To Publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs use rel=canonical

In a video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt said publishers who publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs may use the rel=canonical tag to help consolidate the PageRank of the stories and avoid any issues with Google.

Matt Cutts did say that duplicate content won’t hurt you unless you are doing it for spam-related reasons. Cutts also did say that 25% of the web is duplicative, so you really don’t have to worry about it. But I guess in this case, to help with rankings, you may, as a publisher, want to use the rel=canonical tag to help Google know which is your primary page.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-publishers-with-duplicate-content-use-the-canonical-tag-181331 

Rap Genius Back Is back After 10 Day Penalty

Lyrics site Rap Genius says that is is no longer penalized within Google after taking action to correct “unnatural links” that it helped create. The site was hit with a penalty for 10 days, which meant people seeking it by name couldn’t find it. That’s been fixed, though it’s unclear how much traffic the site will regain for generic lyrics searches.

Removing Links To Remove A Penalty

The company explained in a blog post today that it received a manual action notice from Google on Christmas Day accusing it of unnatural linking, which resulted in a penalty. The Rap Genius post detailed some of the linking practices the company has done and how it tried to correct what it thought Google objected to, which included asking people to remove links as well as disavowing links. The post concluded with an apology:

To Google and our fans: we’re sorry for being such morons. We regret our foray into irrelevant unnatural linking. We’re focused on building the best site in the world for understanding lyrics, poetry, and prose and watching it naturally rise to the top of the search results.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125  

App store Optimization (ASO)

App store optimization (ASO) is the process of improving the visibility of a mobile app (such as an iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows Phone app) in an app store (such asiTunes or Google Play for Android). App store optimization is closely related to search engine optimization. Specifically, app store optimization includes the process of ranking highly in an app store's search results and top charts rankings. ASO marketers agree that ranking higher in search results and top charts rankings will drive more downloads for an app.(As written in wikepedia).

ASO will help us to move into a new era of Search. As Google in on spree of making updates, we as a seo finding difficult to get high rankings in SERPs, i think adding ASO to the expertise will help every SEO at this phase.

Will try to write more on this topic, as i will explore.

A to Z Guide for Holiday Ecommerce SEO

The holiday season is upon us, which means that your ecommerce site needs to be prepared to "deck the halls" of search engines with their products.
My early gift to you is an (almost) A to Z guide of SEO tips and tricks designed to optimize ecommerce sites to prevent them from landing on the search engines' naughty lists.

Auto fill forms where possible (when you have the information), and provide drop downs and selection fields to make it as easy as possible to fill out.

Build text for users into every page, where it makes sense, to support a well-defined content strategy.

Create custom dashboards in Google Analytics for ecommerce-specific metrics' reporting.

Don't have unique pages for small product variations. Instead, list small variations within main the product page.

Ensure titles and meta data are unique, descriptive, and to improve both user understanding and search results' page engagement.

Focus on URL structures that are readable and logical for both users and search engines.

Give reviews visibility and prominence on the site.

Have product sun setting and out of stock strategies in place to reduce 'page not found' errors.

Integrate social sharing options (not just social profile icons) into your site, especially on products, categories, buying guides, and content pages that host shareable content.

Kill thin pages that have little value to users and, instead, redirect to relevant pages that do provide value.

Link to popular products from your home page. Rotate bestsellers and random products in homepage linking modules too.

Markup on-page entities and product attributes using schema.org, or other ontology guidance.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319418/Holiday-Ecommerce-SEO-The-Almost-A-to-Z-Guide 

A Little Usage of Duplicate Content Won't Hurt Rankings

Duplicate content is always a concern for webmasters. Whether it's a website stealing content from another site, or perhaps a website that hasn't taken an active role in ensuring they get great unique quality content on their site, being duplicated out of the Google index is a problem.
In the latest webmaster help video from Google's Matt Cutts, he addresses how Google handles duplicate content, and when it can negatively impact your search rankings.
Cutts started by explaining what duplicate content is and why duplicate content isn't always a problem, especially when it comes to quoting parts of other web pages.

