So, is SEO dead? By no means. It is important to note that one of Google’s present parameters in deciding whether a website has done some bad SEO (in the form of getting bad backlinks) is to look at the recency, quantity and quality of the backlinks that are pointing to a website.

For many inexperienced SEO companies, they have fallen into the trap of watching the SERPs of their keywords on a daily basis. And when the SERPs drop over a week or two, they start building fresh links to it. This is in fact a trap, a honey pot for Google. For in a desperate attempt to regain the lost SERPs, SEOs may be tempted to add a phalanx of links, hoping to give their websites a boost. They can’t be more wrong. For Google will take this opportunity to identify such activities and push down the ranks of your websites further.

So, what works, and what doesn’t?

What Works:

1. Have good content. The old adage, “content is king” is still valid and it is ever more important since Panda 3.3. If you are challenged when it comes to writing, hire someone on the Internet to write for you. Post these articles on your website.
2. Google has gone social. And social networking has become a very important aspect of SEO. If you have just posted a new article, tweet about it, and post it on your facebook page. Get your friends and associates to talk about your article by retweeting your tweets or to comment about it in their facebook pages.
3. Place the G+, Like and Tweet buttons on the page of your article and your site. When visitors to your site like what they read and click on these buttons, they become an instant vote on your site. The more clicks = more authority and you can see a healthy rise in the SERP of your site over time.
4. Exercise moderation. When it comes to link building, it is important to exercise caution, patience and moderation. If you are in a hurry to drive up your ranking, you will are a prime candidate for the Google slap or even deindexing. You wouldn’t want that.
5. Blogs still work, and not necessarily from high PR ones. Look, if you have all your backlinks from high PR blog sites, wouldn’t Google know you’re manipulating? Natural link building would come from both high and low PRs, or even sites with no PRs. For that matter, having a good mix of dofollow and nofollow links would certainly look more natural than purely dofollow links.
6. Article marketing works too. Even spun content. BUT, make sure your spun content is fresh and original and the resulting article is readable, extremely readable. Be selective about where you post your articles to and not to just any article marketing site.
7. Get in content links from aged articles. For that, you will have to work with the webmaster’s of these sites and really offer them a big carrot to link to your site. And remember, Google officially frowns on that. So, do be careful about this.
8. Social bookmarking certain still works. But go slow.
9. Sitemap submission. Have you updated your sitemap with Google webmaster’s tool recently? If you haven’t, now is the time to do so.

These don’t work, and even if they do, not very well:

1. Setting up spammy forum profile pages with your keywords as anchor texts in the signature.
2. Posting spammy content in forums with the above profiles.
3. Getting links from so-called high PR private blog networks. They are a sure magnet for your site to be slapped by Google’s panda.

In conclusion, getting backlinks is still crucial, but the emphasis is getting relevant backlinks and that means you have to work harder to do that. The ‘easiest’ way to do that is to create authoritative content that people naturally want to link to you. You will have to promote your website the good old fashion way. That is, through word of mouth marketing. And that means you have to get people talking about it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. All the best!

Has the Panda update been successful? Lets not look at it as the silver bullet to solving the problem of returning low quality content. To some extent, “how to” searches generally return more relevant results since “Panda” but that hasn’t rooted out all the problem. This is to be expected as Google relies mostly on its algorithm in generating what it thinks to be relevant to the searched term. On the other hand, as long as the process of indexing web pages is automated, it would be difficult to monitor the avalanche of spammy content that is added to the Internet daily.

The “Panda” update also has some drawbacks. Primarily, even good quality sites have been dragged along and relegated to lower rankings in Google. Naturally, this does bring about some untold worries for SEO companies whose clients depend on Google for traffic to their website.

The question is, what can be done to avoid being given a black eye by “Panda”? The short answer is: quality content.

Although it sounds cliché, but quality content is still valued by Google. After all, a search engine is useless unless it can return relevant content to its users. So, whether it is the content on your website or the content of the websites that link to yours, ensure that the content is of good value. Avoid SEO companies that offer massive amount of backlinks. It is not the quantity of the links but the quality of the contextual links that matter most. Although Google has categorically stated that pagerank is not that important, one cannot disagree that links that come from high PR websites will result in better ranking for your website.

As responsible SEO consultants ourselves, we have completed several projects on behalf of our clients after the “Panda” updates have kicked in. Not only did the sites survive the update, the ranking for very competitive keywords actually jumped to the first page of Google. We attributed quality content as the main contributor to such results.

Therefore, if you want to rank well in Google, ensure that you have meaningful content on your website in the first place.

“Sometimes you may want to limit your search results to a specific reading level. For instance, a junior high school teacher looking for content for her students or a second-language learner might want web pages written at a basic reading level. A scientist searching for the latest findings from the experts may want to limit results to those at advanced reading levels.”

Some chap did a compilation of 10 American news sites and headlined the article “Here Are The 10 ‘Dumbest’ U.S. News Websites According To Google”. They include CNN, The Washington Post, LA Times, etc. They all averaged a reading level of less than 2%.

