in the Big Guns. You also should consider that at some point, you might need to hire a professional. SEO tactics and techniques change as often as Google changes its algorithms. Simply running your business likely keeps you busy enough, without also having to play “SEO expert” and trying to keep up with your website.

A business SEO specialist can monitor your site and work to get your site ranked so you can focus on your customers.

You always need writers who understand SEO and the overall SEO strategy, whether they come in the form of a consultant or are provided by a full-fledged SEO provider. Because content is important for a site, you need someone on your side generating that content for you if you don’t have time to handle it yourself.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that your site must provide useful, helpful content if you expect Google to send visitors to it.

Popularity: 2%

TAMPA, FLORIDA — Every time Google changes its algorithm, many websites’ rankings in organic search results change, too.

Google Panda image Courtesy of TechChunks.com

It can be frustrating to those who spend a great deal of time and effort (and money, if you’ve hired a professional SEO firm), to achieve their desired ranking, only to lose it when Google makes a few tweaks.

This was the case in February 2011 when Google launched “Panda.” It happened again in April 2011 when it rolled out Panda to all English language queries, in addition to making several small updates, according to an April 11, 2011 article posted on Search Engine Land.

Panda was designed to weed out pages and websites that were deemed to be of a quality below Google’s high standards, including content farms and websites filled with duplicate content.

In part one of this two-part series, we will discuss the reasons why your site may have lost its ranking. In part two, we’ll share tips on what you can do to get back your ranking.

So why did your website take a nose-dive after the Panda update? In short, it’s likely due at least in part to failing to observe best SEO practices. Why are we still talking about Google Panda almost a year after it launched? Because many sites have yet to recover from the change, says Ali Husayni, an expert in SEO technology.

There are several specific factors that caused websites to lose their rank after the Panda update. Chances are, you were guilty of one of the following:

You copied content from other sources: If you’ve copied one sentence from someone else’s site, you’re plagiarizing and Google will give you an F. Think about what your English teacher taught you in high school: if you’re going to use someone else’s words, you need to attribute them to the person who wrote them. When it comes to SEO, you need to take it a step farther and reword the information so that it doesn’t appear exactly as it does on the site where you got the information.

But your best bet is to not borrow a great deal of information from other sites. Think about it from Google’s standpoint: why should they rank your site higher instead of giving a high ranking to the site where you pulled your information? That’s obviously the site filled with relevant content. The idea is to generate your own original, relevant content that site visitors will find useful.

Your content was old and never updated: Google loves websites that are alive and kicking. If you launched a website in 2007 and haven’t updated the content or changed anything about it since then, Google likely will not perceive it as having useful information. Could you imagine a business search engine optimization site launched in 2007 and never updated? Yikes! Talk about out-of-date, useless information!

Someone else with a stronger site may have copied your site: In this case, Google probably thinks you are the one who plagiarized, and they’ve given credit to the other site. That sucks and unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do except revamp your site’s content.

Tune in on Monday, when we’ll explain how you can restore your ranking.

Popularity: 4%

SANTA MONICA, CA — At Master Google, we always appreciate comments that let us know what we can do to answer your questions pertaining to SEO. Of course, the best way to get advice that is specifically tailored for your business is to fill out a contact us form, but we are always happy to share our general expertise.

A recent commenter posed this question: “Do Trackbacks and Pingbacks matter when it comes to SEO?” The short answer is yes, they most certainly do matter, to varying degrees. The long answer includes an explanation of what Trackbacks and Pingbacks are, and their overall place in your SEO efforts.

Let’s start with trackbacks. A trackback is simply an automated notifier sent to someone else’s blog any time you reference their blog in a post. By sending a trackback, you are creating a link back to your blog, which takes a very small amount of time to do when considering the benefits of it.

Image Courtesy of ITinfoOz.com

While displayed quite humorously in the image above from a recent post by ITinfoOz.com, the subject of trackbacks is a serious one, because the opportunity for generating traffic is there, and is being underutilized, according to entrepreneur Matthew Bredel. Bredel has seen the results of using trackbacks as part of his overall search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts on his blog.

“A trackback is a super comment. The way that a trackback works, is instead of a going to a blog and posting a comment on someone else’s blog, you post a reply on your own website and post a trackback comment. Unless they don’t allow follows, but you still establish authority,” Bredel says.

While trackbacks certainly are more limited with most blogs not allowing follows, Bredel is correct that doing so does help to establish your authority. Blogs also appreciate your interaction.

