Whether you are a small business website owner or SEO Professional, you’re always on the lookout for SEO tools to ease the responsibilities of managing your search engine rankings. With the search engines on a warpath to increase the quality of their search results, there are endless changes to their search algorithms that keep you on your feet. This is where browser extensions can be of assistance. These are simply extra features you can add to your Internet browser to make life easier. While they are by no means as comprehensive as SEO software on the market, they help you more efficiently manage important tasks. Choosing between the many extensions can be overwhelming, so we’ve done the hard yards for you. Today, we’ll look at the best SEO browser extension available in the Chrome store.

SEO For Chrome

This extension was better known as Chrome SEO until Google requested they change their name. This is currently the most popular SEO Chrome extension for SEO Professionals and is all about providing you with the statistics you need to help guide your search strategy. This quick and easy extension notifies you of your Google PageRank increases and decreases, the number of backlinks to your site, your social media shares improvements, and a whole lot more.

SEO Site Tools

Another handy SEO analytics browser extension, SEO Site Tools, gathers statistics about your website from a whole range of sources. The best part is, it filters this information into 6 key sections:

1)     External page data

2)     Page elements

3)     Social media

4)     Page terms and tools

5)     Domain information

6)     Suggestions for your site

SEO SERP Workbench

The flood of updates to search engines algorithms fluctuating the search engine ranking page (SERP) and positions of webpages (I’m looking at you Google) means SEO SERP workbench should be a staple browser extension for all webmasters. This SEO tool lets you quickly check the position of targeted keywords for your website and your competitors websites. While this is a simple extension, being able to constantly and easily monitor targeted keywords can be a godsend for webmasters relying on Google to bring in traffic to their website.

SEO Quake

Unlike the previous two SEO tools, the SEO Quake browser extension gathers intelligence on Google, Yahoo and Bing, as opposed to just Google. This is one of the more comprehensive tools, quickly sorting through and revealing your PageRank, Alex arak, nofollow links, keyword density analysis, and web archive age.  Of course, being a comprehensive tool means more effort on your part.

SiteTrail

This tool lets you monitor any website of your choosing including the estimates value and revenue. I find the most handy statistic is the estimated page view of a website it provides you. Unlike most browser extensions that have a permanent home on your browser bar, you simply need to go to the website you want to see the statistics of, right click anywhere on the website, and then click “SiteTrail” to generate the statistics.

Check My Links

This offers you a quick way to check the health of on site website links, from checking webpages for broken links or errors to identifying where the link is and what error message it gives you. This on site link checker is not only a great way check for broken links on your website, you can identify broken links on other websites and offer for them to link to you instead (only if you are a appropriate replacement of course).

Sorezki Plus

This little gem upgrades Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo search engine and Google Analytics by offering additional social activity statistics, on-page results, social media information and PageRank and search engine ranking, as well as  Yahoo, Bing and Google search engines with geo-location search tools, advanced metrics, anchor/ PageRank scanners and so on.

As a final note, as handy as browser extensions are, you do not have to install all these browser extensions.  These take up space on your browser and installing too many may slow down webpage loading speed. Most companies stick to 2 or 3 SEO browser extensions alongside their more comprehensive SEO tool. Try out one at a time and un-install any that aren’t helpful to you and you’ll quickly figure out which are the most useful for managing your specific SEO needs.

How Does Rel=Author Work?

The inconsistent nature of author markup information is characteristic of Google search in general, which shows different results for different people at different times. As an author, you have no control over whether your author information appears alongside your search listing for a particular user. In some instances Google even rejects participants. This means your author information won’t ever show up for anyone’s search. And sadly, no one but Google knows why.

In light of Jeroen’s comment, I cross my fingers and search for the ‘google doodle animations’ keyword phrase I used in my previous article, hoping it hadn’t disappeared into Internet abyss. To my relief, not only do I see my name and photo appear, this time there is a ‘More by Siv Rauv’ option next to my name, which I haven’t seen before.

I clicked on it and was directed to a page showing all the search listings I had for the query and a separate author bio pulled directly from my Google + profile name and description! I don’t know why but the Google gods decided to favour me.

How long does it take for my author information to show up?

This is another undecipherable mystery. The time between implementation and your author information appearing besides your search listing is another Google secret we mere mortals are not privy to. Like myself, one of our readers Peter, owner of Wildflowers Aromatherapy & Gifts , found his author information appearing within 24 hours. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s as lucky. Fellow internet marketer, Mark Gree detailed his experience, explaining that he “implemented rel=author this summer as Google described and then waited and waited for several months until it finally kicked in for me in early October. Then it disappeared in late October for no apparent reason. And now it’s back again.”

