Snazify

Facebook Finally Speaks To Business

2011-07-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

https://www.facebook.com/business

"Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet..."

The Google Panda Update – Part 1

2011-07-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Bamboo served with a side of link farm.

We have had quite a few questions about the Panda update, and what that means from an SEO level.

Back in late February, Google went live with a set of indexing updates lovingly referred to as “Panda”. Over the past months, we at Snazify have been watching repercussions and how they have impact on our client campaigns. Panda was specifically released to adjust results against “link farm” style practices, and at the time of release it was thrown around that over 10% of indexing results were bumped or pushed back from priority in some way.

The general target of Panda is a respectable one: removing poor quality, link-farm driven websites from the top of Google’s index results. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam, defines this a bit more for us:

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

So, in effect... Panda is an algorithm change, a somewhat drastic update in how priority results are returned. It is a change that defines barriers for how your content is indexed, and if your site crosses the imaginary “bamboo line” look out – we are talking total site indexing adjustment, even pages which have a huge amount of SEO copy writing.

So what adjustments, if any, should you make in order to compensate for this update? Have you actually seen specific downtrends in traffic and conversions starting in March? We'll cover that in Panda Part 2 – SEO kung-fu.

Why Google +1 Is Critical

2011-07-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Most of us have all been on the bandwagon since march with Google's new +1 features, but there is still a large segment of marketers that believe this is a just some kind of fluffy gimmick. Simply not the case.

Implementing Google +1 on your website is critical to keeping your first page results, and a definite boost to those who are struggling to get that kind of organic indexing. I will not go into the finer points of the Google index and why you should always strive for priority organic results, as that ship has sailed.

Granted, the data below has not changed drastically in years, but it is still worth mentioning:

Google Click Through % (On search term, by page)

1 34.35%
2 16.96%
3 11.42%
4 7.73%
5 6.19%
6 5.05%
7 4.02%
8 3.47%
9 2.85%
10 2.71%

Some appear to be taking a risk in not including +1 because they feel that they already have decent results. Well, your competition may be adding it, giving opposing efforts a boost while you sit completely static. Playing the catch-up game is definitely not something you wish to participate in when it comes to SEO/SEM, especially if you are relying on priority ranking for traffic and conversions.

If you have not broadcasted +1 yet on your web vehicle, we would suggest you include it - months ago. :)