Now, on to Pingbacks. Pingbacks have more to do with author control and authenticity, as explained well by an SEO news reporter for Beanstalk-Inc.com in a recent blog post. Pingbacks were originally the response to trackbacks lacking authenticity. Pingbacks make it easy to notify a blog of your use of it just by posting its permalink in your blog post. Of course, there is some controversy over which is really better: pingbacks or trackbacks.

“Some feel that trackbacks are superior because the readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say before deciding if they want to read more and follow the link to the orginal blog source,” Beanstalk-Inc.com’s SEO News Reporter says. “Others feel that pingbacks are superior as they create a verifiable connection between posts. Pingbacks are akin to having remote comments.”

Whether using both trackback and pingback methods, or not having tried either one on a conscious level yet, our CEO, Ali Husayni, has advice for the business owner who isn’t yet using Master Google’s services for their SEO efforts. Husayni recommends his book, Google SEO Secrets revealed, as a good starting point for your entire website, including your blog. Still, Husanyni recommends professional help.

“Engaging in all of these techniques requires months of hard labor, a complete understanding of SEO and, of course, cash. Nevertheless, we’ve been able to transform local, small businesses into large-international ones in a matter of a few months by practicing what we preach,” Husayni says. “Oftentimes, smart business people who have substantial financial backing will delegate important tasks to professionals, instead of spending years mastering what someone else already knows and taking away the focus from their business.”

Fill out our form and we’ll gladly look at your site to see if it qualifies for our Top of Google program.

Popularity: 2%

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Getting ranked at the top of Google overnight is an advertising ploy some search engine optimization companies use to get clients, but SEO Expert Ali Husayni says that those companies are making promises that cannot be kept, because quality results take some time. There is no quick fix, and if that is what an SEO company offers you, you should be alarmed.

Image courtesy of Kanx.org.

“If a company is saying things that sound too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true,” Husayni says. “SEO doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an investment and an ongoing process for long-term success.”

Getting to the top of Google rankings is doable. In fact, Husayni offers SEO services for that, but the timeline to see results varies. Husayni explains that he cannot give a one-size-fits-all answer for exactly how fast clients will see results, since there are many factors are in play.

These factors include: the size and competitiveness of the market, the type of business, the number of keywords, the age of the domain name, how often new content is published on the site, and getting a site indexed, according to recent article by Search Engine Watch. After all, a website that has been flagged for violations in the past will also be in for a longer process to improve their previously bad rankings. Saeed Khosravi, the operational manager at Master Google, said that significant results can happen quickly for the qualified client, but that every client sees results.

“Significant results typically take three to nine months, but some clients see results much sooner,” Khosravi says.

Husayni and his SEO team have worked with some clients who saw big changes right away, but the majority of them take several months. See testimonials from our clients here.

“We don’t use deceptive tactics or marketing gimmicks here to sign clients up,” says Husayni. “We use clear communication, realistic timelines and show progress with weekly ranking reports.”

Popularity: 2%

SANTA MONICA, CA — We’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about the importance of quality, white hat SEO practices. From good content to optimized images, to discussing the difference between black hat and white hat SEO techniques, many aspects of getting a higher ranking on an organic Google search have been discussed.

But what about accidental SEO mistakes? Avoid three common SEO pitfalls that often happen in the development part of your website, including: 404′s, server errors, and weird outbound links, as outlined by Glenn Gabe in a recent article in Search Engine Journal. A simple scan can help you determine if you have any of these errors. In this case, Gabe discusses a specific software for scanning a site, but whether using a tool or internal talent, Gabe points out the learning curve ahead when it comes to spotting bad SEO accidents just waiting to happen.

SEO Services Logo Courtesy of Content-Mag.com

“You can learn a lot by crawling a web site… [it is important to note that there are] three hidden dangers that can be uncovered.” Gabe says.

Let’s delve further into the three most common accidental SEO mistakes:

1. 404′s: To define it simply, a 404 is a “Page Not Found”. It is very important that you eliminate all 404′s, because Google will remove a a site from its index for such an offense, and you’ll lose valuable inbound links. Be sure to trouble-shoot, Gabe advises.

“For example, are powerful pages on your site throwing 404’s? Why is that happening? And how much search equity are you losing if they are throwing 404’s? As you can imagine, correcting pages that 404, that shouldn’t 404, is an important task for SEO,” Gabe says.

2. Server Errors: URL “error” messages for pages you didn’t even know you had is more common than you might think. The culprit: content management systems.

“Confused? They were too. In a recent audit, the content management system being used was dynamically building URL’s based on a glitch.  Those URL’s threw server errors.  And Googlebot was finding them too.  Not good,” Gabe says.