As frustrating as this whole experience, I still believe the potential benefits of the rel=author markup far outweighs the negatives. Though personally I don’t understand why there are so many inconsistencies with this feature. It’s been well over a year since it was first introduced.  If Google applied even a tiny fraction of the effort they’re been putting into their algorithm updates targeting low quality content then life would be a lot easy for authors like us who put so much effort into creating the  valuable content Google wants for their search results.

What have your experiences with the Google author markup been like? Have you also experienced inconsistencies in your author information appearing and disappearing? Or not appearing at all? I’m always interested to find out.

It’s upon us again folks; Google has released its list of algorithm changes for April. It’s been an eventful month with Google unveiling another major update, affectionately (and deceptively) known as the Penguin algorithm update. As expected, this list doesn’t touch on the specifics of the Penguin update with the exception of keyword stuffing. God forbid black hat SEO’ers find another way to game the algorithm. The list describes their “Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.”

I’ve always stressed the need for Webmasters to create fresh, new content via updating existing webpages and writing articles for their company blog. But more so than ever, Webmasters need to keep in mind this list reveals there are no freshness boosts for low quality content or sites. This means you can create as much new content or adjust existing content on your website as you like but if it’s of low quality, you’ll receive no SEO benefit from it. It’ll be interesting to see how effective this new classifier is.

Here is the entire list:

