SEO has changed a lot, although some things never change – good onsite optimization means you don’t have to worry about every little update – your site will be solid.

The Panda update did make everyone step up their game, though, especially in Google Places and link building. I spent 2 solid months researching, studying and revising my SEO methods to conform to the Panda world.

Here are my Top SEO Tips after Panda

Onsite SEO

1. Increase the content of your pages and posts. At least 500 words, and 700 if possible. Make sure you use good grammar and check your spelling. Points off if you don’t do a good job there, just like in English class.
2. If you don’t have videos on your site, add them. You can get videos from YouTube about anything at all. Better yet, make your own. You can do that easily by converting a PowerPoint into a video. The one on this page was put together very quickly using these instructions. It’s not the best but I wanted to show you what you can do using free products.
3. If your business is local, create and upload locations.kml  and geositemap.xml files to your root folder. Here’s a handy dandy geositemap generator. It also explains what to do once they’re created.

Google Places SEO

1. If you have a local business then you need to get busy if you expect to compete. I seriously suggest having an SEO specialist do this for you. There are many details within a Google Places listing that can help you rank well, or kill your listing. On top of that, what worked before doesn’t work now.
2. Make certain you hire someone who is experienced and can show proof of ranking businesses…there are a lot of people who claim to be SEO experts but are not. Don’t waste your money or worse, your chance to be competitive.

Link Building

1. Article marketing is still good, but make certain your content is valuable and not just rehashed crap. Also, longer is better. Ezine requires 400 and sometimes 600 words in an article. I suggest at least 700 if possible.
2. Videos videos videos. Google loves them. You don’t have to show your face in them either, so if that part bothers you like it did me, just provide information.
3. Social media is becoming ever more important. You need to have the following for your business: Facebook, Twitter, Linked In. Blog posts or articles should go to FB and Linked In, as well as Tweeted. There are tools you can use to automate this.

Google is asking us to provide more quality information in a variety of communication methods. This actually should not be too hard if your website is a business, because there are always plenty of things to talk about, explain, announce, demonstrate, and offer. Think of who, what, when, where and why.

If you’re an IM’er you have to provide more content and be smarter about your back linking. You need a plan; just winging it won’t get you far at all.

It’s time to take Internet marketing seriously. Local businesses need to cancel their yellow pages ads and put that money into their websites and online marketing efforts. The competition already has.

Okay, sooooo Google rolled out the +1 button today.

I’m not real excited about it…but Google says it will be a good thing, because now when I search or go to a website, I’ll know which my thousands of friends have been there and liked it too. Similar to ‘Likes’ on Facebook, but FB wouldn’t share those with Google.

So like the little red hen, they went out and did it themselves.

Who knows how it will affect SEO. All I know is that now I have to get votes like a prom queen for my site to rank better. And everybody will know who I voted for, too.

Well, let’s put all that aside for now and get your button up on your site. There will soon be a plugin, I’m sure, but in the meantime, here are a couple of ways to do it, depending upon what kind of site or WordPress theme you have.

What Worked for Me

I’ll show you what Big G said to do in a minute, but their way is not always my way, and this is what worked on my WP theme to put the button on each of my posts automatically:

In the WP Admin go to Appearances, then Editor, then open your post.php file. Put this code where you want the button to show up on your posts (typically above the post content).  You can also put this code in a Text widget so it will appear in your sidebar area.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<g:plusone></g:plusone>

How Google Says To Do It

Simply add this script code before your /body tag. In WP this is usually at the bottom of your footer.php template in the Appearances Editor.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Then add this code in your post.php template or in each blog post where you want it to appear:

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

You are supposed to be able to personalize your button here, but it wasn’t working very well when I tried it:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

One More Thing

Here’s the intro video in case you’re still not sure about this.

Except – Wait!

I want to know what you think of it. Is the Google +1 button a good thing, a bad thing, or don’t you care one way or the other?

Thanks to Uncyclomedia Commons for the awesome prom queen photo!

