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3 Ways to Check if your SEO is Outdated

1/29/2015

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Questionable Link-Building

This is a highly debated topic in the SEO space with a ton of valid arguments on both sides. I can say with certainty that link-building is still needed and indeed does have an impact on SEO. However I will also say that with link-building the quality is needed more than ever. Simply ask yourself does this comment, post, blog, directory, link, make sense? If you are unsure or fairly certain that there is no reason other than just to get a link you may want to reevaluate the way you are doing link-building.
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No Social Posting

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Social posting is similar to blogging in that you can broadcast and engage your community. To take this further with social you can begin to connect to your community, influencers, and ultimately customers. Social is also a great place to gain insight into what your customers want or need. You can also solicit feedback about your product or services. Testimonials or just feedback in general is crucial for securing and maintaining customers. In short if social isn’t part of your SEO look at starting to make sure you are connecting with your audience.

Non-Responsive Design

We have seen huge leaps in technology the past 20 years. A crucial part of this advancement is the development of cell phones and tablets. With cell phones and tablets becoming an integrated part of our daily lives comes the need to make content viewable on these devices. Because of this having a website with a responsive design has almost become a necessity to ensure good user experience on a desktop or mobile device. The best way to check if you site is mobile ready is to pull up your website on a mobile device. If your website doesn’t reformat to a better size automatically you may want to consider revising your website. 
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Blog Recap

To recap make sure that your SEO is functioning by today’s standards. If you begin to fall behind it is better to take the time to correct the ship while it’s moving rather than having it crash and sink. Recovery is a speculative and time consuming process with no immediate benefit. Make sure that your link building is being done with purpose. Stop making excuses and start being social this helps build a bridge between you and your customers. Lastly keep the increase in mobile traffic in mind it won’t be long before this source beats desktops. 
What do you feel is a good way to check if your SEO is up to date?
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Is Google's Penguin Update a Penalty?

1/13/2015

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This is something I get asked fairly frequently at work and online. While I can agree that this feels like a penalty it is simply an Algorithm update. Specifically speaking to Penguin it was an update that judged external links to determine quality sites and content. Because of this review a lot of sites took a dive when it came to there SERP's. This dive could have been a multitude of things from referring links anchor text to link context and so on. 

Google Penguin 3.0 Factors

  • Low Relevance Links
  • Duplicate Links
  • Directory Links
  • Poor Link Ratios
  • Poor Link Diversity
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To further this was what came during the prolong delay of another penguin update. During this time I conducted manual reviews of hundreds of websites and discovered a few things that plagued penguin victims. 
In very few cases did I find it was only one of these factors that affected penguin victims. Most of the time it was the culmination of a few of these issues. Another resounding issue that was frequent in competitive markets, was the lack of a brand. Meaning that links coming in rarely included or had mention of the business name or brand. It is my hypothesis that this was a bigger factor than indicated given that brand mentions are natural despite their lack of context relevance.

The Long Awaited Update

Finally a little over a year later Google updated their Penguin Algorithm on October 17 2014. This refresh came as a big relief to a lot of website owners as previous ranks began to return. This seemed to occur whether people applied fixes or not to their website. Which leaves me to believe that everyone grounded out by the previous penguin update was judged with poor links. Due to this judgement they were not able to obtain the rankings they previously had. 
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The Conclusion

So in short I can see where the penguin update on October 4 2013 could have been perceived as a penalty. However we have to ultimately keep in mind that it was an algorithmic update that simply leveraged judgement when determining SERP placement. Because of this some people lost their momentum while others gained during the update. With a refresh the judgement were potentially lifted or lessened resulting in rank returns. 

What do you think the Penguin 3.0 was?
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    Hectick SEO

    I have always had a fascination with search engines and how they work. SEO allows me to interact and impact search engines in a positive way.

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