3. Weird Outbound Links: This issue, unfortunately, inches into scary territory: hackers. There are hackers constantly trying to get into every part of your website. Don’t avoid searching for these just because the truth could be a little off-putting.

“Here’s a simple question for you: do you know all of the pages you are linking to and from your website? Are you 100 percent sure you know? Are you hesitating?” Gabe asks.

Our advice here at Master Google: know all of the pages that are linking to and from your website, and don’t hesitate to find out if you don’t know. After all, you need to know what is going on with your website, right now. Of course, the best way to tackle these accidental SEO mistakes is to hire professionals with a track record, according to CEO Ali Husayni.

“Google needs SEO companies to better understand sites,” Husayni says. “In essence, we are enhancing the ability of Google crawlers to index and understand sites.”

But, if you are a hands-on type, learn to install and use Google Webmaster Central. This free tool can save you, big time.

Contact us to find out how our SEO services can help your site avoid these very preventable SEO accidents.

Popularity: 1%

SANTA MONICA, CA — What’s in a picture? Martin Missfeldt’s illustration spotlighting the importance of optimizing pictures on TagSeoBlog.com is certainly worth a thousand words. But in order for any image to get the traffic that it might very well deserve, it has to be optimized correctly.

When basic image SEO is done correctly, an image like the one above can be an extremely valuable addition to a website (after all, I used an image Google search to find this image). According to Danny Dover, the lead SEO of SEOmoz.org, an image is only as good as the text supporting it. Dover delves further into his image SEO expertise in his video discussion on a recent SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday. In fact, Dover points out that search engines need text to help the images serve their intended purpose, and that well-developed sites tend to pay attention to image SEO. This newfound knowledge is a wake up call to this writer to implement those changes from this day forward, and I’m sure that it had the same impact on the plethora of other bloggers and SEO analysts who have read it.

“Besides just being useful for people, images are also, it turns out, useful for search engines. I think part of the reason behind that is that pages that are well developed tend to also have images on them because it helps portray information in a way that textual based content can’t do,” Dover says.

Click here to be directed to Dover’s video tutorial on the basics of Image SEO, in which he gives useful advice regarding image SEO. Here are a few pieces of Dover’s words of wisdom:

1. Alt Text: This is the text that will pop up if your image fails to display, either because of someone’s browser or the image disappearing. From an SEO perspective, you can save face, because alt text tells Google what that image was. Dover has a quick tip: keep them below about 140 characters.

2. Filename: The filename is also information for search engines and other technologies, but alt text is stronger for SEO purposes, especially when backed up with a filename.

3. Surrounding Text: This is often overlooked, but the text around an image gives Google an idea about the image itself. The surrounding text can either be a traditional caption, or it can just be the paragraphs around the image (like the picture in this blog).

4. Inbound Links: As with all SEO efforts, inbound links are very important. Dover has very specific advice: “It wouldn’t necessarily be inbound links to the image URL, although it could be, but what I mean in this context is links going to the page that has the image embedded on it. Just like in normal SEO, the anchor text of those inbound links and where they’re coming from and how many of them are, are all really important factors for image SEO and then SEO in general.”

5. Human Categorization: Human categorization comes from the early stages of developing recognition software. Google would hire people and they’d say, “label this.” In fact, Google was semi-famous for creating this game. It was called Google Image Labeler, and it would show you an image of, say, an apple, as Dover explains further.

“They would ask you in Family Feud style, which is a game show here in the United States, to list words that are associated with that object. You’d say something like apple, and you’d earn points if someone else also said apple. Maybe it’s red, Fuji, or Grandma Smith, or whatever it is. So other words that are associated with the image. And that way they could train their software to start to understand what general shapes and ideas mean within images,” Dover says.

While categorization has evolved, an eye for detail is still best done by the human eyes. But, at the end of the day, image SEO is the most effective as part of an overall SEO effort that is important to reach your desired customer base, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google.

“You may not have the budget for a full-scale SEO campaign if you’re just starting out, but some time with an SEO consultant to get you started may be within your budget and well worth the expense,” Husayni says.

Popularity: 1%

SANTA MONICA, CA — It is no secret that each new year brings new SEO trends and practices along with it. But no matter how SEO evolves, one fact has become increasingly clear: content is becoming more and more important. Several SEO experts are pointing out that content is king now, a point made royally in this picture by Dave Virdee in a blog post:

The need for content alone, regardless of quality, is an old, outdated trend. Now you must set yourself apart to get those same clicks, according to Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz.org, in a recent video. See Fishkin’s SEO advice below.

“It used to be the case that on the web, there was a lot of missing information, information that needed to exist, so you could produce low quality content and get traffics and ratings.” Fishkin says. “[Now] you need to be something special to stand out from the crowd.”

