SEO in 2014: How to Prepare for Google's 2014 Algorithm Updates

It has been an incredibly eventful year in terms of updates from Google. Major 2013 changes included further releases of Penguin and Panda, Hummingbird taking flight, and the shift away from providing keyword data thanks to encrypted search.

Many have gone so far as to ask whether SEO as a profession is dead: for one interesting perspective, see my recent Forbes interview with Sam Roberts of VUDU Marketing. My own take is less alarmist: Google has taken major spam-fighting steps that have shifted the playing field for SEO professionals and anyone trying to get their site on the map in the year ahead.

At the same time, the need for an online presence has never been stronger, while the landscape has never been more competitive. The potential to make a real ROI impact with your company's online marketing initiative is greater than ever. But defaulting to so-called "gray hat" tactics no longer works. Instead, SEO professionals need to step up and embrace a more robust vision of our area of expertise.

You might call it a move from tactician to strategist: the best and most successful players in our space will work to anticipate Google's next moves and respond to them with laser focus. In a sense, the infinite digital game of chess that is SEO will continue, but the rules of the game have become more complex.

Through a mix of what I'm observing and reading and what I'm seeing working out in the field today for my clients, here are some suggestions for companies and SEO professionals that are thinking ahead to 2014 for their digital strategies.

Everything You Learned in 2013 is Still Relevant, Just Amplified

When you look closely at the targets of the 2013 updates (ie, websites that cheat their way to the top of the rankings or provide no value to visitors), I anticipate seeing these carried forward throughout 2014. We can continue to expect micro adjustments to Panda and Penguin that continue to target both link quality and content quality.

Smart marketers will benefit from keeping a close eye on their link profiles, and performing periodic audits to identify and remove inbound links built unnaturally. High quality content investments will remain critical.

A solid SEO performance in 2014 is going to be built on a foundation of really understanding what happened in 2013, and what these changes mean both strategically and tactically for SEO. SEO really has changed in critical ways.

Content Marketing is Bigger than Ever

Content marketing will move from buzzword to mature marketing movement in 2014. From an SEO perspective, Google will be looking at companies that have robust content marketing efforts as a sign that they're the kind of business Google wants to support.

Think of all the advantages of a good content strategy:

• Regular, helpful content targeted at your audience.
• Social signals from regular sharing and engagement.
• Freshness or signs that your site is alive and growing.
• Increasing authority connected to your body of work.

Sound familiar? It's the very approach to SEO that all of Google's recent updates have been designed to shape.

What changes you need to make in 2014 depends largely on where your company stands now in relation to an active content marketing strategy. Companies with existing content strategies will need to assess the role of mobile, specifically.

If you've just begun to move in the direction of content marketing, it's time to really commit and diversify. If you haven't started yet, it's time to take the plunge.

Social Media Plays an Increasingly Visible Role

Social media has been a major player in the digital marketing landscape for the last few years. First we saw the rise of mega platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In the last couple of years, visual content from networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and various micro-video services haa swept through.

Today, diversification is a major trend: depending on who you're targeting, it's no longer enough to be active on a single network. In fact, The Content Marketing Institute recently released a study that the most successful B2B marketers are active on an average of seven networks. Companies and SEO professionals will need to be asking the following questions in the year ahead:

• Are we taking our social media seriously? Are we employing the pillars of strong profiles, good content, reciprocity, and engagement?
• Is easy social sharing enabled for all of our content?
• Does our content strategy include a dissemination phase that includes maximizing its potential for distribution through social networks?
• Are we active on the social networks that matter in our industry?
• Are we active on the social networks that matter to our customers?
• Are we active on the social networks that matter to the search engines? (See below for more thoughts on making that strategic investment).
• Does our social media marketing strategy stimulate the level of social signals required to achieve our goals?

Google's updates are likely to increasingly rely on social signals as active human curation of good content.

Invest in Google+

In addition to strengthening your overall social media marketing position, it's going to be absolutely critical that you are investing in your Google+ presence.