• “Categorize paginated documents. [launch codename "Xirtam3", project codename "CategorizePaginatedDocuments"] Sometimes, search results can be dominated by documents from a paginated series. This change helps surface more diverse results in such cases.
• More language-relevant navigational results. [launch codename "Raquel"] For navigational searches when the user types in a web address, such as [bol.com], we generally try to rank that web address at the top. However, this isn’t always the best answer. For example, bol.com is a Dutch page, but many users are actually searching in Portuguese and are looking for the Brazilian email service, http://www.bol.uol.com.br/. This change takes into account language to help return the most relevant navigational results.
• Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain.
• Anchors bug fix. [launch codename "Organochloride", project codename "Anchors"] This change fixed a bug related to our handling of anchors.
• More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename "Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.
• More local sites from organizations. [project codename "ImpOrgMap2"] This change makes it more likely you’ll find an organization website from your country (e.g. mexico.cnn.com for Mexico rather than cnn.com).
• Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location.
• Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.
• Disable salience in snippets. [launch codename "DSS", project codename "Snippets"] This change updates our system for generating snippets to keep it consistent with other infrastructure improvements. It also simplifies and increases consistency in the snippet generation process.
• More text from the beginning of the page in snippets. [launch codename "solar", project codename "Snippets"] This change makes it more likely we’ll show text from the beginning of a page in snippets when that text is particularly relevant.
• Smoother ranking changes for fresh results. [launch codename "sep", project codename "Freshness"] We want to help you find the freshest results, particularly for searches with important new web content, such as breaking news topics. We try to promote content that appears to be fresh. This change applies a more granular classifier, leading to more nuanced changes in ranking based on freshness.
• Improvement in a freshness signal. [launch codename "citron", project codename "Freshness"] This change is a minor improvement to one of the freshness signals which helps to better identify fresh documents.
• No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We have modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as particularly low-quality.
• Tweak to trigger behavior for Instant Previews. This change narrows the trigger area for Instant Previews so that you won’t see a preview until you hover and pause over the icon to the right of each search result. In the past the feature would trigger if you moused into a larger button area.
• Sunrise and sunset search feature internationalization. [project codename "sunrise-i18n"] We’ve internationalized the sunrise and sunset search feature to 33 new languages, so now you can more easily plan an evening jog before dusk or set your alarm clock to watch the sunrise with a friend.
• Improvements to currency conversion search feature in Turkish. [launch codename "kur", project codename "kur"] We launched improvements to the currency conversion search feature in Turkish. Try searching for [dolar kuru], [euro ne kadar], or [avro kaç para].
• Improvements to news clustering for Serbian. [launch codename "serbian-5"] For news results, we generally try to cluster articles about the same story into groups. This change improves clustering in Serbian by better grouping articles written in Cyrillic and Latin. We also improved our use of “stemming” — a technique that relies on the “stem” or root of a word.
• Better query interpretation. This launch helps us better interpret the likely intention of your search query as suggested by your last few searches.
• News universal results serving improvements. [launch codename "inhale"] This change streamlines the serving of news results on Google by shifting to a more unified system architecture.
• UI improvements for breaking news topics. [launch codename "Smoothie", project codename "Smoothie"] We’ve improved the user interface for news results when you’re searching for a breaking news topic. You’ll often see a large image thumbnail alongside two fresh news results.
• More comprehensive predictions for local queries. [project codename "Autocomplete"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of autocomplete predictions by expanding coverage for long-tail U.S. local search queries such as addresses or small businesses.
• Improvements to triggering of public data search feature. [launch codename "Plunge_Local", project codename "DIVE"] This launch improves triggering for the public data search feature, broadening the range of queries that will return helpful population and unemployment data.
• Adding Japanese and Korean to error page classifier. [launch codename "maniac4jars", project codename "Soft404"] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as “soft 404s”), pages that return valid text to a browser, but the text only contains error messages, such as “Page not found.” It’s rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so it’s important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Japanese and Korean.
• More efficient generation of alternative titles. [launch codename "HalfMarathon"] We use a variety of signals to generate titles in search results. This change makes the process more efficient, saving tremendous CPU resources without degrading quality.
• More concise and/or informative titles. [launch codename "kebmo"] We look at a number of factors when deciding what to show for the title of a search result. This change means you’ll find more informative titles and/or more concise titles with the same information.
• Fewer bad spell corrections internationally. [launch codename "Potage", project codename "Spelling"] When you search for [mango tea], we don’t want to show spelling predictions like “Did you mean ‘mint tea’?” We have algorithms designed to prevent these “bad spell corrections” and this change internationalizes one of those algorithms.
• More spelling corrections globally and in more languages. [launch codename "pita", project codename "Autocomplete"] Sometimes autocomplete will correct your spelling before you’ve finished typing. We’ve been offering advanced spelling corrections in English, and recently we extended the comprehensiveness of this feature to cover more than 60 languages.
• More spell corrections for long queries. [launch codename "caterpillar_new", project codename "Spelling"] We rolled out a change making it more likely that your query will get a spell correction even if it’s longer than ten terms. You can watch uncut footage of when we decided to launch this from our past blog post.
• More comprehensive triggering of “showing results for” goes international. [launch codename "ifprdym", project codename "Spelling"] In some cases when you’ve misspelled a search, say [pnumatic], the results you find will actually be results for the corrected query, “pneumatic.” In the past, we haven’t always provided the explicit user interface to say, “Showing results for pneumatic” and the option to “Search instead for pnumatic.” We recently started showing the explicit “Showing results for” interface more often in these cases in English, and now we’re expanding that to new languages.
• “Did you mean” suppression goes international. [launch codename "idymsup", project codename "Spelling"] Sometimes the “Did you mean?” spelling feature predicts spelling corrections that are accurate, but wouldn’t actually be helpful if clicked. For example, the results for the predicted correction of your search may be nearly identical to the results for your original search. In these cases, inviting you to refine your search isn’t helpful. This change first checks a spell prediction to see if it’s useful before presenting it to the user. This algorithm was already rolled out in English, but now we’ve expanded to new languages.
• Spelling model refresh and quality improvements. We’ve refreshed spelling models and launched quality improvements in 27 languages.
• Fewer autocomplete predictions leading to low-quality results. [launch codename "Queens5", project codename "Autocomplete"] We’ve rolled out a change designed to show fewer autocomplete predictions leading to low-quality results.
• Improvements to SafeSearch for videos and images. [project codename "SafeSearch"] We’ve made improvements to our SafeSearch signals in videos and images mode, making it less likely you’ll see adult content when you aren’t looking for it.
• Improved SafeSearch models. [launch codename "Squeezie", project codename "SafeSearch"] This change improves our classifier used to categorize pages for SafeSearch in 40+ languages.
• Improvements to SafeSearch signals in Russian. [project codename "SafeSearch"] This change makes it less likely that you’ll see adult content in Russian when you aren’t looking for it.
• Increase base index size by 15%. [project codename "Indexing"] The base search index is our main index for serving search results and every query that comes into Google is matched against this index. This change increases the number of documents served by that index by 15%. *Note: We’re constantly tuning the size of our different indexes and changes may not always appear in these blog posts.
• New index tier. [launch codename "cantina", project codename "Indexing"] We keep our index in “tiers” where different documents are indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to be to users. This month we introduced an additional indexing tier to support continued comprehensiveness in search results.
• Backend improvements in serving. [launch codename "Hedges", project codename "Benson"] We’ve rolled out some improvements to our serving systems making them less computationally expensive and massively simplifying code.
• “Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet.
• Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.
• Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users. We’ve recently updated the data through our offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks).
• Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks.
• Movie showtimes search feature for mobile in China, Korea and Japan. We’ve expanded our movie showtimes feature for mobile to China, Korea and Japan.
• No freshness boost for low quality sites. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude sites identified as particularly low-quality.
• MLB search feature. [launch codename "BallFour", project codename "Live Results"] As the MLB season began, we rolled out a new MLB search feature. Try searching for [sf giants score] or [mlb scores].
• Spanish football (La Liga) search feature. This feature provides scores and information about teams playing in La Liga. Try searching for [barcelona fc] or [la liga].
• Formula 1 racing search feature. [launch codename "CheckeredFlag"] This month we introduced a new search feature to help you find Formula 1 leaderboards and results. Try searching [formula 1] or [mark webber].
• Tweaks to NHL search feature. We’ve improved the NHL search feature so it’s more likely to appear when relevant. Try searching for [nhl scores] or [capitals score].
• Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.
• More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.
• Better HTML5 resource caching for mobile. We’ve improved caching of different components of the search results page, dramatically reducing latency in a number of cases.”

