Google “Possum” Update + Using Google Sites

Google Possum Updates

As we all know, Google has recently rolled out, and as far as we’re concerned and what we have seen with our data it’s still rolling out as of the first part of October.  If you have been in the SEO game for any length of time, you know that when Google releases the latest animal its either a really good thing or a really bad thing, depending on your SEO strategy.

At 01MG we are constantly experimenting, testing and playing around with things.  With our experimental sites we tend to be a lot more cavalier and bold with our tactics than we are with our client sites and with our site.  So we have seen mixed results depending on which tactics we were using on a given site.  Hopefully we can give you some updates and some pointers based on our findings.

So Google Rolled out and Update…Now What?

1) Don’t panic:
Typically, when Google rolls out an update there will be wild and frankly weird search engine results displayed until the roll out is done or has settled down a bit .
For example: Below is a screenshot for the search term “Chiropractor Schaumburg Illinois”.

Notice anything weird?  

We sure did.

This is primo real estate when it comes to ranking well in Google. This is the proverbial Snack Pack. The Snack Pack that used to be called the 7 pack (for obvious reasons) and got reduced to three listings several months ago.  These slots are highly competitive and extremely valuable to business owners.  For one, they are the most visually prominent listings on the page.  Even with all the ads that sit above it, these have more visual weight and people like shiny objects, so you know they are gonna click on it.

The second component is mobile.  We have written ad nausea about the importance of mobile and this essentially proves our point.  On a mobile device, the snack pack listings are, again more prominent and they are above the fold on the user’s device.  More visibility equals more clicks which typically means more phone calls.   Additionally, the snack pack listings have the added functionality of click to call and click for directions.

So to reiterate, this is extremely valuable real estate in the Google landscape.   The screen cap from above was taken during the peak of the recent roll out that most of the SEO was affectionately calling the Possum Update.

Which begs the question of why would Google rank a site called “m” ?  It’s either a mistake and over site or a weird A/B testing thing that Google threw in the mix  just to see what happened.  It’s puzzling given that Google has a very specific set of expectations and guidelines for what they deem as a “quality website”.   Based on what we know, this would mean that this sites’ title tag is simply the letter “m”.  Doesn’t make a lot of sense from a logic perspective.

The other thing of note is the lack of reviews.  While it is not completely out of the norm to see sites in the snack pack with no reviews, the combination of a single letter as the website title and no reviews doesn’t really make sense?

 

Does it?

 

Additionally, it’s subtle but the listing above that one in the snack pack has the name of the keyword misspelled.  This is again really incongruent with Google’s typical behavior of auto suggesting and auto correcting nearly everything you type…particularly with their own properties.  The information in the snack pack is largely drawn from a business’s Google My Business listing.  So, following that logic, Google verified and approved both a business with the name of “m”  as well as a business with a misspelling of the profession.

Such is the weirdness of a Google update.

 

2)When an update rolls out, the natural inclination is to jump in and start “fixing” things. Adding more links, prompting more social activity and adding more content.  As difficult as it is to resist trying to fix a perceived problem, we typically stand pat and don’t do anything out of the normal business process…tweeting, adding a blog post etc.

Think about it

If Google is showing weird results during/after an algorithm update and you immediately react to it and change something significantly, they are going to notice.  They will notice the difference in your site by comparing data pre-crawl and post crawl of the algorithm update.   It sucks to sit patiently and watch as your rankings flip flop like a spawing salmon, but our advice is don’t touch it.

 

How do you make your sites future proof ?

We always rely on a back to the basics approach
We tend to stick with the usual suspects…..Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.  As of late we have started really focusing on Google and their properties.

Lots of SEO’s out there are unaware that you can build  out an entire website on sites.google.com.   Yup, you can build a Google website for zero cost for hosting and you can actually rank it as well.  Google loves their own stuff, so the more you post on it and around it and link to, the better chances you have to build up the authority of your main website.   For years a lot of people that were “in the know” wrote off Google My Business and Google Plus as dead in the water and death from Facebook.

Not true. 

In order to rank well, especially in the local space you HAVE to have your Google properties in order.   Our intern was digging around and found a really well done suite of Google properties from and IT firm based out of Kansas City.   They have offices in St.Louis as well, but let’s have a look at what they are doing to rank for Computer Support Kansas City.

Google Checklist| What They Are Doing Well:

1) Optimized Google My Business
2) Active and consistent posting on Google Plus
3) Well done sites.google.com website. In this case they are optimized for Computer Support Kansas City.  We suspect that they grab additional keywords based on the way they set this site up.
4) Google Maps on their website for both addresses with great schema.org info included.

