Detecting penalties with Rankpanel: A Case Study

In the beginning of 2012 Google started sending out webmaster notification messages to reportedly 700,000 webmasters all around the world. A lot of these were about “artificial or unnatural links”. Note from the Webmaster: This is a Guest post from Rankpanel's Director, Alexander Puschilov. I think Rankpanel is one of those new tools that might just make it big - especially with the Google Penguin (over optimization) update. The notices seem to be related to some new search quality system in place, which renders certain link building techniques no longer viable. Patrick puts it well, when saying that the major difference between this recent update and previous ones is that this one penalizes the SEO strategy used. In the Rankpanel data set, we started noticing the first major impact on a large number of sites in the week ending March 18, 2012.

Beautiful Mystery

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." – Ecclesiastes 3:11 Author’s Note: This one’s from conversations I had during and after GLC class. I decided to visit Donald Miller’s Blog and found a rather casual yet interesting entry about humanity and its unexplored facets. In his blog he writes, “I still think the least explored territory is humanity, both collective and individual. It’s not physical territory, I know, but where is there more fearful darkness or illuminating beauty than in the depths of the person sitting next to you on a bus? Where is there more evil and more beauty than in the unexplored cosmos of a human being?” I think he’s right. More than the ocean or space, humanity is the least explored territory. I had a short conversation with one of my classmates in GLC before the class started. Little did I know that I said something that piqued her curiosity and self-awareness. During the break, she asked if we could talk more. Though it wasn’t my main point, I explained, “What I see is just an observation. I cannot make decisive comments about you because we haven’t really spent much time together.” In a separate talk over coffee I told a friend, “If you believe that God created everything and everyone, you could say that He has left a sort of fingerprint upon His creation. We can, then, see and find God’s signature in His work – however hard or hidden it may be.” Each person is a mystery. So much can be asked of one person, and it takes a lifetime – maybe even more – to fully understand him/her. We are mysteries known only to the One who created us, and the psalmist understood this as he wrote: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139:13-16 I would submit to the notion that we are in pursuit of all things beautiful – whatever our definition of beauty is. If we treat each person as a beautiful mystery – fearfully and wonderfully crafted by the Hands of the Creator, we would find ourselves spending time discovering them, understanding who they are, trying to unravel facets of their being, in search for that beauty that is God’s fine print in them. We veer away from (yet not ignore) the flaws we see, as we are flawed and imperfect ourselves. Instead, we choose to believe the best in them. However difficult it may seem, or how tiresome it may get, we choose to remain fascinated and enthusiastic – because we have resided ourselves to the fact that through His eyes we will find God in that person, with His mighty Hand ever at work.

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How to Recover from Over Optimization

