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Affected By $3

Confused on the title? Yes, title like that in a SEO blog is really weird, non-relevant. But I feel this is the most suitable phrase to my subject.

 

History of the title:

 

For our SEO business, frequent communication goes on with new and prospective clients through email marketing or through different online freelancing sites. The first question of many clients is like this;

“Many applicants & companies offer $3/hour. Why would I hire you with such high rate?”

“Presently 5 (in some cases more) persons are doing SEO work for my site at $3/hour. I need more persons to speed up my SEO process. Your rate is outside of my budget limit.”

 

Or many job ads are like;

 

“I need top ranking for my 5 (or 8) keywords in Google and my budget is $150 (or $200 at most).”

“I need my new site to be optimized to top 10 ranking in Google in one month and my budget is $200.”

 

And especially after Penguin update, the following one is very common;

 

“My site is well optimized already. It was in top 10 for some keywords but due to some reason it has lost its ranking. I don’t think you have to put huge effort to it. Your offering rate $** is too high. So, if you agree, you may start at $3.”

 

I can’t help but laugh. I think whether people are really doing complete SEO at such prices. Is it possible to get ranking with such limited budget and short time? My concern is not the price but the effort they have to put to get the result (if ever they really get that). I know the magnificent effort I have to put to get top 10 ranking. If it involves a part of SEO like link building or forum posting, then it may be okay but for complete SEO strategy, it is impossible in my view.

 

Am I feeling envious as I’m losing the business to these guys doing at a lower price? Not at all. I am quite professional and I know the price tag of my work. Also, everybody in this business has their right to decide their price.

 

But the thought came to my mind after Penguin update in April this year. After this update, I have got many clients who got penalized due to this. The obvious reason is over-optimization. When I analyzed their site and previous SEO activity (in most cases, off-page activities), I knew the spamming done by the previous SEOs. For most clients, I found the following common activities;

 

  • Links in low quality blogs either banned by Google or having hundred of links in them
  • Hundred of profile linking in Forums without active participation
  • Hundred of low quality bookmarking & directory submission and the surprising thing is that most of these bookmarking sites and directories  have similar looks and names, just like clones.
  • Articles of similar subjects or scraped contents posted in Web 2.0 sites that are filled with similar articles. Most of them are either banned or considered as low quality by Google.
  • Social promotion looks like pure advertisement
  • And in all cases I found that the persons done SEO for these clients are hired at cheap rates.

 

From the above points it is quite obvious that the sites are penalized by Penguin. You may guess that there may be on-site issues that might have attracted a penalty. Yes, I have found issues like site-wide links, footer links, broken links, above the fold issues and some really low quality contents. But such cases are rare with many clients of mine.

 

I don’t think that the clients the hired SEO persons have ever felt the importance of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. The clients just want massive work to get top ranking in short time. The guys doing SEO for them provide the same. Both have forgotten about the quality aspect which is the most important factor above all. Google always prefers quality to quantity. This is the common piece missing in all cases.

 

So, who is at fault, the client or the SEO professional? Most of you may say that it is the responsibility of the SEOs to maintain the balance. But in my view, both are at fault. Let’s discuss them separately.

 

Webmasters: As they are the owner of the sites, they should be more responsible in maintaining the quality. By quality, I mean both the quality of the products or services they are providing and quality of their sites to retain and convert the traffic to prospective customers. They should well aware about every point of Google’s Webmaster guidelines. To rank well in Google’s search, off-page optimization is a must. But it is not like a one pill solution or should not be achieved overnight. Unfortunately, many webmasters are just doing the opposite.

 

They want quick result and so fall  prey to the boastful ads about quick ranking in no time. Also they do not feel the voluminous work involved in off-page optimization and importance of it. Naturally they hire accordingly and prefer low cost and less time to save budget. And at this rate and restricted time, the SEO guy goes for the easiest and shortcut way; spamming. Any SEO professional knows what they are doing but they have no choice as the clients judge them by the volume of work. So they go more mass link building and promotion in a hurry. Clients would be happy to see such massive promotion in such less time. But the result is clear. Panda and Penguin are there to feed on you or a manual penalty is waiting for you. Every webmaster should remember that Google is just not watching what you are doing but it is more interested in how you have done this and time taken in the process. Ranking well needs persistent effort and maintaining quality at each level is the most important thing. Massive promotion is quite unnatural as such level of work is only possible in low quality sites. To rank well, Google always wants your presence in high quality and relevant sites through profile development and that needs quality work and time. But at such rate and with limited time, it is quite impossible to achieve that thing.