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***Update: Google have just released their Google algorithm updates list for April. Check it out to see if any of these smaller updates could affect your website.

Thinking of Penguins tends to conjure up images of cute, waddling birds. But now, at least in the SEO world, they’ll lose part of their innocent image with the new Google algorithm update aimed at webspam being referred to as the “Penguin Update”.  This  is expected to impact about 3% of search queries. If you’re engaging in black hat techniques – be warned – yet again (remember the “Panda Update” anyone?). Google is coming after you, continuing its relentless pursuit of offering only high quality, relevant results for its users. Here are the details you need to know to ensure your website stays on Google’s good side.

Over-optimized websites

Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam at Google, had alluded to this update when he described “over-optimized” websites being punished. This received criticism from the SEO world as it blurred the lines between white hat SEO and webspam. Fortunately he clarified this by explaining, “The idea is basically to try and level the playing ground a little bit, so all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, ‘over-optimization’ or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little more level.”

If you’ve been in a frenzy over thoughts of your website being punished by Google either by manual changes or automated internet marketing software, you can calm down. Cutts has confirmed the over-optimization warning was aimed towards webspam, not SEO in general.

The Penguin Update

In his latest blog post appropriately titled “Another step to reward high-quality sites”, Cutts explains:

“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines”.

The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam” (we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.

We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics”.

What are the implications for SEO?

The Penguin Update specifically targets keyword stuffing, linking schemes and cloaking:

• Keyword stuffing places repetitive targeted keywords in low visibility areas of a website in hopes of being associated with the term by a search engine.
• Linking schemes use organized rings of link spammers that spread unrelated links throughout the internet.
• Cloaking is the most advanced of these methods, whereby a webmaster shows the search engines a fake version of their website specifically designed to game the algorithm.

Most of the black hat techniques have been around for a while. But now Google have improved measures for targeting and punishing websites using these tactics. If you’re engaging in any of these black hat techniques, heed Google’s warning.

Cutts specifically mentions, “In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.

What are the quality guidelines?

What are the guidelines you need to ensure you’re complying with? Here they are below:

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.

4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.

7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

While most of these are straight forward, a few of these guidelines suffer from Google’s well known ‘let’s be as vague as possible so webmasters don’t game our algorithm’ syndrome. What constitutes “substantially duplicate content” for example? Well you can head over to Google’s help center for more information on the Google search quality guidelines.

Is SEO dead?

Cutts also mentions, “We [Google] want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites”.

Google have unleashed a fury of updates aimed at promoting quality content so this Penguin Update isn’t at all surprising. What sparked my interest is it raises the question of how effective will SEO be in the coming future. We now have confirmation from Cutts, Head of Webspam, that the updates are also aimed at de-emphasizing the importance of SEO for websites wanting to rank highly in the search results. While they are in favour of white hat SEO, Google would like it to it to matter less so those creating great content (but aren’t savvy to SEO tactics) stand a chance of ranking well on quality content alone.

I was adamant in my previous article “How To SEO Is Not Important Because Content Is King, Says Google Employee” that I didn’t believe the world could survive without white hat SEO. SEO plays an incredibly important part in driving users to your website by ensuring it is a “good match” with relevant keywords your target audience searches for.

