Read on and learn about what this update means to us and our clients.

Google has just rolled out Penguin 2.0, a large algorithmic update promising to go “deeper” than the 2012 Penguin release, which put a hurting on websites with number of manipulative links in their profile.

This prospect creates fear for many small businesses who depend on search engine optimization (SEO) for their livelihoods. But there is also a sense of confusion as the line often shifts and the message from Google contradictory.

Sorting out Panda, Penguin, and Manual Actions

Google’s Panda update is a different release than Penguin. Panda is geared toward duplicative, thin, or spun content on websites.

Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts recently stated that Google is actually pulling back on Panda because of too many false positives. This is good for news aggregators and other sites that reuse content appropriately and have been hit hard by the Panda filter.

Penguin is much harder to understand, focusing on backlink patterns, anchor text, and manipulative linking tactics that provide little value to end users. To make matters worse, Google likes to take large manual actions just prior to major algorithm updates. In 2012 we saw theremoval of BuildMyRank from the index just prior to Penguin.

Earlier this year we saw major manual action taken against advertorials. Last week Google announced the removal of thousands of link selling websites and we are hearing of a manual spam penalty against Sprint this week.

The proximity of these manual actions with major algorithmic updates is brilliant PR as it associates them together in our memories, discussions and debates – but they are very different things.

Is SEO Enough?

As small business owners move through the here we go again feelings to actually decide what to do in response to Penguin 2013, sorting out the truth is paramount. Google is clearly beating the familiar drum with the same core messages:

1. Build a great website.
2. Make awesome content with high end-user value.
3. Visitors will magically appear.

But the reality is that visitors don’t magically come, at least on any reasonable scale, without organized promotional activities. Many excellent websites have died a slow death due to lack of promotion. And this is where the contradictions emerge in SEO, which has demonstrated extremely high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Long Live Online Marketing

While discussed many times, webmasters still struggle with shifting their link building activities toreal SEO strategy. They fail to see that SEO in 2013 is now integral to online marketing and no longer a standalone activity.

Whereas SEO used to be about tuning a website for optimal consumption by spiders, today’s SEO is about earning recognition, social spread, and backlinks through excellent content marketing. This means SEO is now ongoing, integrated, and strategic – whereas it used to be one-time, isolated, and technical.

Real SEO

Real SEO is the prescription for those who fear Penguin 2013. Here are practical activities that need to be done every month to achieve real SEO:

• Continually Identify Audience Demand: Your SEO won’t be successful if it isn’t useful. To serve a need, webmasters must understand what the audience is seeking. Keyword research, as always, is critical. While doing keyword research don’t over-emphasize head terms or money keywords. Focusing on long-tail keywords renders more immediate results, increases the breadth of a website (remember Panda), and builds authority that will ultimately help the head term.
• Content marketing: In my opinion, content marketing is the new link building. Earn recognition, social spread, and backlinks by giving away valuable information for free. Excellent content has high audience value and points readers to other resources viacocitation. Video is an excellent form of content marketing that is still under-utilized by small businesses. And newsjacking is an emerging form of content marketing that specifically targets hot news topics for viral spread.
• Work on brand: There is increasing evidence that branded mentions are an important legitimacy signal to Google. Promoting the brand has traditional marketing benefits and also now helps SEO. But be careful not to turn SEO content marketing into an endorsement, as this crosses the line. Find traditional marketing tactics, such as press releases, to drive branding while announcing news-worthy events.
• Syndicate: The “build it and they will come” philosophy doesn’t work on an Internet with more than 500 million active domain names. This is why even excellent content needs to be promoted. Email marketing, social media, community engagement in forums, and guest blog posting are efficient mechanisms for spreading the word about engaging content. Interviews, PPC ads, and local event sponsorship will also get your name and content noticed. Any activity that broadcasts your message, your brand, and builds real community discussion will ultimately support SEO, and should be considered part of the SEO process.

Conclusions

The arrival of Penguin 2013 has many small business owners scared and confused. But SEO remains one of the best online marketing channels.

Real SEO is the path forward for those who wish to make a long-term investment in online marketing. Forward-looking webmasters can prepare their sites for Penguin 2014, 2015, and beyond with well-researched, end-user focused content marketing that provides strong audience value.

Using modern syndication tactics, they can broadcast their message, gain audience mind-share and earn recognition. By spreading valuable content, small business can build their brands and earn bulletproof backlinks

Write a high quality, informative article for your website

The first step is to write extremely high quality content for your website. Before you can naturally syndicate content out on the web, it needs to have an original source. The best source for your content is your own website. Anytime that you are going to invest a significant amount of time into writing high quality content, it needs to be used for your own site. Only in guest posting is writing good content for another website viable. With content syndication, the best original source for the article is on your own blog. You should focus deeply on impressing the user with the content. Try to be as informative and unique as you can be. Try to make the article have something better than what any of your competitors are offering.