It's important to realize that if you look at content on the web, something like 25 or 30 percent of all of the web's content is duplicate content. … People will quote a paragraph of a blog and then link to the blog, that sort of thing. So it's not the case that every single time there's duplicate content it's spam, and if we made that assumption the changes that happened as a result would end up probably hurting our search quality rather than helping our search quality.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319706/Googles-Matt-Cutts-A-Little-Duplicate-Content-Wont-Hurt-Your-Rankings  

How to build your Internal Content Marketing Strategy?

You know that story about the cobbler's children not having shoes and walking barefoot uphill in the snow? It's a heartbreaker and it's one we can all relate to. We all know what it feels like to kill ourselves for someone else, only to let our own needs go unmet.
Whether you work in an agency setting writing content for others all day while your own blog sits dry, or you're in-house writing content for every department but yours, it can be difficult to keep your own content marketing goals on track when competing with other business goals. But having a strategy helps.
Your content strategy will get your car back on the road and power you toward where you need to go. But only if you build it.

Determine Your Goals

Align the content you're creating with the goals of your business, whether the goals are to:

• Generate leads.
• Shorten the sales cycle.
• Retain customers.
• Build your brand.
• Show off your voice.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319710/8-Tips-for-Building-Your-Internal-Content-Marketing-Strategy  

Matt Cutt on Search Spammers

In episode number 227 of This Week in Google on the TWiT network, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts answered some questions from the hosts Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis. In one question, Matt explained that Google aims to “break the spirits” of spammers in order to encourage them to change their course of action.
The question was posed to Matt from Jeff Jarvis, a well-known journalist and professor, asking him what he learned about the psychology behind spam and spammers. Matt responded that to reduce spam, it is not just about denying the primary goal of earning money but frustrating them to a point, where you break their will and desire to spam.
I transcribed the exact words and how Matt said it:

If you want to stop spam, the most straight forward way to do it is to deny people money because they care about the money and that should be their end goal. But if you really want to stop spam, it is a little bit mean, but what you want to do, is sort of break their spirits. There are lots of Google algorithms specifically designed to frustrate spammers. Some of the things we do is give people a hint their site will drop and then a week or two later, their site actually does drop. So they get a little bit more frustrated. So hopefully, and we’ve seen this happen, people step away from the dark side and say, you know what, that was so much pain and anguish and frustration, let’s just stay on the high road from now on.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-search-spammers-we-want-to-break-their-spirits-180215  

A Google initiative for women empowerment in India

  To empower women even further, Google India has launched an initiative called 'Helping women get online' that will encourage women in the country to use the online medium more effectively.

At present, only one third of users who use the Internet are women.Google realises that lack of easy access to Internet, lack of knowledge on how to use the Internet and its relevance in their daily lives are some of the biggest barriers for women to get online.


The initiative aims to help 50 million additional women get online by end of 2014 by undertaking a variety of initiatives across India.

Source url : http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-google-looks-to-empower-women-in-india-launches-help-get-women-online-initiative-1922112 

Google 11/11 T&S update

Using our Services

You must follow any policies made available to you within the Services.
Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide. You may use our Services only as permitted by law, including applicable export and re-export control laws and regulations. We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.
Using our Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in our Services or the content you access. You may not use content from our Services unless you obtain permission from its owner or are otherwise permitted by law. These terms do not grant you the right to use any branding or logos used in our Services. Don’t remove, obscure, or alter any legal notices displayed in or along with our Services.

Source url : http://www.google.com/policies/terms/update/  

Now it's Google AdWords Ad Rank Algorithm Update

In a quiet but not entirely unexpected move, Google has announced they are updating and improving the Google AdWords Ad Rank algorithm to take into account some of the new features they have rolled out this year, primarily their new ad extensions.

Ad extensions and formats can now affect the positioning of your ads on the Google search results page. Google uses the example: If two otherwise identical ads were to appear with the same bid and quality score, the ad with the ad extensions most likely to perform would appear in the higher ad position.


Ad Rank will also play a factor in whether or not extensions appear for your ads; Google notes that a higher Quality Score or bid (or a combination thereof) increases the likelihood of extensions appearing.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2302663/Google-Rolls-Out-AdWords-Ad-Rank-Algorithm-Update