The Skills An SEO Needs In 2013

A new Threadwatch post is asking what skills does an SEO need in 2013 to make them a "sharp" SEO?

2013 is a lot different than five years ago when it comes to SEO. Think about what we have much more of now. We have social, deeper localization, Panda, Penguin, EMD, and tons of other Google updates. We have analytics certification, we have content marketing, conversion optimization, and so so much more. It is not just about creating as much content as possible and as many links as possible.

We have a post from 2007 where most the skills we listed were technical skills, like HTML, SEO tool knowledge, etc.

But in today's SEO world, I would assume that the technical skills are a prerequisite. Of course you need to build sites that are search engine friendly, without canonical issues, that don't have duplicate content issues, that have the proper markup throughout the sites including rich snippets. But now you need to know more about analytics, more about social media, more about content marketing, and even more about link bait.

And of course, we have to deal with Panda, Penguin and the other Google algorithms.

Which SEO skills do you need in 2013?

Forum discussion at Threadwatch.

How to Redirect 404 Not Found Page to the Home Page in Blogger

Whenever a person lands on a web page that is either deleted or has no existence Blogger blogs usually display its common 404 not found error message i.e. “Sorry for the inconvenience, the page you are looking for has no existence”. First impression counts more than anything. A person would never desire to display not found error pages to his new visitors. Therefore, it is essential to redirect all 404 not found pages to the home page so users can easily get access to the content that is waiting for them. Since, Blogger do not support PHP, so we have to make use of JavaScript that does the job pretty nicely. Therefore, today in this article, we will learn How to Redirect All 404 Not Found Pages to Homepage in Blogger.

Before, we get on with our tutorial. Let us first discuss the true definition of not found pages. Most of the webmasters would be well aware of it but some beginners might get confused. Consider the following meaningful definition:

• 404 Pages: The 404 not found error message is a form of standard HTTP response code, which indicates the client that the destination which he is looking for, is unable to interact with the server or has no existence. 

• 301 Permanent Redirects:  URL redirection, also known as URL redirecting is a technique that allows a webmaster to forward his one domain to another domain through URL redirection, or making different web page available under many URLs

The Solution:
The solution is pretty much straightforward because there is no rocket science behind this technique. A small chuck of JavaScript coding would be doing the entire job. Consider the following instructions and apply them as mentioned below. 

Go To Blogger >> Settings >> Search Preference. Now from the list of functions Select Custom Not Found Page and paste the following JavaScript coding in the HTML Box. If some folks are using custom 404 error message, than they can add the following code at the end of the coding.

Sorry for the inconvenience, the page you are looking for has no existence.<script type = "text/javascript">
BSPNF_redirect = setTimeout(function() {
location.pathname= "/"
}, 1000);
</script> 

 

• 1000 is the delay time in microseconds. Anyone can change it. Changing the value to Zero (0) would redirect immediately without any delay. 

Save it and that’s it. Now whenever a visitor would hit a 404 page, it would automatically redirect him to your homepage. Note: This technique should be used only if lots of your indexed posts are deleted and they are getting high SERP ranking. 

Multiple Locations? You Need Multiple Phone Numbers In Google Maps

Do you have multiple locations for your business? Are you a doctor that has offices in several locations? Want to be listed in Google Maps?

Well, you would need to have a unique phone number per location to be in accordance with the Google Places guidelines. It reads:

Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.

• Use a local phone number instead of a call center number whenever possible.
• Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or "refer" users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

One business owner wants to do it the "smart" way by having one phone number that is smart enough to know which office to ring. Kind of like how Google Voice markets their product by giving you one number that rings all phones or specific phones based off of time of day or who is calling or other criteria.

A Google Business Help thread has a business owner who wants a centralized number for the business, despite its various locations.

I should note, that Google does practice what it preaches, for the most part. Just check out their locations page.

Anyway, this isn't a new policy, it is just something I spotted in the forums.

Forum discussion at Google Business Help.

Google Places / Local Business Management Update

Last night, Google's Jade Wang announced in the Google Business Help forum that they have made an update to the area businesses can maintain and update their Google Places / Local Listing in Google Maps.

Jade said the changes are around the "verification and editing experience for users managing pages in Google+ (in the Local Business or Place category)."

Specifically what was changed includes:

• better status updates that tell business owners if their edits are pending or rejected
• progress bar to help business owners fill out the most essential information
• can now add categories via Google+
• updated look and feel (tell us what you think!)

