Attention Small Business Owners: SEO Demands Your Involvement

SEO has changed dramatically in the last few years. With massive algorithmic changes from Google launching each season, it can be tough for small business owners to keep up.
Some small business owners are getting SEO fatigue, opting for marketing that is simpler to understand and less risky. Others refuse to believe the rules have really changed and use outdated SEO tactics on the cheap. This, unfortunately, can lead to catastrophic outcomes as Google continues to hammer link networks.

Does SEO By Itself Still Work?

While demand for SEO services remains healthy, those who integrate their marketing strategies are finding the best results. Thirty-eight percent of companies who say their SEO is "highly effective" have pulled SEO and social media together. But this isn't an easy task. And it's a far cry from the straightforward link building activities of years' past.
The integrated SEO strategy of 2014 requires a renewed emphasis on brand and audience. This does not mean that rankings are no longer important. However, it does imply that priorities need to shift to remain competitive in the current SEO landscape.

Inserting the Small Business Brand into SEO

It used to be possible to do SEO in isolation and never mention or inspect the brand. First with on-site tactics, then blog comments, and finally with widgets, infographics, and article marketing. While the purists will insist this wasn't true, many small businesses forced their way onto Page 1 of search engines with non-branded link building tactics. Most agree that this is no longer effective.
Today's top ranking sites have focused on audience optimization, the idea that the attraction of citations, social shares, and backlinks stems from an intimate understanding of what the audience is looking for. Content marketing is the activity that feeds an eager audience high-quality materials, which is why 93 percent of marketers plan to use content marketing in 2014.
A funny thing happens when small businesses produce high-quality content: They want to put their name on it. Once again, Google is ahead of the masses, understanding that branded mentions (even those that don't accompany a backlink) are a signal of legitimacy. This is perhaps why so many SEO professionals insist that press releases help rankings, despite some data to the contrary.

Be Responsive to the SEO Provider

Despite the need for greater brand and social integration, 50 percent of small business still prefer to outsource SEO. However, the nature and frequency of interactions with the vendor will be vastly different in 2014 than in previous years.
To successfully build stronger content marketing, SEO professionals will need more knowledge of the business and their audience, which requires client contact.
As the SEO firm pushes press release activities, the small business needs to provide newsworthy ideas and approve final copy in a timely fashion to maintain a consistent editorial calendar. Business owners need to accept that branded mentions without backlinks are a good thing. This may sound crazy, but some small business owners don't return phone calls from their SEO firm.

Conclusions

As much as small business owners may miss the simplistic link building days, all data indicates that SEO is now a much more complicated activity. While still strongly profitable, SEO in 2014 is integrated with social and PR in ways never before seen.
This has had a strong impact on the demands the SEO firm must place on the small business owner. And to remain successful in the rankings, small businesses must find the time to participate in the process (or at least return phone calls).

Sources : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2331736/Attention-Small-Business-Owners-SEO-Demands-Your-Involvement

So Why Did All Those Movie Sites Lose Google Search Traffic?

In the last month, many webmasters noticed there seemed to be an update to the Google algorithm that hit mid February. On February 14, people were noticing fluctuations in rankings, but some webmasters were reporting that there didn't seem to be any update, including the MozCast, which actually showed the 14th as one of the lowest changing days.
Despite there being different opinions about what's exactly happened on the 14th, it's clear that overall traffic for sites that are in the movie related niche seem to be the ones impacted by the update.
Peter Sciretta (@slashfilm) of Slashfilm, found this very troubling, so he tweeted to Google's Matt Cutts asking why so many movie blogs had been targeted and lost half of their traffic during February.
A few days later Cutts responded, which is unusual because he normally doesn't respond to too many people about specific search traffic issues on his Twitter feed. Cutts apologized for the delayed response and said he was hoping to look into the issue soon.
Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive looked into the issue himself when he saw the tweet and found another movie related site, ScreenRant, that had also seen this traffic dip on the 14th that look nearly identical to the one seen on Slashfilm. It might unusual to see two sites that are in the same industry, yet are unrelated, both get hit at the same time, so it definitely raised flags that something industry-specific going on.
Then, couple days after Cutts tweeted about the Slashfilm issue, this traffic for both Slashfilm and ScreenRant jumped back up to near their previous levels.
In a thorough analysis, Gabe identified multiple areas that he believed could be among the reasons the sites were targeted. This included thin content, affiliate links, content syndication networks on the page, and what he believes to be the primary reason for the traffic dip: embedded videos and trailers that had been subsequently removed for copyright infringement.

When the movie blogs got hit, a number of people in SEO (including myself) started making the connection between YouTube, copyright infringement, and the algo hits. As movie blogs, one could only imagine that there were a lot of posts about movies that contain video clips, trailers, etc. So, I was interested in seeing how much video footage I would come across during my analysis, and how much of that was problematic copyright infringement-wise.
And since we live in an embeddable world (with YouTube and other video networks making it easy to embed video clips on your own website), questions started to arise about how Google could treat the various parties involved in copyright infringement. In other words, who is the source of copyright infringement? And how can you police others SEO-wise that might be part of the problem? What about websites that simply embed public YouTube clips? All good questions, and I was eager to dig in.
It wasn't long before I came across webpages with video clips that had copyright infringement problems. Now, those clips were typically sourced at YouTube or other video networks like Yahoo Video. The great part about YouTube clips that were taken down is that they will literally provide a message in the clip that the user associated with the account has been removed due to copyright problems. That made my analysis easier, to say the least.

The possibility that Google is targeting sites because it simply embedded in these videos is definitely one webmasters should be concerned about. Particularly as we don't know if this algorithm was rolled back only for those specific film sites, and left active for other types of sites.
Is it something that webmasters should be concerned about when they are embedding content that they feel could likely be removed for copyright infringement a later date. Is it safe to embed videos? Should you simply link to it? Or should you have some sort of check in place where someone checks pages every day in case something is been removed?
Until we know more about how this algorithm works, and if it was entirely rolled back, webmasters should err on the side of caution.
Another curious finding from Gabe was that similar sites experienced the opposite, and actually gained traffic. CinemaBlend, for example, saw a dramatic spike on the 14th at the same time Slashfilm and ScreenRant lost theirs. However, CinemaBlend loss traffic a month earlier, and were in recovery mode. But Gabe also discovered that the site seem to be stripped embedded videos on pages where clearly there'd once been a video.
Was this change on the 14th actually Panda? It's unclear if it was Panda related or if it happened to be some other part of the algorithm that can be lumped into it, as Google does algorithmic refreshes that are specifically related to Panda or Penguin.
It was clearly somehow tied into the entertainment and movie industry, and seem to be directly tied to YouTube embedded videos for content that was removed for copyright violation. Clearly, site that just embedded video – when they were not the source of the video – should not be penalized. But for some reason, the sites were. There are many sites that embed videos because it is some hot content, even some of it does get hold of a later date.
You can read the Gabe's full analysis here. It is well worth a read, especially for those in the entertainment industry seeking insight into traffic fluctuations seen over the last month or two.

Sources : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332225/So-Why-Did-All-Those-Movie-Sites-Lose-Google-Search-Traffic

5 Examples of 'Spam Link Building Tactics' Done Right

Link builders have a horrible reputation for chasing fad tactic after fad tactic, looking to build quick and easy links designed to manipulate search engines, scaling their processes as much as possible to build link after link.
This perception spawns from the link building arms race pre-Penguin, which was hard to avoid within SEO. If you were in a competitive niche, odds are your competitors were engaging in questionable link building tactics during this era. Google was lacking any sort of enforcement for bending or even breaking their Webmaster Guidelines, and only had time to punish the most egregious of offenders. The simple fact is that mass link building worked.
Thankfully today Google's algorithms are better at detecting link spam. As Dan Petrovik said they're not great, but good enough.
Unfortunately this has meant that any tactics heavily used for manipulative purposes has officially been put on Google's "do not touch" list. Recently, Matt Cutts of Google even called guest blogging for SEO "done", citing spammy examples.
My argument is that it's when it comes to link building, it's not the tactic that becomes untouchable, it's the application of those tactics.
To demonstrate what I mean, let's look at five different examples of "spam link building tactics", done right:

• Blog comments
• Press Releases
• Reciprocal Linking
• Directories
• Guest Posting

Now obviously none of these tactics should be used to scale a link building campaign. I've seen time and time again the power of even a few well-built links – there's no reason to attempt to scale a campaign into a link mill.
Each of these tactics are valuable tools within a natural, intelligently done link building project, with the end goal of raising your online visibility and creating a diversified backlink profile.