Standing out from the crowd is made easier with a few extra steps to make your content of a higher caliber than your competition, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google.

“The industry is constantly evolving and SEO has grown to encompass much more than on-site optimization. It’s really only five or ten percent of the total work,” Husayni says.

After all, SEO now is all about generating useful, high-quality content on a regular basis, along with technical research for keywords relevant to the company, and a long-term link building campaign. No matter which part of the process you are in, a strong SEO effort has the constant need for the production of updated content with useful, relevant information in it.

The demand for new content, all the time, makes creating quality content tough, but worth it, for those willing to put in the work, according to Fishkin.

“There is a big opportunity for people willing to say, ‘I’m going to have the best reviews in the city,’ ‘I’m going to have photos,’ ‘I’m going to interview the chef’. That qualitative information can make a big difference.”

So remember, sometimes less really is more.

Popularity: 2%

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Most people understand that in today’s market, a website has to rank near the top of Google to be competitive, but the fact that it is not an easy task to get there can escape many of them. The most common question when it comes to getting a top search result placement on Google is: “How can I get my website to the top ranking on Google with free SEO?”

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, has an answer to this question.

“Search engine optimization is like any other demanding industry in business,” says Husayni. “You don’t do it part time if you want to be successful.”

After all, when it comes to SEO, there is a big learning curve while acquiring skills, and it is an ongoing process, a fight to stay current. There are thousands of sites on the internet with tips, lists and tutorials about SEO techniques, including the Master Google website and blog, but search engine algorithms get updated regularly and without warning.

“The only constant about SEO is that it will change,” Husayni says. “One update can turn everything you’ve been doing on its head.”

Learning the basic concepts of SEO might not cost money, but there is still a cost. When a company or individual is wondering about whether they can do SEO on their own, they should carefully consider these questions:

• Do I have the time to keep up with frequent updates to algorithms and new techniques by reading blogs, breaking news and articles online?
• Do I have the skill level to research and write quality content for my site, including press releases and articles?
• Do I know where to submit articles and press releases or how to share new content on social networking sites?
• Do I have a good working knowledge of computer coding languages to manage and update the code of my site in order to implement new techniques while staying within Google’s Quality Guidelines and Terms Of Service?
• Do I have the stamina to continue doing this these things on a consistent basis?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of those, the company or individual should consider hiring an SEO professional instead. Husayni works with small businesses frequently. In fact, it was his desire to help small businesses be able to compete with their larger competitors that have bigger budgets that got him into SEO in the first place.

“You may not have the budget for a full-scale SEO campaign if you’re just starting out, but some time with an SEO consultant to get you started may be within your budget and well worth the expense,” says Husayni. “Call the office for a free consultation to find out.” Click here to contact us about our services.

Popularity: 4%

SANTA MONICA – To allow blog comments, or not to allow blog comments… that is the question for many bloggers, this one included. While a blog is a great place to send ideas out into the world, the subject of exactly what we expect to get back from it is one that is constantly being discussed, especially when it comes to moderating blog comments. So, the question is this: do blog comments have SEO value?

I am not the first person to investigate this issue. The picture above, ”Paper Blogs”, by Bookwyrmish, was featured in a recent post on the same subject, by Alexander B. Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media. Howard cited two different experts arguing two sides of the issue. One argued that it was a waste of time, while the other said that he enjoyed interacting with customers, but Howard took the time to emphasize his own valid opinion that a blog should be a chance to build a community, not just to preach, which is why comments are so important.

“From where I sit tonight, whether you choose to have comments or not speaks to whether you want to create an online community,” Howard says. “which requires a human’s touch to manage and moderate, or to simply publish your thoughts publicly online, without making the necessary commitment of time and patience.”

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, agrees with the need for a quality blog with equally as useful comments. Without an interactive base, readers have no reason to read and comment on your posts, and that will leave you link-less, without the SEO opportunities that every business needs.

“You cannot just sit and wait for others to link their sites to yours,” Husayni says. “That simply won’t happen. In a world where there are thousands of new sites built everyday, your prospective site visitors have no way of finding you to read your content [without search engine optimization].”

As for just how often to moderate your comments and how many posts you need to put up per week, consider these things to be a part of your overall marketing efforts. Stay white hat with these for optimal SEO. What exactly is white hat marketing? It includes quality content, site optimization, guest blogging, internal linking, and more. In our recent post, we defined white hat marketing and compared it to other practices. Check it out: Best SEO Practices: Black Hat vs. White Hat Techniques and the Gray Hat Area.

Popularity: 2%