Let’s eat!  Your website is an employee that works around the clock 24/7.  Humans eat 2-3 meals a day so why not feed your hardest working employee?  Makes sense, right?  Right…Healthy links are the best way to take care of a website.  These are links related to your industry, has a page rank of four or better, and will help your visitors.  Google will recognize you and your website will bring you a return on your investment.

The good part of having back links is that your website does not have to be submitted to the search engines.  Once you have websites linking to you that have been indexed, the search engines will take notice and index your website as well (assuming that your website is new).  Being in the SEO Services business we found out that it was beneficial to go after the terms SEO Fort Lauderdale or SEO Miami instead SEO Services; since the latter is a national ranked term that will take six months to a year to get ranked.  It is a highly competitive term globally.  Going after Geo-targeted keyword terms is easier, wiser, and will benefits your company’s website more efficiently. This is a Win-Win situation!  You can’t lose if you follow-up with the SEO secrets you are about to read.

Share The Glory.  Share The Links.

Using Social media is another great way to feed your website. Even though Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn uses no-follow tags on their website you’ll still be able to get traffic and credit for the traffic.  You may want to use your link in your posts moderately since no one likes people that only talk about themselves. It’s the same concept in the social network communities. Mention other websites or experts in your industry.  It’s okay to give other people credit and they will in return give you credit by sending traffic your way.  One hand washes the other in all aspects in life.

A few hundred or even thousand people visiting your website from the social media networks will catch the attention of the search engines, especially Google.  Nearly every social site has a slot for your website URL.  Use your complete URL, for example our URL is, http://www.boastingbiz.com/.  I have seen many websites that display their website address instead of their URL, for example, www.yourwebsite.com without the “http://” which is a common mistake.

Social Media Tips To Remember

• Use Complete URL’s
• Use your link in your posts but not all of them
• Interact with you followers.  People love attention too!

Knock Knock.  Who’s There?  Guest Blogger

Guest blogging is more of a natural way to get links pointing to your website.  You have to get the attention of the website owner in order to even have the chance to guest blog.  Calling or emailing them with a warm introduction goes a long way.  Most business and website owner’s are bored to death with spam emails that when a real person reaches out to them, it’s usually welcomed.

When writing your content, it is better to use new content because duplicate content does not benefit anyone.  It does take a considerable amount of time to create quality, thought provoking and relevant content, just ask SEO Consultant and GURU, Tom Bates with APT Media.  Webmasters will have their own guidelines.  While some will have one or two rules, others will have many, however, you must pay attention to their requests.  Also, aim for high page rank blogs that you can contribute your knowledge.  It doesn’t cost you anything but time, so make sure your content is worth it.

3 Things to keep in mind when Guest Blogging

• Place a text link with your keyword phrases
• Relevant content that is informative
• Pay attention to the guidelines

Of course, there are easier ways to get links, but like everything else in this country the more convenient the more it will cost you.  Purchasing text links has been a grey area subject in the Internet Marketing industry. This is due to the fact that it can be seen as cheating the system.

You can purchase a few high page rank link for a about $100.00 a month.  If your pockets are deep for a link building campaign then this may be a feasible back linking option.  Google does not like it because they are not getting a peace of the pie. They would rather you use their Google Adwords, which is another way to bring quality traffic to your website; it will cost you a few of those pretty pennies or should I say crispy dollars.

Final Thought:  What to do or not to do?

Hopefully this article has given you an appetite for links. However, all links are not good links.  Stay away from Link Farms, Black Hat SEO Tricks (or companies that provide such services), and any of the 7 ways to get your website blacklisted.  There are also Internet Marketing software that are considered spam, so avoid using them!  You will know that the software is spam when it can automate hundreds of links in a short amount of time.  Having a hundred links pointing to your website in a day is virtually impossible, and will give Google a red flag and our I.P. address will get marked as spam.  In March, Google began giving warnings to websites with tons of unnatural links.  Keep your website healthy.

What did you think?  Share your thoughts.  Give us a shot out on Twitter @BoastingBiz.

Bio: Kevin Dorival is an SEO specialist; he currently works with Boating Biz. Fill out this SEO quote form for a free estimate on your project.

What is link building and how does it increase business?
Welcome to the world wide web, or as it is more formerly known, the internet. This world is truly a world full of webs; sticky spider webs that attach from one place to the next. The bigger your web, the more things attach to it and get caught in your web. These webs are what make you successful in the online world, make your business popular and make you money. They are called links. You will hear this word very often because links and link building are a large part to online success for any ethical SEO SERVICE COMPANY.