I just don’t believe we could ever get to a stage where SEO is becomes unnecessary. By continuously mentioning their goal for an SEO-less future, it de-emphasizes SEO in the eyes of naïve businesses. Yet, we’re nowhere near this euphoric world and there’s no evidence to suggest otherwise. Surely it’s counterintuitive for businesses that write great content to disregard SEO? What are the chances un-optimized content from an un-optimized website ranks highly within Google’s search results in the near future?

What do you guys think? Do you believe these updates are making search better? And is it possible to reach a point where SEO is dead?

Chances are you’ve come across a search result with the author’s name and photo next to their search listing. Users tend to gravitate towards these results as they stand out on the crowded page. Yet few businesses have taken advantage of this feature. The internet is saturated with content similar to yours and having your author information appear is a simple (and free) way to add prominence and credibility to your search listing. According to a recent article by Search Engine Land, only 1 in every 5 Google searches shows Rel=Author (a.k.a. author markup) in the top 100 results, so it’s the perfect time to jump on board before your competitors do.

Author markups enable the author of the webpage to link their content to their Google Plus profile page (which has to link back to the site for 2 way verification). Doing so shows a rich snippet of their Google Plus profile (your image, name and link back to the profile) next to their webpage in the Google search results. Be warned, however, I have seen some instances where Google hasn’t accepted someone to participate in this relatively new experiment, but the benefits far outweigh this possibility.

What Benefit Does Author Markup Offer My Business?

In case I haven’t sold you enough on the idea, according a recent study on the impact of rich snippet markups on traffic, the number of clicks increased by 150% once the rich snippet was added.

Let’s take a closer look at why click-through rates increased dramatically. Author markups:

• Highlight your listing. For free, I might add. It now stands out from the 4 out of 5 results that don’t have an author markup attached.
• Anyone can see it. Even users who aren’t logged into their Google accounts or their social media accounts will still see the rich author info and photo.
• Provides credibility. Info for rich snippets is taken from a verified Google + profile.
• Increased exposure. Your name is hyperlinked with your Google Plus profile URL so if people like your article they can easily visit your profile.

Another added bonus is the additional metrics in Webmaster Tools. Which Webmaster would say no to valuable and free analytics for your blog? Under the “Labs” section you’ll now see author stats including the approximate number of times each of your posts showed up in the search results (impressions) and approximately how many times it was clicked on.

Author Markup And SEO Benefits

Cutts previously featured in a Google Webmaster video discussing the introduction of author markup. In this video, his colleague Othar Hansson alludes to author markup having SEO benefits. “It’s early days, we hope to use this information, and any information as a ranking signal. We want to get information on credibility of authors from all kinds of sources to use as ranking signals,” Hansson says.

Now SEO professionals are speculating about Author Rank; the idea of assigning a higher level of trust and authority to content created by verified authors. In other words, the better the content is, the more trusted the author becomes and the more trusted their future content becomes.

While the SEO benefits have been widely debated, it does make sense. Who seems more trustworthy? Content created by verified authors who have created previous quality content over less reputable writers appearing in the search results? Google is aiming for an SEO-less world where content ranks based on its quality, rather than how well optimized it is. Associating a verified and trustworthy author to content and having it as one of the ranking signals will help Google determine quality content. Of course, Google wouldn’t admit to this since it leaves their algorithm open to be gamed. Then there’s the question of what factors determine ‘quality content’.

How Do You Implement Author Markup?

It’s a little daunting when you’re not an SEO professional but it’s a lot simpler than you think. Basically, you just need to link your Google Plus profile to your blog (which has to link back to the site for 2 way verification). Follow Google’s instructions on author markup listed here and reference step 1 and 2 below for further clarification for Google’s instructions on verifying your email address and how to find the “Contributor to” section on Google +.

If you encounter any problems, try following all the instructions I’ve detailed below:

Step 1. Create a Google profile or a Google Plus account

Use an email address with the same domain as your blog and verify the account using the email they send to you after you sign up. Once you view your profile, under the heading “Work” you can add your email address and you will see a grey circle with a tick next to it to show it has been verified.

Supposedly as long as you post on the same domain as your email, and the posts have the same byline as the name on your Google Plus account, this is sufficient for Google to link your articles to this account. But just to be safe, I wouldn’t stop at this step.