Many people had great articles on Ezine that ranked well and sent visitors to their site. However, a lot of Ezine articles were crap, and many of those were also ranking on the first page of Google. Everybody dropped, good and bad alike.

So now the question is, should you continue to submit to Ezine for article marketing purposes? My answer is yes for a couple of reasons. One is that Ezine Articles was the best article marketing site before the update, and now they have made 5 changes to upgrade the quality of future article submissions:

1. Increased Quality Checks – Articles are spending twice as much time in the review process, and their editors are placing more focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.
2. WordPress Plugin and API – No longer being accepted to avoid content duplication.
3. Dead Links – In the past, if you had a dead link Ezine gave you 5 weeks to fix it, with numerous notifications. Now you have 2 weeks to get it taken care of.
4. Membership Level – I think they’re being a little too strict on this, but now if you haven’t met their quality requirements within the first 10 articles you submit, you not only don’t reach Platinum level but are banned from submitting more articles. They have backpedaled a little though, saying that if you are showing progress they’ll be a bit more lenient.
5. 400 Word Minimum – Before it was 250 words, and a good writer can often get their message across in that short of an article. That said, this makes writers work harder to write worthwhile content.

Life just got a little harder for article marketers, but I think it’s worth it to get high quality information on the Internet and in search results. What’s your opinion of these Ezine Article changes?

Here’s the deal in a nutshell – follow the rules and you won’t have to worry about algorithm changes and updates. 99% of the time they only affect websites that are trying to get rankings by cheating in one way or another, or that are so poorly designed and optimized that they seem spammy to search engines.

It pays to do things the right way. Follow these 5 steps and you won’t have to worry about changing algorithms:

1. Build a site that is valuable for visitors
   Check your navigation, content, photos, forms and landing pages
2. Ensure that your code is search engine friendly
   Review your titles, descriptions, content, alt tags and contextual links
3. Make it easy for visitors to convert
   Make certain your phone number is easy to find, contact form works, your shopping cart works smoothly to completion, your download links aren’t broken
4. Build links the right way
   Write meaningful articles that are interesting to read and add value, then syndicate them for keyword links as well as encouraging potential customers to visitor your site
5. Post to your blog on a regular basis
   Keep it fresh and interesting with valuable information for the reader, and avoid sales pitches

This can be a considerable amount of work, but if you’re serious about your business you’ll do it. If you’re not SEO savvy, hire someone who is. You want a website that is the best it can be – ranking well in search engines and converting visitors to sales.

Consequently, I was very happy to find this article in the Axandra newsletter, and have received permission to publish it in full.

How your web page changes influence your search engine rankings.

It’s a no-brainer that changes on your web pages influence the position of your website on search engines. However, it’s not so clear how search engines react to the changes on your site and what exactly causes the changes in the search results. A new search engine patent might have some answers.

Several search engine patents deal with the changes on your site.

Google published a patent that described how the changes on your web pages influence the rankings of your site 6 years ago. Last month, Microsoft was granted another patent that discusses the influence of web page changes on search engine rankings.

This new patent shows which elements on your web pages might be monitored by search engines.

Which web page elements are monitored by search engines?

According to the new patent, changes of the following web page elements can influence the position of the page in the search results:

• Keywords that are included in a web page.
• Keywords that are associated with a web page
• The anchor texts that are used in links on the page.
• The colors and the sizes of images on the page.
• The position of text or images on the page.
• The frequency of document changes over time.
• The amount of the web page content that has been changed.
• Tags that are assigned to the page.
• Search queries that are used to find the page.

How exactly do changes in these elements influence the rankings of a page?

According to the patent, searches are classified into the two categories “informational” and “navigational”. The effect of the web page changes depends on the category of a search query.

A navigational query is a query that is used to find a particular site. For example, a search for “ny times” will lead to the home page of the sites. Examples for information queries are “how do I fix a broken bicycle tire” or “who won the 2011 XYZ awards”?

If the searcher is looking for information about a recent event (2011 XYZ awards) then pages that recently added the keyword could be boosted in the search results.