 

I am more concerned about rate as now SEO process is moving to complex level. You have to be paid members of different high quality sites and forums if you want to get the latest SEO updates. Also you need high quality SEO and social media paid tools for proper analysis of the site and off-page promotion. Yes, there are many free tools available there but they help you to a certain level. So, if you want a part of your SEO work to be done by an individual, then low rate and limited time are ok. But for complete SEO work, a well integrated approach is highly required and for this, both cost and time are to be considered by every webmaster.

 

SEO professionals: A client has his every right to decide his budget and time. Likewise we have every right to decide rate for our effort. We have two choices; either we accept the rate and time offered by the clients or deny. But for the sake of getting a job, we shouldn’t compromise with quality. When a client hires us, he believes that we will help him in every respect. We should respect his faith. Otherwise he will perish forever for our low quality service which will not create a good impression on our profession.

 

NB: Please don’t take this article as an offense to persons doing SEO work at low rate. I am more concern about the quality of the service. This article is especially written for those webmasters who consider SEO as a low quality job and those SEO professionals who are cheating good clients with spamming.

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Evolution In Animal World: Revolution In SEO Strategy

The two endangered species are now the most ferocious animals creating havoc in SEO world. I think you have already guessed it; Panda & Penguin. And the credit goes to Google who has made this evolution twist in a matter of one and half year contradicting the Darwinian principle regarding slow pace of evolution process.

 

Google Panda & Penguin

 

Why am I discussing this stuff though both these algorithm changes are quite old now? Yes, there are thousands of articles, discussions, videos etc. on these changes providing ample quality information and insights. But my curiosity plays around the fact that there are a good number of sites still penalized by Panda even after one and half year of its release. Thousands of sites are still got hooked in the position where they went after the first or recurring blow of Panda. Though our innocent devil (for spammers only) Penguin is comparatively younger than Panda, still six months have already gone since its arrival. The periodic refreshes in these two algorithm changes have affected the search results with varying degree of impacts. So, let’s have a quick review of these two.

 

What you should know about Google Panda algorithm:

 

Panda was released on February 24, 2011 affecting 11.8% search queries in US. But prior to it, Google had announced in January, 2011 that a constructive correction was in pipeline to address the problem of shallow and low quality contents. But no one had thought that it would affect in a huge way. Panda was basically against the scraper sites and content farms producing low quality contents or generating duplicate contents by modifying the original contents. So, in reality they don’t add any value or provide any unique information on the existing one. Panda is all about quality. Google always emphasizes to provide the best user experience in your site. So, it is quite obvious that such a change would come. Till date, there are 21 updates in Panda algorithm. On April 11, 2011, Panda was released internationally for English search queries. The important thing in this update was the incorporation of signals drawn from users’ complains and Google also announced that 84% of changes due to this update matched with users’ signals. On August 12 in the same year, Panda rolled out to other languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The key point about Panda is that it is a site-wide penalty. That means if you have low quality contents in some pages in your site or have same stuff in different pages, then be sure that your whole site is going to be penalized. Ranking of all pages including pages having quality contents will be down. Panda is being considered as a ranking factor.

 

What you should know about Google Penguin algorithm:

 

Penguin algorithm was released on April 24, 2012 affecting initially 3.1% of search results. Till now there are 3 updates in this series. Its aim was to target the web spam activities or it was specifically termed as over-optimization penalty. It was a long awaiting step from Google. As the term “over-optimization” covers up both on-page and off-page optimization processes, you should better be aware of both these factors. Some aspects related to over-optimization are aggressive promotion using exact anchor text, low variations in anchor texts, keyword stuffing in contents or in internal and external linking, linking to low quality sites or sites banned by Google etc. Penguin is not a manual penalty. So, reconsideration request is not going to help you. Google sends warning emails about spamming activities to your webmaster mail account. Some SEO professionals feel that if you clean those spam and send a reconsideration request to Google, then your ranking will again increase. But you should remember that as Penguin is more about algorithm penalty, so reconsideration can’t increase your ranking. Google will crawl your activities as it always does and if you have cleared your spam, then in its next update, your ranking may rise but it is not guaranteed.