1. Blog Comments

Anyone with any semblance of a blog hates blog comment spam with a passion. What better example low-quality link building than spam blog comments? Truly a dark time for the SEO industry, one that we're still seeing the after-effects of today.
It was a natural enough concept: leave a comment on a post and your name will be linked to your website, as a way to show who you are and where you're coming from.
Then we did what we're all so prone to do – attempted to make our lives easier and scale a link building tactic for max efficiency and ease. We quickly learned that enough of these blog comment links translated to Google ranking power. It wasn't long before the tactic was automated and scaled to the mess we see today.
Here's the ultimate spam comment, and one of my personal favorites:

This kind of automated script is the worst kind of abuse, and is a direct result of scaling a link building tactic, poisoning the Internet well.
Blog comment spam became so bad Google specifically introduced the nofollow tag to attempt to reign in its impact and frequency.
But it doesn't have to be this way, does it? In fact, you can build wonderful online visibility with a link by leaving an intelligent, thoughtful, engaging comment on a blog. Will this online visibility be a result of SEO ranking power? Absolutely not – but if you're a niche website trying to gain visibility, what better way than to engage in your online community with a few thoughtful comments on relevant blog posts.
Check out a few examples:
This comment on 12bottlebar, a cocktail blog:

And this comment on Gardenrant:

The point is that comment links on blogs are natural if you're engaging in your community, which is precisely what you should be doing if you're looking to build your online visibility.
Should you be mass building blog comment links? Or exclusively blog comment links? No. Resoundingly, no.
Are blog comment links a natural portion of a healthy backlink profile? Yes.
And that's the point – if you want to build your online visibility, building a natural backlink profile is still one of the most powerful online activities you can do.
Blog comments can accomplish:

• Increased exposure to new audiences
• Influencer attention and engagement
• Diverse, natural links

Let's check out press releases.

2. Press Releases

In July 2013, Google update their Link Schemes page to include the line:

...and another tactic for online visibility involving links lands squarely on the "do not touch" list, according to the frenzied SEO response.
But looking at the example Google listed, it's clearly spam – all the anchor text is keyword rich, repetitive, and shoehorns in the links.
Beyond this example clearly being spam, was it ever a good idea to create press releases exclusively for links, which were created exclusively for rankings? No – once again that's an example of a manipulative practice, solely meant to manipulate rankings. Something Google clearly wants to devalue if not outright punish.
Can press releases still be done with links? Absolutely. Will those links still add SEO value? It depends. Here's common opinion:

• Links from press release exclusive sites will more than likely be ignored or devalued by Google.
• Clear signs of manipulative tactics in press releases can and will be punished.
• Press releases written for their original purpose – publicity – are more likely to gain traction, and if used by other news organizations the links within will add value.

What's the takeaway? Use press releases as they're supposed to be used naturally: as a publicity tool, for real announcements. Don't do it as a tactic solely to build links, meant to manipulate Google's algorithm – it will be caught and punished.
For an example of an outstanding press release that gained traction check out Raven's upgrade announcement press release. It was even picked up by Yahoo Finance.
Press releases can accomplish:

• Important publicity for company events.
• Journalist and media attention.
• Promote positive attention to your company's developments.

3. Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking is yet another prime example of a natural online process scaled as a link building tactic until it no longer made sense.
The original concept was based around forming a partnership with another website: both websites benefitted from mutual linking, sending traffic back and forth. Originally it was an editorial link the way Google intended – a vote of confidence.
Unfortunately, once again scale ruined another perfectly acceptable manner of linking. Spam pages with hundreds of links out to other "trusted" companies became the norm, artificially boosting SERP rankings.
Google cracked down on reciprocal links in 2005 with update Jagger. Google link schemes now includes excessive use of reciprocal links:

Once again, pay attention to the language – particularly "excessive" and "exclusively". Google absolutely doesn't want you to use manipulative tactics that are only designed to increase your rankings in search results. Instead, you need more natural, business-centric goals when creating such reciprocal links.
Partnering with other websites is a fantastic way to increase your online visibility, and shouldn't be limited to a link building tactic. However, if you're creating a partnership of real value, why wouldn't you pursue the link?
Check out a few pages that highlight the power of partnerships and reciprocal linking:

• California's Department of Parks and Recreation
• Idaho Nonprofit Center's list of Current Nonprofit Members
• First Fruits Foundation
• Moz's Member Perks Page

Nearly every business has online (and offline) partnership opportunities. Partnerships go well beyond just building links, so don't make that your only goal. Think about how you can further your company as a business, and then make sure you're building links as appropriate.
What reciprocal links can accomplish:

• Establish important business relationships
• Further your own authority
• Build trust across the web

4. Directories

Directories actually existed before search engines – they were the original way to find relevant information and trusted websites around the web.
Of course, when Google became the dominant search engine and Google's reliance on links as a ranking signal became well known, directories became much, much more common.
It wasn't long before directories were created solely as link farms, with paid inclusions, lack of theme or relevance, and anyone was allowed to join as long as they've paid. Traffic, users, and business value went out the window – once again the tactic became something meant only to manipulate search results.
Notice a theme yet? Google doesn't want to reward questionable tactics, and certainly wants to punish outright manipulation. Yet for who-knows-what-reason, some SEO folks seem intent to scale link building tactics until the only possible benefit is for search results – clearly against Google's guidelines.
There's respectable ways to pursue directories, which can actually have a positive value to your business, including links. Generally speaking, there are two types of worthwhile directories to pursue:

• Niche specific directories
• Local directories

Niche specific directories still have power – but only if they serve as a branding opportunity (beyond a simple link), and have the opportunity to drive referral traffic. The concept is to create signs of external engagement, which showcases your brand.
The directory needs to be relevant and specific to your industry, user centric, and serve an actual purpose beyond simply influencing search result rankings.
Local directories are extremely important for companies trying to establish or improve their online presence within a community.
There are numerous local directories any business looking to improve their online visibility should consider, including:

• Google Places
• Yelp
• Yahoo Local
• Bing Local
• Yellowpages.com
• Whitepages.com
• Angie's List
• Kudzu
• Bbb.org
• Etc. etc.

It's extremely important to be involved in these local business sites if you're looking to be found by local users, customers, or clients.
These directories/listings still have real power for search, but once again should be treated as a branding opportunity – not to mention as a source of potential customers. Keep a business-first mindset, and acquire links as possible, applicable, and appropriate.
You should attempt to build these link as if Google doesn't exist – or as if Google was staring over your shoulder.

5. Guest Posting

Cutts' latest proclamation to "stick a fork in guest posting" had many an SEO scrambling. I wrote in-depth about it here, but to summarize:

• Guest blogging is more than just an SEO tactic – it has many legitimate roles online tied to marketing, business, authorship, and speech. Google couldn't declare guest blogging "done" if they wanted to.
• Nofollowing all links within a guest post is forcing a complicated issue on the masses who are ill prepared to deal with such technical issues. Even if Google does get widespread adoption, they're compromising natural, editorial links for the sake of removing any potential manipulation.
• There's a world of difference between quality guest blogging and the spam guest blogging that Cutts pointed out.
• Google isn't about to ignore good content simply because it's from a guest contributor – likely they won't ignore the links, either.

So let's take a look at an example of low quality guest blogging:

And the "bio":

What makes this "guest post" bad:

• Poor grammar, word usage, formatting.
• Weak writing, lack of real or new information, regurgitated content.
• Lack of authority, lack of substance.
• The "bio" contains no biographical information, clearly made solely for the keyword anchor link.

The fact is this is clearly a guest post written solely for the link. This is actually a decent example of what happens when you try to scale guest blogging links – there are much more heinous, unreadable examples that involve spun content, irrelevance, stuffed links, and misinformation.
So what does a quality "guest post" look like? Hopefully, you're reading one now.
After having to look back I found that within this post I linked to one other article I wrote for this same publication, using the anchor text "here". Beyond that, I link out about 15 other times to cite an example or provide further information. My bio, which is hosted on my author page, gives specific information about who I am, my company (with a link), and what my company does.
This article was designed not as a form of advertisement for myself or my business, but instead to share a critical philosophy I believe to be important and overlooked: the importance of using diverse, business-focused, link building tactics – even tactics that have been added to Google's "do not use for SEO" list.