For navigational queries, pages with static content might get a boost. This methods works fine with some type of sites but it could cause problems with home pages that update their contents regularly (for example nytimes.com).

What does this mean to your website?

This patent was granted to Microsoft but it’s likely that Google uses similar methods. Search engines don’t just look at the current version of your website.

They also remember how it was in the past. The changes on your website could indicate a change of ownership, they could indicate that you try to keep your website up-to-date, they could be a signal for spam and more.

When you change your web pages, consider which signal you might be sending to search engines.

When you optimize the pages of your website, do not optimize a page that already has high rankings for one of your keywords. Better optimize another page of your site for the new keyword.

The more pages of your website you optimize, the better. Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords to show search engines that your website is relevant to a particular topic.

Keep some of the pages fresh and leave others as they are to offer search engines different kind of pages for different search queries.

“Copyright Axandra.com – Web site promotion software“

First I’m going to show you how Google has changed. Then I’m going to tell you exactly how to get your own site ranking, and quite possibly showing up on the first page of Google search results more than once.

The Google 3 Pack, 7 Pack and 10 Pack have mostly disappeared. Now when you look up a search term with a local designation, you get a page that looks like this:

The organic listings are the first three below the ads. Note the little plus sign and “Show more results from…” below the second organic listing. When you click on the plus sign you get a list of that site’s indexed pages that Google thinks fit the search parameters, with the option of going even deeper:

Following the organic results are the top three Places results, and when you click on the Place page link you are taken to that site’s page:

Below the organic results for businesses that rank in the top three Places results are the more generic local directory results, icluding Merchant Circle, Magic Yellow, and Yahoo Local.

So what does all of this mean for you? If you own a local business, you have more opportunities than ever to get your site found on the first page of Google.

5 Magic Steps to Google Ranking

1. Your first step is to ensure that your site has the best search engine optimization possible, for both visitors and search engines.
2. Get yourself over to Google Places, click on Put your business on Google Maps, and spend time making your Places page complete and informative.
3. Ask customers to write testimonials and reviews on Google, Yelp, Insider Pages, Merchants Circle, and other local directories.
4. Add quality content to your site. Informational pages and/or a blog will work.
5. Build inbound links to your site from other sites. The best way to start the process is through article marketing.

Okay, so these aren’t really magic – they take hard work, dedication, and money if you don’t have the time or knowledge to do it yourself.

You have a few options – you can scour the Internet for information on SEO and implement it on your site, you can join the SEO Power Team’s 3 month course ($97 a month) and get professional tutorials on how to do it yourself (written by yours truly), or you can call an SEO Consultant and have it done for you.

What you must NOT do is ignore or put off marketing your website any longer.

Google has implemented a new service that encourages searchers insert a location when a generic keyword is typed in, such as dentist. Results for my local search for a dentist returned the top ten business listings on Google Maps.

If you have a local business and have not taken care of this extremely important facet of off-site SEO, it’s time to get busy. Your competitors are already there, and it will take some time and effort if you want your website to rank in the top ten.

If you’re at a loss as to how to go about getting good rankings, check out the SEO Power Team. This step-by-step guide for DIY SEO will tell you exactly how to optimize your site for top rankings in Google.

We’ll be seeing a lot of articles proclaiming, once again, that SEO is Dead! But is this really the case? The short answer is no, but to learn why SEO is still alive and kicking, read the well thought out article Does Google Instant change the SEO game? by Jonathan Leger.

You may find this new rollout to be helpful in your keyword research, as a matter of fact. As you can see in my example, as I typed “learn seo” it gave me suggestions that are popular with searchers. So to promote my SEO Power Team course, I should use the keyword phrases learn seo online and learn seo step by step (SHAMELESS promotion I know!). Give it a try with your product or service and see what Google suggests. This is a quick and dirty way to do some longtail keyword research.

You know what you sell and you know the topic of your website. Are you sure that Google puts your website in the right category? If your website is about shoes, Google still might think that it is about frogs and toads.

If Google puts your website in the wrong category, it will be very difficult to get high rankings for your keywords.

