Google’s Matt Cutts recently let slip that Google’s next update would target sites that were overoptimising for their target keywords – but what does that mean for SEO?

It’s extremely rare for Google to announce their updates in advance, but whether it was intentional or not, Cutts’ candid revelation should be applauded as it gives well-meaning webmasters chance to correct their sites and avoid an overoptimisation penalty.

How Can I Avoid An Overoptimisation Penalty?

The update is expected to target sites that rely on ‘keyword stuffing’ to make their landing pages relevant to a given search query – so if your HP printers page mentions the word ‘HP printers’ 5 times in the title tag and 75 times in your 400 words of on-page content, you might want to rethink your strategy.

Similarly if all your internal links use the same exact match anchor text you’re leaving yourself open. Instead of ‘HP Printers’, try ‘Hewlett Packard printers’ or if it’s from your printers category page, go for simply ‘HP’ instead. Already things are looking more natural.

Won’t I Lose Rankings?

Nobody can ever predict the impact of a Google algorithm change, but while rankings are never update-proof, there’s actually potential to get more traffic thanks to Google’s increased reliance on latent semantic indexing.

If you’re not familiar with this concept, I saw a great example earlier while researching guest post opportunities for a client on pet blogs. An ‘inurl’ search for ‘pets’ and ‘write for us’ brings up the following results:

This is a nifty link building trick btw - you can have that for free.

Notice how Google is emboldening the word ‘dogs’ because it knows it’s relevant to ‘pets’ – this is an example of how Google has come to understand synonyms, rather than robotically returning the exact phrase searched.

However, these results are highly filtered by the inurl search – a simple Google search for ‘pets’ just brings up pages optimised for that specific keyword.

So What Changes Will The Update Bring?

Google’s forthcoming update is expected to bring much more reliance on synonyms to its search results. So while the update WILL penalise sites that overoptimise for exact match keywords, this isn’t the signal for webmasters and SEOs to panic and completely de-optimise their sites – this WILL mean a loss in rankings.

Instead, it’s an opportunity to stop ignoring user experience and make your onsite content much more natural – Google is allowing you to cater to users without sacrificing traffic. In short – it’s no longer a compromise between SEO and user experience, they’re now one and the same thing.

So stop keyword stuffing, optimise for synonyms, write more natural on-page content and you’ll can expect traffic for a greater range of keywords, as well as a more conversion-friendly website.

I tweeted earlier today that it was lazy for bloggers to write about the new version of Twitter every time it happens – which after all, is quite often.

With this in mind, yes there is a new version of Twitter. No, I’m not going to waste a blog post on it – the SEO Preston blog deserves better.

Instead, I’ll be moaning about the many ways Twitter annoys me and outlining the changes that Twitter could make today to improve their service.

1)      Ban the spam

Every time I mention Christmas, I seem to get spammed with @mentions like “do you want an iPhone 4s for Christmas? Click here!” Yes I do, but no I won’t. Add an option to mark a Tweet as spam and ban persistent offenders.

2)      Sort out the search

It might just be because I’m old but every time I search for a user I’m baffled when I’m presented with a load of tweets from people I don’t know. Then I realise I have to click the ‘people’ results… Give me that option before I search – this is supposed to be social media after all!

3)      Filter out retweets

Personally I’d love the option to filter out tweets from people I don’t follow that have been retweeted by people that do. I’m sure my friends would love to filter out SEO-related tweets that I retweet, too.

To one particular Twitter friend: I like you, but Katie Price is no friend of mine – please don’t assume you have to retweet everything she says for my benefit.

4)      Regulate Follow Friday!

This is a personal beef and I’d like to appeal to the nation: Please don’t just use the #FF hashtag and then list your friends. Every. Single. Friday.

If you really think I should follow one or more people, at least take the time to tell me why. Twitter could – nay, must – ban tweets that only feature hashtags and @mentions. No text, no tweet.

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There you go, 4 ways to improve Twitter right now. By the way you can see the aforementioned tweet and all my others by following @mattfielding. (SEO Preston twitter account coming soon!)

