We here today, will be discussing some tips to avoid the over-optimization penalties and modify your SEO strategies and SEO activities going forward.Friends, Let’s make these changes to our websites before Google’s over-optimization penalty hits.

According to me lets put over SEO strategy in track by making  Six necessary changes to the site:-

First,Titles should sound real. It should look like human being wrote them and should not look like that it was intentionally written to rank for phrase after phrase.

Bad: SEO services, Search engine firm space brand name, whatever your brand name is, SEO(search engine optimization ). What does it sound like? It sounds like all you’re trying to do is rank for keywords, not show off your brand name, especially if this is your home page or those kinds of things. You’re repeating keywords three times. Search engine optimization is in this title three times. Think about whether a normal human being would read that title and think, oh yeah, that sounds legitimate.

Second,avoid manipulative internal links.Such linking are found on sidebars,inside the post content,where people have taken all of the instances of a particular word or repeated it throughout the side bar or in the footer, those kinds of things, and are pointing with exact match anchors to the same page over and over again.Linking repeatedly to the same page with the same anchor is not helpful for SEO, and it makes our sites look really spammy and manipulative and questionable to someone who’s browsing it.

You have a blog post and it mentions a page on your site that you want people to actually go to and that you think is useful in context. Great, link over there. Fine, use the anchor text. Maybe use a modified version of the anchor text, a little longer, a little shorter, a little more natural sounding, and you’re going to get these same results, but you’re going to do it in a much more effective way. You’re not going to be at risk of whatever is happening with this over-optimization penalty.

Third, Optimize, linked filled footer.Use your footer wisely.Use your footer to link to the things that people expect to find in the footer. If you really need to get anchor text on pages, find natural ways to put it in the real menu at the top, in the content itself.

Fourth,text content blocks built primarily for the engines.
You know how sometimes you get to a page and there’s good content, usable stuff, an image, a call to action, and then weirdly there’s this block of junk. It’s this block of blah, blah, keyword, keyword, blah, blah, blah, keyword, keyword, blah, blah, blah. Why is that there? Why does that exist? Does that really work? Does that really trick the engines? Yeah, it tricks them into thinking that they should penalize you.

Fifth, back links from penalty likely sources.So this is one of the toughest ones because it’s really hard to control if you’ve already gotten links from these places. But you can see with those 700,000 Google webmaster tools, pings that they sent everybody that said, hey, it looks like you’ve done some manipulative linking, and that kind of thing. Be really careful for all of these, link networks, anything that says private link network, or I have a link network and I’ll place your site on it, or building up a network of sites that you then interlink to one and other. Come on. There are so many better ways to get links.

Last one, Sixth , large amounts of pages that are targeting very similar, kind of modified versions of keywords and keyword intents, with only slight variations, slight variation being the key here. So think:
used cars Melbourne , used autos Melbourne , pre-owned cars Melbourne . Why are those three different pages?

This Six things you should change or pay attention to.

Even something as fundamental as glancing at the Google Webmaster Tools account for the site can evoke gut-wrenching emotions, especially if the site has amassed tens of thousands of 404 errors. How are you supposed to come up with a process to manage this? What should the process even look like?

What Qualifies as Expired Content?

There are a number of examples that would be considered “expired” content. Expired content is content on a website that is only relevant for a limited period of time. Below are examples of different scenarios that would need to be considered expired content.

Job Search/Real Estate Listings: Job listings routinely expire, especially when positions become filled. The same is true for real estate when property is sold.

What is the best way to handle expired listings, especially if the content is only available for a very limited amount of time?

E-commerce: Expired products can occur when products that are sold on the site routinely change for one reason or another, such as:

What happens when the site no longer sells a product?
What happens if the product becomes temporarily out-of-stock?
What about seasonal products that are only sold during limited times of the year?

