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Webmastering

Google to change the game in fighting with spam

Although over the last years Google rolled out thousands of major algorithm changes that caused up and downs, however when it comes to fighting against search engine spam things have not changed too much, same with content farms, auto-generated websites and so on.

Recently, Google’s Matt Cutts wrote a blog post related content farms and how Google will be fighting with those in the following months. Basically, they have launched a redesigned “document-level classifier” that it seems to be a major improvement when it comes to fighting with spam websites. To sum it up, Matt announced three major changes that are about to be launched:

– The document-level classifier redesign for on-page spammy content (like keyword stuffing)
– Major improvement for detecting hacked websites (a major source of spam in 2010)
– Sites with low levels of original content and those auto-blogs seem to have come to an end

Therefore, we should be waiting for some major changes in “auto-blogging world” and “links from “high PR .gov .edu links marketplace”, this could mean a great step-up in Google algorithms. Matt Cutts added that Google’s major concerns in 2011 will be however related to auto-generated content websites while they receive many complains from both searchers and other SEO companies/people.

However, one question should be asked: what kind of auto-generated content websites Google will try to tackle? Are they talking only about personal auto-blogs made for money sites or are they including even big websites using auto-generated content like AllTop? Remember the action against Mahalo?

It seems that 2011 will be the year when Google is trying to put more emphasis on original content, on websites that really deserve top places in SERPs and on the other hand those auto-generated content sites seem to have come to and end. We consider this latest Matt Cutts’ blog post more like a warning than a simple announcement, but only time will tell us whether if we were right or wrong.

Webmastering

How to sell products on Twitter

Twitter has become lately not only a social media website where you could share links, build a community and so on but also a great place for helping you in your SEO strategy (Matt Cutts admitted social media links are now part of SERPs algorithms) and furthermore, a website where you could easily sell your products as well (or others’ products, as an affiliate marketer).

Finding clients on Twitter it is not something as difficult as it may sound, when using the proper tools for doing this. Let’s take for example online stores selling their products on Twitter, with great success ; these all work, so why wouldn’t you dive in and search for other distribution channels like Twitter ?

Maybe some of you have heard in the past about this tool, maybe some have never heard about it : TweetDeck – a so called « social media dashboard ». It is easy to install and use, just go to TweetDeck.com, download the app and run it. Before using this tool you should first create a list of buying-phrases that will definitely help you finding new customers. For examples, as Valentine’s Day is almost here, you could run queries like « Valentine’s gifts », « gifts ideas for Valentine’s », « gifts for my love » and so on.

Ok, so we have the list, now search those through TweetDeck and start making offers to potential customers ; one word of advice though, do not overdo it or it might turn against you. The best approach would be to start asking questions like « what kind of gift would you like », « does your girlfriend likes movies » etc. This way you will get to know what gift to propose to your prospect and also start building relationships as well.

This is definitely not a quick get-rich-online scheme but a method of increasing your sales and searching for prospects on various different channels, others that you have been used with by now.

Webmastering

Are linkwheels dead? What is a link pyramid?

We talked in the past about how to properly create a linkwheel structure, how to maintain it and how to best benefit from it. Later on, it seems that Google has started devaluating links coming from linkwheels structures, so instead of still trying and seeing no benefits, what is the next step we can take?

The answer is quite simple: link pyramids. But what is a link pyramid and how can it help us? Basically, link pyramids are structures created from your money website, bumper sites and low-valuable backlinks. As the name says, you will have from 3 to x layers of backlinks, for example:

Top layer – money site
Middle layer – web 2.0 websites like Blogger.com, a hubpage, Squidoo pages etc
Thid layer – articles pointing to your web 2.0 structures
Fourth layer – less to 0 value backlinks pointing to your articles these can be from forum profiles, blog comments, social bookmarking etc

Of course, it depends of how competitive is your keyword and many other factors for knowing the exact number of web 2.0 properties to use or how many articles to submit, but basically this is the main structure that should be used. What happens when the “pyramid arises”? Well, your middle layer “sucks” link juice from your third layer which gets its link juice from the fourth layer, in the end all the benefits heading to your money site, through buffer sites.