Moz's most recent study of ranking factors confirms that Google+ is playing an increasingly significant role in a solid SEO ranking. The immediate areas to focus on include:

• Establishing Google Authorship of your content, and tying it to your Google+ account. Authorship, which brings your body of content together, will play an important role in the SERPs as well as strengthening your Author Rank.
• Those +1's add up. It isn't clear exactly how much Google +1's directly contribute, but it's fair to say that it's a major factor in the "social signals" component of Google's algorithm. I expect this to increase in the year ahead.

Hummingbird Was Just the Tip of the Mobile Iceberg

2014 will be the year of mobile SEO. Hummingbird was just the very small visible tip of a very large iceberg as Google struggles to respond to the rapidly shifting landscape where half of all Americans own smartphones and at least one-third own tablets. Those statistics will probably shift upward, maybe dramatically, after the 2013 holiday season.

As a result, your site's mobile performance matters to your SEO rankings. Properties that you're trying to rank need to be designed first for mobile and then scaled up for the big screen. If you don't have a mobile-optimized website, this needs to be your top priority in terms of SEO and design investments for 2014.

Some underlying changes that happened with Hummingbird, including the increasing importance of both semantic search and Knowledge Graph, will continue to grow in influence. Practically speaking, this is to help prepare the search engine for the rise of voice search associated with mobile. But it also has direct implications (which we're still learning about) for broader SEO. This is one area that you should pay close attention to, from how you structure your content to what content you choose to put out.

The Long Versus Short Debate

Which is better, long content or short content? The answer depends on who is creating the content, who is reading it, what it's about, in what context it's being consumed, and how you define "better."

For the purposes of this argument, which form of content will help you best prepare to rank well in 2014? Frustratingly for some, the answer is more "both/and" than "or."

Vocus recently cited a study that showed that the top 10 results for a specific keyword search tended to be more than 2,000 words in length. The validity of that study has been debated, but it's probably fair to say that length is a proxy for depth of expertise and value delivered to the reader.

Google values both expertise and value. As a result, we've seen a trend where the "minimum desirable length" for text-based content has shifted from something in the range of 550 words to articles in the range of 1000-plus words.

Yet we're also confronted with the reality of the mobile device: if I'm reading about something I'm only moderately interested in, there's a high probability that I won't want to scroll through 2,000 words on my iPhone. That leaves content marketers faced with the challenge of producing mobile-friendly content, which tends to be (in a sweeping generality) much, much shorter.

Proposed solutions have run the gamut from content mixes to site architectures that allow you to point readers to specific versions of content based on their devices. This is great for the user experience, but where it all comes out on the SEO algorithm front remains to be seen. For now, I'll just acknowledge that it's an area of concern that will continue to evolve and that it's something you should keep your eye on.

Advertising and PPC has a Shifted Relationship with SEO

Since Google made the decision to encrypt the vast majority of its searches, our ability to access keyword data for research purposes has been restricted. However, there's a loophole. Keyword data is still available for advertisers using PPC on Google's platform.

More SEO budgets may be driven toward PPC simply because access to the data may otherwise be restricted. It's also possible that we'll see the release of a premium Google product to give us access to that data through another channel from Google in the year ahead.

Guest Blogging Remains One of the Most Effective Tactics, With a Caveat

Guest blogging has exploded in the past year, and it's going to remain one of the most effective means of building quality inbound links, traffic, and branding exposure in 2014. However, it's absolutely critical that you're creating high quality content, and using extremely stringent criteria when selecting your target sites.

In other words, you need to apply the same high ethos approach to guest blogging that you do to the rest of your SEO efforts. If you dip a toe into spammy waters where guest blogging is essentially scattershot article marketing with a 2014 update, you're likely to be penalized in a future Penguin update.

Conclusion

This has been a year of significant change in the SEO industry. Even contemplating strategies for 2014 can feel staggering.

The good news is that looking back, it's easy to see which direction the trends are heading in terms of the years ahead. Staying the course on solid white hat tactics and paying attention to a few priority areas that are shifting rapidly should give you the insights needed to improve your organic search visibility in 2014 and beyond.

