What’s a Content Farm?

Content farms, are essentially websites that provide masses of low quality content – with the primary aim of achieving high rankings for as many keywords as possible (often with the goal of getting clicks and generating revenue through Adsense or similar advertising).  Often the content from content farms is not unique and is just an aggregation of content scraped (by automated tools or manually by workers from low-wage countries).

In many cases, sites that copy the content from other websites can rank higher than the original site and the new algorithm update is trying to address this.

Google’s Matt Cutts has said:

” ‘we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.’

And also :

“The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”

What should you do?

If you’re a legitimate site offering high quality, unique content, then you probably don’t need to do anything – and the algorithm may even give your site a boost (as low quality content farms are dropped from SERPs), but if you want to get high, long term rankings on Google, you should :

• Create a high quality website, with unique content.
• Optimise the pages of your website for both users and search engines
• Improve your site trust by getting as many good quality, relevant backlinks as possible

The content farm algorithm update was part of an ongoing strategy by Google to improve the quality of their search results by removing spam. Google is expected  to release many more anti-spam algorithms this year.

In particular in the latest batch of updates, Google Places content has been given much greater prominence, and is now (in many cases) taking up a significant section of the “above the fold” part of the page – monopolising much of the area previously allocated to organic results.  Organic search results are now give less prominence at the bottom of the page – and usually below the fold.

At the moment, many of the Place Pages being listed in Google SERPs are still of questionable value, and it is still relatively easy to create a brand new Place Page and have it ranking at the top of the SERPs.

In our opinion there is still a lot of work for Google to do with Google Places results in order to ensure that users get the best possible search results.
I believe that Google needs to get smarter about the algorithm they use to determine Place Pages rankings, and anticipate  that they will continue to tweak and adjust how Place Pages are integrated in the Google search results, but whatever happens, it is clear that having a Google Places listing for your business is now more important than ever before.

WebConsulting SEO specialise in Local Search Optimisation, so if you would like to find out more about Local Search  or find out how you can go about raising the profile of your own website for local search queries, please contact us.

Within the last few weeks dramatic changes to Googles search result pages have been released worldwide, these include Google Instant, Instant Preview and significant changes to the way that Google Places listing are incorporated into the SERPs.

Google Instant – is in some ways Google Suggest on steroids, but instead of just presenting suggested search keywords while a query is being typed, the actual search results are dynamically updated on the basis of the portion of the keyword you’ve already entered.  Google Instant was launched on  8 September.

Instant Preview – provides visual snapshots of the web sites returned in the search results. A preview of the web page is generated to the right of the search results, which allows a fast preview of all the search results by simply hovering the mouse cursor over the magnifying glass icon for each respective result.

For an overview of the changes, and an outline of the opinions of Llew and Andy on the longer term impact the changes may have on the way people may use Google search , and also the potential effect on Search Engine Optimisation strategies, see the Nett article – Google Search Changes.

If you are not already using Google’s Webmaster Tools, I suggest that you get yourself setup ASAP.  Find out more about Google Webmaster Tools, or if you have any questions, concerns, or problems with setting it up, please feel free to contact us for web/internet advice and assistance

What are Parameters?

You have probably noticed URLs which contain a variety of  different characters – often including “?” and “&”.  Most often these URLs are used by dynamic sites that generate page content, and the parameters are used to determine what information is included on the page and how it is displayed.  Here are some examples :

www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999
www.example.com/product.php?caregory=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=asc
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=desc

In the above examples the parameters are :

category – a text based title of the category (good for SEO)
cat-id – a numeric  code for the item category
sid- a numeric code representing a visitors session id
sort – a field indicating in what order items should be listed

Some parameters affect the content of the page, others can influence how the page is laid out.  Search Engines have long been able to recognise and crawl these types of dynamic URLs. However, one problem that can be introduced through the use of parameters is the issue of dynamic content.  Each of the example URLs provided above could conceivably reference exactly the same page content – presenting search engines with a dilemma to determine which is the most relevant URL, and which ones should be ignored.  Search Engines will try to make a guess at this – but will not always choose the one that you would.