Over optimization is all about sprinting with your SEO in such a way that you're already leaving your best partner behind - content and value. The internet is not a sprint. It's a marathon. You don't sprint until you've run a long one and the finish line is a few meters ahead. Note: Sorry about the Boromir pic. It gave me a few laughs. I'm an LOTR fan. You have to understand that all websites have a purpose - and that purpose is to get visitors coming in. If you want this purpose achieved, you have to have a website that hooks the visitors in and serves the visitors well in their experience inside your website. Over optimization is not a big punching glove that Google simply just threw your way. It's more like a balance sheet where Google compares if your content and site's value is deserving of your level of SEO. If it's not, and your SEO is way too high for the quality of the content that you provide, then you're over optimized. I won't make it hard for you. The best way to get back from over optimization is simple but tasking. Slow down the SEO and create more great, quality content. This should bring you back on track. I talked about what quality content is in my recent Google Over Optimization Penalty post. So I'm going to talk to you how to create that kind of content in this one. First, quality content should be something unique - either in its base idea, delivery, and/or form. Idea This is the concept behind the content. What is the direction of the content? What is its purpose? What is the content trying to achieve? What is it trying to teach your readers? In the internet where information and data is everywhere, a 'good idea' doesn't make the cut. It has to be a 'great idea' for it to go somewhere. And great ideas have to have great delivery or form - otherwise it will remain just that. A great idea. Delivery This is who you are as you deliver your content. Are you a humorous intellectual? A teacher? Are you perhaps a concerned mother? How you deliver the content matters most to your readers. Using yourself as a voice is usually the most powerful way of getting a more loyal readership. Simply because of the authenticity behind it. Form This is what you use in order to get your message across. Are you using an image? An infographic? A video? A story perhaps? How you deliver your content matters - and the form with which you deliver it matters too. Sometimes a different form attracts a different set of audience. Great content comes in different forms. Second, quality content should be newsworthy - and if it's newsworthy, it should attract attention. This is where social signals will catch up with your links - helping your linking strategies seem natural due to the social effect that your content is getting. Spread the word out on the following social networks: Facebook What better way than to have your friends Like your content? You can tag relevant people who you think are interested in our article as you post it in your status update or in your Facebook Page. Twitter Tweet your content and make sure to mention influential Tweetizens and ask them if they can retweet your stuff to their circle of influence. As of today, Twitter is still my number one referral traffic driver. Google+ This is arguably one of the best things that happened late 2011. Google+ simply drives in traffic as you tell a story about your content - using techniques like adding a title and formatting your update in the form of paragraphs. Inbound.org This is a new one from Rand Fishkin and Dharmesh - it can drive in good traffic in your website but you need to post only really great quality content. You can login with your Twitter account and nothing else. StumbleUpon Stumbleupon can really surge your traffic up - but the best thing about it is that the surge doesn't plop down. It gradually wanes. Stumbleupon has been a great source of traffic and social signal for me thus far. Third, quality content should be linked to - over optimization is about links BUT getting a lot of deeplinks for quality content is ALWAYS natural - even if it's exact-match anchor text. If you get a lot of great deeplinks for your quality content, this can neutralize your over optimized, exact-match anchor text linking problem. Fourth, make sure that you have an author behind your quality content - AuthorRank improves the trust of your content and because of this, it boosts up the page's PageRank score. Set it up by getting a Google+ account and link your pages to that Google+ account. For example, my Google+ profile page is https://plus.google.com/113834493623295339552/about I link to my Google+ profile page from my SEO Hacker website using this code for my name in my author bio after every post: Sean Si This will tell Google+ that I am the webmaster of SEO Hacker because I was able to put my link in there. Afterwhich, I will put my link in my Google+ profile page in the Contributor To section. Wait a few days and when you see your Authorship picture (Google+ Profile Pic) on the Google SERP, you have successfully told Google that you're responsible for authoring those articles. A successful Authorship dictation reduces the chances of you getting penalized for over optimization. Get these things right for your content and you should be back up in your rankings. Perhaps you won't get all your rankings back at once but give it some time. There's a Google quality score you're trying to reach. Do everything you can to reach it.