A link is a text that you can click on, leading you from the website you were on to another website. These links join websites together. When you are linked, someone has put a link on their website that leads directly to yours, which is link building. Link building is getting a mass amount of quality websites to link to you. That is incredibly important in making you popular on the web. In the online world, the number of links leading to you are like “votes”. These votes add up and the more quality and relevant links you have, the more popular and visible you are to places like Google. You WANT to be visible to Google and all of the millions of people that search information on Google everyday.  In fact, there are 2 million Google searches every minute. So, the more quality links there are that lead to your website, the more people will be able to see you because you will be “ranked” higher in the search engines like Google. That’s what success on the internet is based on; being seen and being clicked. In order to do this, you need to keep a few things in mind.
Imagine, you search something on Google. Typically, you click on those first links to pop up on the first page. Statistically, about 34% of the clicks go to the very first link in ranking. That’s number 1. The second highest in ranking, gets around 17% of the clicks. That means, the second listing has half the chance to get clicked on than the first! Now, you may think you have success if you have reached the first page of Google’s rankings. But in fact, the last link of the page only gets approximately  2.71% of the clicks. And if you’re link is on the 2nd page of rankings, you only get about .05% of the clicks! The higher you are ranking, the more of a chance you have to be clicked on.
This is where link building comes in. To be successful, you want to be that number one site to get clicked on. This leads to increased clicks and many more eyes looking at your website which all leads up to more business and much more profit. Link building is the key to success, popularity and profit in the online world.

Now, Not just any old link will do…. Success and failure can be decided by just one BAD LINK. That BAD LINK may link to or from a bad neighborhood, that Google has flagged as a BAD NEIGHBORHOOD. If you decide to hire a link builder who has simply spammed your email offering a “team of seo experts” who have many years of experience building links, RUN LIKE THE WIND!!!

What visual do you get when you get these spam emails of SEO EXPERTS?

If you think for a moment that this is the team spamming you, BLOCK THEM, Tell them to take you off their SPAM LIST…

Do you have ideas you used to pick a good Link builder? Leave your “RELEVANT COMMENT” Tell your horror story, We want to hear form you!

Image courtesy of :

http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu

In this modern day, the internet is very much world wide. We live and breath this technology and are spoiled by its ease of use. Most of us use the internet in our daily lives. Whether it’s used just to check your Facebook or to gather more information on a particular subject. There is an infinite amount on information on the internet and it is ever-changing. Now, in this age, we have utilized the internet and its information processing abilities for more than just entertainment. It has become a place for business and marketing.  It is a place to build your business, to spread the word to the public about your services and to gain clientele. This is where SEO and link building come into place.

    If you were to search “air conditioning repair, Dallas” on a popular search engine website, you would have dozens upon dozens of links pop up. The majority of those links would be of business’ websites who specialize in air conditioning repair. This is a prime example of link building. What those first websites that popped up have done, is they have successfully made their website “visible” by getting high rankings from search engines through link building. Link building is the process of connecting your website to other websites and other websites to yours in order to gain popularity , or make it visible. The goal is to make your website one of those first few websites to pop up when someone searches for something relating to your business.

In order to get these high rankings to make your website visible,  you have to match all of the qualifications set by certain search engine sites such as Google or Bing. This is called an algorithm. Your website would need a good reputation, a high popularity on your page and a high number of pages linking to and from your page and so on and so on.  The number of links to your website are similar to the number of votes you have in ranking. This is what search engine optimization is all about. Search engines have a specific formula that websites have to match in order to have high rankings.

That is the ultimate goal here at Absolute Placement Today, Inc. We want to make your business’ website visible. We have come together to make 10 tips on how to improve your link building and to gain the highest of rankings and visibility through Affordable SEO Services.

1)      Create good content. Yes, this may seem quite obvious, but it is so very important. You must have interesting, useful or perhaps entertaining writing that is citation worthy. This will bring all the right attention to your website.

2)      Create content that can be shared. Use photographs or videos which can be shared by others to the rest of the world that link back to your original website. People will re-post your videos on their websites or share it with others if your content is informative or interesting, which will bring viewers to your website.

3)      Use anchor text. This was said to be one of the most important tips in link building by google. Anchor text is the visible text that you click in a hyperlink.  Include key words in your texts such as  the name of your company or the service you provide.

4)      Write content for people who skim read. That includes big headlines that are representative of your content and are eye catching. Create an easy, bulk free and cluster free layout. Visually pleasing websites tend to be very popular.

5)      Only link to trusted domains. You only want to link to trustworthy websites and have only trustworthy websites linked to you. If you link to a website with low rankings, this could make your website have low rankings as well.

6)      Involve yourself with your community. Perhaps, create a blog say every Friday to reach out to your community members. You could post a how to video or just answer common questions in an FAQ. This gets your name out there and makes your name a good one.

7)      Get your URL out there! Email bloggers your URL. Use your URL as part of your email signature. Put it on business cards! There are a multitude of ways to spread your URL. Use it with everything you do.