Webmaster Tools Parameter Handling

Since September 2009 Webmaster Tools enabled site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site. The main benefit of the feature was to improve the canonicalization of a site in Google’s index due to duplicate content. Canonicalization issues occur when multiple URLs load the same content (as in the example URLs above).  However, this was a bit limiting – when you choose to ignore a parameter, you are telling Google that this parameter has NO impact on the displayed content. However, some parameters may not affect the content, but may affect how the content is represented.

Google has recently announced improvements in the way that parameters can be defined in webmaster tools.  The new functionality allows webmasters to specify “default values” to certain parameters which don’t necessarily affect the content.  This provides greater flexibility for webmasters and improved indexing for Google.

So, using the above example URLs, the webmaster could specify that cat-id and sid parameters should be ignored, and that the sort parameter should default to “asc”  (displaying results in ascending order).

Parameter Handling can be found in Webmaster Tools via Site Configuration >> Setting >>Parameter Handling (tab)

• high resolution images (storing bigger pictures) – from the beginning of October facebook have been rolling out support for print-quality, high-resolution photos – increasing the size of the photos stored from 720 pixels to 2048 pixels on the largest side or 8 times bigger overall
• a brand new viewer for browsing photos – A better photo viewer makes it simpler and faster to navigate photos.  You can now view photos and even whole albums without going to a new page.  Paging through photos should also be significantly faster

  

• a new uploader with better tagging – a new Flash based uploader allows you to tag multiple photos in the same album at the same time. It will also be easier to tag photos of the same person.

These new features are expected to be rolled out to all Facebook members over the next month or so.

Google claim to have combined the “best features” from two previous keyword tools into one and now that the updated Keyword Tool is the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, have suggested that it is simply called “The Keyword Tool.”

The New Keyword Tool is designed primarily for use with Adwords, but is also accessible without signing in to a Google account.  The benefits over earlier versions include:

• Flexible search options: now able to Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category to get a single set of results
• Keyword Filters: able to Filter results by word or keyword match type
• Negative keywords: can more easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword list
• Advanced options: able to View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, and more.

One thing to be aware of with the new keyword tool are changes in the way Global and Monthly search volumes are being calculated.  Previously these search volumes included searches undertaken on Googles search partner sites , but now, apparently only “Google.com search traffic” is taken into account. It is not yet clear whether or not this includes Googles country specific search engines (such as google.com.au)

Google New aggregates many of their individual product blogs and shows the latest posts from them. It also provides a search box to search for Google products and highlights the latest news on some of their featured products.

Google claim that the purpose of Google Instant is to deliver users with faster, dynamic results and provide further predictive suggestion (similar to Google Suggest) to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

At time of posting it hasn’t yet made its way to www.google.com.au, but has been implemented on Google.com and Google.co.uk and is expected to arrive in Australia very soon.  At the moment Google Instant only works under a limited subset of browesr (mostly the latest versions), and will also not shpow up if you have a low bandwidth internet connection.

So far there does not appear to have been any change to actual rankings – the results from both natural and paid search do not appear to have changed, but it’s going to be interesting to see how Google Instant may impact Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Search strategies.

This release has generated the usual (and predictable) – “OMG – It’s the end of SEO” statements, but of course it isn’t.  As long as people rely on search for finding the information they need on the internet, there will always be a need for improving rankings and online visablilty.

In response to the question ““Will Google Instant change search engine optimization?” Matt Cutts has said :

“I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time”

It appears likely that Google Instant will change users search behavior, and this may have an indirect impact on how a site should be optimised.  Whilst traditional SEO strategies are unlikley to change overnight, Google Instant may very well introduce other opportunities for website owners to have their site found – and is quite likely to result in new SEO strategies and techniques.

Search Engine Land have published a great article called Google Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide, which talks about how Google Instant works and their view of how Google Instant may impact rankings.

