Tag Archives: Google Algorithm

Google’s Algorithm for Blogs is Harder Now

January 10, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I wrote another article about how Google changed its algorithm regarding how blogs place in search results. Please keep in mind that this change happened in September 2013 and it was very pronounced. I do not do SEO for a living. I just noticed because I track my statistics for my notary blog and outsource blog regularly and train myself to notice things. The first relationship is between how good your blogs are and how you place on Google. The trick here is that a good article is not enough. You need to have incoming links and a way to get seen as well.

Blog tags are a wonderful invention, but are they all they are cut out to be? Using blog tags you can link up lots of blogs to each other in all types of ways based on keyword frequency. You choose tags based on whatever keyword you are trying to accentuate. The problem is that an incoming link is only given credit if several conditions are met:

(1) The link needs to come from a page with similar keywords. If you have tagged certain keywords, then we will assume you have the keyword relevancy. That is easy.

(2) The page that you link from needs to be indexed by Google. If a page gets low traffic, Google might not index it, which means you might get zero credit for an incoming link from that page. What I found is that Google will ignore a page which gets less than about 25-35 clicks per month. This problem wouldn’t affect a larger blog, but for small blogs getting less than 40,000 visits per month, your tags will only do you any good if they are for unusual keywords, or for particular entries which for some reason get lots of traffic. Newer posts that have been recently promoted might get a few hundred visits right away, but your older blog entries might get very little traffic even if your newer posts link to them. My outsource blog is tiny and my tags will not get me much play until I grow. A sad fact of life.

(3) If people actually click on a particular link, the value of the link becomes tremendously bigger. Very few people click on tags, but people would be more likely to click on a link in the body of an article, especially if it were dressed up in such a way that they would be encouraged to click on it. I often put suggested reading links at the bottom of articles and they get clicked on a fair amount, especially if they are highly relevant.

The value of a visit from Google
I noticed that despite how much harder it is to get blog traffic, for each additional click to my blog, I get many additional clicks to my site. Roughly 8 site visits per 1 blog visit. What an amazing correlation! I also learned that visits directly from Google give you much more reward in site visits. How does this work? I think that Google tracks how much traffic it gives you and then rewards you by giving your site higher placement as a result. It is a very helpful cycle, but you need skill to manage this relationship.

What is the solution?
Honestly, I am so overworked, that I make this mistake often — I do not put enough links on my posts until after the fact. Since blog entries on my blogs are generally only popular when they are initially promoted, putting the links on after the fact doesn’t help much. The solution is to pre-publish your blog articles and put as many quality outgoing links to other content as possible BEFORE you promote it. Put lots of good tags, and optimize the content so that you can put more tags as well. You can find creative ways to insert more of your essential keywords into the article to gain relevancy for your keywords.

Google is a wonderful tool. Try hard to master the art of blog promotion with Google. Facebook and Twitter have done miracles for me as well and should ideally be used to promote articles with good tags and outgoing links.

Tweets:
(1) #googleanalytics Google’s algorithm for blogs is harder now. It’s harder to get traffic period!

You might also like:

Social Media: The analytics are deceiving
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/27/social-media-the-analytics-are-deceiving/

The Google algorithm has some serious issues
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/04/the-google-algorithm-has-some-serous-issues/

Google has changed its algorithm

January 3, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Google changed its algorithm to promote blogs less

It is so ironic. The minute we published a blog entry a few weeks ago about how Google gives too much promotion to blogs, and not enough promotion to actual websites that offer valuable services — Google changed its algorithm. As of August, 2013, I am seeing a lot less blogs on Google searches. This is good and bad. I like to look for good service providers online. I might be able to actually find them now. But, what about the multiple blogs that I write for and promote?

I am noticing that we are not losing that much ground in our incoming traffic statistics from Google searches. The Google algorithm makes it hard to show up on main keywords for blogs. But, if you have certain phrases, or longer keyword variations including two, three or more words, it is easier to show up well. If a blog entry is promoted in Google+ then you have a much better chance of showing up, and Twitter can make the difference as well. Blogs that get traffic will show up better, and if they get traffic from particular keywords, that helps as well. The Google algorithm is complicated and always changing.

We are sad, because we try so hard to show up on particular keywords, and it is sometimes really hard. Power of Attorney is one of our favorite keywords that we have written multiple blog entries about. Perhaps we will have to write thirty, with a few popular entries in that bunch to show up well on Google. Remember, Google gives more weight also to newer articles, so if you value traffic from a particular keyword, keep writing fresh content!

Tweets:
(1) A year ago, I was saying that Google gives too much promotion to blogs. That ended!

You might also like:

The 2% rule; only 2% of companies are worth hiring
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/21/the-2-rule-only-2-of-companies-are-worth-hiring/

Active vs. dormant followers on Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/27/active-vs-dormant-followers-on-twitter/

The Google algorithm has some serous issues

August 4, 2013 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Of Interest | Tagged , | Leave a comment

I am a long term admirer of Google and most of my traffic comes from them. My observations are only meant to help and inspire, but not to demean or criticize.