All the theory is there – everyone agrees that building links to deep pages in the site is an important step, but it’s something that SEOs seem to overlook when it comes to the crunch, directing every juicy link that becomes available to the homepage.

What Are Deep Links?

Deep links are links to pages lower down in the site structure. The SEO Preston blog sits on webain.co.uk which is a link building site, meaning that any blog post counts as a deep page.

We rank for a number of search terms thanks to the breadth of keywords used across the site in various blog posts. The homepage already has a high authority but it’s impossible to optimise it for every single keyword. By building links to blog posts, the site has pages that rank for a wide range of keywords.

Similarly, CustardMedia.co.uk has a homepage that ranks for ‘Online Marketing Agency’, ‘Digital Media Agency’ and ‘SEO Preston’. But trying to rank it for every keyword on the site would be impossible – how could we hope to rank the same page for SEO Agency, Content Writing, Link Building etc etc etc.

Rank Deep Pages for Relevant Terms

By building links this way we send out indications to Google of which keywords our pages should rank for. Seen a page on your site ranking for the wrong keyword? SEO Preston is quite a straightforward term but there was a time that Custard Media’s PPC page was ranking for the keyword ‘online PR’ instead of the online PR page itself.

Building deep links to both pages using relevant anchor text is a great way to tell Google “you’re indexing the wrong page, bad Google.”

Build a Natural Link Profile

The SEO Preston blog is full of posts advocating a natural link profile. Well guess what, deep links are one of the most natural ways of linking.

In the real world people don’t link to a site’s homepage 100% of the time. They link to category pages, product pages, whichever page it is that contains the vital information that they want to share. In the case of the SEO Preston blog, people link to individual posts because it contains details specific to their area of interest.

Reflecting the way people naturally link is the safest way to avoid manual penalties, and if 90% of your links go to the homepage, you’re risking Google coming down hard on you and losing whatever rankings you’ve acquired.

Get Your Best Pages Indexed

Many people don’t realise that Google operates an indexation cap. Nobody knows the actual number but depending on your domain authority, you may be limited to (for example) 70% of your pages being included in Google’s index.

Deep links can help here. If you have 1,000 pages, build deep links to as many of your priority pages as you can manage toensure your money pages are indexed.

See how many advantages there are to deep linking? Wondering why SEOs still ignore it in favour of constant homepage links? Notice the cheeky link above to our content writing page?

Suddenly Google sees a deep link coming in and takes this as a sign that this page is deemed as useful elsewhere on the internet – increasing the chance of ranking for this keyword and increasing the ‘value’ of a page outside the homepage.

If you’re interested in improving your link building, contact SEO Preston agency Custard Media today

SEO Wizz’s post references SEO blogger Justin Briggs who coined the phrase Freshrank in a recent post. They took this idea and ran with it, producing a great blog post that describes how the SEO community has interpreted the Freshness Update.

The idea is not that the newest websites rank the highest, that just wouldn’t work. Google’s algorithm is far more complex than this and takes into account hundreds of different ranking factors.

Instead, Google have introduced Freshness as a fairly major ranking signal, meaning sites that are constantly updated will stand a much greater chance of ranking for certain keywords. One example is the SEO Preston blog, which despite constantly linking out to CustardMedia.co.uk continues to outrank its parent agency’s site for the keyword ‘SEO Preston’.

Well, this is awkward...

Because the Custard site doesn’t get as much fresh content directly related to ‘SEO Preston’, it can’t rank higher for that keyword under the new algorithm settings.

FreshRank

Another interesting aside to this new update is that it doesn’t just take into account the freshness of the content on the page, but that of the pages that link to it. The theory is that the fresher the content on the page that links to you, the more benefit to your site.

This means that PageRank is no longer the overriding factor behind the value of a link. As poor as PageRank is for indicating the value of a webpage, it’s been the best thing we have to go on for a long time.