Google's 2013 Algorithm Updates: A Look Back

  

When Google makes changes to its all-powerful, mysterious search algorithm, the world of inbound marketing watches and, more often than not, reacts strongly to them. These algorithm adjustments have certainly proved to be challenging for marketers. But, the fact of the matter is it's on us marketing pros to roll with Google's modifications and learn how to revise our search strategies accordingly.

To help you understand what changes the search engine conglomerate has made this year to its vaunted animal-themed algorithms -- and there were several -- we've got the list of all of the major ones made in 2013. (And hey, it's only November -- but hopefully there won't be any other big ones we need to worry about.)

So just in case you missed any of them, here are the big changes to Google's algorithm that marked the year, and how your marketing was affected.

February and March 2013: Panda Updates

                                               

Initially launched in February 2011, Google's Panda algorithm has come quite a long way. It was originally conceived as a way to penalize those who published weak content (as Google calls them, "scraper sites" and "content farms") and reward those who put out quality content (for instance, those who create original, thoughtful blog content regularly).

This particular update -- number 24 for Panda, which Google referred to as a "refresh" -- was announced in January and implemented in February. It reportedly affected roughly 1.2% of English-based search queries. As Google noted in a tweet following the modification, it was developed to further ensure only high-quality content would be rewarded.

Per Google, a high-quality site is one that's trustworthy, has original and factually correct content, isn't biased or one-sided, doesn't receive a high volume of user complaints, and has content that is comprehensive and thorough. Conversely, low-quality sites have numerous paid links, are mostly empty, contain thin content, and have too many ads.

Just a couple months later, another substantive update -- number 25 -- was made to Panda. This revised version, announced by Matt Cutts, the head of webspam at Google, was similar in many ways to the previous update. However, as Cutts noted, this algorithm alteration would be the first Panda one to be made gradually over time instead of all at once.

"Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day," Cutts noted at the SMX West marketing conference in March, "you are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes."

May 2013: Penguin 2.0 Unveiled

Also discussed at the SMX conference by Cutts was this overhaul of Google's Penguin algorithm, which in May, he elaborated on upon its release. This 2.0 version, the fourth Penguin-related update the company made, was meant to swing the hammer down even harder on webspam.

With this newly revamped formula, there was an even bigger effect on webmasters and SEOs than the last Panda update -- approximately 2.3% of English-based searches were impacted, Cutts said. Specifically, a considerable adjustment was made in the algorithm related to website authority.

Google decided to recognize sites that produce content for specific industries and areas of expertise by giving them an "authority boost." Other major differences that came to pass with 2.0 included more intricate analysis on Google's behalf of links to determine their quality.

So, marketers who produce content for specific communities or fields that showed thought leadership, provided in-depth insights, and link to quality sites are given a bump in search results by Google.

Here's what Cutts had to say about this fourth version of Penguin back in May, including what future updates Google had in store for the algorithm as 2013 progressed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQmQeKU25zg

As Adam de Jong noted in his guest post for Inbound Hub, websites that thrived after Penguin 2.0's release shared certain positive traits. The main one? Companies that branded themselves well, which can be accomplished by posting unique content with quality links, were highly rewarded by Google's latest algorithm.

"Sites that have a holistic brand have held onto, or improved, their rankings and traffic post-Penguin 2.0," de Jong stated in his post.

August 2013: Hummingbird 1.0 and 'In-Depth' Articles

After years of "P" animal-themed algorithms, the biggest news in Google's history came when it switched its new algorithm to that of the hummingbird. Okay, I kid, but the update itself was undoubtedly a significant one.

As noted by TechCrunch, the emergence of Hummingbird 1.0 was "the biggest overhaul to [Google's] engine since the 2009 'Caffeine' overhaul (which focused on speed and integrating social network results into search) and that it affects 'around 90% of searches.'"

The big change with Hummingbird is that it now allows Google to recognize full-question searches instead of just parsing specific keywords. With this relatively new capability, Google can appropriately rank answers to these long-tail question searches.

How exactly does this update help user searches? Well, let's say, for example, you want to find free, available parking in Downtown Boston. Before Hummingbird, if you'd searched "Where is the best place to park in Downtown Boston for free?" the SERP may've shown you free parks you could visit in the area in addition to your intended results. But now, with Hummingbird, Google can provide you with the results you actually want to see based on queries like this example on page one, as it can more easily understand the question asked and its context.