Summary

If you want to build a diverse, natural, powerful backlink profile, the simple fact is that you need to build links as if Google doesn't exist. The only way to coexist (and even thrive) with Google is to build the sort of links they value – links with a purpose, links that make sense, and links that add value to your business.
So, the next time you go to build links, remember:

• Don't attempt to scale a fad link building tactic because it's currently "powerful."
• Find a way to build links that add value to the web, the site, their users, and your own business.
• Don't be afraid to build links that traditionally pass little SEO value – don't focus exclusively on these, but don't be afraid to include them as a natural part of your link building activities.
• Please, please, think application – not tactic.

source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2331742/5-Examples-of-Spam-Link-Building-Tactics-Done-Right

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Your SEO Rainy Day Fund

So your site is chugging along. You're feeling happy. Organic visits are through the roof and your converting users into happy customers at well over the standard percentage.
Then one day it happens. You walk in, open your analytics and discover your traffic statistics have fallen off a cliff.
At first you're convinced it's a mistake, but after a few stressful checks you find out no – this is real. Your site is down 25 percent, 30 percent, or maybe even 80 percent!
Days stretch into a week, then weeks. Now you know what happened – you were hit by Google – either manually or algorithmically you aren't sure yet, but you know it happened. Now what?

Maybe you're lucky and the action was manual, so you can go into the manual viewer and see what you did wrong, what pages are affected, and what you need to do to get out of the pits of Mordor. Or maybe it was the result of an algorithmic change, which means you have to figure out which one, or ones, and then wait until the algorithm comes back around to recrawl your site. If it is a Penguin problem, you could be waiting a while.

Could This Kill Your Business?

Penalties come in all shapes and sizes. Some actions only affect a page or two. Some penalties remove main keywords, others sections from your site, and then there is the big daddy of penalties, the homepage removal.
Homepage deindexing is just that, your homepage won't be found for your site name. Now, it may be found for the full domain, so "domain" brings up nothing, but "domain.com" will bring up a listing. In the worst of the worst, neither will bring up anything in the search results.
Homepage removal also usually results in a significant deindexing of your site in general. So where you might have had several hundred pages indexed you now have less than a handful.
So whether it's a page removal, keyword removal, link devaluation, or the harshest homepage dissolution, where does that leave you? For many it means the end of business, as they know it, for some it means the end of business.

What Happens After a Penalty?

If you see you received a penalty and you know you did something against Google's Webmaster Guidelines drop everything and I mean everything you are doing and go fix it the moment you see it.
Sometimes and just sometimes for some things, Google has what I call the "you didn't mean it" or "we all do stupid things sometimes" grace period, meaning anything can happen by accident and if you get your stuff correct fast and I mean hours not days, fast, they might just go ahead and readjust you.
So let's say that didn't work or you didn't notice it until a month or so later. (Yes it happens all the time.) This article isn't about writing reconsideration requests and how to remove links or replace thin content, this is about how you survive if the worst happens.
So the question to you is – if your livelihood relies on the Internet and your website is a significant piece of that income, how will you survive? Where is your SEO rainy day fund?

SEO Rainy Day Fund – What?

As SEO consultants we hear it so often, too often. My site lost X traffic, we need your help, but we have no money and oh yeah it's been like a year. Can you help us?
Well see here is the thing – we want to help you, we feel for you and we often offer you some advice for free, but we have to eat too and so we can't do it for "free", "exchange of services", "shares", or "part of your profits".
So what is a desperate site owner to do? You need an SEO rainy day fund.

How Much Will Recovery Cost You?

Unfortunately, many site owners, usually out of ignorance, or hiring cheap or unethical SEO firms damage themselves unintentionally.
You don't have to have this money tied up in savings, but make sure you have an empty line of credit, savings, or rich uncle. Big firms make sure it is added into your discretionary funds.
If you're a "site that should be in Google" (e.g., a big brand) you are less likely to suffer the huge losses we're talking about here. You have to be very brazen or just not address your issues.

PPC Money

Cost: Variable cost depending on keywords
Do a review of your main money-making key phrases and search terms every six months and find out what it would cost you to survive, if you had to, on the paying for every one of those terms. Now not every term that converts, the ones you need to survive a penalty situation. Also make sure to know if your keywords are seasonally dependent.
Google makes this pretty easy for you in the AdWords Keyword Planner (it's free to use but you must have an AdWords account) and there are other tools out there like SEOquake that will pull in keyword values for you.
Know how much it costs you to keep your company a float if you were to suddenly nose dive off the organic cliff. Now this is just organic terms, don't go and look at every term on your site, you will give yourself a heart attack and we don't want to do that.
Make sure you have access to enough of this money to survive six months. Most people won't even know for one to two months why they lost their traffic, let alone how to recover, then few get their sites back in the first reconsideration request if it is manual or even longer if you have to wait for the algorithm to come around and fix it. Make sure you have six months in reserve.

Site Audit Fees

Costs: $2,000 to $7,000+
When dealing with a penalty situation, cost shouldn't be your determining factor. Not that you should throw cost to the wind, but if you're price shopping instead of expertise shopping, you're setting yourself up to fail.
With the addition of the manual action viewer it would be easy to think that all you have to do is go in, click, voila! There is your penalty and apply the one solution fits all to your site and everything will be all right, but this isn't the case.

• The Manual Action Viewer only shows manual actions, so any cute little animal penalties or algorithmic filters that resemble penalties won't show here.
• Just because it says you have X penalty on X pages, doesn't mean you don't have Y penalty on other Y pages. Only experienced SEO professionals will know how to look through your data to see what is really there.
• This stuff is complicated, without years of expertise as well as keeping up with all the current daily information it is very easy to be led down the wrong path and wind up with empty pockets as you helplessly watch your site drown in a see of red down arrows.

For a standard penalty site Audit with actionable items, meaning things you can do to help your site, a reputable experienced SEO will typically charge between $2,000 to $7,000 (though for enterprise sites it can be much more).
This is just a general figure, some might charge a little less, some a little more and all of it is dependent on your site and its issues. However if you are not prepared to pay this rate, you are not prepared to get yourself out of penalty status. Knowing how all this works and the time it takes to truly delve into your penalty issues is a service you are paying someone to do and it is one that costs money. Be prepared.
Your site audit will outline your issues, the main items you can fix to affect your penalty issues, and possibly your reconsideration documentation if you perform the necessary changes. This, however, is completely subjective and every SEO professional has their own way of doing things, but if you aren't getting actionable items, then what are you paying for?

Additional Costs

Costs: Variable
Unless you have time to wait for your site to get back to full health, you will need additional resources to make any real headway on your penalty issues, especially if you want to make that headway quickly.
The tricky part of a rainy day fund is, what is next? If you play in the world of risky link buys you may never get your site back, do you have the funds to create a new one? If you have a thin content penalty, do you have funds to hire content writers? If your site just got hit with an over-optimization, what will you do to get those links back?
The list is long, but here are a few of the potential costs for particular scenarios. Note: these are general costs and are variable on city, state, country, size type and vertical.

Panda Penalty

Type: Algorithmic or manual for thin (shallow) content.
Solution: All new, unique, original informative content. Sometimes you need to develop all new site architectures and navigations, this can also incur design and development costs depending on how deep your thin content issue runs and the flexibility of your site.
Costs: Expect to pay $5 to $100 a page for freelance and copywriting houses or $25,000 to $60,000 a year for a full-time writer in-house.

Penguin Penalty

Type: Algorithmic.
Solution: Reduce optimization across site, links or anchor text. Sometimes you need to develop all new inbound links, internal URLS, rewritten title tags and content.
Costs: Expect to pay $5-$20 per link acquisition (we aren't talking buying the link, just costs associated with you or your firm getting the new link to your site); or $1,000 to $10,000+ project costs to eliminate the spammy tactics, depending on site size and level of issue; $45,000-$65,000 a year for a junior level SEO in-house who can take care of these tasks for you

Unnatural Links

Solution: Identify bad links, remove bad links, create disavow list, submit request for reconsideration. To remove links coming into your site you will need to contact site owners and ask them to take the link down. This can often take 3 or more "passes" (communications) with the site owner, as they have no incentive to take the time to remove these links. Many will ask for money.
Costs: Expect to pay $1,000 to $5,000 in either consultants or tools to identify/document link issues; $1,000 to $10,000+ project costs to make the removal requests; $500 to $5,000 to create your reconsideration request and supporting documentation; $75,000 to $150,000 a year for a senior to expert level SEO in-house who can take care of these tasks for you; then $5 to $20 (on average) per new link acquisition after you're reincluded in the index (again, just costs associated with you or your firm getting the new link to your site).