 

In closing, if you aren’t leveraging Google properties, you should.  For more info on how to do this…ironically… you should Google it   J

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Small Business SEO Tips

Improve Your Local Search Presence

If you’re a small business owner, and especially if you are working to get visible in your city, odds are that you’ve heard of the term Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO. What does that mean exactly? It’s making your website search-engine friendly, so that when people are looking for your brand, products or service, you can easily be found. SEO is a very challenging and technical skill to acquire that is best left to professionals. Think of it this way – you don’t hire your house painter to work on your car engine do you? When an SEO company is doing is job for you, and doing it well, they’ll take certain steps to ensure that your website is well written, has lots of high quality, original content, and gives all three major search engines what they’re looking for. The big three search engine companies are of course Google, Yahoo and Bing. Generally speaking, what works well on Google will work well on other sites, so ask your SEO company to focus on making your company’s website Google compliant.

The main page of your company’s website should have a clear explanation of who you are, what you do, what products you offer, and what your hours are. Be sure that you have your Email address and full phone number, including area code, clearly visible on the top of your page. For an added bonus, ask your SEO company to include your address and place it in Google Maps. For example, there is a men’s groom business in Leawood, Kansas that has their location embedded in Google Maps. You can see an example of how they did this correctly by looking at their site listing here: http://thegentsplace.com/locations/leawood-ks: that red pin that you see on the Google map was placed there by the business and then verified by Google so that they know it’s a real and legitimate business. Instead of taking anyone’s word about a business listing, it might surprise you to know that there is a human being that verifies each business entry so that they know it’s a valid location and address.  When doing a map listing, you should also include some good quality photographs from outside or from across the street that displays the front of, or the most prominent looking angle of your establishment. And don’t worry, the photographs don’t have to be done by a professional. No need to hire an expensive photographer for this task. Most modern smart phones have cameras that are good enough for what we’re working to accomplish here. So, use that phone to snap a few pics and use those when creating your Google Maps listing. It will show that you are a real business and your account and addition to the maps should be approved in short order.

More Ways SEO Can Help

Another way that you can have your SEO company make sure that you can be found, that your customers understand how and where your business operates, and that the big three search engines understand your particular company well is to include services areas. Service areas will define where your business operates out of, how far it will travel, etc. For example, if you’re a painter, and you’re located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you’d do well to let potential customers know how far away from the city you’d be willing to travel, if at all. A great example of quality SEO work done to a website, showing the service areas can be seen at ColorWheel Painting. They have a map, and how the various service areas they work in. You can see how they did this by clicking here:

http://www.remodelandpaint.com/Milwaukee-Painting-Contractors/Service-Areas.

Another example would be if you are a plumbing company, and you were to tell people the cities and towns that you will come to from a major metropolitan area. A great example of this is a company that is located in Overland Park, Kansas. This plumbing company must have a great SEO agency because not only do they let potential customers know about all of the different services they offer, but they have done a fantastic job of showing all of the cities that surround Overland Park and Kansas City, Missouri that they will travel to for service. For example, they’ve even gone to the trouble to talk about a very small suburb that goes by the name of Martin City. That city is most famous for being home to one of the best BBQ joints around, but they also have a growing residential population. And with residential homes you can be sure that there is plenty of plumbing work to go around.

 

Not only do they discuss what services they offer, but they also let you know some information about area, so it’s informational as well as educational.

When it’s all said and done, make sure the SEO company that you’ve chosen to work with will accurately represent your company, services and products. The better job of “painting a picture” of your company that you can do online, the better the chance you have of connecting with your potential customers and letting them know what you’re all about. And if you do a good job of that, Google will reward you by ranking you higher in the search engine than your competition. It’s generally assured true that the the big G is the leader, so if you do things right with them, you should see similar results when people search for your business in Yahoo and Bing.

 

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Holy Weebly Batman

Weebly, the Good the Bad and The Weebly

We could go on and on about why you shouldn’t use a free web builder, but we’ll save that for another day.
There are so many things wrong with free web builders, that we don’t feel like re-hashing what was covered in the link above.

Sometimes when we get bored at the office, we troll around the web  doing research and just poking around.  Every once in a blue moon, we stumble across a site that is really well done on a really shitty platform.  We try to avoid naming names, but we’re talking about the good ole Weebly boys.  Wix and the host of others are not without sin, but for this example we’re talking all things Weebly.

Ok, so what’s the point of this post other than an excuse to post a really old meme?

Every once in awhile you run across someone who actually put some time and effort into making a crap platform look good.   We were doing some research on cat odor and cat odor remover and we stumbled across this site for a cat odor product.

Its a rare stand out in the sea of bad Weeblys.
And…here’s another bad meme. We are up to 2 bad memes now for those of you keeping score at home.

What makes its so much different that your typical Weebly site ?
Well, thanks for sticking around people, because we’re gonna tell you.