Based on the above criteria, how does “www.google.com” stack up?

Duh….

There is a long-standing argument from 2 schools of thought on the matter of backlinks. One school of thought says, “all backlinks are still links, so it doesn’t matter if the link comes from a high PR site or not.” Another school of thought says, “Not all backlinks are the same. It does matter where your backlinks come from “.

There are merits in both arguments. Take for instance, a brand new website. Without any backlinks, it is nearly impossible to rank for any keywords, let alone the competitive ones. On the other hand, an established site trying to outrank the competition is going to need a lot more than just any backlinks to rank higher.

It is important to note one established fact: that links from “nofollow” tags (what “nofollow” and “dofollow” tags are will be discussed in the future) DO NOT improve your ranking in Google. So, does that mean that you should not get links from sites with “nofollow” tags turned on? Nope. For although these links do not improve your search ranking, they bring traffic to your site.  Many people make the mistake of being so focused on improving their website ranking in Google that they forget that fundamental to getting more business (precisely why people do SEOs in the first place) is getting traffic.

We are not saying that ranking high in the search engine is not important. But using backlinking as the only strategy in getting traffic completely misses the point of website promotion.

On the other hand, if you manage to get links from high PR websites that allow the “dofollow” tags, then of course these links will help improve your ranking in the search engines. Note, however, that if the page that allows the “dofollow” tags is linking to a million other websites, then benefits being passed to your website’s ranking is negligible.

In conclusion, let us give a spin on an old line by George Orwell:  “All backlinks are important, but some backlinks are more important than others”.

This just about sums up whether a backlink is of any worth to your website.

For example, if you type “singapore web hosting”, and point your cursor over the magnifying glass shown in the search results, you will see the following:

Google Instant Preview

What is the impact of this feature on SEO? Well, it simply means you will have to ensure that your website design is up to scratch. This feature is particularly helpful if someone is in a hurry to look for something specific. By simply moving his cursor over the links displayed, he will have a good idea on the quality of the website (and by inference, the quality of service he can expect from that website). A poorly designed website is simply not going to cut it, and the user in all probability will gloss over it and move on to something more engaging.

This also raises another interesting point. For a long time, SEO professionals have argued that being listed on the pole positions (the first 3 links in a search results page) is crucial to getting the most traffic. However, with Google Instant Previews, this might be less important now. Granted, being listed on the top and on the first page is still essential, especially when the search term is a very competitive one. However, being listed on the top does not guarantee any clickthroughs as a user will probably give it is a miss if the preview is anything less than interesting. On the otherhand, websites listed lower down on the first page of Google might experience greater traffic if they have well-designed websites.

So, give a thought about the quality of your website before launching on an extensive SEO optimization campaign. If you require assistance in getting the best results for your SEO campaigns, please feel free to contact us anytime.

But it is difficult as there are simply too many things to consider. Here, we will discuss a few ways in which you can suss out the potential candidate to work for and with you.

Firstly, a good SEO consultant will seek to understand the market segment your website is addressing. They should be asking you who your target audience is, where are your customers located, where is your website present hosted. Also, they should be able to advice you if your website should be given fresh content or a complete makeover. Poorly coded web pages can hinder the proper indexing in search engines such as Google. Consequently, they should be able to tel you if you need to change the geographic location of your hosting services (this is undoubtedly a measure of last resort) or they can help you set up a Google Webmaster Tool account to notify the actual target market (country) that you want to target your website for.

Then, you could point out the keywords that you want your website to list well or you may direct your SEO consultant to do a search term analysis for your business site. Based on the content of your website or from the interview they have conducted with you, a good SEO company will next send to you a list of keywords that may be relevant to your website. At times, SEO companies will much more. They might even deliver to you a number of other search terms that may be relevant to your website but for which presently your website is not being ranked for.

Next, after deciding on the keyword/search terms you want to target for, you should do your due diligence to determine whether the SEO company is good for the money. A few things that you should ask them: Do they have any money-back guarantee if they fail to deliver on time? How long will they need to optimize your website? What is their approach to SEO? Are they able to tell you their methods? Can they do a press release or a free publicity for your website? It is noted that a good SEO company not only is able to have a good link building strategy, but they should really have a plan to help improve the ranking of your website in search engines. Besides, if they can do a good PR for you, the news item might be picked up by Google news and that can potential drive thousands of visitors to your website.

Looking out for the most qualified SEO professional to work with is critical to your success. If they are as competent as they claimed to be, they should surely be able to help you list your corporate website high up in the search engine results page, bringing in a lots and lots of click throughs and consequently, business to you. If the SEO company is unethical or what they call a black-hatter (using tactics to fool the search engines into listing you quicking), then you could lose out in the future as your website might be sandboxed, or worse, blacklisted by the search engines. That will be disastrous.

If you want to find out more information about ethical SEO methods and how we can help you in your search engine optimization efforts, call SEOCOLOGY anytime. We will be glad to help. You can either call: +(65)-62251468 or email us at sales@signetique.com.