Perhaps most importantly, sites that have to worry about expired content tend to be enormous – often comprised of hundreds of thousands of pages. Thus, recommendations need to be manageable and clear. Taking an individual look at all expired and out-of-stock products is unrealistic. Start thinking, is there a way we can build a process for these type of changes?

Options:-

Like most SEO solutions, there isn’t necessarily one right answer. We need to take a look at each individual situation on a case-by-case basis and take into consideration the current back-end of the site, as well as the resources and the technological capabilities of the site’s team. There is a time and a place to use each of these options for expired content. Identifying the right scenario for each situation is very powerful.

I. The 404 Error

It makes sense for webmasters to think that 404ing expired content on the site is the approach to take. After all, isn’t that the very definition of a 404 page?

Consider creating separate checklists for the steps that you, as an SEO, would need to take to determine which pages to 301 redirect, which ones you need to 404 (if you absolutely need to), and which ones to leave as is. Checklists should also be created to help develop the framework for how your technical team would implement these changes. After awhile, an overall framework should emerge on how your site handles its expired content, which will help make the entire process run much more smoothly.

The letter seeking more clarification on behalf of “dozens” of human rights groups was written by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and sent to Page last week, The Hill reported.

“Online markets provide traffickers with the ability to reach untold customers across all political jurisdictions,” reads their letter. “As a global leader and innovator in internet technologies, Google is in a unique position to do its part to fight human exploitation and trafficking, and we would encourage the company to proactively address these concerns.”

“Basic Idea is to level the playing ground a little bit. So all of those people who have sort of been doing…over-optimization or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level. “

After news of the pending over optimization algorithm update hit the web the other week, a few of my clients wanted to know how this was going to affect their websites. Were their sites at risk of an over optimization penalty? I read a few more recaps of the panel discussion to get a better understanding of what exactly “over optimization” means to Google, and I told them that as long as their site has been practicing white hat SEO all along (which it definitely has since my company started managing it) then you are in no danger of being flagged for over optimization. Matt Cutts even admitted, “If you’re white hat or doing very little SEO, you’re not going to be affected by this change.”

This update is designed to help smaller, mom-and-pop websites that are producing great content and have user-friendly websites to perform better in the search engines, even if they don’t have the SEO budget to compete with the big brands. Personally, I think that’s great. There are plenty of smaller websites out there that do everything by the book when it comes to SEO, but they are blocked out of the SERPs because bigger brands can just dump money into their SEO campaigns. Giving these quality websites the opportunity to really make an impact in the search engines is long overdue.

Significant effort ends up going into helping key executives of larger brands understand the role that search should play in marketing and how to budget it. Discussions generally end up focusing on how the search strategy should integrate with the other marketing efforts by the business.

For search marketers (when I use search marketing I mean SEO and PPC collectively) looking for a quick tidbit, this isn’t the type of panel for you. This panel forced you to step back and really assess things at a strategic level.

Two major points clearly emerged from this panel:

Clear confirmation of the need to view marketing activities as an integrated whole.

There remains a huge gap between the way most in the search marketing industry look at their task and the way traditional marketing people do.

SEO vs. PPC vs. Marketing Overall

In our industry we sometimes view search as the central focus of everything. After all, people are increasingly moving online, and we have studies that show us that online spend is continuing to grow in a huge way. EMarketer released data in February that shows that online ad spend will exceed print ad spend for the first time in 2012.

Search is often treated as a harvester after the idea is put out there. But there’s another way of looking at search. Come to the table with ideas of how search can affect the planning cycle from the beginning. New product, come with list of keywords. Take 10-15 keywords branded for the product. No one will be searching for these since it’s brand new and then watch the traffic spike over time. Watch it grow. Shift copy as it grows to calls to action, drive sales.”

Interestingly, after the “but” in the above quote, the activity still centered on harvesting. If you wanted to take this to the extreme, you might think of search marketing as nothing more than a new fangled type of call center.

Let that one sink in for a moment. That’s right, many people think of our entire industry as nothing but a call center.