Step 2. Link your Google Plus profile (through the “Contributor to” section) to your blog

1. On the right hand side panel, click on “Profile”.
2. Click on “Edit Profile” just on top of your cover photo.
3. Scroll down the page and find “Contributor to” links.
4. Click on these words to open the edit box.
5. Now just enter in your blog URL.

Step 3. Link your blog to your Google Plus profile

In each article page, there needs to be some reference to the post’s author in order for this to work. Placing this link in your “About me” or author bio is best. I could include a paragraph in my bio page requesting readers “Visit me on my Google Plus Profile for more Google Plus tips and tricks” with “Google Plus Profile” pointing to this link <a rel=”me” target=”_blank” href=”https://plus.google.com/110662901240422086069/”>Google Plus Profile</a>

Here is the general code:

<a rel=”me” target=”_blank” href=”[Your Google Plus Profile URL]“>[description of what the link points to]</a>

4. Link your individual content to your Google Plus profile.

Now that its implemented, when you write an article, simply link your name in your byline (your hyperlinked name that appears under the article title) or author box (often at the bottom of the page with info about the author) to your blog author page with the Rel=Author code. Mine would be <a rel=”author” href=”http://www.socialmotus.com/blog/authors/SivRauv”>Siv Rauv</a>

Here is the general code:

<a rel=”author” href=”[Author page URL]“>[Name]</a>

Tip: If you use WordPress, there are plugins, such as Author Box Reloaded, that will add the markup for you automatically. They will also add your image and icons to all the social networks.

5. Test this connection

Google provides a testing tool to verify your author markup and simulate what your webpage would look like in the search results. But be warned that this tool can indicate false errors.

There you have it. Now go and link your old blog posts to your Google Plus profile. While this has been clearly implemented for Google’s own self interest (forcing you to use their social network) author markup provides anyone who creates online content, particularly small businesses to get their content to stand out.

Does a potential employer have the right to demand you hand over your private Facebook login details to secure a job? According to the Washington Post, Justin Bassett was subject to just that at a recent interview.  Bassett rightfully refused and withdrew his application, stating he didn’t want to work for this kind of intrusive company. Despite this being a clear violation of a person’s privacy and Facebook’s privacy policy, with the current economy not all jobseekers will be in the position to walk away.

It is commonplace for employers to perform background checks on potential employees using information found on the internet, particularly through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Rather than relying on simplified information provided by the candidate, companies want to understand the person behind the resume to determine whether they will be a good fit within the company.

However, many users have set their profiles to private to keep details of their personal lives limited to those in their social network. Companies are now conjuring up ways to bypass these privacy settings, from demanding a potential employee hand over their social network passwords, to asking people to add the company to their social network and/or log into their accounts at interviews for employers to see on the spot. Armed with this information, they are in their legal rights to reject you based on any reason they see fit; your lifestyle choices, private opinions, social connections, religious view and so on.

In the past few days Facebook has issued a statement on the matter, stating that this new HR technique “undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends,” suggesting that it could result in “unanticipated legal liability” for the parties (employers) that demand it. Facebook says that it will take action to “protect the privacy and security” of its users and initiate “legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.” Most recently, Two U.S. senators are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate employers asking for Facebook passwords as this is a clear violation of a person’s privacy.

Personally, I do respect an employer’s right to uncover all the public information they can to determine if an employee is suitable for the job, but employees must way up whether this will really affect their ability to succeed within a company. Whether you wrote something derogatory when you were young and immature, or drank too much on a bucks night, these actions most likely have no bearing at all on your performance in a company and should be taken with a grain of salt. And if a company is allowed to engage in such intrusive actions, why can’t an interviewee demand private files from the company to determine to learn as much as they can about a company and whether it is the right place for them?

What do you think about an employee’s choice in such matters, when his paycheck depends on it?

Achieving a top ranking on the Google organic results page seems to be the goal of every website. But have you ever wondered how paid search can affect the amount of traffic you receive?  Google’s research team have recently shed some light into the relationship between search and paid results, finding that in some cases websites experienced a whopping 89% drop in clicks.

“When we released the first paper, we had a lot of questions coming back, asking more more details around incrementality and under what situations can you expect different numbers?,” said David Chan, Google’s lead researcher. Here is a summary of the findings below.

Analysing this figure

Surely anyone ranking on the very top of the search results wouldn’t see an 89% drop in clicks if PPC wasn’t in the picture? And you’re right, 81% of the time, paid search ads appear without an accompanying organic search result for the website. Not surprisingly, an organic result only shows up in second to fourth place 5% of the time, and outside of the top five results about 4% of the time.

