Introduction: We'd like to start something new in 2013, and do a series of posts on certain topics by our talented team members, from SEO, to Design, to Javascript tricks. We're gonna start off today with a post on SEO by our Director Christopher Mills.
One of our primary service offerings is Search Engine Optimization and during the course of 2012 we were incredibly busy due to a number of amazing updates rolled out by Google. In fact, in the past 10 years, it's quite clear that 2012 saw the most changes implemented by Google and this left many webmasters scrambling.
The most notable changes for 2012 were as follows:
- Penguin Update - Google's Penguin algorithm update focused on links. Webmasters who had bought links or acquired low quality links were being heavily penalized and losing rank in the search engines. Google followed this with the announcement of their disavow tool, which allows webmasters to "block" external low quality links, thus allowing them to clean up their link profile and then request a search engine reinclusion in order to start ranking again. This update has not, in our opinion, hit everyone just yet, so if you have bought links or are acquiring links from low quality sources, we highly recommend you stop immediately.
- Panda Update - Although Google's Panda algorithm update was rolled out during 2011, many updates to the algorithm were rolled out in 2012. The focus of Panda was to decrease authority and credibility of websites that contain poor content, have low quality links pointing to them or lack sound technical SEO foundations.
- EMDs - Exact Match Domains started being penalized and brands were (are) being forced to no longer register keyword specific domains. In other words, a domain such as www.seoservices.co.za might be penalized as the registrant may in fact not be a registered entity with the name of SEO Services.
- As Google evolves, it will become harder to rank by using quick fixes and the most important thing will be diversity - launch SEO campaigns, manage your social media effectively, write excellent copy and provide useful information to your readers.
- Rankings are no longer a Key Performance Indicator, but rather just a consequence of good SEO (Phrased by Trond Lynbø). Focusing on the bottom line (sales/leads) is more important than where a website ranks for a specific keyword or phrase.
- The implementation of schema and usage of authorship will assist in growing trust and authority with Google.
- A fast loading site with a strongly optimized foundation will be crucial.
- Spend time on Google+, it may not be big now, but Google will continue to push it and it will become more and more important for building trust.
- Do not forget mobile!
9 comments
Joan - BlogBizBuzz
January 10, 2013 at 2:29 pmNice opening to 2013 article, plenty going on with Google at the moment as always!
Content in the correct Context. Your design is the packaging for your content. Design is the context in which content is absorbed.
Mobile is imperative and Google + Pages, Hangouts, will I tend to agree, be the place to keep an eye on.
Facebook is moving everything toward mobile and be wary of PC vs Mobile ad charges they have made them way more expensive.
Christopher Mills
January 10, 2013 at 2:36 pmHi Joan, thank you very much for popping in and leaving a comment, I love nothing more than discussing topics around SEO.
The age old saying of “content is king” is such a good one, but for the past year or so I’ve been saying “context is king” – the entry of social media and the likes has definitely moved us more forwards in the way we have to do things, so I agree with you, content in the correct context is spot on.
Google+.. it’s like a bottle of lovely champagne that’s been slightly shaken.. almost ready to pop the cork. That’s my opinion at least, I just see big things happening. Google’s put so much time into preparing itself to compete with Facebook and Twitter, there’s no way they won’t keep releasing incredible addons. I believe that as it becomes more and more integrated into everything they do, it’ll become a natural part of our daily lives online, rather than Facebook or Twitter, which are choices and that’s where the grand difference comes into play.
And good old mobile.. what can we say, it’s growing and growing and growing, ignoring it would be truly ignorant.
What are your thoughts on author markup and the likes? The ever expanding transformation of Google Search Results no longer just being bursts of text, but rather objects that are more visible and more tangible.
James M
January 10, 2013 at 2:46 pmSearch as we have known it is gone. Since Panda come along in 2011 things have changed radically. Social media is now such a dominant force that you can’t ignore it as well as mobile. There is author markup now etc and there is just so much functionality out there on the web that people want to interact with. The best part is, it is so easy to cover all of these angles and be successful if you are willing to put in the time and effort to create something of value that is of high quality.
I have a goal this year to stop with the normal updates across social media and try and be different. There is much you can do and 2013 should be an awesome and exciting year for SEO again. Out with the spam, and in with the new, top quality!
Christopher Mills
January 10, 2013 at 2:53 pmCheers for the comment James!
Social Media is such an interesting one, because Google has been so up and down when it comes to giving value for interactions and such on Facebook and Twitter. Because of Google+, Google naturally wants to put their value into their own product, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook and Twitter count as a very small ranking factor, and that Google+ is heavily weighted in comparison – I guess it’s one of those things that time will show.
2013 – Less posts/updates, more quality posts/updates.
Joan - BlogBizBuzz
January 10, 2013 at 4:30 pmAuthor markup makes it viable for people to actually see who you are, making it easier to recognize people whom you wish to link up with, which is powerful!
Picked up this thread from Twitter… LOL still a beautiful powerful, effective system – Love it!
Christopher Mills
January 10, 2013 at 4:52 pm@Joan – Couldn’t agree more, making the search results that little more personal <3
iMod Digital
January 11, 2013 at 12:39 pmThank you for all the comments everyone!
james
January 15, 2013 at 11:50 amWas an interesting year, with some great lessons learnt… On the whole these changes have been good for the web in general, and Im glad that they came sooner rather than later. Would be interested to hear your take on link building tactics for the year ahead. ps. the page is literally “shaking” when viewed from my iphone.
Christopher Mills
January 21, 2013 at 1:07 pm@James – Thank you for popping in and leaving a comment, it’s nice to connect to you here. Agreed, I think the “cleaning up” of the web is a requirement, there is too much nonsense floating around. Link Building.. such a massive topic, not something I feel I can summarize into this comment box, but I believe that AuthorRank is going to play a big role in terms of flowing Google juice to sites that are connected to a person with a strong online reputation. I also believe that backlinks are going to be heavily monitored by Google and the more and more information Google captures, the harder the process will become. We stopped concentrating on backlinks quite a while ago and we’ve seen better results from less link building than actually building links! That being said, the World Wide Web depends on links, that’s what makes it a “web”, like a spider web, so there is no escaping, I just don’t believe that the process of building links will apply any more, it’ll have to be something more intelligent and organic.
Yes, sorry, we haven’t had a chance to make the site responsive, it’s desktop happy. We put our responsive time into building http://mozcation.imoddigital.com – take a look at that on your iPhone 🙂