 

What to do if you get affected by Panda and Penguin.

 

  •  Obviously the first step is to go through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Try to analyze your site and your off-page optimization process to find out where you violate the guidelines. You can do it through experienced SEO professionals.
  • Google always prefer quality, uniqueness & freshness in your site to provide the best user experience. So check whether the contents in your pages stand up to these factors.
  • Any duplicate or low quality or shallow content has to be removed and replaced with quality and in-depth content.
  • Never try to over-optimized contents by keyword stuffing. Your style of representation should be natural and unique.
  • Never buy cheap contents from the market. Try to prepare it yourself or through high quality content writers. The content should be unique, well researched and should provide new insight in the subject.
  • Internal linking must be well articulated. Don’t try to push keyword rich anchor texts in all linking.
  • Never link to low quality sites or sites that are banned by Google. If there is any such link, remove immediately.
  • In your off-page promotions, try to maintain relevancy and quality. Be sure to link only relevant and quality pages as Google is now giving more importance to relevancy than PR . Otherwise Google would consider it as unnatural.
  • Site-wide link is not troublesome if that site is relevant & of high quality. As per Google, these links must have no-follow attribute for non-relevant sites so as not to pass PR juice.
  • If you have some site-wide links in low quality sites, then remove them by request. If there is no response from the site, you may go for “Disavow” option released by Google last month.
  • Anchor texts for inbound links should not be keyword-rich. Don’t promote only exact anchor texts in your link building process. Try to give enough variations to theses anchor texts.
  • The last option is; if you don’t see any rank development by following these procedures, you should start with a fresh site.

 

No one knows completely about Panda and Penguin and the periodic updates in these. But we can safely say that it is all about quality. So, the best thing is to follow the Google guidelines and maintain that throughout your development process both on-page and off-page.

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Page Layout: The New Update in Google Algorithm

Google’s latest algorithmic changes about the layout of a webpage are highly welcome by all categories of users. In this updates Google has mentioned that web sites having too much ads above the fold will be punished by reducing their ranking in SERP. Such algorithmic change has been anticipated by many SEOs since very long as it directly relates to the quality of a page.

Google also clearly mentioned the same in its blog post where it declared that such change was done by carefully considering complains by lots of users about their bitter experience while surfing through search result web pages. Many of these web pages have full of ads above the fold which are irrelevant to the main content of that page.

Time is the most critical factor for any user. The basic requirement of any category of user is to get the most relevant and authentic web page as a result of search on any topic in the least time. But previously many sites on the first page of SERP have full of ads. While navigating through such sites for required quality content is very tedious and time wasting for many users. Scrolling down such a page for actual content is logically boring and meaningless for any user.

If a search engine provides such results on its top pages, naturally users get disappointed and will put little faith on its search quality.

Keeping in view of the above fact, now Google will check the amount of content visible once the page is open. If the first view has little content or full of ads, then such sites will not be considered as providing best user’s experience and may get lower ranking.

But this algorithmic change has drawn a good amount of controversy as some parts are very confusing.

Little content v/s full of ads

Full of ads above the fold is clearly understood but the meaning of little content is somewhat confusing. Whether info graphics related to the content of a page will be considered as a part of main content or not is doubtful. Also some sites place ads related to welfare of human society or the earth or wild life which may or may not bear any relation to the actual content of the page. If such sites will be punished, then it may demoralize others to spread social awareness.     

Normal degree v/s excessive degree of placing ads

Google says that this algorithmic change would not affect sites that place ads on above the fold to a normal degree, but would affect sites who load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree so make it hard to find the actual content. But here Google does not define the line of control between normal and excessive degree of ads.

Affecting 1% of global searches

Google says that this layout algorithm change would noticeably affect 1% of searches globally. What does it mean? Does it mean that this change carries less than 1% value with respect to the whole ranking algorithm? Or after fixing the yardstick on layout, Google surveyed the most common searched topics globally and found out this figure. Or such a small figure is an indication for site owners not to be worried about using Ad sense.

What about nonsense ads below-the-fold?

Suppose I have a page which has either no ads or very less but related to my content ads above the fold. But I put a lot of nonsense ads like selling cheap Viagra or reselling used cars or cheap household products below the main content. Does this layout algorithm punish my site?