When looking for IT companies online, I find that I only come up with blogs and a ton of job offerings. Yes, job offerings are important. However, Google is supposed to be a smart search engine and focus on what the browser wants to find. If I am looking for COMPANIES, that is a very different nature of search than looking for JOB OFFERS. The reason for this is because Google rewards pages that are new, or recently updated, and job offers fit that description, while hard-coded pages of actual companies are more static and get updated every several years at best.

Google has a very sophisticated algorithm that identifies relevancy based on sentence structure, incoming links, outgoing links, and how many what I call “associated” keywords you use. If you are writing about Acupuncture and use words like “neck pain”, or “back pain”, then Google knows that you are writing something that really is related to Acupuncture and you are not just faking it.

But, there needs to be some mechanism in the search process to identify what type of search results to give. Perhaps a filter where you can pick what type of search you want.

PHP Programming Company — search term
Then, Google could offer you a choice.

“Gee, it looks like you are looking for Programming Houses, would you like to see: (1) Jobs offered in PHP (2) Blogs related to PHP Programming (3) Programming Companies or (4) Other information relating to PHP programming.”

This way I could easily target my search in one easy click and actually be able to find results — what a novel concept!

The next hurdle is identifying which software companies are any good. This job I leave to myself, so that I can publish useful search results on 123outsource.net!

You might also like:

Social media: the analytics are deceiving
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/27/social-media-the-analytics-are-deceiving/

Active vs. dormant followers on Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/27/active-vs-dormant-followers-on-twitter/

Understanding “Twitter Minutes” & the Google Algorithm

September 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

What is a Twitter minute? Does it matter?
A Twitter minute is a term I invented while staring at my Google Analytics statistics. I was appalled and saddened when I found out that the thousands I had spent on Twitter PPC had gotten me the highest bounce rate in the Twitterverse as well as the Twittersphere. People only spend a few seconds on my page on average, although we got a lot of sign ups on my Twitter account. The average time spent on my page by organic Twitter followers was over two minutes while the pay-per-click crowd averaged about four seconds. Bizarre.

A Twitter Minute = sixty seconds spent on my blog from a visit from someone that found our link on Twitter

The Google Algorithm
Basically, what counts is that Google algorithm rewards your main site when your blog gets more traffic, particular more traffic from social media. But, if the time spent on your blog from new visitors is only four seconds, what happens? Do you get penalized, or do you get a benefit? The answer is neither. You can spend hours on the internet reading about the Penguin algorithm, the Panda algorithm and lots of other cool names, but those articles will tell you nothing useful about how the algorithms apply to you other than the fact that it is very bad to have poor quality incoming links!

My strategy for getting higher quality clicks
Having photos and pics on my blogs would make a difference. Nice looking pics double Facebook engagement, and would lengthen the amount of time people spend on my blog pages. Another helpful thing to do is to have paragraph headers and bold them. It is easier to read a long article that is cut into bite sized easy to digest pieces.

Twitter minutes as a tool to measure your various campaigns
I have a dozen social media campaigns going on simultaneously, and I’m always comparing them. My main measure used to be how many clicks I got to my blog pages or site pages. This matters. But, after my tragedy on PPC, Twitter minutes is my new measure. Of course if a click comes from Google+, and recently I have been getting many from there, then I can no longer really call it a Twitter minute. It would be a plus minute.

Calculations comparing social media platforms
I calculated how much time I put into Google+, and calculated the rewards. The most effective use of my time was posting my blog entries on their community pages, and I post on many! I get to learn which of my blog entries are interesting to the masses, and also get to see what my bounce rate is. If I spend an hour posting on Google+, I might get about 70 clicks, each of which averages about 35 seconds. If I spruced up those blog articles that did exceptionally well with expensive pics and artfully rewritten text and submitted only those really popular articles on a regular basis, I might get over 100 clicks and over a “Plus Minute” in reading time.

With Twitter, the calculation is different. On Google+, I post mainly to other people’s communities. On Twitter, I have my own communities — six to be exact, and soon to add a few more. The interesting thing with Twitter, is that the efficiency of the time you spend posting is directly proportional to how many relevant and active followers you have in your network. You could spend 90 seconds posting to a group with one million reasonable quality followers and get 10,000+ clicks. Or you could spend the same 90 seconds on a network with one hundred followers and not get a single click. With Twitter, I can calculate how long it will take me to accumulate a critical mass of followers. I can calculate how many Twitter minutes of reading time I will get once I have that mass as well. It is hard to compare a fixed target to a moving target like Twitter.

Summary
When optimizing your social media campaigns, you need to understand the following. You don’t need all of your blog articles to be favorites. They don’t all have to have pics. It is good to do experimental ideas in your blog to see what your audience likes. If they like a particular theme or title, then you can spruce it up after the fact, or completely rewrite it and publish it again! If you are going to promote particular blog articles again and again, you are getting inefficient results on your sweat equity if you don’t have optimized articles. That means beautifully written, great keywords, pics, and very popular titles. The title is 30% of your popularity right there!