Now, according to SEO Wizz, a link from a fresh PR1 page could be more valuable than that from a static PR6 page – at least in the short-term (but to be honest, I’m sick of telling clients that SEO is a long-term game, it’s about time there was some good news for those looking for ‘quick-wins’).

If you’re interested in hearing more about how you can take advantage of the new Freshness update and attract some much-needed FreshRank to your site, contact SEO Preston agency Custard Media today and see how we can freshen up your online marketing campaign.

However, despite the fact that this new ‘Freshness Update’ affects nearly three times as many searches as Panda, the online community hasn’t paid nearly as much attention.

They're lemons, not oranges. Just saying.

This is mainly down to the fact that rather than punishing sites and causing widespread panic which forces site owners into action, the Freshness Update offers a great opportunity to improve SEO rankings – which means the majority of lazy webmasters and SEOs won’t do anything about it.

So what exactly is the Freshness Update all about?

Google’s Freshness Update & SEO

The Freshness Update will improve rankings for:

• Sites with up-to-date information about annual or recurring events
• Pages with fresh information about current events, even if they have no links or are just minutes old.
• Pages containing the latest updates about new products or new information in general

This means that we should no longer see high-ranking results for:

• Last year’s occurrence of a recurring event – for example the FA Cup Final
• Last week’s reports about current news stories, when newer information has been posted today
• Older product information – for example iPhone 4S reviews from the day of release, as long as updated information has been posted since.

As SEOs, this presents opportunities that previously weren’t available to smaller clients or those with little to no domain authority, as long as we’re quick off the mark.

For example, if Apple suddenly announce that the iPad 3 will be released, we’ll be adding a blog post about it to our iPad insurance website, insureipad.co.uk.

As long as we’re ahead of the game, this should mean that we appear highly in the search results quickly, without having to wait weeks for the results of a careful link building process.

If we keep updating the post when new information comes out, we should maintain that ranking in the long term. Or, we could add a new post and repeat our success.

It’s not clear which will be the better strategy, but we’re looking forward to testing it – and even if the high ranking only lasts a short while, the spike in traffic will provide excellent brand exposure, so it’s win-win.

Just a shame most SEOs will be too lazy and/or stuck in their ways to even try it.

Search engines like Google can find these deep pages in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to create a sitemap. This is a page that presents a link to each URL on the site in a clear structure, allowing both users and search engines to navigate the site.

As a search engine crawls the sitemap, it discovers pages that it may not have otherwise seen for a number of technical or navigational reasons. These pages are then indexed and (if the SEO has been done correctly!) start to rank for their target keywords.

Sitemap Structure

Sitemaps should start with the homepage and show a clear hierarchy with regards to the structure of the pages. Using the example above, the sitemap structure should show a number of pages stemming from the homepage, such as ‘winter breaks’, ‘beach holidays’ and ‘UK holidays’.

From here, each of these secondary pages can be split into tertiary pages – to use the ‘winter breaks’ example again, this page can be split into pages such as ‘winter breaks in Europe’, ‘winter breaks in America’ or perhaps ‘ski holidays’. Either way, always the more important pages of your site higher in the sitemap structure to indicate to Google that these are the priority pages.

Structuring a Sitemap for Large Sites

One of the most frustrating things about doing SEO for a large site is that there are plenty of tools that can tell you how many pages Google has indexed on your site, but very few that can tell you which have been left out.

Checking manually would take forever on a site with thousands of pages – one way to do this is to create multiple sitemaps. If each one contains 50 pages, for example, and there are one or two mini-sitemaps with less than 100% indexation, manually checking those would be a much shorter process.

If you’re interested in improving the structure of your website, get in touch with SEO Preston agency Custard Media today.

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SEO Jobs Finder – Find now SEO jobs all over the world.

There was also a fair bit of SEO thrown into the mix as well – after all, no affiliate can hope to make any real money if their site doesn’t rank.

And despite SEO not being the main focus of the conference, there was enough information thrown around to make an excellent post on SEO Preston. Here are the highlights!