What is the main concern for site owners?

Even a single page failed to satisfy this layout algorithm requirement will drag the overall ranking of the site. So now one should be very conscious about the layout of every page. Moreover Google mentioned that even though you make the necessary changes after getting affected, it would take several weeks to gain the previous ranking as Googlebot has to re-crawl every page of the site to access the changes made. So prevention is better than cure, guys.

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Google Update: Search Plus Your World

It has always been amazing to watch Google experimenting with the Web with its innovative and unimaginable ways that are not only new to Google itself but have the capability to change the online marketing process or opening new avenues in search methods. With the announcement of its new concept of search version “Search Plus Your World”, Google has done its first bang in the new year. Though Google has declared that this new facility will be shortly available, but it has created a lot of speculations in internet about its would be impact on the SERP.

What exactly is Search Plus Your World?

In simple words, you may call it the integration of web search with personalized search. Now when you search anything, you not only get the personalize data from all the web pages like before but you also find the data related to the searched term that you have shared privately or publicly in social media or more specifically in Google+.

How does it help you?

This means you don’t have to search the same item twice to find out the general data and personal data. Previously if you want general idea about any topic, you simply search in the search box. If you want to get any personal idea about anything, you have to search it in social media. But with search plus your world feature, you can get all of these in a single search. All the photos, images, videos or contents you have shared in Google+ and have forgotten will be reflected automatically with public web pages. And the most amazing thing is that your personal information will appear in the first page.

Should I be concern about my privacy?

To some extent, you should have to. With search plus your world facility, now Google will give you three categories of data and these are the data from related web pages, data those are publicly shared in Google+ and private data shared with closed friends and relatives in Google+. Google will try to draw all information whether publicly shared or privately shared. So from now you have to be concern about two things. First, whether the data you are going to share may affect your personal life in future or will put you in awkward situation. Second, whether the person you are going to share with is that much of trustworthy. So whenever you are trying to share something in Google+, remember to answer these two question yourself.

But Google has assured its users that as all information in Google+ are secured by SSL encryption, and the search pages will have that level of security, there is no need to be fear.

Moreover, no two users will get the same results by searching for the same item. Though the data from the public web pages will be same for both users but personal data depend on individual. The main concern is the person with whom you have shared the content may get the data by searching the same item.

Are personalized search results a new concept?

Not at all. In fact, personalized search result, has been an integral part of many search engines for many years. The search results you generally get have largely influenced by your search history, IP address and locality. But all results are from public web pages. So the meaning of personalized search results is that the results vary from person to person.

With search plus your world, now the search results include your private contents along with public results. Anything you put in Google+ will become searchable item in Google search.

Anyway, with this new concept, deeper penetration of social media in Google’s search engine algorithm is clearly visible as speculated in last year by many internet marketers. Certainly search plus your world will change the nature of search in a great way.

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Google And Facebook VS India : Democracy Killing Democracy

The continual development of argument and disagreement between sites like Google and Facebook and Indian government due to posting of objectionable materials in their sites has generated as much interest regarding the future course of action by both sides. The problem started since last month when the communication minister Mr. Kapil Sibal failed to pursue the networking sites to have a control mechanism to censor the photos, videos or articles downloaded by users so that offensive materials could be removed from the sites. But the sites showed their inability to put such a mechanism.

A local journalist Vinay Rai has filed a complaint against the sites stating that these sites were responsible for the defamatory and offensive materials posted by users in their sites. Indian government has authorized prosecution against 21 sites including Google and Facebook.

The network companies filed a petition against the case in the Delhi high court to put a stay order as it is against the democratic right to have freedom of speech and expression. Google India Representative Mukul Rohatgi expressed that no human interference is possible and it is not feasible to check such incidence. Billions of content are regularly posted by users and it is next to impossible to control and verify all these posts.

Previously Google told that it may possible to remove articles that are illegal or against the local Law but it can’t remove the contents that are controversial but legal as it represents different views and ideas by different users.

Facebook also expressed the same concern and told that it is against such activities that create religious tensions and spreading message against national integration. But no current or future mechanism is possible to check such contents to be posted online. But such contents can be removed as soon as they get information about such contents.

 

Google and Facebook

 

Standing at the same side with government, Delhi high court asked the sites to have stringent check or may have got banned like in China. The court is having the view that companies should have some mechanism to check and remove such offensive materials from internet.