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The Three Dangers of Loving

I've been learning in my relationship with my girl that loving someone has its dangers. Usher said "There's so many ways to love ya", and this is true. There's so many ways to love a person - but what is the right way that will help you keep your relationship straight? This entry has been inspired by my love for Angelyn Co. To you I will give my life not for the sake of loving but for the sake of glorifying Christ from here on Loving for the sake of Loving There are a lot of people today who have a lot of love to give. We were created as relational beings. It is a natural part of us to love someone. But there is a question we have to ask ourselves. Why do we love? Why do we give our love away to another person? Is it to get married? Is it to have children? What if those things come and are fulfilled? What next? There are a lot of people today - especially younger people - who love for the sake of loving. Because they have love to give. Just because you have love to give, doesn't mean you have to give it. Loving for the sake of loving can be the most selfish, meaningless act you can do in your life - and it will easily lead to emotional instability. Love is a choice. It is also a powerful emotion. How you distinguish between the two is determined by its purpose. Loving for the sake of loving easily defines love as an emotion because loving for the sake of loving cannot define love as a choice. It will bear no meaning. Loving someone too much I've written quite a handful of articles about loving someone too much. This is one of the most dangerous aspects of loving that a lot of people fall into. Loving someone too much puts you in the dangerous playground of idolatry. It simply puts the beloved before anything else - even Christ. Loving someone too much also sets you up, if you're a guy, to let the girl lead. And if you're a girl, it sets you up to follow even towards wrong leadership. Wrong leadership can mean, a leading to impurity, sexual immorality, lying, and anything against the heart and leadership of God. Loving beyond what you can give Our love has its limits. We are finite beings with finite emotions and finite will, energy, resources, time and imagination. Because we are finite beings, even if we have a lot of love to give, we can run out. Our emotional tanks can go empty. When this happens, you are setting yourself up for disappointment, burnout, stress and bitterness. Loving beyond what you can give and not getting any reciprocated love in return can easily lead to bitterness. Loving beyond what you can give and going farther than what your limited time, resources, and energy can bear can easily lead to burnout and stress. How can Love go Wrong? The questions our generation is asking is "How can our love have gone wrong?", "Where did we lose ourselves?", and the cry of our hearts remains unanswered. How can love hurt so much? There are so many ways to love someone dangerously. So what do we do? How do we love someone in the right way? The Purpose behind Loving There is only one way to love someone - to really love someone. Love for the sake of the glory of God. This is the answer. Love can never go wrong with that purpose and direction behind it. Love for the sake of the glory of God. Glorify and honor our God in your love for others - and you will never ask love why it went wrong - ever again.  

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Over Optimization Penalty

Over Optimization has been the recent craze of those who were unfortunate enough to be hit by this Google algorithm change. It's not an easy thing to deal with over optimization. So how do you get back on track once you're hit? Black hat has gone a bit further Over Optimization has just been added to the list of 'don't do's' by Google. I thought only black hat techniques were placed in this category but obviously now that is no longer the case. Even natural, white hat SEO now has a fine line that it cannot cross. That line is named just enough optimization. Seriously, you can no longer be aggressive in your SEO to be good. Things are going to slow down from here on for Google to pass over your site and let your SEO grow. The Factors Behind Over Optimization Over Optimization is optimizing your website far beyond how it would be naturally done so in an off-page perspective. It is a content-quality check to enforce the Panda update. The defining, common factor is an 'if statement'. If your website does not have quality content AND:

1. You have a lot of exact-match Anchor Text coming into your website - signaling unnatural link building
2. You are practicing Obvious Link Exchange - link exchange pages already signal spam to Google. Setting up a link exchange page is a no-no. Right now, in-content link exchanges are the best way to go.
3. Your website has a Fast Link Acquisition Rate - again, signaling unnatural link building
4. Your Social Signals vs Links Ratio is far from each other - if there are a lot of links coming in, there should be people coming in from those links. If those links are quality, the people coming in from there should most likely engage in a social activity in your website. If your social signals are not consistent with your links, there must be something wrong.

“It’s widely believed that keyword stuffing and link exchanges are already spam signals in Google’s algorithm, so either Google intends to ratchet up the amount of penalty or dampening that those spam signals merit algorithmically or they have new over-optimization signals in mind as well,” - Matt Cutts Perhaps Over Optimization can be simplified to optimizing your website for the search engines rather than for people. The bottom line is, a site can only be considered over optimized if it is filled with SEO techniques - whether good or great, and the content does not live up to the site's SEO level. "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 bit more level." - Matt Cutts One thing's for sure If you have great, quality content that focuses on people and not search engines, you have nothing to worry about. Here are 23 guidelines from Amit Singhal to ask yourself in verifying content that the Google Panda Update will consider 'quality'

1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
6. Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
7. Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
8. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
9. How much quality control is done on content?
10. Does the article describe both sides of a story?
11. Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
12. Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
13. Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
14. For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
15. Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
16. Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
17. Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
18. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
19. Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
20. Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
21. Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
22. Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
23. Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

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Online Reputation Management Tips | Mininet Creation

One of the best and most manipulative ways that you can clean a bad reputation using Online Reputation Management is through creating a mininet. This process takes a lot of time and is not really easy - but if you do it right, it pays off.