Chan further explains that the ranking is a good indication for branded versus generic terms. This means that the brand’s organic result is likely to be higher in the search results if it is a branded term.

But don’t forget paid search

Just because you’re the king of the search results ranking, doesn’t mean you should ignore paid search. On average, brands that ranked in first place in the organic results received 50% more clicks when accompanied by a PPC ad for their company.

“It is a very surprising result, and, I think in some ways, it runs counter to what people would think but the data speaks for itself,” said Chan.

The study found that 82% of PPC clicks are incremental when the associated Google organic result is ranked within the second, third and fourth position and 96% of clicks are incremental when the brand’s organic result was outside of the top five results.

Conduct your own experiment

Take these results with a grain of salt as the relationship between search and paid will always vary from advertiser to advertiser and keyword to keyword. Prior to implementing any type of internet marketing strategy, always experiment to see what works best for your own website. Also, I should point out that the Google team studied clicks and not conversions, so it is unclear how the incremental clicks led to a conversion.

Chances are your business is sending out email marketing campaigns on a regular basis. But did you know the average email user receives a massive 147 emails and deletes 71 of these emails within the first 5 minutes? And while users spend a good 2.5 hours looking over their emails, this is spent mostly on a minuscule 12 emails. So, how do you make sure your email ends up in this elusive pile?

Baydin, which developed the email plugin Boomerang, gathered data from five million of emails sent out by its clients and identified which emails received the most responses and which fell into the pile of deleted emails.

Before you write your next email, keep these tips in mind:

• If you want people to respond to your email, use words such as “Apply,” “Opportunity,” and “Connect.”  At the same time, avoid the words “Confirm,” “Join,” “Press” and “Invite,”
• The optimal time to send emails is just before work hours – at around 6am. Users who scheduled messages to read later, using Boomerang, most often wanted to deal with them around 6 a.m.

Check out the infographic below for more tips on how to take advantage of email marketing:

There is no doubt that Bill Gates’ 1996 statement, “Content is King” is as true today as it was back then. With the proliferation of content indexed daily by Google, high-quality, relevant, and compelling content that engages the reader is imperative for helping your business stand apart from the crowd. But surely even a king needs a great support network to spread and uphold their power? Just like great content needs to be supported by internet marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) to deliver it to users. Not so, according to Google engineer, Jonathan Rockway. In what can only be described as a prime example of why you should think before you hit the send button, he explains why SEO is not important in his Google + profile:

Instead of being able to SEO the entire Internet, businesses can now only affect the search results for a tiny percentage of users. That’s a good thing because SEO can’t scale, and SEO isn’t good for users or the Internet at large.

If you look at the Google experience from the standpoint of customers, it’s pretty good. Users get relevant search results and ads. Advertisers get their content on top of everything else. It’s a good compromise between advertising and usability, and it works really well. It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug. Manipulating Google results shouldn’t be something you feel entitled to be able to do. If you want to rank highly in Google, be relevant for the user currently searching. Engage him in social media or email, provide relevant information about what you’re selling, and, generally, be a “good match” for what the user wants.

Of course the internet jumped to the defense of SEO, prompting Jon to follow up this post with the following:

Since people are taking what I’ve said out of context, I thought I’d clarify this statement:

“It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads”

I shouldn’t have mentioned ads here. Position on the results page should only depend on the quality of your content; if your site has the best content on the Internet for the user’s search terms, you should be the top result. You shouldn’t be able to change your position in the organic results any other way, like by exploiting bugs in Google’s ranking algorithm. The specifics of the ranking algorithm may change, but if your site is the best, you won’t have to worry about it.

While it would be wonderful if compelling and unique content alone could dictate the search results, in the real world websites are built in ways that prevent this from happening for a variety of reasons. I could list several commonly made mistakes that prevent the best, most valuable content from reaching the top of the search results.

Matching content to query

Subsequently, I want to take this opportunity to reinforce the fact that SEO plays an incredibly important part in driving users to your website by ensuring it is a “good match” with relevant keywords your target audience searches for. Simply using marketing channels such as email marketing or social media are not enough. Take for example, if you were to write an article on “refrigerators” when your target audience actually searches for “fridges”.  If you don’t properly optimize your article using SEO techniques, how can you ensure it’ll rank for the keywords that actually are important to you? You need to match content to query or content can remain virtually invisible to search engines. It then becomes difficult to reach an audience outside of those who are already part of your mailing list or social network. The fact is Google cannot determine if a website is the best keywords to match with your website based on non-optimized content alone.