Here's another way to put it: Google has made searches more human.

Along with the release of Hummingbird, Google also made news in August when it revealed a more accurate way for users to locate in-depth evergreen content. The company noted the best ways this older content can be found on your site is through implementing authorship markups, proper pagination, and logos. You can learn more details on how to get your evergreen content found on this Google Support page.

September 2013 (BONUS): All Keywords Encrypted

Okay, so this isn't technically a search algorithm update, but it was still a major event in the search universe. At the end of the third quarter, Google announced something many-a-marketer feared would happen at some point: that all keyword data would be encrypted.

In other words, instead of just Google users' searches being encrypted, now even the searches of those not logged in to Google are encrypted, as well. While some marketers will say this is terrible news, they should know there are still ways to gauge keyword data, both from organic searches and PPC campaigns.

The big question, though, is why Google made this particular move to begin with. Well, the company stated it was to provide "extra protection" for users. However, other theories have arisen -- one of the most popular is that Google decided to encrypt all searches to deter the NSA from gaining access to searches (or spying, if you will).

Whatever the reason, it's clear marketing pros need to adjust their efforts accordingly to continue to monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Why Google’s New Hummingbird Algorithm is Good News for Serious Content Creators

On October 3rd, 2013 Google announced a major search algorithm release called Hummingbird.

Uh-oh.

Does this mean your content-driven business is in jeopardy? Is keyword researchdead? Are you going to have to reengineer your entire content strategy?

There’s no question that the Hummingbird algorithm is only the beginning of change in search optimization, but smart content creators can be prepared to thrive in this — and any — environment that may come in the future.

This release is basically a platform that enables Google to better handle “conversational” search queries.

To illustrate this, consider the difference between these two queries:

1. “golden gate pictures”
2. “give me some pictures of the golden gate bridge”

           

The first query is formed the way people have learned to enter entries using a keyboard. This has been our primary input method since web search was born.

Keyboards are not natural human devices, and even for fast typists they are a bit of an awkward device to use, so learning to abbreviate queries to talk to a search engine is a generally accepted practice.

However, the rise of mobile device usage brings some new challenges.

The mobile keyboard cometh

While many continue to type with the keyboards on phones and tablets, they are a bit more awkward to use.

Over time, people are going to increasingly gravitate to voice search in environments where that is acceptable (e.g. environments where speaking to your device is not seen as intrusive).

Voice queries are far more likely to fall into the pattern of the second query above — natural language queries.

As in all things search, Google wants to dominate mobile search too.

Google wants to process “real” speech patterns

Having the best platform for processing conversational queries is an important part of that, and that’s where Hummingbird fits in, though it’s just the beginning of a long process.

Think of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm as a two-year-old child. So far it’s learned a few very basic concepts.

These concepts represent building blocks, and it is now possible to teach it even more concepts going forward. It appears that a lot of this learning is derived from the rich array of information that Google has on all search queries done on the web, including the query sequences.

The Knowledge Graph

These examples involve Google’s Knowledge Graph, where natural language search benefits from the ability to pull real-time answers to queries that understand the specific context of the query.

Note that the Knowledge Graph has accepted some forms of conversational queries for a while, but a big part of Hummingbird was about expanding this capability to the rest of Google search.

I have seen people argue about whether or not Hummingbird was just a front end translator for search queries, or whether it is really about understanding more complex types of user intent.

The practical examples we have now may behave more like the former, but make no mistake that Google wants to be able to do the latter as well.

The mind reading algorithm

Google wants to understand what is on your mind, well, before its on your mind.

Consider Google Now as ultimately being part of this mix. Imagine being able to have Google address search queries like these:

1. Where do I find someone that can install my surround sound system?
2. What year did the Sox lose that one game playoff?
3. What are the predictions for the price of gas next summer?
4. What time is my dinner on Tuesday night, where is it, and how do I get there?

No, these queries will not work right now, but it gives you some idea of where this is all headed.