All Penalties

• Agency Recovery Plans of any Type: This is where you forgo the a la carte, in-house plan and you purchase retainer services from an SEO agency or firm to help walk you through each and every step of the process at a set fee per month. They do the audit, the recovery plan, help you with the resources, the reconsideration and the site rebuild after reinclusion or what to do if that never happens.
• Monthly Retainer Rate: This will vary widely and by who is helping you, but remember you're paying for experience and experience costs money – often a lot of money. Being able to get a client out of a penalty situation takes skill, and SEO professional who do this are highly sought after and paid well. If someone is willing to do it for cheap and not a friend, lover, or family member, better look elsewhere.
• Giving Up: Getting a New Site: You might decide that recovery is impossible and your only solution is a new website. Even a small site, if done right with proper content and design, is looking at a minimum of $2,000 to $3,000. A large site can hit the seven-figure range.

Penalty Survival Isn't Cheap

Penalty survival is always talked about in terms of how to recover your website, what to do to get back in Google's good graces, but rarely does anyone mention the very real costs of what a penalty can cost your company in hard dollars, for those who are not prepared it can mean the end of the line.
So just like you keep a personal rainy day fund, make sure to have access to an SEO penalty fund. Otherwise, if your site gets in trouble with Google, you might find yourself in the very uncomfortable position of handing out pink slips and sadly closing the doors. And yes we know it was probably unfair, but there is no Google reconsideration request for that.

Source :  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2294184/Your-SEO-Rainy-Day-Fund

E-commerce Holiday SEO Keyword Optimization: 6 Keys to Success

For many retailers and brands, success pivots on holiday sales. A single day during November and December might bring in double or even triple the amount of average same day sales in other months, particularly on traditional retail discount days.
But consumers begin window shopping online well ahead of Thanksgiving, planning gift purchases and often waiting for the right sale on a major household purchase, yet many e-commerce sites don't publish holiday content until November, which is too late for the early birds and for search engines, which can take weeks to add new pages to their index.
The remedy to this problem? Start early and plan smart.

Plan Site Content Around Holiday Calendar and Peak E-commerce Sales Days

Top searches from the last quarter of 2012 show that consumers are shopping for deals and gifts around holiday terms as well as known retail discount days – Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and more recently Free Shipping Day and Green Monday. In order to best capture these potential customers during their research phase, e-commerce sites should plan to have categories and landing pages optimized for related terms. For example:
Consumer Holidays

• Halloween – "Halloween costume ideas"
• Thanksgiving – "Thanksgiving gift basket"
• Christmas or Hanukkah – "Gifts for Dad"
• New Year's – "New Year's champagne flutes"

Retail Top Sales Days

• Black Friday – "Black Friday promotions"
• Cyber Monday – "Cyber Monday flash sales"
• Green Monday – "Christmas gift shipping deadline"
• Free Shipping Day – "Christmas gift free shipping"

2. Conduct Gifting and Holiday Keyword Research

The next step is to drill deeper into category terms. Review last year's organic and paid keywords, as well as on-site search terms for high search count and high conversion terms.
Google Trends and Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool are invaluable sourcing for brainstorming keyword lists and uncovering potential new target terms for holiday 2013 optimization.

A quick review of Google Trends shopping results reveals that "secret santa gifts" was a rising term in Q4 2012. With a little bit of creativity, terms like this can be a great way to expand visibility of the site's holiday gift guides.

3. Identify Products to Include in Site Gift Guides and Categories

With target terms identified, such as "secret santa gifts" or "top gifts for coworkers," what follows should be a review of appropriate products to build out a rich landing page. Gift cards, accessories, novelty items, and personalized products are good bets, in addition to top sellers and items in the range of $25 to $50 (gift averages may vary based on industry).

4. Publish Holiday Pages Early

While waiting for the merchandising team to upload holiday products to these new categories, site owners can get a head start by publishing a landing page with a coming soon banner placeholder to drive interest and give search engines time to index the page ahead of the peak November and December sales season. This tactic also works well to capture early bird holiday shoppers; according to a 2013 Google Consumer Study, 30% of shoppers start their holiday purchase process before Halloween.

5. Optimize Categories and Products With Keywords in Attributes, URL and Copy Blocks

Finally, it's time to apply keyword insights to meta descriptions, title tags and URLs. Pages will hold more SEO value if they also contain paragraph text copy using target terms, as post-Panda search engine optimization is increasingly tied to relevant content.

6. Build Links Through Features in the Blog, Email, Social Properties

Lastly, drive links to holiday pages by highlighting gift categories on the site's blog, in scheduled email blasts, and Facebook, Instagram, and other social properties. Pinterest is particularly suited for promotion of gift content. Consider creating a holiday gift idea pinterest board (optimized with keyword targets in the name and description) and include top identified holiday products, therein driving deep links and eyeballs to the site. This is where creativity counts. With a little luck, a Pinterest board may even index on the first page of search results.
Go ahead, start brainstorming and tipping the marketing team off to this year's clever holiday acquisition strategy!


source : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2294468/E-commerce-Holiday-SEO-Keyword-Optimization-6-Keys-to-Success

Google Webmaster Tools Give Users More Link Data

Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts kicked off SES San Francisco this morning by announcing a change to the way Google Webmaster Tools serves backlinks to users. Now, instead of getting a huge list of backlinks in alphabetical order, they are giving a better representation of all the backlinks.
"If I download my backlinks in Webmaster Tools, my list ends at H. If you are Amazon or eBay, you get 000000a.com to 000000c.com," Cutts said.
When Google is serving 100,000 backlinks in Webmaster Tools, it wasn't that useful to users when they could get so many results from a single domain, and there was no way to sort them.
Shortly after the announcement this morning at SES, Google published a blog post detailing the changes:

Based on feedback from the webmaster community, we're improving how we select these backlinks to give sites a fuller picture of their backlink profile. The most significant improvement you'll see is that most of the links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically. You're also more likely to get example links from different top-level domains (TLDs) as well as from different domain names. The new links you see will still be sorted alphabetically.
Starting soon, when you download your data, you'll notice a much broader, more diverse cross-section of links. Site owners looking for insights into who recommends their content will now have a better overview of those links, and those working on cleaning up any bad linking practices will find it easier to see where to spend their time and effort.

This is a great change for webmasters, especially when people are trying to clean up after receiving a bad backlink warning. This was a problem for larger sites, and especially if someone was cleaning up a site that had thousands of low-quality/spammy backlinks pointing to a site.
The change has already gone live, so you can download a better cross-section of your backlinks in Google Webmaster Central right now.

Source : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2294466/Google-Webmaster-Tools-Give-Users-More-Link-Data

Ten Tips to the Top of Google

Ten years ago, creating a website and getting found in Google wasn't hard to do. Choose a domain. Learn some basic HTML code. Do some keyword research. Create some title tags and meta tags. Write about 250 words. And for the most part, you were done.
With Google's more recent quest for quality, authenticity, authority, and usability, however, many of of the tips that could help get your site to the top of Google 10 years ago might not produce the same results today.
Here are 10 top tips on how to optimize your site for Google's algorithm today and beyond.

1. Learn & Implement Marketing Basics

Start with a plan, not a prayer.
No matter how many buzzwords, new paradigms, disruptive technologies, or innovative inventions are introduced, search engine optimization (SEO) at its most fundamental is marketing. Marketing on the web, with efforts, outcomes, metrics that matter and competition for marketing dollars.
It doesn't matter if it's SEO for a mom and pop store, or a national online retailer. Attacking SEO without a plan is like trying to row a boat with no oars – you might eventually get somewhere, but it won't be where or when you wanted to arrive.
When I hired my first employee at my agency in 2002, the first thing I did was have them read the excellent "Marketing for Dummies" book, that lays out some basic principles. (they have a great marketing cheat sheet for reference)
Answer (at least) these questions:

• What is your expertise?
• What is your differentiation?
• Why should users care?
• Which users (age, locations, interests etc.) should care?
• What is the message and / or media that is going to connect with them?
• Who is your likely competition?
• Why should Google rank you higher than your competition?