On Tuesday, Google told the high Court that India can’t act like a totalitarian regime like China as blocking websites is not the only option by a democratic country like India.

To clarify its statement Google showed its intention about how blocking a particular search may affect the innocent users from getting useful information by giving the example of search results of the word “virgin”

Definitely sites like Google or Yahoo and more importantly social networking sites like Facebook should respect the integrity and feelings of a nation and its people and their faith and belief and as the sites mentioned that they do the same. But the controversy aroused due to the indefinable line of action.

Google mentioned that it can’t withdraw the articles that are controversial but legal. But it should visualize the effect of such legal but controversial issues on the society. It is their fundamental duty to respect the feelings of every sectors of society and maintain the harmony and the harmony and integrity can’t be disturbed for the sake of freedom of speech and expression.

But the most important aspect in this tussle is that the government would not realize that the basic purpose of internet is to share information. Internet can be considered as the written or printed version of our physical world in every respect. Both good and bad coexist in the physical world. That does not mean we have to abandon this world. It is we to choose what we want. Likewise World Wide Web is the world of information, ideas and expressions. Both good and bad are there in the internet reflecting the real image of the physical world. Let the users decide what they wish for.

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The Fundamental Ethics Of Search Engines

The creation of World Wide Web is most probably the most important piece of invention of late twentieth century having the power and potential to alter the path of world history (some political analysts credited the recent Jasmine revolution to social media). The single factor behind its creation was information sharing all over the world by people belonged to all sphere of human society. The socio-economic and cultural impact of it is an ongoing process affecting our life in all respect every day. So my question is to what extent the search engines have fulfilled and maintained the true spirit of World Wide Web. The moral obligation of delivering the proper information and true knowledge to the users lies on the hand of search engines.

 

Search Engines

The evolution of search engines starting from the introduction of first search tools “Archie” or first search engine “W3Catalog” to the birth of search engine giant “Google” in 1998 is really a matter of great interest. When more and more web pages have been added in internet, the need of a web guide was felt greatly to retrieve proper data from the web and this void was filled by the introduction of search engine. So the prime objective behind the creation of a search engine was to help and guide the users in the vast world of information. Google changed the nature of searching and indexing web pages by introducing its new concept of page rank algorithm based on linking factor. The basic assumption behind it was that quality pages will get more links from other pages as compared to the pages of inferior quality. With such innovative algorithm Google became the trusted web guide of users very quickly. Other search engines have gradually followed the same principle.

In the process of providing the best user experience, search engines have made numerous updates in their algorithms. And to rank well in SERPs, sites are trying to follow their guidelines. In this process, search engines have become the guardian of site owners. But the dual characters of guide and guardian by search engines have some funny and controversial side effects. Sometimes the search results are beyond your wildest dream. For example, when I searched for horse in Google  HORSE Poker Game, Horse Breeding Game and horse breeding video from YouTube were in  the first page of Google SERP.

 

Google Search Results

Sometimes popularity does not mean quality. The boundary between guide and guardian role is becoming hazy due to commercialization of search results. If they want to play the role of true guide, then they have to provide what the users want. But algorithmic search results mean they provide what their algorithm decides and in this process they become the guardian of users. I know that a search engine can’t work without an algorithm. I am not crazy. But my concern is to what extent the refinement of algorithm satisfies the users’ need. The last year Google Panda update victimized many innocent sites. Simply adding the effect of social media in algorithm means trying to include popularity factor than quality factor. The present trend is such that YouTube is becoming the second largest search engine rather than quality and informative sites like Wikipedia.  In such scenario, calculated inclusion of social media in algorithmic updates is required. The search results have greater impact on the psychology of users. They believe what they find at the top pages to be true and authentic and in such condition abnormal results may change their mindset. Search engines have to be more conscious while updating their algorithm.

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Welcome To SUVAANCE

Welcome everyone! Suvaance is created first by a small group of SEO Experts who are quite experience enough in providing high quality SEO Service to the clients. And it was planned by them to work together to share their experience & deliver the best ever quality SEO service to each & every customers. Suvaance is using the tagline “Shaping Your Destiny”. After discussing over many phrases, everyone agree with the idea about this tagline because the 3 words in the tagline are enough to show our motive.

 

 

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