These all require quite a bit of semantic analysis, as well as pulling in additional information including your personal context.

The 4th question I added was to show that Google is not likely to care if the search is happening across web sites, in your address book, or both. Not all of this is Hummingbird, per se, but it is all part of the larger landscape.

To give you an idea on how long this has taken to build, Google’s Amit Singhal first filed a patent called Search queries improved based on query semantic information in March of 2003. In short, development of this technology has taken a very long time, and is a very big deal.

The implications of a Hummingbird search world

It is important to remember that this step forward being described by Google as a new platform.

Like the Caffeine release Google did in June of 2010, the real import of this is yet to come. Google will be able to implement many more capabilities in the future. The implications to search in the long term are potentially huge.

For you as a publisher, the implications are more straightforward. Here are a few things to think about:

1. Will keywords go away?

Not entirely. The language you use is a key part of a semantic analysis of your content.

Hopefully, you abandoned the idea of using the same phrases over and over again in your content a long time ago. It will remain wise to have a straightforward definition of what the page is about in the page title.

I’ll elaborate a bit more on this in point 3 below.

2. Will Google make the long tail of search go away?

Not really. Some of the aspects that trigger long tail type search results may actually be inferred by Google rather than contained in the query. Or they may be in the user’s query itself. Some long tail user queries may also get distilled down to a simpler head term.

There will definitely be shifts here, but the exact path this will take is hard to project. In the long term though, the long tail will be defined by long tail human desires and needs, not keyword strings.

The language you use still matters, because it helps you communicate to users and Google what needs and desires you answer.

3. You need to understand your prospect’s possible intents

That is what Google is trying to do. They are trying to understand the human need, and provide that person with what they need.

Over time, users will be retrained to avoid short simple keyword-ese type queries and just say what they want. Note that this evolution is not likely to be rapid, as Google still has a long way to go still!

As a publisher, you should focus more attention on building pages for each of the different basic needs and intentions of the potential customers for your products and services. Start mapping those needs and use cases and design your site’s architecture, content, and use of language to address those.

In other words, know your audience. Doing this really well takes work, but it starts with knowing your potential customers or clients and why they might buy what you have to sell, and identifying the information they need first.

4. Semantic relevance is the new king

We used to speak about content being king, and that in some sense is still true, but it is becoming more complex than that now.

You now need to think about content that truly addresses specific wants and needs. Does your content communicate relevance to a specific want or need?

In addition, you can’t overlook the need to communicate your overall authority in a specific topic area. Do you answer the need better than anyone else?

While much of being seen as an authority involves other signals such as links, and perhaps some weight related to social shares and interaction, it also involvescreating in-depth content that does more than scratch the surface of a need.

Are you more in-depth than anyone else? If someone has some very specific scenarios for using your product or service, does your content communicate that you address it? Does your content really stand out in some way?

What’s it to you?

As noted above, this is going to be a journey for all of us.

While Google’s eventual destination is easy to imagine (think Star Trek’s on board computer), Hummingbird has only scratched the surface, and the steps along the way are hard to predict. That will be driven by very specific developments in technology.

All About The New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm

Google has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called “Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far.

                                  

What’s a “search algorithm?”

That’s a technical term for what you can think of as a recipe that Google uses to sort through the billions of web pages and other information it has, in order to return what it believes are the best answers.

What’s “Hummingbird?”

It’s the name of the new search algorithm that Google is using, one that Google says should return better results.

So that “PageRank” algorithm is dead?

No. PageRank is one of over 200 major “ingredients” that go into the Hummingbird recipe. Hummingbird looks at PageRank — how important links to a page are deemed to be — along with other factors like whether Google believes a page is of good quality, the words used on it and many other things (see our Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors for a better sense of some of these).

Why is it called Hummingbird?

Google told us the name come from being “precise and fast.”

When did Hummingbird start? Today?

Google started using Hummingbird about a month ago, it said. Google only announced the change today.

What does it mean that Hummingbird is now being used?

Think of a car built in the 1950s. It might have a great engine, but it might also be an engine that lacks things like fuel injection or be unable to use unleaded fuel. When Google switched to Hummingbird, it’s as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one. It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch.