Conduct research. Segment your audience. Set realistic goals for your SEO efforts, and then ensure tracking is in place to measure your efforts versus results.
Plan a strategy for your content, including; topics, timelines/editorial calendars, distribution (don't forget PR), and schedules and frequency. The goal is to exist with a "sizzle"; a reason to rank and/or some expertise worthy of interaction.

2. How to Structure Your Site

Plan your site for topical expertise, organized in a well-siloed, easy to navigate structure.
Although the initial plan sounds like a lot (and it can be!) the goal isn't to overwhelm and under-deliver on your marketing plan. There are, though, fundamentals in strategically building and/or organizing your site. Leveraging research into your audience, define the topics where you have expertise and/or differentiation (remember, this is marketing 101).
Research your keywords! Read this article on keyword research.
Structure your site around intent-based topics, ensuring content is siloed and distinct (cross-link to relevant and related topics only). Dividing up your site into relevant content topics gives both users and search engines an easy way to identify your expertise, and relevant topics to rank for.
Unless you're Amazon.com, it's difficult to be an expert at everything. Better to dominate a niche than try to be everything to everyone – at the beginning at least!
BONUS TIP: If you're always fighting with designers developers and marketing managers over how SEO ruins usability, don't despair! Demonstrating successes in SEO often quash the naysayers, so save some gray hair and first shoot for the "least imperfect" site feasible, and then work toward the perfection you desire once you've convinced your detractors of SEO value!

3.Build a Digital Footprint

It's not just about search engines. Embrace traditional marketing, outreach, partnerships, social, guest blogging, inspired mentions, and good old-fashioned relationships.
Apart from SEO is dead (again) chat, the next most popular SEO discussions is always on what SEO should actually be called. "Inbound marketing", "IMS", "Search Science," I've probably heard them all, but few terms capture the essence of what SEO should be doing.
With that in mind, I took it on myself to relabel SEO as "Search Everywhere Optimization" because as SEO folks we are hoping to affect the visibility of our clients sites in many venues on the web, which then creates better visibility in the search results, and more search clicks organically.
With the Search Everywhere mantra, SEO practitioners can finally expand beyond just traditional SEO responsibilities and dabble or partner with PR, social, partnerships, sponsorships and other traditional offline opportunities that get people talking online about brands and their expertise. This includes great events like SES Conference, working with nonprofits and in-store promotions, all of which can fuel the content machine and distribute content and create connections organically: a Digital Footprint.
The goal of a Search Everywhere strategy isn't to replace traditional marketing agencies, however. It's about SEO professionals working with them to ensure that every marketing initiative considers the opportunity of creating share-worthy content that can be placed and amplified online via outreach, social and/or PR channels.
The Digital Footprint you create isn't just for inbound marketing though. Google, as a massive "connections engine," uses connected entities to assess the trust and authority of sites, companies, individuals, and brands (which really encapsulates all three), leading to the earning of greater topic visibility (i.e., relevant rankings/traffic).
NOTE: It's not just about links, it's about citations, connections, mentions and associations. Who you're 'seen' with online matters!

4. Design for Multiple Screens

Create a user-friendly site design that works well and fast across all devices – especially mobile and tablet.
With so much focus on usability, the demise of the desktop browser dominance, and the prevalence of mobile devices, Google's made it very clear that no mobile experience, no love from Google!
What's often forgotten in the race to comply with a scary (for some) Google mandate, is that Google isn't saying every site should be using the same technology, solutions or share the same usability elements. Google understands that some sites need to have a mobile version (this is a site that has it's own URL structure - normally hosted on an m. sub-domain or within a mobile sub-directory or a main site) and some need a responsive website design (RWD) that adapts to the device used to access it.
NOTE: Responsive design isn't a brand new idea, but having (almost) ubiquitous browser support is!
There are various resources that provide the hows and how tos, (even Google gives some good details) but the process must begin with a site review on different devices to see if:

• Different screen sizes present obvious and usable interfaces
• Mobile or tablet users see views customized to their devices
• Interface changes based on platform or device are logical and maintain *some* consistency across platforms
• From an SEO standpoint, best practices are followed so that Google / Bing recognized the difference between device specific sites (if different sites exist) and this mitigates potential duplicate content issues

The Search Agency (full disclosure that I work there!) recently published a Responsive Web Design whitepaper that goes in depth into the pros and cons of the technical aspect of RWD.

5. Conduct Keyword Query Research

Research keyword queries leveraging social, web stats, paid media and industry research to help understand user goals, purchasing cycles, and needs.
As noted in the keyword research article above, traditional keyword research needs to evolved to focus more on the Consumer Decision Journey and less on search volume.
What does this mean?
Search engines are interpreting each search through a lens of intent and context.

• Intent: What does the user mean based on previous searches, their search behavior?
• Context: Where are they? What device are they using?
• Both:
• Machine learning: What do I know about this and similar users who have searched for this term (e.g., click behavior, engagement signals)?
• Connections: If I can identify this user, what information from his connections would help or influence click and / or search behavior?

SEO professionals must understand how these factors influence search results and present the most relevant content for each of the intents and contexts that a user in a specific mindset is experiencing.
For example, a user searching using the query "price of tea" might be looking for an online tea purveyor, spot price in the commodities markets, Starbucks price list, or, if they're standing outside a Teavana store, a comparison of their prices. If you're Teavana, you want to make sure that a "price of tea" pages is optimized around comparisons – mentioning advantages over Starbucks, value proposition of loose leaf tea, and details of how to purchase online (or in the local store), and not commodities!
At the same time search engines improve their abilities to understand search query intent based on behavior and context, users are becoming more sophisticated and expect answers to the search queries they enter.
Google and Bing are both trying serve up the best answers feasible, and to present a quick path-to-answer improved "direct answers" with those answer appearing within the search results themselves.
Keyword query research is a fundamental need for any SEO campaign. Thinking through the lens of a user query, as opposed to just focusing on keyword volume, can help drive more valuable organic traffic.
By connecting user intent to website content, SEO practitioners can enjoy – potentially – a higher level of relevant search engine traffic that both engages and converts more efficiently.

6. Write Just Enough Content

There are no "ideal lengths" of content, only enough to satisfy user intent and the context in which they're querying.
I remember when everyone had their favorite best practice of word count. It was a time of keyword density and keywords meta tag stuffing. They were good days, but they had to come to an end (though some still live in that dismal past!).
Here's the real truth about word counts:
Write just enough and not too much!
There really is no ideal length, but there isan ideal question: "Should this page exist?"
The answer should consider primarily:

• The page's uniqueness (based on other pages on the site).
• Its uniqueness (based on other pages on the web).
• Its value to users (does it answer a question they may have? FYI, analytics is your friend for engagement metrics!).
• Its accessibility from a site's homepage (via clicks).
• The content's ability to provide value with the correct media (image / video / text) so users are potentially inspired to share it!

Nowhere in these criteria does it mention the number of words, the ideal type of media, the density of keywords, or any of the other traditional optimization tactics.
Also, with Google's launch of "long form" modules in the results page, the need not to count words, keywords, paragraphs, and characters is underscored!

7. Tag Your Content (Standard, Social, Schema)

Standard tags such a meta description, title, and header tags are still important for user engagement and core SEO optimization. New and necessary tags, OG for Facebook, Twitter Cards, and schema.org microdata formats are no-brainers.
In the late '90s when I was getting my feet wet in online marketing, there were few techniques and far fewer websites, leading to an ease and confidence in getting almost anything to rank for almost anything. Tags we swore by were titles tags, meta description tag, H tags and, of course, the meta keywords tag. The tools of a trade with few tools.
Fast forward to today and there are many more tags, markup and necessities to enable better crawling, indexing and viability to rank. Through all this, the title tag has remained above most of the bickering, continuing to be the primary clickable link in the search results and (by all consensus) an important part of search engine ranking algorithms.
These "oldies but goodies" - with the exception of the black sheep keywords tag - are still important from a blocking and tackling standpoint, but alone won't fundamentally rocket you to the top 10 of Google. These are the "Standards" which every SEO should understand, and also understand that Google may or may not decide to consider when presenting a result in the SERP.
Social tags are often overlooked, but Open Graph (OG) tags have gained importance (and will continue to) as Facebook's Graph Search continues to build and improve to a usable state (sorry Facebook). Other social tags that look to materially help SEO from a visibility standpoint are the Twitter Cardsthat "gives users greater context and insight into the URLs shared on Twitter, which in turn allows Twitter to send more engaged traffic to your site or app." (*love* social organic traffic!)
Schema Markup is probably the most exciting development over the past few years, and one gaining traction slowly, despite the protocols being backed by the major (and minor) search engines. At its core, schema markup allows search engines to better identify the structure of data, to facilitate more efficient crawling, indexing and presentation of search results. Google offers an excellent Schema Q&A – far more than even this article can contain – and the Schema website gives even more detail to assist in definitions and implementation.