8)      Partner link. Use a small number of trusted, highly relevant websites to partner link with. Share eachother’s links on your websites.

9)      Submit your links to directories. This can be a great way to get your business out there whether it requires or does not require payment. There are millions of eyes out looking through directories.

10)   Use the social media websites! Almost everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account. These are all places where your popularity can reach sky heights. Your likes on Facebook or your Tweets and followers on Twitter all relate to your high rankings. The more people who link to you, the more votes you have in rankings.

The internet has become the most widely used tactic for marketing. It is a gold mine. But like mining for gold, it takes a lot of digging to reach. Search engine optimization is a science and link building is an art. Big search engine websites like google want what is called “natural looking” websites, or organically linked websites. Which means doing all of the hard, dirty work like using the social media, sending your link out to internet bloggers and reaching out to the community. Although it may seem like it would take too long, you never want to buy from companies who promise to give you thousands of links instantly because those big search engines can spot that type of paid endorsing  a mile away.  Websites who pay their way to the top do not ever get there. There is a recipe used to get your website to the top of Google’s search list. Through organic link building, it is possible to make your company larger than life. It is possible to have eyes from all over the world looking at your business’ website. We at Absolute Placement Today, Inc. specialize in just that. We are here to link build your website to number one.

image courtesy of www.fitness.gov

Google’s Panda Updates: 2.3 Quality Content

Google’s entire series of Panda updates involves a variety of changes to Google’s algorithm with one single focus:  to improve the rankings of quality content, while also reducing the rankings of lower-quality content.

After all the dramatic changes caused by Google’s many Panda updates, you could really say that Panda is almost an entirely new platform for ranking content.  The word “update” implies a small change here and there, but there’s nothing small about Panda.

This particular update is not a huge one, but the effect of this update and all the other Panda updates together changes many rankings in Google.

On July 23, 2011, Google rolled out its Panda 2.3 update.  Officially, Google did not make a huge deal out of Panda 2.3.  When asked, a spokesperson simply noted this update represented Google’s continuing commitment to high-quality content and was one of about 500 updates Google implements during each year.

What were the real effects of Panda 2.3?

As is the case with many of Google’s updates, Google didn’t say very much publicly about this update.  But, webmasters and SEO experts intently monitor every little change, and they certainly found some additional changes in this case.

User “Mr.Savage”, on this Webmaster World thread, said that he was very angry with the update.  By favoring quality, popular, and deep content, he claimed, Google was favoring all the big-time blogs and authority sites.  Some of his sites, which were smaller in terms of their online impact, lost significant rankings and traffic.

And, he wasn’t the only one affected.  Many other users noted a dramatic drop in traffic to their websites.  Some noticed between a 50-70% drop in website traffic.

Other users also noticed similar trends in what appears to be Google again favoring large websites.  Smaller niche specialty shops were not able to rank well for specific terms, even though their content and products may have fit those niche terms better than a larger online store.

To some users, it seems as though those gigantic websites with multiple staff members and regular updates benefited more from Panda 2.3 than the “little guys.”

What does Panda 2.3 mean for your website?

Ultimately, clearly you have to realize you have no control over what Google does when it makes an update.  While many users complained the “big boys” weren’t impacted by this update, while many of the “little guys” were, it’s also true not all the little guys were hurt.
The best you can do to maintain high Google rankings is:

• Create quality content
• Make regular updates to your site
• Have many in-bound links to your site
• Keep doing all of these on a regular basis

By following these general principles, you’ll put yourself in the best position to rank highly in Google.  If you don’t have the time to do these things, then you may benefit from the help of a professional.

We wish good luck to your site and its rankings, and be sure to let us know if we can help in any way.

With Panda 2.2, Google continued its yearlong assault on low-quality and scraped content.  If you recall from our other Panda Updates posts, the original Panda targeted content farms, Panda 2.0 aimed at helping to return the highest-quality result for your search, while Panda 2.1 also targeted quality, but only affected just a small handful of websites.

Interestingly, Google’s algorithm is so complex that even Google doesn’t quite know what is going on, and neither do its engineers have control over the exact results of any algorithm changes. In fact, some Google engineers have been quoted saying that they are unaware of about 25% of Google’s searches at any given time.

On June 21, 2011, Panda 2.2 was released.  Google’s Matt Cutts explained that, officially, the purpose of Panda 2.2 was to improve scraper detection.

“Scraping” refers to copying information from other sites and placing it on your own, without giving credit to the original author.  You can do this easily yourself by using the copy-and-paste function on your computer, but there are also automated tools that do this.  This has long been a major problem on the ‘net.

What is “unique” content and how can I avoid Google penalties related to content?

You’ve asked a great question!  No one really knows how to define exactly what “unique” means.  SEO experts believe that if you created an original article and then rewrote a new one, somewhere between 50-70% of the words in the new one must not appear in the original.