When’s the last time Google replaced its algorithm this way?

Google struggled to recall when any type of major change like this last happened. In 2010, the “Caffeine Update” was a huge change. But that was also a change mostly meant to help Google better gather information (indexing) rather than sorting through the information. Google search chief Amit Singhal told me that perhaps 2001, when he first joined the company, was the last time the algorithm was so dramatically rewritten.

What about all these Penguin, Panda and other “updates” — haven’t those been changes to the algorithm?

Panda, Penguin and other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Think of it again like an engine. Those things were as if the engine received a new oil filter or had an improved pump put in. Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda

The new engine is using old parts?

Yes. And no. Some of the parts are perfectly good, so there was no reason to toss them out. Other parts are constantly being replaced. In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

What type of “new” search activity does Hummingbird help?

“Conversational search” is one of the biggest examples Google gave. People, when speaking searches, may find it more useful to have a conversation.

“What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example.

Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.

In particular, Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

I thought Google did this conversational search stuff already!

It does (see Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome), but it had only been doing it really within its Knowledge Graph answers. Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

Does it really work? Any before-and-afters?

We don’t know. There’s no way to do a “before-and-after” ourselves, now. Pretty much, we only have Google’s word that Hummingbird is improving things. However, Google did offer some before-and-after examples of its own, that it says shows Hummingbird improvements.

A search for “acid reflux prescription” used to list a lot of drugs (such as this, Google said), which might not be necessarily be the best way to treat the disease. Now, Google says results have information about treatment in general, including whether you even need drugs, such asthis as one of the listings.

A search for “pay your bills through citizens bank and trust bank” used to bring up the homepage for Citizens Bank but now should return the specific page about paying bills

A search for “pizza hut calories per slice” used to list an answer like this, Google said, but not one from Pizza Hut. Now, it lists this answer directly from Pizza Hut itself, Google says.

Could it be making Google worse?

Almost certainly not. While we can’t say that Google’s gotten better, we do know that Hummingbird — if it has indeed been used for the past month — hasn’t sparked any wave of consumers complaining that Google’s results suddenly got bad. People complain when things get worse; they generally don’t notice when things improve.

Does this mean SEO is dead?

No, SEO is not yet again dead. In fact, Google’s saying there’s nothing new or different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important; Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.

Does this mean I’m going to lose traffic from Google?

If you haven’t in the past month, well, you came through Hummingbird unscathed. After all, it went live about a month ago. If you were going to have problems with it, you would have known by now.

By and large, there’s been no major outcry among publishers that they’ve lost rankings. This seems to support Google saying this is very much a query-by-query effect, one that may improve particular searches — particularly complex ones — rather than something that hits “head” terms that can, in turn, cause major traffic shifts.

But I did lose traffic!

Perhaps it was due to Hummingbird, but Google stressed that it could also be due to some of the other parts of its algorithm, which are always being changed, tweaked or improved. There’s no way to know.

How do you know all this stuff?

Google shared some of it at its press event today, and then I talked with two of Google’s top search execs, Amit Singhal and Ben Gomes, after the event for more details. I also hope to do a more formal look at the changes from those conversations in the near future. But for now, hopefully you’ve found this quick FAQ based on those conversations to be helpful.

By the way, another term for the “meaning” connections that Hummingbird does is “entity search,” and we have an entire panel on that at our SMX East search marketing show in New York City, next week. The Coming “Entity Search” Revolution session is part of an entire “Semantic Search” track that also gets into ways search engines are discovering meanings behind words. 

Google Zebra a “Merchant” of Doom

The Google “Zebra” update is both rumor and an SEO inside-joke. As of today, there is no Google Zebra update. The myth arose after comments Matt Cutts made at a conference regarding merchant quality. It was dubbed “Zebra” because Google seemed to favor black and white animal names for their algorithm updates aka “Panda” and “Penguin” (the recent Hummingbird, not withstanding!). But jokes aside, the recommendations in this article by Michael Campolattano are valid (on a case by case basis). Sorry for any confusion.