Syndicate the content to the top article directories

One of the many things that you can do to get links through content syndication is to syndicate the content to the top article directories. Keep in mind, you can only do this after the content has already been indexed by Google on your own website. Google does not index content immediately, so this means that you have to wait 1 to 2 weeks before you can syndicate the content to these directories. Some websites can be indexed in less than a day, others can take longer. The better quality your site is and the more often it is updated, the more likely it is to get indexed fast.

Wait for webmasters to pick up the articles

After you syndicate to article directories, you can wait for webmasters to pick up the articles. This happens regularly. It’s very common for a webmaster to search on article directories for a good article to put on their website. If they are covering a specific topic and they want to have more text on their site to explain some of the things they are talking about, articles from article directories can be of great assistance. Your articles might just get picked up and put on a really high quality website. This would result in additional backlinks and great results.

Syndicate to document websites, press release sites, web 2.0′s, etc.

There are lots of other websites that you can use this type of tactic with. For instance, you could syndicate content to document websites, press release sites, web 2.0 properties, or any other sources. You also might want to think about syndicating to social media websites like Facebook and Twitter

Perform keyword research

When it comes to investing in pay per click advertising like Google Adwords, keyword research is something that you should do before hand. Researching your keywords ensures that you are targeting the right phrases. You need to target search engine phrases that are low in competition and have very small bit amounts. These are going to be the most ideal search engine phrases for a beginning PPC advertiser, because they are easy to manage and they can provide you with a substantial amount of profit. Longtail keyword phrases can even be effective in PPC advertising, so doing your research or consulting with a professional search engine marketer can be very important.

Perfect your ad copy

The ad copy that you use needs to be keyword relevant and targeted to the phrases that you are marketing your ad for in search engines. Perfecting your ad copy is important and it something that you should do regularly throughout the life of the campaign. You can try improving your keyword usage or you can change the ad copy to target clicks more aggressively.

Start with a low bid and raise from there

Starting with a low bid can be very effective, because you can continuously raise your bid in order to get more clicks and results from the campaign. Starting with a load bid allows you to test out the system and get comfortable with it. As you get familiar with how it works, you will be able to spend more and get more aggressive with your Investments. Before you know it, you could be scaling your PPC investments to great heights.

Analyze your ROI

Analyzing your return on investment is a key factor for pay per click advertising. If your ads are not performing well, even if they are getting lots of clicks, then you need to do something about it. Analyzing your ROI is a good way to know when to pull back on your ads and slow down, or when to get more aggressive. If you make the right move at the right time, you could enhance your campaign dramatically and get far more effective results. You could make money quickly and easily, provided that you know how to work the system. PPC advertising can be wildly profitable, but your campaigns must be optimized if you want to spend less and get more.

Guest posting on niche blogs in your industry

If you target the right blogs, such as blogs with very high page rank, low Alexa rank, and a big audience, you can get great results from guest posting. This is what makes it not only good for improving your search engine rankings, but also great for getting direct traffic to your website and building your brand. Every guest post that you do On a high quality website will provide results for you. You will get clicks back to your site, you’ll get fresh visitors coming, and you’ll have an opportunity to capitalize on this new traffic. Guest posting is one of the highly effective ways to build high page rank links and it’s something that is still used in 2013 and will be viable forever.

Manually blog commenting on niche related blogs

Manual blog comments can still provide good links to your website. They are also great for building guest posting relationships, because you never know who you are going to meet. It’s a social activity that has many positive benefits, including being able to increase your search engine rankings. Manually blog commenting allows you to leave a well thought out, respectable comment on the website. The higher-quality your comment is, the more likely it is to get approved by the webmaster, and the better chance you will have to get the link to stick and become a long-term backlink.

Manually syndicating your content to article directories

If you want to build a syndication network, to be able to syndicate your content to niche related blogs in your industry building valuable back links and increasing your search engine rankings, and you need to start by manually syndicating content on your website to article directories. Once the content has been published on your actual website, you can then syndicated out to article directories in order to get the content in front of the eyes of others. Article directories have large user databases and many people go there in order to get content for their website. They may just decide to use your article, leaving the link back to your website as credit. These links can improve your search engine rankings and be a viable way to get results in 2013.