Mike shared a screen shot of the new editor:

Forum discussion at Google Business Help.

Top 20 WordPress Plugins For Bloggers in 2013

Plugins can add almost any imaginable functionality to your WordPress blog.

 

With more than 23,000 free and 1000s of premium WordPress plugins available; life of a blogger has become very easy these days.

I’m listing here – My collection of 20 Top WordPress Plugins for bloggers of every niche in 2013. Most of the plugins mentioned here are not only essential for every WordPress bloggers, but also the best in their respective categories like anti-spam, sitemap, security etc.

 

1. Akismet: The one and only plugin every blogger activates just after installing a fresh copy of WordPress for his blog.

This is the plugin, you can’t imagine your blogging career without it. It fights against comment spams in the best possible way.

Basically it moderates all your blog comments via the Akismet Web Service and display the spammy looking comments on your Admin Screen. It’s up to you, to SPAM or UNSPAM them. Undoubtedly the top anti-spam WordPress Plugin for 2013.

 

2. Google XML Sitemaps: Indexing of all your blog posts and pages in major search engines should be the top priority of every blogger.

How can web-readers find your creations if they are not indexed in search engines?

This Plugin exactly do the same as soon as you publish a new post or page, by generating a special XML sitemap and prompting search engine bots to crawl and index your content efficiently.

 

3. Jetpack by WordPress.com: Probably the best plugin you can gift to your WordPress blog.

You can add a number awesome features to your self-hosted WordPress blog, which were available to WordPress.com users only.

Free features like Photon, Infinite Scroll, Mobile Theme, Social Media Sharing, Email Subscription, Jetpack Comments, WordPress.com Stats and Gravatar Hovercards are available under a single roof.

Created by Automattic, the company behind WordPress – is the favorite of almost all WP bloggers.

 

4. All-in-One SEO Pack: My all time favorite SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Plugin for WordPress blog.

These days newbie as well as intermediate bloggers (blogging for 1 to 2 yrs) are getting carried away by the glitters of SEO, and losing ranks due to over-optimization.

And the main reason is – Use of complicated SEO plugins, which displays Keyword Density, Scores etc., and tempts to over-optimize by keyword-stuffing resulting in low quality posts. Instead of concentrating more on the quality of blog post, they are staring more on the digital parameters of these misguiding SEO Plugins.

With 13,451,174 downloads and counting; the simplicity of this WordPress Plugin makes it the BEST in its category.

 

5. WordPress Backup to Dropbox: Backing-up your WordPress blog regularly should be your top priority. Nobody knows, when it may crash or get hacked by a boring kid.

And the Best and Safest way to backup all your data is by using this out of the box Plugin – WordPress Backup to Dropbox.

Compatible with the latest version of WordPress, great support and secured backup makes it the Best Backup WordPress Plugin.

 

6. WP Super Cache: This Plugin makes your WordPress blog Super Fast.

Everybody knows – A fast loading site is how much important from SEO (ranking) as well as user experience point of view.

WP Super Cache produces static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog, and serves them to 99% of your visitors. A must have plugin for blogging success in 2013.

 

7. Better WP Security: One of the top WordPress Security Plugin available, which protects your blog from hackers in a most effective way.

It protects you from all the vulnerabilities like obsolete plugins, software, weak password, and keeps the attacker away from sensitive areas like login, admin etc.

It also stores a regular backups of your WordPress database and helps to get back online faster in case your site get hacked.

 

8. Redirection: 404 Error pages are very common problem of every bloggers, which also a component of Panda algorithm (large number of 404 pages) due to its low quality.

This plugin keeps a track of all your 404 errors and helps you for 301 permanent redirection, easily and effectively.

Very useful plugin, if you are migrating from your old WordPress blog to a new address (new domain).

 

9. Social Media Widget: Social media sharing plays a vital role for your blog like – Higher search engine ranking, traffic and brand building etc.

This Plugin makes your job easy by placing a sidebar widget with Social Media Icons of your choice.

Supports all possible social media networking sites, option to choose your icon size (3 sizes) and package (4 packages), and animation options are noteworthy. You can also choose to use the rel=”nofollow” tag in your links.