8. Don't Over-Optimize

Overdoing internal anchor text, linking, and excessive footer links. "Too much of a good thing" can end up being a bad thing. Keep it simple and user-focused, especially in-content anchor text links.
Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of SEO folk are also terrible online marketers, still living in the past. It doesn't take much to see the efforts Google is putting into mitigating webspam, meaning many of the tactics we used to love and use are now obsolete.
It still pains my colleagues and I when we come upon a newly updated site that displays many SEO tactics that belong in the same era as Webkinz and High School Musical (the original movie), not least of which is over-optimization and massive challenges around internal linking.
Today's optimization should be much more around creating a user-friendly experience, with internal linking and content that benefits users first and the most discerning of users, Google, second.
Footers with massive link counts aren't always beneficial on every page if top or in-page navigation provides a better experience, and definitely spammy-looking keyword rich anchor text all over a page looks... well spammy.

9. Optimize the User Experience

Post-click engagement sends the signals that your site rocks, not only do users provide metrics through trackable usage, also through social signals - shares, likes and +1s
We used to look at site traffic, cheer when it went up and cry when it went down. We used to treat users as faceless entities that proved our worth as SEOs and when we boosted the key metric of "organic site visits" we expected our clients to bow down before us and call us geniuses.
The user was a metric to a means, rather than a real "metric that mattered" and for this SEOs suffered. They suffered because the rest of the marketing world scoffed and eventually asked us to justify our existance. our fees and the time it took to get nominal results.
And then "eureka" some savvy SEOs realized we weren't all that difeferent from paid search, and display, and email marketing, we could leverage data to better understand the user and to ensure they did what we wanted them to do once they arrived at our sites, and we made sure we attracted not just more, but "more better" traffic.
And then we became user-cetric in our marketing approach. And so did Google.
Now... we need to look at what people do once they get to our site, and we need to optimize their experience, not just because Google demands a speedy site, user-friendly layouts, less 'dead end' 404s and onsite engagement, but because both Bing and Google say the users experience, their bounce back to the SERPs, their consistent times of engagement, and – for those trackable users – their behavior during a site session matter!
SEO doesn't stop at the visit any longer, thinking beyond the click has become the norm, inspiring shares, mentions, interaction and satisfaction *is* a new (and welcome) paradigm of recent SEO strategies.

10. Keep Link Building Practices Natural

Create and seed great content in venues where it makes sense. If it is truly great, and you bolster its discoverability and visibility through social media mentions, you may just inspire links, and more importantly relevant traffic!

"The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change." – Heraclitus

Savvy SEO practitioners know change will come, the challenge is both in planning for when and for what!
With the recent changes to link strategies, e.g. links from guest blogs, widget links and press release linking, SEOs are going to have to adapt to less rich anchor text, user focused linking, and nofollows in many cases.
"Natural" link building doesn't appear just a Google recommendation anymore, with the introduction of Penguin penalties and frequent manual reviews, Google the 'link police' is a 2013 reality.
Though the best advice often repeated by Google's Matt Cutt's is "create great content", SEO still needs to rely on outreach to introduce brands to relevant websites in the hope of negotiating content placements, partnerships, sponsorships or story mentions to expand digital footprints and potential traffic sources.
In this sense, the question becomes "should I still include links as part of content distribution or partnerships" and the answer is probably "sure", as long as links or anchor text traditionally designed to manipulate PageRank are nofollowed.

3 Bonus Tips

11. Build a Brand

Do this online and offline through associations, connections, citations, and engagement. And most of all... be special!
Since Google's Vince update, Google's preoccupation with brands has them flying higher in the SERP
What is an online brand?
An entity that inspires, creates or demonstrates an expertise in certain topics so that other trust entities quote them, link to them, discuss them, interact with them, and show trust in their topic expertise.
A brand online can even be "created" by Google itself, through the association created by results in the top three positions on Google's paid and organic results.

12. Use Authorship to Build Your Personal Brand (Authority)

Claim and master Google+ through their relatively easy process and correct markup of your site.
Brands are not unique just to companies, just as expertise is not unique to a few industry figureheads.
Personal brands – individuals that demonstrate expertise, trust and interaction – are also favored by search engines, with Google especially looking at the web as a web of people, connected and interacting with brands (which could be other people) they trust.
The connections created between brands, their expert content, and their 'trusters,' is really key to both providing relevant trusted results, and personalizing those results so that individuals see additional trust signals in the search results specific to them.
Authorship, Google's content verification and content association methodology ensures that connections are recognized, organized and associated with authored articles, comments, opinions (+1s), and other content attributed to specific writers(s).
Why bother? Authorship manifests in author's photos appearing alongside content results in the search results – improving click-through rates significantly!

13. Be Social

Claim your social profiles, connect on networks relevant to your audience, and remember no platform is, or should be, an island!
Your social footprint consists of a few components:

• Claiming your relevant social profiles
• Optimizing your profiles for your topic expertise / location expertise
• Posting interesting content or relevant information, content and form factor for each platform / audience
• Connecting with your optimal audience
• Interacting with your audience
• Amplifying interactions (ensuring no platform is an island)

Social interaction and amplification has progressively become more important for SEO given the ability to deploy or promote shareable content to both "connected" and "potential" audiences, empowering both groups to engage and generate trust and topic association signals, links, citations and mentions that search engines can recognize, catalog and leverage to improve both the personalization and relevance of results.
Recent patents and experience alludes to sentiment being a factor search engines are considering as additional indicators of trust and brand... ensuring positive mentions, reviews and interactions are available, crawlable and indexable may eventually be a key component of trust signals for ranking! Engage!

Final Thoughts

There's probably another 50+ tips to get yourself to the top of the Google search results, but we'll stop here. But don't let that stop you commenting below if there's some important tips that you feel are obviously missing. Check back on Search Engine Watch where I and others will be expanding on this list of SEO tips to the top!


source : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2066301/Ten-Tips-to-the-Top-of-Google

What is 'Pure Spam'? 10 Examples From Google

Like a hot dog, one does not often associate the word "pure" with "spam". In fact, one is generally best not to think of what it's made of – unless you're Google, of course.
Since 0 AG (After Google), Google has had to contend with pesky webmasters and SEO practitioners looking for ways to rank sites as highly as possible as quickly as possible, often regardless of what that actually did to the search results.
Any decade-plus veteran of SEO will remember the "Wild West" days of SEO and, if they were trying to stick to pure white hat strategies, their frustration.
For years Google told the SEO community that buying links was bad, content scraping and spinning was trouble, blatant link schemes would get you penalized, and that you should focus on good content that people will want to link to naturally.
The problem? The algorithm they had couldn't compete with what are now deemed "unethical practices". Webmasters and SEO professionals who "cheated the system" tended to do well.
Fortunately, for those who want to actually create a good user experience (including Google), they've figured a lot out over the past few years.
To illustrate the point they launched a page earlier this year on fighting spam that actually shows real-time examples of pages they're kicking from the index for being "pure spam". I've got to admit, the first time I heard about this manual Google spam action I half chuckled and thought, "Well that's a pretty bold explanation."
The question then becomes, "What does this mean?" The this end let's take a look at a few of the real-time examples of pure spam that Google was displaying (as of the writing of this article) and think about what they might have seen there that qualified it as "pure spam".