1) Template Choice: They chose a minimal template and didn’t try and get too crazy or superfluous with the design choices. Its got a straight forward and very clean magazine style layout.

2) Website Sections: They have sections built out that “good websites” all have.  Terms and Conditions and a Privacy statement. They even went so far as to have a very subtle cookie acceptance pop up on the bottom of the page.
There is an opportunity for a high five meme or a Fast Times at Ridgemont High image here, but we won’t go there.

3) Social Sharing Buttons: They included social sharing buttons. This may not seem like much, but its fairly involved to integrate it into your Weebly site. Trust us, we have had to do this.

4) Testimonials.  They went the full nine yards and incorporated a testimonial slider on their Weebly site.  This is somewhat like putting lipstick on a pig, but in this case it definitely helps dress things up. When it comes to these free websites, the more things you can do to make them look like a “real” website the better off you’ll be.  This is another instance where it took some effort and thought to include this in the website

5) Links. They have a nice internal linking approach. Although its a smaller site, its the subtle little touches like this that will really help your SEO footprint and your SEO potential in the eyes of the almighty Google.  Additionally they have some outbound authority links which is another ranking factor that will help.

It looks like they have not yet upgraded to the paid version of Weebly because the site still has the “Create A Free Website” and “Powered by Weebly” in the footer of the site   But we suspect because they have included a video that they may be indexed.

We know this post may seem slanted negatively against free website builders…which it is.  You should always hire a professional design firm,  BUT that being said, we do feel it is our responsibility as Deputy Sheriff of the Internet to highlight sites like this that are at least trying to make a crap platform look decent and offer a good user experience.

To whomever was tasked with building that Weebly, well done you sombitch.

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Doing it and Doing it and Doing it well.

We’re referencing this old school video in this post.

 

OK What the hell are you guys talking about here?

We found another site that gets it, they are doing it, doing it and doing it well.
Here’s why.
This site is  for a Sports Performance Training Company based out of Lawrence Kansas.   Ok..cool but what’s so special about it?
1) Their on-page SEO is some of the best we have seen in the industry.  For the search term “Sports Performance Lawrence Kansas” they dominate the 1st page.  This is a smaller company with a fairly new website. They are out ranking some heavy hitters like Lawrence Memorial Hospital and some other companies that have been in business for longer than the Athletic Strength Institute.
2) They are not only dominating the local space in Lawrence, they are starting to make a foot print in the next largest city over…Kansas City.

This is all well and neat, but how are they doing this ?

Full transparency here.. this is some drunken master SEO analysis but here is why we think they are dominating this space.
1) As we said earlier their on page SEO is amazing.

2) Keyword Research. These cats have obviously spent a lot of time analyzing the space and checking out their competition,

3) They have an over arching locations page.  Visit their site and under the facilities tab, they have a service area link.
4) Each one of these location pages has its own map and its own location specific page built out.

See how they have 4 separate pages for the 4 separate keywords they are trying to rank for ?
e.g.
Sports Performance Overland Park
Sports Performance Lenexa
Sports Performance Leawood
Sports Performance Olathe
and
Sports Performance Kansas City. 

5) Social Media. This personal trainer is a beast. Check out all of their social profiles from their website. Look at the volume of posts they put out on their Facebook Page.

We always like to give kudos to KC SEO Companies that are doing clever things.
These guys are definitely doing it and doing it and doing it well .

 

We’re gonna keep an eye on this one and see how it plays out over the next few months. We think there are going to be big things happening for Athletic Strength Institute.

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Hold Onto Your SEO Hats – More Changes From Google Are Here…

As we are all aware of, from time to time, Google will update the way that it looks at websites. While Google doesn’t tell you the specifics of what they are looking for, they will give you a general idea of the coming change. This latest round of updates is no different.

In May, Google had completed the full roll out of their latest version of the mobile update. This update verifies that a webiste will work well on mobile devices such as phones and tablets.

From a technical perspective, this update is supposed to signal that a webiste is mobile ready, mobile friendly, and that the site should be ranked higher than other sites that may not be mobile friendly. If your site is already mobile compatible, there should be little to no change for you.

It’s worth noting that this latest update looks at your site on a page by page basis. If your front page is updated, but not other sections, then you might be penalized. If you’re uncertain about how your website measures up, ask us about a no-obligation audit. We’ll be able to identify if your site needs to be udpated so that it will comply with the latest updates, and if you like, we can also do the work.

You might have heard of the term “Mobilegeddon” last year. Some people in the SEO world have dubbed this “Mobilegeddon 2” but we think that’s a bit much. This is what we would consider a minor update, whereas the one last year was major.

In addition to having your site mobile friendly, what’s the last time that you checked your links? If you have links that don’t go anywhere (also known as “dead links”) your site may not be viewed as favorably as it should be. There are numerous tools and services available to do link checking, and is also a service that we offer.