 

10. WordPress Poll: Adding a Poll to your WordPress blog is a great way to entertain and engage visitors.

It adds an AJAX Poll System to your blog, which is extremely customizable via templates and CSS Styles. It also supports multiple selection of answers.

I personally use this awesome plugin on my WordPress blog to host polls, every now and then. A top WordPress Plugin in Polling category.

 

11. Slick Social Share Buttons: Sharing your posts and pages with your social media friends and followers are as important as sharing your Home Page (via Social Media Widget).

As social sharing acts as a search engine ranking signal, and helps you to achieve higher ranks in SERPs. Also brings tons of traffic as an act of sharing.

A highly customizable social media WordPress Plugin.

 

12. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam: It adds a CAPTCHA to all your forms, registration, lost password, login etc.

It ensures added security by preventing spams from automated bots. It’s highly configurable and works great with Akismet.

Go for this beautiful CAPTCHA Plugin if you are a security savvy blogger.

 

13. Contact Form 7: A simple yet highly configurable contact form WordPress Plugin for your blog.

With it, you can manage multiple contact forms on your blog, which supports CAPTCHA and AKISMET Spam filtering.

Add this Plugin to your blog for ease of use and better flexibility.

 

14. Subscribe to Comments: An unique way to inform commenters about the subsequent comments on the post.

Bringing commenters back to your blog will increase engagement, loyalty and page views.

A must have WordPress Plugin for every blogger in 2013. It’s one of my favorite, and am using it on my blog.

 

15. WordPress Related Posts: By displaying related posts below your blog post, you can engage your readers for more time, thereby increasing the page-views.

This WordPress Plugin generates a list of related posts with thumbnails in the footer of your content. It’s also mobile-ready.

It show the statistics about Page Views and CTR (click through rate) of related articles on your WordPress dashboard. It includes both desktop and mobile devices.

 

16. WPtouch: Make your WordPress blog mobile-ready.

This easy to use Plugin transforms your WordPress blog theme in to a beautiful mobile theme. It gives a smooth browsing experience on mobile devices like iPhone, iPod touch, Android mobile phones, BlackBerry etc.

With exponential increase of mobile web-readers, expected to surpass the desktop counterpart in 2nd half of 2014, WPtouch is the most popular plugin among WordPress bloggers.

 

17. WP-PageNavi: Unfortunately, most of the WordPress themes don’t come with numeric page navigation. Instead, they show the Previous and Next Post links.

From better user experience, reader engagement and SEO point of view – Numeric Page Navigation is must.

This highly customizable Plugin is essential for every WordPress blog in 2013.

 

18. Transposh WordPress Translation: Make your blog available to the whole world by providing a means of translation to almost 66 languages.

Transposh makes the translation work easy for your blog readers.

Compatible with the latest version of WordPress and with a great support, this is one of the Top WordPress Plugin for bloggers in 2013.

 

19. WP e-Commerce: A top e-Commerce WordPress Plugin to sell products, services and digital downloads to your customers.

Main features of this plugin are – Highly customizable, plenty of integrated payment gateways, option to add discounts and coupons, search engine friendly, and with a great support.

 

20. Smart YouTube Pro: If you are planning Video Blogging, then this WordPress Plugin is for you.

A Professional Video Plugin, which allows you to easily insert videos in to your post, comments and RSS feed.

It also supports Vimeo, Metacafe, Facebook high quality videos, and works great on iPhone and iPad.

With video thumbnails support, numerous customization options and compatibility with HD Video Protocols – This is one of the Top Video WordPress Plugin in its category.

 

Hey just wait – In case you are planning to migrate your old WordPress blog to a new address (Domain) or, simply want to transfer few blog posts to your new blog, then WordPress Importer is the right plugin for you.

It imports Posts, Pages, Comments, Categories, Tags and Custom Fields from your old blog to new one, via a WordPress Export File.

When I tried this plugin for an hands-on experience, the migration of post with comments was extremely smooth. A cool WordPress plugin for sure.

I’m pretty sure – These 21 Top WordPress Plugins for 2013 will make your blog and blogging career Secure, Well-backed-up and Successful.

Webmasters Notice Decline In Google Image Search Traffic After Design Update

Last week, Google updated their image search design citing this is better for webmasters. Webmasters were not convinced, they didn't like that searchers can get the high resolution image directly on Google's web page and not be required to click through to the source of the image to see that high resolution image.