10 Examples Of 'Pure Spam'

On the page Google notes of those listed, "These pages are examples of 'pure spam.' They appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking and scraping content from other websites."
Remember, this is a manual action and so a human actually looked at the following pages and deemed them to fit this criteria. Here is what they're seeing:
Example 1: NorthCarolinaPhoneLookup.com

This page, with a copyright date of 2008, is a brief blurb of repetitive content at the top with a simple list of numbers below in hopes of ranking for queries for those numbers. For anyone who's ever looked up a phone number you'll know the frustration caused by such sites and why Google wants them gone.
The service isn't unique to this site and the site itself is a duplication of other sites that are likely to be hit soon. Simply substitute the words "north carolina" in the into text for any other state and run a search for it and you'll see what I mean.
Example 2: Cuzb.com

One need only read the content to understand why this page was marked as "pure spam". The site is English but the writer clearly is not. In looking for other pages from the site in the index, this penalty extended across the whole domain. Thanks, Google.
Example 3: QuickPayDay.Tripod.co.uk

I had to include this one simply because it was a bit of a head scratcher. The question isn't whether it's spam or not (one can't argue that it's thin on content) but rather how it even got to the point of a manual review. Sure it's got some spammy links but even the archives couldn't find content so one might think basic SEO factors would take care of it.
Example 4: DMMmovie.biz

To determine why this site was classified as "pure spam" simply read the following sentence with me:

"Gru is a modified man. No more a super-villain who needs to be the baddest of the bad people, he's now trained, with his three lovely children, his very funny gobbledygook discussing, Tic-Tac-looking minions, a creepy dog and an wicked researcher associate (Russell Brand) whose concentrate is now creating jellies and jellies."

Enough said.
Example 5: AntiquesHeaven.info

Aside from the only purpose of this site being to act as an affiliate site generating revenue by pushing people to eBay and Amazon, the content near the bottom of the page is copied word-for-word from Yahoo Answers.
Oh, and useless keyword stuffing such as:

"great north western telegraph company glass insulatororiental fish bowl tablesdresden lampsgeneral fireproofing co wood file cabinetart nouveau alabaster bustprimitive folk".

Example 6: PacificRimWatch.MetroBlog.com

I'm not sure what's in the water they drink while building sites that sell illegal copies of movies or maybe more, what the people who would purchase from this site sprinkled on their morning oatmeal but let's read the following sentence together:

"Brendon has been displaying Off-shore Rim upset love on this computing machine relating to weeks currently. It's safe to mention this individual desires it."

Clearly not human written and if auto-translated and not spun, they're using the worst translation tool on the planet.
And it doesn't help their case that the site language setting is Spanish as is most of the navigation.
Example 7: DC.CCJ.in.ua

There are two very clear reasons why this page has been deemed "pure spam" and we're going to even ignore the fact that all the images are broken:

• They've taken content directly from Facebook – and right in the first paragraph as well. 
• The horrible spun content (for example: "Facebook password finder.The Stages of the of the certain stage. It is the smell rumour.").

"Pure spam"? Definitely.
Example 8: CouponCentral101.com

Ah, coupon sites. Admittedly, my first instinct as I saw this site was that the "pure spam" classification was due tot he fact that pretty much every link on the page is an external link to an ad site.
But then I realized that the copy on the page was taken directly from an Ezine article. How do we know it wasn't duplicated on Ezine after? The archives show us that on May 29, 2012 the site had different content and the article was posted on February 20, 2012.
So – thin, no value content, and even the content that is there is duplicated.
Example 9: HowWeightManagement.com

First look it seems that, while a little heavy-handed with the ads and footer links, not "pure spam". That is, until you read the content which contains such gems as:

"the benefits calorie burning is the only benefit of Pure Barre. According to Pure Barre, the technology to protect your joints, because it does not involve any rebound or jump. Each followed by stretching create long bulk, muscle exercise intensity part."

Thank you Google for removing this rubbish.
Example 10: RkwVik43.biz

The note I've had to add to the picture probably says enough. Google isn't a fan of content that's difficult to read. And if you read the text you'll see it varies from Minecraft to pay stubs to pubic hair. Not exactly tied together by relevancy.
There is a full litany of issues ranging from missing images (and by images I mean all of them), text such as:

"... Minecraft Force Op 1.5.2 which is finally released today and using that you can. O maior servidor de Minecraft online do mundo.Mais de 15 servidores download media de 4 mil jogadores ..."

Switching from English to Portuguese mid-paragraph isn't particularly helpful outside of a language site.
On top of that the site's content is extremely poor quality (even outside of the mix of language) and there is no focus. In short, the site would be a disaster for users.

So What is "Pure Spam"?

We all have our own definition of "pure spam" but what's more important is understanding what Google means by it. At this time and after reviewing literally hundreds of example of what they consider it to be, the focus of this penalty seems to rest on content.
There doesn't appear to be a crossover into links in what they define "pure spam" to be. Websites with this penalty should focus their attention on their content and user experience.
With that said, websites prone to a penalty such as this one likely have serious issues in their backlink profiles as well. I'm not suggesting that webmasters ignore reviewing their links in the event of this penalty, simply that links don't appear to be a major tying factor in the sites receiving it or even how Google themselves define the penalty. Best not to wait for an "unnatural links" warning however.

Additional Reading

I pondered writing a section of this article on what to do if you receive this penalty. Heck, on the same page they list the sites being penalized they also list a number of spam strategies they're going after so it's pretty clear what's covered.
That said, I couldn't cover the subject better that fellow SEW writer Kristine Schachinger did in her article Pure Spam: What Are Google Penalties & What to Do to Recover. Well written and covers the recovery subject point-by-point.

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Source : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2286153/What-is-Pure-Spam-10-Examples-From-Google

Link Building A-Z Guide – Definitions & Terms

When those of us in search marketing talk and write about link building, we tend to use terms that we think are very commonly understood. We bandy around phrases like "CTR on page 1 of the SERPs is better than on page 2" and "god help me if my content gets deindexed."
However, for the new guys and gals out there (and that includes people who are both learning about building links and clients who seek link services) this link building guide will help define and explain some of the more common link building terms, from A to Z.

A – AC Rank, Actual PageRank, Anchor Text

AC Rank [A Citation Rank]
Majestic SEO's measure of a page's importance, on a scale of 0 to 10. It can be considered an alternative to Google's PageRank and is used in various link tool programs. The AC Rank stands for A Citation Rank.
The Actual PageRank
Google's value for your page, and it's not what you see on a tool or your toolbar, as that isn't updated frequently enough to reflect the true value.
Anchor text
The content inside of the anchor element ( < a>anchor text < /a>) and is designed to give you an idea of what the content you are pointing to is about. The anchor element contains an href attribute where the target of the link is designated. The anchor element is, many times, called an anchor tag.

B – Backlink Profile, Bait, Bing, Blekko, Blog Network, Broken Links

Backlink profile
A term used to describe the links coming into a site from sources other than the site itself.
Bait [link bait]
Content that is specifically designed in order to naturally attract links.
Bing
The most popular alternative to Google's search engine at the current time, owned by Microsoft.
Blekko
Also a great alternative to Google and prides itself on being a spam-free search engine. It has some great features that can help you when link building.
Blog networks
Exactly what they sound like: networked blogs. Their importance in link building has recently been compromised as several high-profile and large networks (e.g., BuildMyRank) have been devalued.
Broken link building
The process of finding links that hit 404 pages on other sites, contacting the sites with those links, and asking to have the link pointed to your own resource.

C – Content, Conversion, CTR

Content
The subject matter, in text and images, of your site and its pages. Content is also used to describe anything that your brand produces, whether it's a guest post on another site, an article that you distribute, a press release, or an infographic.
Conversion
A term used to describe an event where a user performs a certain action that is valuable to you as a site owner. Some webmasters view a contact email as a conversion, for example, while others simply view an actual sale as one.
CTR [click through rate]
A term associated with PPC but becoming more popular in the general SEO vernacular as some speculate that it may become more important in ranking. Your CTR is the number of times your listing is shown (triggered by a search and referred to as impressions with PPC) divided by the number of times it's clicked upon, calculated as a percentage.

D – Deep Link Ratio, Deindexed, Directories, Drain Rank, Disavow Links

Deep link ratio
The percentage of links that go to your subpages vs. just your home page. Many different views abound about what number is ideal.
Deindexed
Refers to being thrown out of a search engine and removed from their database.
Directories
One of the most consistent ways that people have built links throughout the years. There are paid and free versions, directories that accept all submissions and many that are quite picky about what they'll accept, and while they have fallen out of fashion somewhat recently, they are still a valid source of traffic.
Disavow Links Tool
Use this to tell Google or Bing which links you want them to ignore in your backlink profile. This tool came about after an outcry from webmasters who were punished for incoming links that hurt them but that they could not control.
Drain rank
This refers to the idea that linking out to other sites drains your PageRank.