Recently, a certain search engine’s algorithm updates have not been so nice to most of the web. These Agents of G.O.O.G.L.E (yes I’m a Marvel fan!) arrive quietly, then tear relentlessly through the fabric of our very SEO souls! And what makes these updates even more frightening (and creepy) is these kill shots come in the form of cute and cuddly animals. I mean who would be afraid of a cute little Penguin…awe…or that cuddly Panda? And when was last time crowds ran screaming “The Hummingbird is coming…run for your lives!”? Never!

Well, the animal pain train is on its way again and this time its newest addition comes directly from the plains of Africa – code named  “Zebra” or as I like to call it “Your eCommerce store is toast…losers”!  Really, G.O.O.G.L.E should stop patronizing us and start giving these updates appropriately scary names like Gargoyle or Dragon, Sabertooth or Piranha! How many people would try to game the system when G.O.O.G.L.E Piranha is on its way? The question is, who will G.O.O.G.L.E Zebra hoof stomp with their so-called “Merchant Quality Update”?

         WHO IS GOOGLE ZEBRA?WHAT DOES IT WANT?

                                                   

Essentially, agent Zebra is G.O.O.G.L.E’s latest algorithm update who’s mission is to clean up the eCommerce community and rid the world of low quality merchant scum! With online shopping growing exponentially each month, it was only a matter of time before G-Men developed plans to capitalize on our online shopping addictions. I know this is labeled a “Merchant Quality Update” but make no mistake, this is the beginning of Google picking off organic results like witnesses in a Gambino trial, hence protecting their paid media empire and forcing everyone to incorporate SEM into their strategies.

G.O.O.G.L.E is speeding towards a system of unintentional SERP results based on relevant, high quality sites that offer value to its given market, abolishing the very thought of keyword focused rankings. Most of us are huge supporters of this idea since 70% of the web is spammy garbage anyway. We are not, however, as oblivious as Daddy-G thinks. Now I understand that things change in any industry and given that ours is very young, I get that the SERPS are bound to be updated.  However, SEO’s have watched organic listings dwindle so much over the past 2 years that today organic real estate makes up only a whopping 13% of a SERP! So you can understand how a lot of us get an uneasy feeling by this benign “Merchant Quality Update”.

Valuable above the of the fold real estate still features the normal 3 paid ads, but now (not surprisingly), it is joined by a plethora of G.O.O.G.L.E paid shopping ads.

Facebook Marketing – How Your Small Business Can Thrive With Facebook

Can Facebook actually be used to bring in leads, opportunities and sales to your small business?


YES! Myself and my clients do it every day.

You can’t use Facebook for your business the same way you use it for your personal life – you need a clear social strategy in place before you’ll see results. This isn’t hard to do, and can easily be achieved in 10 minute sessions a few times per week. Automate your status updates, then visit your Facebook page to prod discussions and answer questions.

Here are some of the most common questions my clients ask me about Facebook marketing:

Do I have to use Facebook’s paid advertising?

NO! Everything I teach in my Zero to Facebook online workshop is completely FREE – you can use Facebook to bring in leads without ever touching their paid advertising features.

What are a few Facebook marketing tips?

Engage with your audience. You’d be surprised a small amount of time has on the number of fans on your Facebook page. Taking a few minutes a day to interact with the people on your page will make you see huge results from Facebook. Another tip is to use photos on your Facebook page. The new design displays photos prominently. Most businesses don’t feature photos. Upload a few today!








What’s a basic Facebook marketing plan?

Here’s my 3 step overview to Facebook:

First, send people to your Facebook page. No one will like your page unless they know you have Next, use automated social media tools to schedule content and status updates.The third step is to jump in and engage. Make your page a fun and lively experience by encouraging fans to interact on your page.

Does Facebook offer business accounts? Can I create a business profile on Facebook?

You’ll need a personal profile in order to create a page for your business. “Pages” are the Facebook equivalent of Facebook business accounts.


What’s the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook profile?

 Facebook profiles are for personal use and you are only allowed one profile per user. You can always recognize a profile page if you see the “friend” option. Only personal
profiles have friends. Facebook pages on the other hand were designed to be used for businesses and you can create as many pages as you like. You’ll know your on a Facebook page if you see a









How can I see who is looking at my Facebook page?

