Before I jump into this week’s recap, I have a quick confession to make. I’m on vacation this week so I didn’t read nearly as many posts as I typically do. I still read a lot, but I’m sure a few gems slipped through the cracks.
But fear not. Even on vacation, I can’t deprive everyone of a recap of last week’s exciting activity in the world of Internet marketing. So without further ado, here are a few of my favorite posts from last week…
March of the Penguins, Which Led to a Friendly Panda and Finally a Recovery
In this post, Glenn Gabe provides an interesting case study about a client that had 3 domains impacted by Panda (1 of the domains was also hit by Penguin). Glenn made the same Panda-friendly changes to all 3 domains, but the domain that was hit by both Panda and Penguin updates (Glenn calls this “Pandeguin”) did not recover. Here’s a screenshot of that domain’s traffic:
To combat Penguin, Glenn and his client worked feverishly to track down and remove the site’s spammy links. The client was completely unaware of how the site acquired these spammy links, and after months of investigation, they realized that the links were created BEFORE the client purchased the domain name.
Once they identified the source of the spammy links, they continued the removal process, and then, they submitted a massive reconsideration request (even though the site was impacted by algorithmic updates). As expected, Google’s response to the request was that manual action hadn’t been taken on the site, but as Glenn explained, Google now had an exhaustive list of the client’s Penguin-friendly actions.
Finally, on August 20, the domain recovered (as shown in the following screenshot). This is interesting because it corresponds with the Panda 3.9.1 update, which wasn’t officially associated with a Penguin update.
Obviously, this raises a number of interesting questions. Does this mean the Panda and Penguin updates are related? Was a Penguin update embedded in the Panda 3.9.1 update, or was there an undocumented Penguin update?
Unfortunately, these questions remain unanswered in the post. Hopefully, in the coming weeks or months, we’ll have more details.
A 5-Step Plan to Improve Every Blog Post You Write
In this post, Ali Luke offers 5 actionable tips to help improve every one of your blog posts. Basically, if you’re a blog writer, this post will make you better. Here’s a summary of the tips:
- Create a plan before you write a single word – If you create a rough outline before you start writing, it will help you collect your thoughts and write a better post. Even just five minutes of planning can go a long way.
- Give extra value with examples and/or exercises – People will respond better to your content if you use examples that they can relate to.
- Include a call to action at the end of each post – Once readers finish your post, they are waiting for you to tell them what to do next. Don’t make them guess. Give your readers a simple instruction (e.g., leave a comment, subscribe to your RSS feed, etc.) to keep them engaged with your blog.
- Edit your title, introduction, and conclusion – Great writers are great editors. Your first draft will NOT be your best draft so don’t be afraid to revise your content!
- Format for easy readability – People don’t want to read massive walls of text… and they won’t read them. Format your content so that it is easy to skim and consume.
For longer descriptions of these tips, be sure to check out the post. Happy writing!
5 Big, New Changes in Google Search & How to Adapt to Them
In this post, Kim Tyrone Agapito discusses the 5 most recent (and important) Google changes that you need to know about. As we’re all well aware, search is constantly evolving, and to succeed in SEO, it’s important to stay on top of that evolution. With that in mind, here’s a summary of Kim’s list:
- The Pirate Update / The Emanuel Update / Google’s DMCA Algorithm – Essentially, Google will penalize your site if it receives too many Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests.
- Google Knowledge Graph – Now that Google displays additional knowledge results in the SERPs, it’s more important than ever to explicitly define your site’s information architecture (to make sure important information is found and semantically linked).
- Gmail in Search Results – This is an interesting update because it makes email marketing even more important. Now, instead of only optimizing for readership, you should also optimize for potential SERP inclusion.
- Google Plus Local – For years, local search has been critically important for geographically located businesses, and now, it’s even more important because local pages are indexable and significantly more social.
- 7 is the New 10 in Google SERPs – Ranking on the first page was already difficult, but now the degree of difficulty has been raised even more because there are fewer spots up for grabs.
For more information about these changes, check out the post. And if you have other Google changes that you’d like to add, please leave them in the comments below!
The Beginner’s Guide to Guest Blogging [INFOGRAPHIC]
Guest blogging is currently one of the most popular link building techniques, and this infographic does an excellent job explaining the basics…
Over to You…
I hope you enjoyed this week’s recap, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments!! What were some of your favorite posts this week?