To be clear, no one on the panel used those words, but the general sense of the search marketing industry as being focused on harvesting was something that fit the intent of the discussion from end to end.

Also of interest was the fact that the word “SEO” was hardly ever mentioned. Fiala used it a few times, but I am not sure that any of the other panelists used it at all.

“Search” was mentioned quite a bit, but you got the sense that the focus of this activity is on paid search. After all, if you’re in harvest mode, do you want to harvest now, or 6 to 9 months from now? The lack of immediacy in SEO remains its big boat anchor.

larger companies start battling for keywords, it will force the costs to rise across the board. Which will effect everyone looking to bid on those phrases.That could mean an increase of tens of thousands of dollars on that same list of keywords, if not more.

SEO is the logical solution. Organic listings are relevant and are preferred by surfers. It is also cheaper to maintain than PPC. Large corporations are scrambling to find qualified SEO experts and are willing to pay in the neighborhood of $100,000 a year. There is not certification or accreditation. Which makes it hard to judge who knows what. Experience and a proven track record are a must.

Where do you think SEO is going. Is it smart for companies to focus on PPC or SEO?

Lets focus on the reasons:-
Startup Marketing:-Earn Customers Without Paying for Them.
Startup is not a product problem or rarely an engineering problem, but startup is a marketing problem.

Building something other people want can be challenging but web is so wide open now, that if we can think it of , dream it of , if we figure out. What people need we can built up, the problem is letting those people who need it know that we had got what they need it

Loved watching Video by SEO Moz owner:-

Rand Fishkin – Inbound Marketing for Startups: How to Earn Customers Without Paying from HN London on Vimeo.

2- Duplicated content This is usually a problem with content management systems. Using the same amount of content with a few words rearranged can hurt. For example, if your site offered services for different cities and you used the same content for all and simply swaped out the cities; that would be seen as duplicated content.

3- Bad urls – Google just announced they can no longer read urls that end in id=123, which is great, however if your urls contain more than 2 query strings, you can still run into problems.

4- Hiding content – Believe it or not, this is still a problem. Some people try to get away with it by not making blend in exactly with the background (making the content 1 shade darker or lighter than the background color) or by making the content so small it can barely be read.

5- Exchanging links Linking to unrelated sites, especially while taking part in a link exchange, can be bad for your site. As we  have stated , it’s best to stay away from link exchanges with sites that are not related. This might translate into your site not being fully indexed.

6- Backlinks and rankings – Many people have no idea what to do when they have a site built. They assume they can have it built and submit it to Google and that’s all it takes. Others are obsessed on numbers, thinking if they merely out-link their competition, they will rank better. Neither one of these are true.

7-Title and descriptions tags – Keeping title tags and or description tags the same throughout the site is bad. I have heard designers say, It keeps the site uniform. What it really does is place you in the supplemental index. Title and description tags should reflect what the page is about.

Even if you have a big budget you can still use this process to passively build relationships and get more links. The process is outlined below and at the end I’ve got an extra tip that anyone who’s doing outreach should be doing right now.
Filling the funnel

In order for this to work, you need to be willing to accept guest posts. Don’t be afraid to accept guest posts. Apart from being an excellent way of keeping your blog updated with fresh content, this is the foundation of the passive link building process.

Be prepared to get a lot of email but just because someone asks or even sends you content doesn’t mean you are obliged to post it. Keep the quality and standards of the guest posts you publish very high. Not only does this mean you get better content on your site, it also sets the standard for other people wanting to guest post. Below are the four methods I use to fill the funnel.
Have a Guest blogger page

People search the web all the time using advanced search queries such as:

keyword phrase intitle:guest post

keyword phrase inurl:guest post

You want to be found for searches like this so create a page that satisfies both these queries for your industry and you’ll get a bunch of people contacting you. When they get in touch ask to see other examples of articles they have written and have a look through their site to see if this is a site you would be happy to link to. If all looks good, give them a brief with some guidelines on what you expect in order to publish the post. This would include things like minimum word count, if you expect images, possible titles and any other requirements you may have. If you want to see an example of this, John Doherty has a page on his personal blog for SEOs looking to guest post.