Search engine optimization

SEO is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website, without spending a substantial amount of money. Search engine optimization is relatively inexpensive and it is very effective. Through SEO, your business can obtain targeted search engine rankings on Google and even Yahoo or Bing. Google has two sections to their search engine listings. In the primary section, these are called the organic results. Paid results are on the outside, located at the top of the page and the right hand sidebar. This is called PPC and we cover this below. To rank in the organic section through SEO, it does not cost money to advertise. However, your website has to rank your naturally. Getting your website to rank naturally can be very difficult and that is why SEO companies provide the services that you need to accomplish this.

Pay per click marketing

Like mentioned above, there is a section on Google’s search results located at the top and right hand sidebar. This section is their paid advertising section. In order to get your website ranked in this section, you have to pay money. This is accomplished through the Google Adwords pay per click marketing program. Essentially, we create an advertisement for your business and depending on how competitive the keywords are in your industry, you will have to pay a set price for every click that your advertisement receives. We can help you create a profitable ad that delivers results for your business and we set up the entire campaign for you. It’s typically more expensive than SEO, but it provides immediate results and you can calculate your ROI within just days.

Social media marketing

Advertising on social media marketing can be very effective for building your brand. While it doesn’t always provide direct traffic and sales, it can be successful for some industries. Reaching out to your target audience and having a presence on social media websites is very important, regardless of the type of business that you own. Your customers use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and websites like Pinterest, so you should too. Getting your name in front of them allows you to brand yourself and get recognized as an industry leader.

Provide value through information

The best way to write a quality blog post is to provide as much value as possible. You can do this by making your blog posts informational. Do as much research as you can on the topic at hand and find information that would be interesting and engaging to your audience. The more that you can include in your blog post, the more your audience will appreciate your efforts.

Format the article professionally

Proper formatting is essential. If you do not properly format the article, your readers are going to lose interest quickly. One of the ways that you need to format the article is through subheadings. Above every paragraph, you should have a short subheading like you see in this article. This allows your readers to quickly skim over the content and see whether or not it is worthy of reading. They will be able to judge within just a couple of seconds, whether or not they want to continue on. Additionally, bolded subheadings allow them to see the essential content, without having to read the entire article.

Use engaging titles

Drawing in your audience can usually be accomplished through writing an engaging title. The more time and effort that you put into writing a quality title, the better your results will be. Titles need to have clear focus and they need to show your audience why the article is worthy of reading.

Never forget the SEO

While paying for search engine optimization services is important for your homepage and the services or product pages of your website, it’s also important for your blog posts. We can provide top-quality SEO for every blog post on your website. What we will do, is we will research long tail keywords that you can use to rank your blog posts. We will then optimize the blog posts and include those targeted phrases throughout the content, categories, descriptions, titles, and tax. This allows you to effectively rank on search engines, so that you can get more traffic to your website. Driving traffic to your blog posts is an effective way to grow your business, long tail keyword phrases are typically easier to rank for then keywords that you might target with your homepage or product or service pages.

The Google Penguin update is calling for better quality, longer-lasting links

Since the Google Penguin update is stressing the importance of high quality links, more webmasters are starting to recognize the potential of guest posting. Guest posting is one of the only viable ways to build permanent, one-way back-links  If you are not familiar with the process, it’s actually quite simple. The goal is to write a quality article that would be worthy of a blog. You then find a niche related blog in your industry and you request to write a guest post for their website. If they approve your request, you can have your guest post published on their website and you can leave a back-link to your own website. This back-link is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the guest post. By guest posting regularly, you can build dozens of high quality back-links  which can have a substantial impact on your search engine rankings.

Guest posting offers more than just increases in ranking

When you guest post, you are going to get more out of your efforts than just an increase in ranking. In fact, guest posting has proven to provide direct traffic. If you target popular blogs in your industry that have relevant traffic, there is potential to get direct traffic back to your website. Readers of the blog post will potentially click your link and this can result in immediate traffic, which you can convert to sales once they arrive at your webpage. Guest posting offers more potential than many other types of link building. There are very few link building methods that can provide direct traffic and improve your search engine rankings at the same time.

As an SEO company, we have been using guest posting for years. In fact, guest posting was one of the fundamental link building methods that we used, long before it became popularized after the Google Penguin update. By getting guest posts on niche related websites for our clients, we are able to build long-term back-links that help our clients obtain very promising results in the search engines. These are the links that we used to rank our clients quickly and help them maintain those rankings for many years. It’s an effective strategy and it’s one that has been particularly useful for our business. If you are interested in receiving guest post for your website, be sure to contact us and ask about how we include them in our search engine optimization campaigns.

1. Build relationships through interaction

Never be afraid to get involved on a social media website. If you are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even Pinterest, it’s time to get involved with your audience and start building relationships. Interaction is key to being successful on a social media website. Through relationship building, you can establish trust and authority in your industry. Your customers will also be able to connect with you on a personal level, since they will see the dedication that you have your business.