Facebook offers in-depth user data about your page, called Insights. You can access this by going to “edit page” in the top right corner, then clicking on “Insights” on the menu on the left-hand side. Insights includes information on the gender, age and location of who is looking at your page, as well as which types of status updates are the most popular.

What’s unique about Facebook when compared to other marketing?

Unlike traditional marketing, where you can only hope that a small percentage of people you are trying to reach will pay attention to your message, on Facebook, they’re already paying attention.You’re not popping up a billboard on the highway in the hope that you will capture someone’s interest as they drive by. Everyone who Likes your page is raising their hand and expressing their interest in learning more about your business. Your customers are already on Facebook, so why not plant your business where they already are?

How many friends can I have on Facebook?

Facebook allows you to have no more than 5,000 friends. Once you reach 5,000 you’ll simply be unable to accept new friend request. However, Facebook pages allow an unlimited number of “likes”. This is one of the many reasons you want to use a page and not a personal profile to promote your small business on Facebook.










How do I get a custom URL on Facebook?

Custom URLs also known as “vanity URLs” are made available once 25 people like your Facebook page. This allows you to create an easy to remember facebook URL such as Facebook.com/GetTheDash instead of the long numerical URLs that are initially assigned to pages. You can find this option by clicking on “Edit Page” in the top right corner of your Facebook page, then choose your username in the “Basic Information” section.

How can I create a custom landing page for my Facebook page?

My favorite free app for creating custom landing pages is called Static HTML Plus and you can find it at bit.ly/zeropage. This is a great app because it’s completely free, has no ads or branding from the app, and even allows you to create distinct content for fans and non-fans. That means you can create one of those cool “click like to get our exclusive content” landing pages for free. You can insert any HTML into your custom landing tab including videos, images, or opt-in forms.

How do I post on Facebook as my company’s page instead of my personal profile?

Facebook allows you to switch between your personal profile and your page. To make the switch, go to Account in the top right-hand corner and click on Use Facebook as Page. In the pop up window, click Switch to (your page’s name). That’s it! You’re now using Facebook as your page and can leave comments on your own or other pages.

Future Trends:Online Marketing & Technology Predictions

What does 2013 hold in store for online marketing? The acceleration of innovation in online technologies and the ways we can discover, consume and engage with information can be a challenge to keep up with. But as digital marketers that are more than shiny object opportunists, seeing future trends is exactly what we need to do in order to anticipate our place in the digital universe.


It’s not just about where you can sell stuff to people right now, but next month, next year, 5, 10 or more out.  That’s why I think the concept of discover, consume and engage is so important, because it transcends ideas like “social network” or “search engine” and focuses more on consumers and technologies. Will we be using a search engine like Google in 5 years? Will we be using desktop computers in 5 years? What will future social networks look like? Answers to those questions are answers to the future of marketing and customer engagement.


Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and plenty of other large companies are innovating at amazing speed to gain control of our attention. Some are doing it through devices , some through content, others through infrastructure. A handful of companies have had a huge impact on what we do online and at the same time, new companies, start-ups and individuals are creating amazing solutions. What are you doing to see the bigger picture and

what it means for your business?


Rather than jumping sequentially from one thing to the next, marketers should consider developing adaptive models that allow for rapid assimilation of new technologies and trends. As it stands, companies may adopt early with some risk, move with the crowd giving up first mover advantage or wait and see until it’s too painful not to change. The ramp up time to evaluate and adopt new technologies and trends is expensive. As an example, over $100 billion has already been invested in social business and that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the next 5 years as companies implement enterprise collaboration platforms and social technologies.


In order to survive and thrive, I think more companies are going to evolve their ability to adapt more quickly, tune in to trends and data more efficiently and at the same time have the infrastructure and partnerships that will allow them to evolve and innovate at greater speed.


From a practical level, the new internet no longer exists on your computer as consumers and content shifts to tablet devices and smartphones. The search experience has not only become distinctly different for consumers through user innovations like Siri, interface and back-end changes  but also for marketers trying to play Google’s game in achieving top search visibility.