Buffer sites are valuable while they can support different types of backlinks automatically created with tools like Xrumer, Scrapebox, SENuke and so on. Imagine pointing all those links to your money site in a week or so, the only word that comes to my mind is banned! Exactly, gaining thousands of backlinks in a week to your money site could only lead to getting banned/de-indexed from the search engines, thus the necessity of using those buffer websites to act like a barrier but in the same time gain all the automatically created link juice and transfer to your money site.

Whether we are talking about linkwheels, link pyramid or any other link building structure, you must keep in mind that a gradually increase in the backlinks number is a must. In the same time try to gain some really valuable backlinks as well, non-anchored backlinks and so on, so that your strategy will not raise any red flags and will not get you kicked from search engines’ index.

IT

Mozilla Firefox, now number 1 browser in Europe

Firefox Internet browser, developed by Mozilla, has become number one Internet browser used in Europe and managed to dethrone for the first time is history Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, according to StatCounter, an audience measurement company. This is the first time Internet Explorer comes on the second place in a such competitive market such as the one of web browsers.

In December, Firefox’s market share reached 38.1% in Europe, compared to 37.5% for Internet Explorer. Another web browser, Google’s Chrome, has also increased its market share to 14.6% from a 5.1% level recorded a year ago.

According to Aodhan Cullen, general manager of StatCounter, this change in market share is due to the fact that Chrome is grabbing more and more from the piece held by Internet Explorer while Firefox maintain its position, thus becoming the most popular browser in Europe. He also added that this could also be the effect of March 2010 agreement between the European competition authorities and Microsoft when they have decided that any Windows user can choose from a list of browsers which one would he like to use it further, when installing the operating system.

Two years ago, Internet Explored was dominating the worldwide market with 67% and while this browser still remains the most popular choice for most users around the globe, Microsoft’s browser market share went down to 50% in September 2010. However Internet Explorer still leads in North America with 48.92% while Firefox has 26.7% market share followed by Chrome with 12.82% and Safari with 10.16%.

Firefox still continues to increase in popularity while it is offering a great and secure browser, highly customizable with plugins and extensions and with a little extra-goodies other browsers do not offer, at least this time.

Webmastering

Quality over quantity or quantity over quality?

This is a debate that seems to never end in the SEO industry, more precisely when it comes to link building. There are two types of link builders with different thoughts:

1. Quality links count more

Quality link are described as those of great value, coming from high PageRank websites, niche-related with less than let’s say 10 outbound links, featuring unique content and so on. These are the high-hanging fruits that are supposed to make a difference and indeed, quality links are most of the times the best ones a website could acquire, even if it lasts lot of time until getting some of those.

2. Quantity of links counts more

These are the usual blog comments, forums links, directories links, guestbook links and so on. The difference between the ones above and these is the fact that these come from high-spammed channels, are located in bad neighborhoods, have maybe thousands of outbound links on page, basically all the opposite to a quality link.

You might say that the answer is simple: quality links count more. But the question that comes is: are quality links easier to be obtained than quantity links? Again, you might say of course, due to the fact that quantity links require much work.
On the other hand, it would not be the first time we see websites ranking quite high in search engine results and when checking their backlinks we notice that only bad links are pointing to their websites, in high numbers. The answers for those sometimes huge numbers are, simple said:

– Scrapebox – a tool for automatic blog comments
– Xrumer – a tool for forum spamming, considered the most powerful blackhat tool ever created
– AutoPligg – a tool for spamming Pligg websites
– Auto-Directory submission tools
– Article Marketing Robot – a tool that submits your articles to thousands of websites thus gaining instant backlink, and so on;

Of course, those are not the single tools that automate link building however they are the most representative ones ever created. Getting back to our initial discussion, it seems that indeed, bad links in quantity can also help in website ranking but only when used with caution and without leaving any footprints. But in the end, one quality link could literally weight as much as 10,000 spam links so the decision on how to approach one of these strategies will only depend to the link builder.