Testing has been underway for a couple of months or so, with Yahoo already incorporating up to 25% of Bing’s search results, and in July, Yahoo announced that the organic search results on Yahoo will be powered by Bing 100% beginning in August/September.

Will the Yahoo-Bing change affect your website traffic?

In the USA, Yahoo and Microsoft sites currently have a combined search market share of approximately 30%. In Australia (where Google has a much bigger slice of the search pie) Yahoo/Bing combined searches still account for about 10% of total searches – which is still a pretty significant volume of searches.

If your site currently receives higher rankings (and traffic) from Yahoo than it does from Bing, it is very likely that your overall traffic will drop in August/September when the changes are applied. There are a number of ways you can check how much of an impact this may have on your site :

• Check your rankings for primary keywords under Yahoo and Bing. You can do this yourself by manually searching for your primary keywords in each search engine – or as us about our search ranking reports service.
• Check your user stats or analytics to compare the relative volumes of traffic being generated by Bing and Yahoo. Look at this over the last couple of months, because recent Yahoo testing may already be having an impact.

If you are not sure on how to access or interpret your usage stats, contact us and we should be able to assist. If you are currently getting higher rankings in Yahoo, or receiving significantly more traffic from Yahoo than Bing, there is a good chance that your search traffic will drop when the Bing search results are fully applied to Yahoo. Conversely, if your website is already listed for the right keywords in the Bing results, you will very likely get an increase in website visitors.

How to optimise your website for Bing

Fortunately, optimising your website for Bing is really not much different from optimising your site for Google. So if you already have an optimisation strategy in place, it will probably help your Bing rankings.

Like Google, improving your search rankings in Bing requires optimised web pages (with keyword rich content) and good incoming links. One difference is the priority that Bing puts on the various ranking factors. Optimisation strategies that work well with Google may not have the same effect on Bing and vice-versa. Here are a few suggestions that will help you to get the best ranking results for your website:

• Take a look at the pages that already get good rankings for your primary keyword phrases in Bing and compare them to the pages that get top results in Google. You may be able to determine differences in the types of pages that are ranking better in each search engine.
• Vary your optimisation strategies by Optimising some of your pages for Google and other pages for Bing. This can increase your chances of getting listed on the first result page.
• Focus on a single primary keyword phrase to optimise for each page. It is much better for a web page to be highly relevant for one key phrase than vaguely relevant for many key phrases.
• If possible, optimise each page of your site for a dedicated search engine/keyword combination. The more targeted the optimisation, the more likely it is that the web page will be listed in the top results.

You are likely to lose traffic if your web page currently has high rankings on Yahoo but not on Bing as Yahoo’s own results will be dropped after the transition to the new Bing results. Therefore, the sooner you start to optimise some of your web pages for Bing, the better.

The intent is that Yahoo will start to use Bing for their search results, and Microsoft will start to show Yahoo paid ads on their search properties.  It is early days yet and still not clear how many of their overlapping products/services are going to be handled.  My guess is that some may be consolidated, some will be retained and some may even be dropped all together.

In most cases optimisation strategies are not search engine specific, but there are some differences between the search engine ranking algorithms, and it is possible to tweak techniques to favour one or another search engine.   Because of it’s significant market share (particularly in Australia), traditionally most SEO efforts have been geared towards Google rankings.  Spending much time and effort on optimising for Yahoo or Bing was often put into the “nice to do” rather than the “must do” priority list.

With a consolidation of Yahoo and Bing Search Results, it may now be worth taking a closer look at Bing specific optimisation strategies.  If your site is currently ranking well in Bing but poorly in Yahoo you should be smiling, but if the reverse is true – then maybe you should be a little concerned.

The following video from WebPro News provides a great overview of the proposed collaboration – including some useful points from Danny Sullivan.  It is still early days, and if this proposal goes ahead, it is likely to take some time, so while there is probably no need to get nervous yet – you should definitely stay aert.