In an online discussion, a webmaster complained that the rankings of his website fluctuate much on Google's result page. Google's John Mueller said that this was normal: "Fluctuations like this can be normal - the algorithms don't stand still and use many signals to review & determine the relevance of pages & sites. Looking at it just now, it seems that [your rankings] may just have come back again :). That said, working to improve the overall quality of a website is always a good thing. Read the full article...

Getting high rankings hasn't become easier with Google's recent updates. Fortunately, it is still possible to get high rankings if you do the right things. Depending on your target keywords, you have to do different things to get high rankings. 1. Long keywords: on-page optimization has a high impact If you target long keywords with little competition, the value of on-page optimization is very high: Say you want to be listed for the search term "the knoxville ornithologists club Read the full article...

In an online discussion, a webmaster complained that his website didn't get its rankings back after using the disavow links file. Google's John Mueller answered that it takes some time until Google trusts a website that spammed in the past: "Looking at your site's history, it looks like you've done quite a bit for quite some time, and it looks like our algorithms have picked up on that too. So while resolving the manual action is a good way to start, you need to keep in mind that it can Read the full article...

In a video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts explained that they dropped the 100 links per page limit. This limit was mentioned in Google's technical guidelines but they removed that limitation. For example, a page like Techmeme.com has many links but Google does not penalize the site because the website and the links are okay. A page can have too many links Matt Cutts also said that Google reserves the right to take action on a site if a website looks spammy and has many links on a single Read the full article...

In a new video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts says that you can use Google's disavow links tool even if your website doesn't have a manual action penalty. For example, you could use the disavow links tool in these circumstances: A website with which you don't want to be associated links to your site. A website doesn't want to remove the links to your site. You think that someone is hurting your site with bad links or a link bomb attack. You think that someone might submit a spam report Read the full article...

If your business is in an industry that's not 'sexy', you might think that it is impossible to get backlinks to your website. Of course, it is much easier to get backlinks if there are a lot of blogs about your topic. With the right ideas, however, you can get backlinks to your website even if your business or product is rather boring. Step 1: build a list of related topics Start with your business at the top of the list. Then expand the list: What is your business vertical? Which Read the full article...

In a new video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts said that each page of your website should have a unique meta description. He also said that it is better to have no meta description at all than to use the same meta description across several web pages. For his own blog, Matt Cutts doesn't create meta descriptions. Google can auto-create snippets for your web pages. You can view the full video here: Among many other things, the website audit tool in SEOprofiler informs you about duplicate Read the full article...

In a video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts said that you shouldn't worry too much about links in blog comments. Here are the main takeaways from the video: Commenting on blogs with a link to your website isn't spam as long as it isn't abused. Use your real name when commenting. If you use a keyword as the anchor text, it can look spammy. If an unnatural high percentage of the backlinks that point to your website comes from blog comments, that might raise a red flag. Every natural backlink Read the full article...

As mentioned yesterday, Google introduced a new manual action penalty for websites that do not show the same images to Google and website visitors. In an online discussion, Craig Miller, Vice President of Marketing at Shopify.com, said that many of Shopify.com's users had problems with their image SEO: "Our merchants seem to be have issues with their image SEO. It’s a common complaint in our discussion forums and I have confirmed that indeed have issues being indexed and showing up on Read the full article...

In a video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts answered the question "Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead of separate mobile URLs?" Responsive website design means that the design of a web page changes depending on the device that is requesting the page. People that view the web page with a normal web browser on a computer will see the normal page, people on tablet computers will get a slightly smaller version of the page, people who view the page on a mobile phone will Read the full article...

Google has introduced a new spam filter that can lead to a manual action penalty of your website. If the images that visitors see on your website are not the same images that Google sees, Google might take manual action against your website. What is an image mismatch? According to Google's official help page, image mismatch means that "some of your site’s images may be displaying differently on Google’s search results pages than they are when viewed on your site." As a result, Read the full article...

The official Bing blog has posted information on how to improve the Quality Score of your ads and web pages. Although the information is from Bing, it can also help you to get better results with your Google campaigns. If you want to optimize your paid search campaigns for the holiday season, the following tips will help you: Relevancy is important Some business owners run ads on every possible keyword variation and on every synonym that they find. While it is important to bid Read the full article...