2. Participate and respond to comments

One of the ways that you can interact with your target audience is by participating and responding to their comments. If you notice that they mention your business or they talk about a subject related to your company, don’t be afraid to chime in and speak your mind. Getting out there and talking with your followers is important if you want to brand yourself and be successful.

3. Offer helpful resources

One of the best ways to get noticed on social media websites is to offer something helpful. This can be a discount, coupon, information, or an announcement. If you can provide something that your readers want to hear and gain access to, your social media presence can accelerate exponentially. Try to think of things that your business can launch on social media websites that will really gain traction and get recognized.

4. Update your profile regularly

Status updates allow you to update your profile and your followers will see these updates. If you can do this regularly, you will effectively get your message in front of more eyes in a quicker time frame. Update your status with the links to your blog posts, company announcements, and industry information.

5. Make your social media profile inviting

One of the biggest mistakes that a lot of companies make is they have a very dull and uninviting social media page. It may be that they just haven’t beefed up the page an often provided enough content in detail about their company. This is something that you can fix easily, be sure to complete your profile and make it look inviting for your audience.

6. Be honest and truthful

When you are releasing status updates and building relationships on social media networks, always be honest and truthful with the information that you are posting. You don’t want to mislead your followers are provide false information, this could come back to haunt you at a later date. You never know who’s listening, it’s important to speak your mind, but always provide relevant and honest information to your followers.

Although quality content is vital, it is equally as important to create unique content. Regardless of whether you have the same products and services is your competition, if you write an article that is the same as theirs, and will be considered noncompetitive. To eliminate this issue, instead, consider your target audience. This will give you the opportunity to highlight the products and services that your audience wants to know about, and provide you with that uniqueness that you need. This is extremely important, because it will highlight your website’s personality, which will draw more and more people to your brand, products and services. Although price is important, when it comes to SEO, it is even more important to be distinct and warm to your audience. Another aspect of SEO that is becoming increasingly important is to interact with them via social media outlets. There are many different social networking sites available, including the most popular, Twitter and Facebook.

These two social media websites paved the way in influencing consumer decisions; it has also been a huge influence in creating viable back links for your website. It also takes advantage of the most tried and true marketing ploy known to man, word-of-mouth. Now 2013, Google + and Pinterest have come forward, and are increasing in popularity by both individuals and business owners alike. By clicking on the “+1″ or “Pin It!” tab on any website, will make it much more noticeable among a much larger circle of people, enhancing visibility and recognition. Because social media is becoming increasingly more important, it makes SEO more important to use video, graphics and imagery that will trigger conversation in posts. All of this type of visual media needs to have text options, including descriptions, accessibility, transcriptions and more. All of these combine to drive traffic to your website, which will help you to boost your search engine ranking and help you gain authority on the World Wide Web. With so many options available for search engine optimization, it is important to the health and well-being of your business to take advantage of all the latest trends, and keep on top of those to come.

Micro-conversions are also on the horizon as the next great thing. It is important to note that these are not your primary pages. These are downloads of brochures, specific web pages, location checks, registering for newsletters, reading blog comments and more. These can add an exceptional amount of value to your business, because most people will not take action with one click. By evaluating your website and your PPC ads, you can discover the value of each click, including micro-conversions and other actions that you can take to encourage more engagement with your customers. You can also enhance your search engine ranking by taking advantage of video ad platforms. Whether YouTube or another video website, this is an exciting and valuable advertising portal. You don’t have to worry about making a viral video, all you need to do is consider your target audience, and create an innovative and relive video, including tips on how to use your products, technical support and much more, which can make them relevant and useful to your customers.

Moreover, although it may not be for everyone, you may be able to take advantage of dynamic generated ads. These give you the opportunity to check out creative and innovative ideas and market them to specific websites or users. Although this is very limited, if you are a display advertiser, this is extremely vital. This will give you the option of using Google’s Display Ad Builder and Merchant Center, and use their templates as well as products from their merchant feed. These will match up all relevant searches via the Internet directly to your website, provided you have a very specific campaign or structure of your keywords. It is also important to have a number of template ads that work cross product, as well as landing pages that match. Dynamic display ads are the next wave, so it is important to make sure that you keep up to date on this technology, take advantage of it and ensure your competitiveness in an ever-changing marketplace. Finally, although shopping has changed from traditional retail to more online, searching still plays a vital role. For this reason, you want to make sure that your PPC campaigns implement coupons, local searches, reviews and more and make sure that you can easily be found where your customers are looking for you.