2012 is the Year of Mobile Search

It’s fairly obvious that in 2012 every SEO worth his salt will be pushing mobile sites. Some of the statistics being thrown around about mobile search and the mobile phone industry in heneral were frightening:

• There are more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes – someone needs to invent an app to clean teeth!
• 44% of people sleep with our mobile phone within arm’s reach
• 17% of mobile users downloaded a voucher code in Q1 of 2011
• 14% of travel searches in the UK are done on mobile devices
• Of the top 500 retailers in the UK, only 17% have mobile optimised sites – what an opportunity!

If the big companies aren’t optimising for mobile, they’re giving a very poor user experience. The smaller retailers who are smart and act now on mobile search will be able to grab a huge slice of the pie before the big boys catch up.

Google will Move Away from Links

Is Google Plus the new link?

It’s been pretty clear for a while now that Google needs another ranking factor around which to base their algorithm. Links are too easy to game (there’s no way this site should be ranking #1 for ‘seo preston‘, for example) and Google knows it.

Both Pierre Far and Kaspar Szymanski of Google were on hand at the Expo for Q&A sessions and both were pushing Google Plus. They were extremely evasive when it came to links, but the number of times social signals were mentioned makes it fairly obvious which direction Google’s algorithm is going to go in the next couple of years.

SEO Conferences are Fun!

The SEO Preston team had a great couple of days but it was tough going. The sleep deprivation was worth it for the fun factor as well as the mountains of information we gathered that will help improve the SEO and PPC services Custard Media provides for our clients.

There was some excellent food on offer, German beer and snacks from one of the affiliate network’s stands and even free massages. 7ThingsMedia undoubtedly stole the show though, however, with their unique attraction right outside the main expo hall.

Offering Red Bulls and mobile phone charging, it turns out that they’d hooked up a bike to a phone charger so you could recharge your battery with pedal power – or get your colleagues to do it The addition of a green screen to superimpose a background into the photo was a nice touch.

Matt B charging my phone

And while the SEO Preston blog was already being planned out in my head, it was somewhat clouded by alcohol after Matt & I turned up to the official event afterparty to find a free bar!

Stay tuned to the SEO Preston blog for the next few weeks for some great tips from the A4U Expo.

The SEO Preston Guide to Writing Better Blog Posts

Firstly, even when a post reads really well it sometimes doesn’t look fantastic on the page. Try separating the blocks of text with sub-headings and bullet point lists and use images to make the page look more appealing.

Next, make sure you structure your post to engage the reader. Choose a headline that would make you want to click the post to read on. Front-load your content so the first paragraph contains the most important piece of information, then expand on it in the rest of the post.

Don’t try to optimise for every keyword under the sun. Write around the keyword you’re targeting, and write for people, not search engines. Google is very sophisticated these days and can’t be fooled by keyword stuffing.

Finally, and most importantly, write something that you would be interested in reading. If you’ve been given a boring subject, think how you can make it more interesting by offering the reader something. Are you telling them anything they don’t already know? Why should they read your post? What are you offering to the reader?

Top 5 lists, how-to guides and ‘your take’ on the latest news are all ways of making any subject more interesting, rather than just giving a broad overview of something.

Writing the above guide made me realise that the SEO Preston blog hasn’t always been the most aesthetically-pleasing, so with this in mind, here’s a picture of my new business card which arrived this week!

As well as having my new business cards delivered this week I’ve also had my family tree researched, so I wanted to bring everyone’s attention to Ancestry Search Services. If you’re in the Lancashire area and you want to know more about your family tree, follow the link.

Working at an SEO agency this is the question we’re constantly dealing with. Different people will give different advice – some good, some bad.

For example, we attended a business event last night where a room full of non-SEO savvy business owners and management were told that Google is “basically a link-based voting system – whoever has the most links ranks the highest.”

Cue a worried glance exchanged between myself and my Custard Media colleague. To dispense advice like this to a room full of people who know no better just adds to the problem faced by many companies who have picked up bad advice and started down the wrong road. I could easily name unscrupulous SEO Preston companies who would gladly take thousands of pounds per month from unsuspecting businesses who simply asked for as many links as possible to their site.