E – Equity, External Link

Equity
The group of links pointing to your site at a point in time.
External links
Links that go from your site to someone else's site. Some people nofollow them in order to prevent them from receiving any link juice.

F – Followed Link, Footer Link, Footprint

Followed links
Links that are allowed to send link juice to their targets. For ranking purposes, these are the kind of links that you want. A link without a rel=nofollow is a followed link.
Footer links
Links that appear in the footer of a site, generally on every page. These were originally so abused that many SEOs now consider a footer link to be very poor. However, there are still legitimate footer links.
Footprints
Ways of identifying patterns that you're using to build links. For example, if 75 percent of your links come from non-U.S.-hosted sites and are all on blogrolls, that's a big footprint. A "natural" backlink profile should not have many obvious footprints due to its organic nature, therefore having easily identifiable footprints is a potential bad sign for your site. However, you can have a good footprint too (such as if you had a lot of great and authoritative links from respected news sources because your site was constantly being cited there.)

G – Google, Guest Posting, Graph

Google
So powerful, it's now a verb. No matter what anyone says, almost all of us market to what Google wants.
Graph [link graph]
Generally speaking, the link graph is a representation of links for sites. It can be thought of as being the "normal" for a niche of sites but may also refer to links for a certain market sector/keyword/locality/etc. You can use a link graph for competitive research to define what everyone else is doing and see where you stand in relation to that. A complicated thing to define, as it's not a discrete concept.
Guest posting
A popular way of building links and creating new content. Many sites actively recruit for new guest posters and some are amenable to the idea when contacted. The whole idea of a guest post is to raise exposure for a brand on another site, but it's quickly becoming a spammy and abused method. However, when done correctly, guest posts can bring you some fantastic traffic.

H – Hashtag, Hidden Link, Href

Hashtags
Widely used on social network platforms in order to associate a tweet/comment with something. They begin with #. On Twitter, hashtags are used to help trend certain ideas. For link building purposes, hashtag searches on Twitter are useful for finding good potential link targets.
Hidden link
A link that is intentionally coded in order to not appear as a link. It can be hidden using a text color that is the same as the background, placed inside an irrelevant image, font size 0, etc. These are viewed as manipulative and deceptive and can cause Google to remove your site from their index.
href
An HTML attribute that lists the target of a link. An example is <a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools </a>.

I – Image Link, Internal Link, Inbound Link

Image link
An image that is linked to a target. Image links are part of a natural link profile and can pass link juice, but they do not include anchor text as regular text links do. Instead, they use an alt text (which is also used by screenreaders) to give information about the link target.
Inbound links
Links coming to your site from a site other than your own. The anchor text of an inbound link supposedly tells the search engines what your page is about, thus helping you rank for that term.
Internal Link
A link from one page of your site to another page on your site.

J – Juice

Juice
A term used to describe the benefit received from a link, also referred to as link juice.

K – Keyword

Keywords
Words or phrases for which you want to rank in the search engines. They should be present in your copy and in links pointing to your site.

L – Link Profile

Link profile
The collective group of sites that link to you.

M – MozRank

MozRank
A method of measuring the link popularity of a webpage by SEO software provider Moz. Becoming a more important metric by the day, almost akin to PageRank.

N – Nofollowed Link

nofollowed link
These are indicated by placing a rel="nofollow" into the link code. A nofollow is designed to tell Google that the link should not pass value to the target. Nofollows are also used internally for PageRank sculpting and to indicate that a link is sponsored/paid. Nofollow links are not good for ranking purposes but they can be good for traffic.

O – Outbound Linking

Outbound linking
The practice of linking from your site to another. Many people nofollow these links in an effort to conserve link juice, but that practice is becoming a bit more frowned upon recently.

P – PageRank, Paid Links, Panda, Penguin

PageRank
Google's measure of a page's importance. There's a difference in what you can see as your PageRank and what Google thinks it is.
Paid links
Refers to links that are bought and placed on a website, with the intention of helping the buyer's website rank better. When not indicated as such, are a violation of Google's guidelines and are a risky tactic. Paid links can be problematic both for the site selling them and for the webmaster buying them as both practices can get you penalized. If a link has been purchased, it should be indicated as such with a nofollow according to Google.
Panda
A Google algorithm update that can make grown men cry. It first struck fear into our hearts in February 2011 and was an effort to force higher quality sites higher up in the SERPs. After the first update, we've seen several more. There's way, way too much to go into here but you can read all the SEW articles about it here.
Penguin
A new search algorithm designed to detect, and boot out, spam. Like Panda, it made us cry and several sites were "accidentally" affected by it, so badly that there's actually a form to fill out if you think you're one of those accidental cases. Again, there's too much to go into so read about it here.

Q – Query

Query
Simply a question that you ask a search engine or a database, whether or not it's in the form of a question. We refer to queries in terms of how many times someone searches for a keyphrase, and in manners related to seeing where you rank in an engine.

R – Rank, Reciprocal Links, Referrer, Rel, Robots, Rot

Rank
Where you show up on the SERPs.
Reciprocal linking
The process of linking to someone who links to you. It's a common way of requesting a link (i.e., I'll link to you if you will link to me).
Referrer
In link terms, a referrer is something that sent a visitor to your site. That could be a search engine or a link from a website. It's the previous place a user was before they hit your site.
Rel
An element that gives the role of a link. Current uses critical for link building are to say whether a link should be followed (the default) or nofollowed (rel=nofollow).
Robots
Search engine bots, but robots can be slang for the robots.txt file, which gives instructions to engines about what to do with your site. If you don't want certain pages to be indexed, you block them in the robots file. There are also meta robots tags ( < META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">) A robots.txt file is also found at url.com/robots.txt.
Rot
A term used to describe what happens when there are links pointing to pages that are no longer available and not properly redirected or handled.

S – SERPs, Sitewides, Social Signals, Spam

SERPs [search engine results pages]
The pages Google, Bing, and others show you after you've performed a search.
Sitewide links
Links that are on every page of a site. You commonly see them in sidebars and footers, and while they once were a pretty easy way to get good rankings quickly, they're no longer viewed so positively. You do tend to find them in almost any backlink profile though, as they are part of a natural profile.
Social signals
Signs that your site/post/article is doing well socially, on the main social network platforms. Social signals are thought to be an ever-increasing method of measuring importance in the search engines and may become a bigger part of algorithms.
Spam
Jokingly referred to as being "sites positioned above mine", but is defined as being anything that clutters the web and makes for a poor user experience. Spam links are considered to be links that are irrelevant and low-quality but pursued simply to improve rankings.

T – Toolbar Pagerank, Twitter

Toolbar PageRank [TBPR]
The number from 0 to 10 that you can see that reflects the most recently updated idea of how important your site is to Google. It is not Google's true value of your site.
Twitter
A social media platform where users communicate through 140 characters or less. It's becoming more and more useful for finding good information as it happens.

U - Underline, Unnatural Links, URL

Underline
To signify most links, the linked keywords will be underlined. Links are commonly coded with underlining; style manipulations that do not underline a link can be considered to be a hidden link.
Unnatural link warnings 
Like lice, nobody wants to see them. They are messages received in Google's Webmaster Tools that indicate that some potentially unnatural links have been detected for your site.
URL [Uniform Resource Locator]
URLs have several elements that are important for SEO purposes. The domain name can give clues about the theme of your site and your brand and should be chosen carefully, as overly-optimized domain names were supposedly downgraded in the EMD update. File names should also be named carefully so that your URLs are SEO-friendly.

V – Velocity

Velocity
Your link growth speed. It can be measured with Link Research Tools.

W – Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools
Top search engines Google and Bing offer a free platform that you can use to keep an eye on your site. It can be a first line of defense when you notice any negative changes with rankings and traffic.

X – Xenu

Xenu's Link Sleuth
One of those old-school things that anyone who's been involved in SEO for more than a few years probably loves. Xenu's Link Sleuth identifies broken links on sites.

Y – Yahoo

Yahoo
The other search engine. Many link builders will refer to being listed in the Yahoo Directory, which used to be one of those things that we all recommended. Today, Bing provides the search results you see on Yahoo.

Z – Zzzzz

Zzzzz
Sleep, which you definitely need if you're going to link build. It's tiring work!

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Source :  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172916/Link-Building-A-Z-Guide-Definitions-Terms