How to find out what Google thinks about your website

To find out what Google thinks about your website, perform a “similar” search for your domain. Enter the following in Google’s search box:

related:www.domain.com/ ~domain.com

Replace domain.com with your own domain name and make sure that there is no spacer after the colon. On the result page, Google will show you websites that it finds related to your site.

If the websites on the search result page are related to your website then everything is okay. If the websites are about totally different topics, then you have a problem and Google probably won’t display your website in the search results for the right keywords.

Why does Google put your website in the wrong category?

Suppose your website is about selling shoes. If your site is linked to by other websites that are about frogs and toads then Google might think that your website is related to frogs and toads.

It’s important that the other links on the web page that links to you are related to your site. If you’re listed in the “Shoes” category of an Internet directory then all web sites in the same category are usually also about shoes.

When search engines look at this page and check the links to other sites they will think that your web site is related to shoes. That means that it will be much easier to get high rankings for search terms that are about shoes.

Is your website in the right co-citation category?

The other websites to which your link partners link influence the ranking of your website on Google.

Here’s an example: web sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 all link to the web sites A, B, C and D. Although A, B, C and D don’t link to each other, Google thinks that A, B, C and D are related to each other because the same web sites link to them:

If A, B, C and D are all linked from 1, 2, 3 and 4 they might be related to one another, even though they don’t directly link to each other.

If A, B, C and D are all linked by many other web sites, they have a strong relationship. The more web sites they are linked by, the stronger the relationship.

If you are the owner of website A, you should make sure that web sites B, C and D are related to your site.

What does this mean for your website?

When you build links, make sure that the page that links to your site also contains other links that are related to your website topic. The more pages of the other site are about your topic, the better.

If the link to your website is in a good neighborhood then it will be much easier to get high rankings for your keywords.

The backlink tools in IBP will help you to get more related backlinks to your website. Related backlinks and optimized web page content will bring your website on Google’s first result page.

This article is reprinted with permission: copyright Axandra.com – Web site promotion software

Google got so many complaints, and probably confused a lot of people, so they want back to their plain white page.

Apparently this is not a penalty but a change in Google’s ranking algorithm. Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. Prior to this change, Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases, basing results on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages.

If you’ve experienced a decline in traffic from Google to your website, you might have to change some of the content on your web site. Until this update, the order of keywords could vary to some degree. Now, though, if you want to be found for "dog training collars dallas" then these words should appear in that exact order on your website. If you’re using a different variation, such as "dallas dog training collars" then you’ll most likely get search result listings for that variation but not for other word combinations.

Searchers tend to think that these are “Google approved” businesses and will usually click one of the, rather than scroll down to the organic listings. This is the one time organic listings just don’t count.

Here are a few statistics that are relevant if you serve a local geographic market for your products and services:

• 40% of all searches have local intent. A search for “dentists” implies a local search, as does “seattle dentist” obviously.
• 80% of all commerical searches have local intent. A search for “zoom teeth whitening” is a commercial search.
• 17 million people use online maps to find a local business

For more information on how to improve your Google Local listing, check out the article The Power of Google Local (Maps) And Why It Matters To You at Biznik.com.

It’s interesting to note that 2 listings are from Twitter, and several others are from groups I belong to, including friend feed. Using a word with no previous listings gives a clear view of what Google grabs and uses.

I’ve got 5 invitations left to give away, so if you’d like one, please sign up for my newsletter, and I will randomly select 5 subscribers and send them an invitation. I’ll make the selections on Wednesday, December 23rd.

Google Wave is incredibly innovative, and will change the way the Internet works:

Don’t let this happen to you. I found a guide written by Brittany Lynch, former Google employee, that explains what Google is looking for and how NOT to get banned from Adwords. The best part is it only costs $.01 – for real. I paid my penny and downloaded the guide, and it contains valuable information on what Google is looking for when you place ads.

Get it quickly – distribution is limited: Adwords Big Ban Report.

Update: The first 200 at 1 cent were sold out, and the price for the report  is now $7. If you’re using Google Adwords that price is still super low and worth spending to make sure your ads are not at risk.