This always ends in tears for the business in question, who see their rankings suffer and never see a penny back from these agencies.

This is where Custard Media differ. If you want to outrank your competitors, simply follow the guidelines below.

The SEO Preston High Rankings Guide

• Stop spamming your internal pages with anchor text links

For the record, anchor text link building is extremely effective when done correctly. The incorrect way to do it is to build 100% of your links to a particular page using the same exact match anchor text. For example, the Custard Media SEO Preston page (exact match anchor text link alert) ranks well for the keyword ‘SEO Preston’, as does this blog. That’s because we vary the anchor text used when linking, including a lot of brand links (more on that below).

• Strengthen your domain with brand links

When real people build organic links to other sites, they’re generally not concerned with exact match anchor text. To ensure your link profile looks as natural as possible, use brand links like ‘Custard Media’ rather than anchor text links like ‘SEO Agency’ (yes, I did the opposite at the top of the page, but do as I say, not as I do).

This is especially true of links to your homepage. Google likes brands because its users like brands, that’s why Adidas and JJB will rank well for keywords like sportswear (probably, I haven’t looked it up). So let Google see your brand name being used for links and watch the strength of your domain improve.

When this happens, that strength filters down into your internal pages, which in turn climb the rankings for their target keywords.

• Build good content

This isn’t just about keyword-rich content, it’s about content that engages the reader to encourage social links and improves metrics like bounce rate, time spent on your site, number of pages visited etc etc etc. In the post-Panda world, it’s not enough to say ‘my keyword density is good’. Your content has to be good. Write for humans, not search engines, and the rankings will follow.

• Sort out your internal links

Internal links allow search engines and site users to navigate your website – so build internal links to your most important pages. Don’t try to spam the system by linking to every page from every other page – adopt a conservative approach and show Google what your most important pages are. Help Google to help you.

• Look for ‘quick wins’

Even if you’re not ranking #1 for your main keyword, you can often rank for terms that your competitors haven’t even considered. One keyword that Custard Media concentrate on is SEO Preston – coincidentally so does this blog, but don’t read too much into that – and while everyone else is fighting tooth and nail for a slice of the action, we’re quietly ranking #1 and #2 for ‘SEO Agency Preston’.

Find a few of these ‘quick win’, low competition keywords and pretty soon it will outweigh the losses suffered by not ranking right away for your main terms.

Time and space restricts me from going too granular on this, but if you’re trying to outrank your competition, why not contact Custard Media – we’ll even give you a free site audit to let you know where we think you can improve.

In the meantime, keep reading the SEO Preston blog for more handy hints.

We like to think of ourselves as experts in all areas of online marketing, but even we had missed Google’s whispered announcement that EAN numbers were now a mandatory requirement for a product to be listed in Google Shopping.

For the uninitiated, an EAN number is the standard number that appears below a barcode. It stands for European Article Number, has now been renamed to International Article Number and is also known as a UPC (universal product code).

Google originally had these EAN numbers as an optional piece of information within a shopping listing, but recently snuck this little tidbit onto their help pages:

“Note: As of 3 May 2011, unique product identifiers are required for all products submitted to the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, except for custom-made goods. We encourage you to provide unique product identifiers whenever possible.” (source: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161)

Our client had got wind of some second-hand information, but unlike most SEO rumours this one turned out to be correct. Our SEO Preston client was afraid that Google might blacklist their products, and rightly so.

EAN numbers were originally for mobile search. If your Google Base listing had an EAN number, you would appear on shopping results for mobile search. However, now that Google are now making the numbers mandatory information, thousands of businesses will be scrapping around to get their listings up to date.

If this is ringing alarm bells, you can look up EAN numbers here. Alternatively, why not hire Custard Media to take the stress out of optimising your Google Shopping listings? We have experience in this area and specialise in making sure your listings are visible and convert.

If you’re interested in our Google Shopping optimisation service, get in touch today – and keep an eye on the SEO Preston blog for more Google news & updates.