SEO is important for users

At the same time, while black hat SEO techniques have frustrated users for years, there is no denying SEO is important for users as well. SEO ensures that a website and its content can be discovered, analyzed, and then indexed by various search engines. This is particularly important for smaller businesses that do not have a dedicated team to constantly write engaging articles. Just yesterday, I was searching a popular restaurant in my city and couldn’t find their website via the search engine. In the end I finally found the website through a local online directory listing. It’s not always about gaming the search algorithm, SEO ensures a site is being seen correctly by the algorithm.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I’m hoping that he was referring to black hat SEO rather than SEO in general and simply didn’t have the publicity training to understand the significance of adding those two extra words. Because no matter how you look at it Google should NOT be cracking down on all SEO and simply rewarding websites with great content, irrespective of the amount of links and other off site attributes for the site. That would simply force website owners to use their Adwords program..hm.

What do you guys think? Should great content be the only factor in SERPs? And should employees be allowed to freely speak their mind regardless of the consequences?

Google has faced a mountain of criticism over its new ‘Search Plus Your World’ (SPYW) feature which displays “personalized” results from one lone social network; its very own Google +. Many, including myself, believe they’re sacrificing the quality of “personalized” search results by favouring their own social network. Regardless of your thoughts on this new feature, as a business owner or marketer relying on Google as a major source of traffic, it is more important to understand how this affects your SEO and social marketing strategy.

What does it mean for SEO?

As the most dominant search engine in the world, Google has essentially changed the way search operates by introducing SPYW. In summary, when users are logged into their Google accounts their results will automatically personalized based on their previous searches, history and social connections. For example, when searching for a keyword phrase, a related Google + post from someone in your circle may appear in the results. In this way, Google is moving search towards showing the best results for one specific user, as opposed to showing the best results for all its users.

Unfortunately, to the detriment of quality results, SPYW simply displays social content from Google + and Youtube. Google claims this is due to their current standoff with rival social networks, Facebook and Twitter (which doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon). But I’m not buying it.  Google + profiles and pages often list links to the users Twitter and Facebook accounts.  So surely this data alone could be used to create a comprehensive social directory.

So, what does this mean for business owners and marketers?

This is a massive incentive for businesses to create a Google + account for its SEO benefits. Google is clearly going all out to leverage its existing dominance in the search space to ensure it also succeeds in the social media space. For example, while the personalized results can be disabled, there is no way to opt out of seeing the Google+ “People and Pages” recommendations that prominently appear on the right hand side of search results (where sponsored ads used to appear). This means businesses with Google + pages have a chance to gain a free listing on the first page of Google, particularly when users are searching for long-tail keywords. For more information on how Google + affects SEO, check out the article “SEO How To Guide: Google Launches Google + Pages For Business”.

What does it mean for social marketing?

On the social marketing side, Google have launched various initiatives to integrate personal elements to search for years now. But SPYW is a big leap forward for the search giant as it deeply (I cannot stress this word enough) integrates Google + into its search results. From bringing up Google + profiles in the search box, to showing personal results from those in your Google + Circles to “People and Pages” prominently featured on the left hand side of the results page (of which users cannot disable).

What’s more, any user who creates an account for another Google property such as YouTube or Gmail must now create a Google Plus account. There’s also a pre-filled checkbox authorizing Google to use your information for personalization.

What you can do to capitalize on SPYW?

The average user will most likely leave the personalization option on. Thus, it has become more important than ever to be involved with Google + and focus on both search and social in your Google + strategy. You need to develop a list of important keywords (preferably from the existing keywords you’re already targeting) and start creating and sharing relevant content based on these on Google +, just like you already do on Facebook and Twitter. However, this is more important as links pointing back to your website help with SEO and sharing content based on important keywords helps you show up for related searches of people who have you in their circles. Also, keep in mind, the more your account is associated with a particular keyword phrase, the higher chance you have of being recommended on the new “People and Pages” list on the search results. You can create all sorts of content from how-to-guides to e-books. And remember to optimize your Google + profile around these keywords to help with SEO!

Google is leveraging its search dominance to go all out and force users to use Google + and giving clear incentives for business owners and marketers to start using their social network. So if social marketing and/or SEO is an important factor for growing your business, I suggest you start looking at ways to capitalize on Google +.