Action – Get Some Links!

At this stage in the process you still don’t have any links to your site. All you’ve been doing up until now is building out a list of webmasters that now owe you a favour. Now you need to convince those people to let you post on their site. Social media makes this easy. When they post on your site, make sure you promote the post on social media, follow them on Twitter and Google plus. From now on you’re being their biggest fan, reply to a couple of their tweets comment on their blog and generally just be nice to them, you want to become a familiar name to them and build a real relationship.

Finally hit them up on email and ask to guest post, something like this usually works really well.

Hey “name”,

Since your post on my site I’ve been reading a lot of your content and it’s really good. Any chance I could repay the favour and write a guest post for your site?

That’s it, don’t make it too long, keep it casual and finish with a question. I swear the success rate on this process is insane. Of course you’ll get the odd person that will say no or just ignore you but you haven’t lost anything and you got a good piece of content for your site out of it.

People don’t like to say no (hence ending the email with a question), especially when you’ve done them a favour by letting them post on your site.

This new service which would be launched sometime next year, would challenge online retail giant Amazon.com’s Prime service, which offers unlimited fast shipping for an annual membership fee of $79. Amazon’s Prime has been a big success in recent years.

Google plans to combine this new quick-shipping service to its Product Search, a comparison shopping feature which directs shoppers to retailer websites, rather than selling the products directly. Through Product Search shoppers can see whether a product is in stock in the nearby store and whether that product could be delivered on the same day. Google has also approached UPS and other courier companies that it can partner with.

The search giant recently updated its Product Search feature with more information on products and with features that would provide shoppers with a much better experience. With this new venture, Google hopes to bring in more ad-money. However, critics feel that the venture might turn out to be an expensive affair.

To anyone with an SEO background, there are certain basic on-site SEO tasks that any web master, business owner, or Internet Marketer needs to be aware of. These include the following major components:

1 ) Title Tags - The title tag in your HTML meta code is the tag that tell the browser what to display in the title of the window at the very top of the screen. Because this text is so visible to the user, Google likes to rely heavily on this text as a clue as to what your page is about. As a result, it is a really important SEO strategy that your title tag be filled with keywords that are appropriate to the content of the web page. Furthermore, you really don’t want the same title tag on every page. This is not good for SEO. Instead, you want to have different keyword phrases in your title tags that properly identify the theme of that particular page. Remember, you are trying to help the search engines easily digest your content. That’s basically what SEO is. You want to aid them in their understanding of what this page is really about.

2 ) The first H1 tag - Similar to the title tag, Google will look at the first H1 text to appear on your page as a strong signal as to what the page is about. Use it wisely. Again, you want to place keyword phrases here that are thematically related to what the information on the page is conveying to the end-user.

3 ) The name of the page itself – As you name your pages in your web site, use plain English as much as possible for SEO. You will notice that WordPress uses this extensively in their blog software. This is no accident and WordPress is considered the best blog for SEO. For example, http://example.com/?On-Site-vs-Off-Site-SEO-tactics&AID=22 will perform much better for SEO than http://example.com/?AID=22. Why? Because there is descriptive text in the longer version of the page name that helps the search engine know what the page is about. Many people have written about issues around “dirty links” and SEO (links including system variable data such as AID=22 in the example above). I think it is better if you can design your system without any variable data at all. It just takes this SEO issue away. And it’s just easier for the search engines. It’s also easier for the end-user. However, there is no problem promoting pages via SEO with variable data in the links. I’ve been able to make both fly using the same SEO tactics with no problems. The search engines are smart enough by now to manage through that variable data. Just make sure your plain English is in there.