Along with links, be sure that you have an updated Google + listing, and that it’s verified. Along with that, you should be sure that you have a LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and possibly Pintrest account. Did you know that more and more, Google, Yahoo and Bing are looking for social signals? Think about it – any real business is going to make sure that customers can find and interact with them – and social accounts are the “proof” of this.

Have questions or need help? Want to make sure that your company, business or brand can be found online? Give us a call to find out how we can help your business grow in 2016.

 

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Hello? Is this thing on?

We do a pretty fair amount of observation on the internet.  We like to pay attention to design, usability and just general internet happenings.  In the sea of really bad landing pages, we’re looking at you LeadPages    Its nice to come across a simple, well done landing page that just “gets it”.
It may seem brutally simple and overly utilitarian, but sites like the one we are referring to just work.  It’s a newer site and we’re pretty sure its got something to do with lead generation or generating calls.  That being said, let’s have a look see at why this site “works”

1. It’s wicked fast.
In this day and age, 2.1 second is unheard of.  The page size is insanely low as well.  It’s not unusual to see pages in the neighborhood of 2-3MB these days. This thing comes in at a super slim 956KB.

2. On page SEO
It’s a little thin on the content side of things, but its really strong with the on page SEO treatment.  The site hierarchy makes sense  and its all cascades well.

3. It’s mobile friendly.
This may not seem like a big deal, but when it comes to ranking in 2016, it matters.

4. No Bullshit
Harsh I know but seriously. Look at this site.

Do you have questions?   YES
Do you need answers?  YES
Need to talk to someone ? YES

HERE IS THE NUMBER TO CALL.  It’s in a big bold font, multiple times on the page.
In closing.  It’s nice to see simple, well done pages like this that don’t have pop ups all over the place or some video you have to watch before you see the content.

Straight forward and well done.  Kudos to whomever built the Talc Powder Ovarian Cancer website.  You have our respect.

 

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Mobile Update Round 2

Looks like Google is planning another round of mobile updates that will affect rankings.  If your site is not mobile friendly by now, its high time you get that fixed!

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PDF and SEO

Search Engines Detect and Penalize Plagiarism

It is a good thing that search engines detect plagiarism. I am not sure how they sort out various versions of articles or articles that quote other articles, but without some protection against plagiarism there would be very little incentive for originality in adding content to any website looking for optimization.

Websites that are found to plagiarize are penalized to one extent or another. Search engines try to discount plagiarized material – and this can result in drops in SERPs or even banning in some instances from search results.

To what extent the plagiarizing is very important. Websites where content is copied and pasted verbatim from one site to another are usually more apt to suffer the major problems in optimization. There is speculation that even partial plagiarism, where one paragraph or a few sentences are copied is seen by search engines as plagiarism. Considering that there may 400 variations of articles on some given topics, it’s a wonder that penalties for plagiarism aren’t even more prevalent. This means that you could inadvertently express an idea in the same succinct wording as someone else and receive a penalty.

From the standpoint of the search engine’s design, content is a major factor in a website’s success in optimization. Since millions of websites are adding content as fast as possible there is almost a certainty that plagiarism continues, in part created by a normal response to the search engine design.

Content writers need some guidelines to stay out of the penalty box. These are some guidelines – only rules of thumb, and certainly not a bottom line on all content contingencies:

Make sure all the people who write content for you use their own original articles as much as possible. Whether you are the sole writer or you hire a team of writers, this is the best practice. You should have your writers spot checked for originality, by yourself or one another.

When writing of completely unique material is not possible, then try these alternatives. This kind of situation may also be a part of submitting any particular content to multiple websites – and you do not want to be penalized.

Make absolutely sure that you create a real and different variation from the original for each of the websites that you will submit to. It is best to rewrite, reword, rephrase each sentence. You should at least use synonyms, vary verb tenses, reorder sentence structure if possible.

You can and should alter any sequencing in lists or time related events or outlining generally – as the meaning of your content may permit. You can even merge or subdivide paragraphs. Using a smaller synopsized version of the original can also help when secondary submissions or uses do not demand a full or exhaustive version. You can shift viewpoints, change to a questioning rather than exclamatory voice, use humorous or poetic characters in your language, etc.

Another way to check whether your content resembles or matches other content is to visit a spell checker website. One of these is named Article checker and is found at http://www.articlechecker.com/ This

is one more way to avoid penalty. There are some other articles for this at:

• Web Templates Blog

Source by Arthur L Browning

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Zero One Marketing Group

Here at Zero One Marketing Group Consultants, we work with local businesses in Kansas City – helping them grow and expand through online marketing and digital strategies. We work closely with industry leaders to provide some of the most state of the art technologies and most up to date market wide services. If you are a local business that wants to grow their practice online, then we advise you to contact us.

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