Discussion threads at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums both have webmasters citing they have noticed a significant decrease in traffic from Google Images since the design update.

One webmaster said:

There is minimal traffic from image search on 4 websites i am tracking. The traffic remained is the actual search traffic, nothing from images.

When people get the full resolution image, they have no reason to click to go to the URL.

Others shared some stats over the years showing the decline in traffic over the years from Google Image Search.

One webmaster is asking others to join in and block Google from indexing and ranking their images. Martin from WebmasterWorld, a big time image search guy said:

I think we shouldn't block Googlebot now. First we have to fight and discuss.

Should 'we' fight back? Would it make a difference? Would blocking GoogleBot from your images matter to Google?

How To Optimize YouTube Videos For SEO

Inbound marketing is all about reaching a well-defined audience or prospects with relevant content to establish a relationship with them, improve brand awareness and build trust. Content can include blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, podcasts, videos, etc. Creating awesome content is the foundation of inbound marketing. However, for your content to be useful to your audience, it must get found by search engines.

Drive Engagement with Videos

 

Videos drive engagement on a website and are an important part of content marketing. You can use videos to diversify your content mix, drive traffic to your website and improve user experience. If you are publishing videos on YouTube and other video sites, make sure you optimize them to be found by search engines. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google Search and thus you should be uploading all of your videos to YouTube.

Optimizing YouTube videos to rank well on search engines is all about on-page and off-page SEO. Let’s look at how you should optimize videos on YouTube.

On-Page SEO for YouTube Videos

 

1) Title and Description

Your video title and description should be optimized to rank for the keywords that you are targeting. The video’s title should be catchy (for better click-through rates) and have your target keyword (for better ranking on search engines). Google truncates titles with more than 66 characters in its search. Therefore, be sure to target keywords within the first 66 characters of the title.

The description should also be relevant to the video and optimized for the keyword you are targeting. Do not stuff the description with keywords for ranking purposes. Use the keywords naturally and let them provide value to the description.

You can have a longer description and thus use multiple target keywords. You can also include a link to your website in the description to drive traffic. By default, only a few lines of the description are visible when a video is shown. You therefore want to include your link at the beginning of the description to improve click through rates. Also, have your call-to-actions in the description to increase leads.

2) Tags

For better SEO, include at least 5-7 relevant keywords as tags for your video. When users search for videos on YouTube, related videos are on the side of the main video. These “related” videos are shown based on the relevance of their tags to the tags used for the video being watched. Using tags can generate additional video views and improve traffic to your website.

Off-Page SEO

 

Off-page SEO is all about link building.

3) Inbound Links

Like is the case with website SEO, inbound links are an important aspect when it comes to YouTube video rankings. The easiest way to get an inbound link to your video is to embed it on a website outside YouTube, perhaps on your blog.

You can also share the video on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and bookmarking websites like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. These Web 2.0 sites have huge numbers of users and can drive significant traffic to your video.

Using YouTube Analytics, you can see how many links and embeds your video has accumulated.

4) Views/Popularity

If your video is popular, it will be ranked higher on YouTube. You should therefore upload a quality video and share the link with your email list, in your social media networks, and other places. Videos are ranked on YouTube based on the number of views they have received in the past 24-48 hours. Moreover, having more views can earn your video honorary placement in the “most viewed videos” category.

5) Ratings and Comments

Creating high quality, interesting and educative videos will generate many “likes” and comments. This will help your videos in overall search engine rankings and can lead to many views and links being created to the video. The secret to getting high ratings and comments is to create awesome content that is related to your market. The video can be educative or funny and should be of high quality.

Share the video in your networks and list of subscribers, and encourage them to share it too on social media sites.

Optimizing YouTube videos for SEO is important and can drive immense traffic to your website as well as generate new leads. The above on-page and off-page tips will help your video to be ranked high for the search terms that you are targeting.

Google Panda Update Version #24; 1.2% Of Search Queries Impacted

Google has announced a new Panda refresh, making this version number 24.

This refresh has a noticeable impact 1.2% of English based queries according to Google.

The previous confirmed update was #23 and it impacted 1.3% of English queries on December 21, 2012. Prior to that was a refresh on November 21st that impacted 0.8% of queries. It seems like Google is now rolling out these updates every 4 weeks or so.

Last week there were significant reports of a Google update, which Google denied.

Here are all the releases so far for Panda:

1. Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sep. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)