4 ) Keyword meta tag - This tag used to get a ton of play for SEO, but is now largely ignored by the search engines. I believe it fell out of favor due to manipulation and misuse. It is a tag that is not seen by the end-user, so unscrupulous web masters abused it and it became less-and-less important for SEO. Real SEO tactics don’t abuse or deceive. I still populate my keyword tags because I believe they are still looked at, but I don’t believe they are very critical. If nothing else, it’s another instance of your keywords. They all help SEO.

5 ) Description meta tag – This tag is still useful, but probably more for Yahoo and MSN. Since you will be in this part of your web site anyway to get the Title right, you might as well make this variable-driven as well and make the description appropriate to the page. Again, it can’t hurt SEO.

6 ) Keyword Density - This is very important for SEO. Keep in mind that the search engines are just large computer programs digesting your site and trying to figure out what it is about. One of the simplest things they do is to count up all the words and look for repeats. They then calculate percentages, or densities, of specific 1-word, 2-word and 3-word phrases that are found in your text. By looking at the most popular keyword phrases, their programs understand the important themes of your page. If you observe your own writing on a specific subject, you will see the patterns as well. I don’t recommend that you write solely with keyword density in mind as it will result in lower quality content. However, I also don’t recommend that you completely ignore keyword density in your content creation. My preferred approach is to write content straight-up for the first draft. Then, as you edit for grammar, consistency, and clarity, also edit for density. Run your content through a density checker and see what phrases are used the most. Make adjustments accordingly so that your top themes / keyword phrases are showing up between 2-4% of the time. But don’t do this to the extent that anything reads as unnatural. You need to always keep your audience in mind.

7 ) Outbound links - What your page links to matters, in terms of both the quality and quantity of links. As you build links out of your page, be specific about where they go. Don’t link to low-quality or bad-neighborhood sites. Also watch your number of links. Generally, the less the better. However, having no outbound links is not always good. I believe Google uses your outbound links as a way to position your site in the vast weave that is the Internet. Often times, Google can get a good feeling about what your site is about just by looking at who you link to. So again, select these links wisely understanding they will actually impact your SEO.

8 ) High-quality, original, content - I probably should have put this first because it can’t be stressed enough for SEO. Your site needs to provide high-quality and original content. You will read this maybe a hundred times as you research SEO. Content is king. And I firmly believe this to be true. If you are under the impression that the internet is so big that search engines can’t identify content as really unique, guess again. One afternoon spent playing with CopyScape will convince you that there is technology available today that is able to tell you if any given sentence has been repeated anywhere on the Internet. It’s staggering, actually, when you really think about that. The volumes of data are just outrageous. But if CopyScape can do it, I’m betting that Google can do it also. And I firmly believe that your site receives a positive bump when Google determines that the content is original. Many people have asked me if using content that is repeated on other sites will penalize the site. I believe the answer is no, you will not be penalized by Google (copyright infringement is a completely different and very serious legal topic that I won’t go into today). But I also believe that you won’t get where you want to be by using content that already has high mileage. The other hot debate related to how sites using duplicate content can actually rank higher than the site where the content originated from. Yes – This has been demonstrated empirically a bunch of times. But you don’t need to be too concerned with that for reasons we will get into later. Just keep your eye on the ball. Put in the time, energy and creativity it takes to create unique content and you will be rewarded. Plain and simple.

9 ) Appropriate amounts of content – Somewhat different from #8 is the issue of how much content to put on your site for good SEO. I don’t believe there is a single magic answer as each site has a different objective. But as far as SEO goes, I generally believe the more the better (assuming you are following #8). Give those hungry spiders as much food for thought as you possibly can. But let me also qualify that statement. You need ensure that your content doesn’t stray too far from the core message of your site. If it does, this can create confusion around what your site is really about. Tightly focused sites perform much better than more generically focused sites. For example, a site selling used Honda Civics that uses appropriate SEO strategies will probably get ranked higher and faster than a more generalized site selling all types of used cars. This is a generic statement, and there are many exceptions, but it’s a reasonable place to start your thinking about niches and themes.

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