Don’t think that we’re teaching you how to copy someone else’s content and not get caught!  Rewriting your own content for distribution to other sites can be an effective part of an SEO strategy.

When marketing articles, you may distribute the same article to a handful of targeted sites, or you may distribute it to hundreds of sites.  Some sites may want what we just discussed to be an “original” article.  So, you may rewrite the same ideas in the article, but use mostly different words than before.

Panda 2.2 Isn’t What Would be Considered an “Algorithm Change”

While Panda 2.2 did no doubt affect a good handful of websites, Danny Sullivan, of Search Engine Land, explains Panda 2.2 was a manual update.  Instead of being a permanent change, each Panda Update is more like a computer program run manually by one of Google’s engineers.

The first four Panda updates (the original Panda, Panda 2.0, Panda 2.1, and Panda 2.2) each had about 6 week or so between each update.  If you were affected by the original Panda, and then made changes to follow Panda’s guidelines, your rankings still wouldn’t be updated until the release of Panda 2.0.

In this sense, Panda has been more of a manual update.  “Algorithm changes” would be changes implemented at one point in time, but then carried out by Google automatically on an ongoing basis.  An example would be Google’s Mayday Update (implemented in 2010), which focused on increasing the quality of long-tail keyword search rankings.

It’s Easy to Avoid Being Hurt by Panda

If you’ve been reading our entire series on Google Panda, you’ve probably realized that avoiding Panda’s ranking penalties is pretty easy.  All you need to do is:

• Write well on a certain topic
• Use correct grammar and spelling
• Write an original article

If you follow those guidelines, you’ll easily avoid any of Panda’s penalties.

In our previous Google Updates posts, we’ve taken a look at some pretty major changes, most of which were focused on increasing the quality of content and the result returned in the search engine rankings.

The original Panda update focused on “content farm” sites like Associated Content, which allowed writers to write whatever they wanted (including low-quality stuff).  Then, the content farm would take all of the content, optimize it for the search engines, and get great rankings out of it.

Panda 2.0 aimed to improve the quality of search results by including data about sites users blocked.  It also attempted to improve the results of long-tail keywords (key phrases made of 3 or more keywords and not searched as commonly as many other keywords).

Feel free to follow those links and learn a little more about those Google updates, but be sure to stay tuned to this series to keep up with what happened the rest of the year.

That’s a Nice Review, but What about Panda 2.1?

Panda 2.1 was originally feared by some to really be Panda 3.0.  What this means in layman’s terms is that many SEO experts believed Panda 2.1 would have a much larger impact on the search results than it ended up having in reality.

Officially released on May 9, 2011, Google claimed Panda 2.1 would impact far fewer search results than either 2.0 or the original Panda update.  Google never officially stated what this update would actually do.

What Results did User Reports Show?

Google is notorious for taking an official stance, and then having data observed by a variety of users totally contradict what it announced.

Interestingly, Google’s own algorithm is so complicated in nature that often Google engineers don’t have control over the final website rankings.  In Panda 2.1, for example, user “tedster” at this Webmasterworld.com thread noted a Google search reported a web page was removed, when it fact it was not.

User “crobb305” noted a 70% recovery level in traffic he had lost as a result of the update.  You talk about scary!  He also observed drops of particular pages of about 300 to 400 positions, then a gain of 300 to 400 positions, followed by a drop.

User “maxumer” stated he had an 80% drop on all traffic over a period of several days.  To him, it appeared to have the effect of one of Google’s penalties.  But, at the same time, he hadn’t broken any of Google’s big no-no’s – buying and selling links, farming content, or scraping content.  He also saw his keywords appear on page on of Google’s ranking on one browser, but in completely different rankings on other browsers.

What Does all of This Add up To?

In one word, “CHAOS!”  For the most part, the update didn’t seem to have a large impact on most websites.  But, on the other hand, many more users than the 3 mentioned here noted dramatic changes in their own rankings!

What’s really going on?  Does Google even know?  Does it have some sort of hidden agenda, like it seemingly always does?

What changes would you like to see in Google for 2012?

In two of its previous updates, the Attribution Update and Panda, Google took a strong position in favor of ranking quality content higher.  At the same time, it would drop, or sometimes even entirely remove, low-quality content from its rankings.

The Attribution Update targeted sites with low levels of original content and sites that copied content from other sites.  Panda’s main goal was to return the highest-quality result for your search.  So, if you searched for the cure to a health condition, pages from our federal government’s website would be more likely to be ranked highly than pages from someone’s blog.

As a result of these updates, Google received a ton of positive feedback from searchers, and sites with high-quality content reported receiving even more traffic.

In Panda 2.0, released on April 11, 2011, Google began to include data about sites users block into its algorithm.  It would then take those sites and rank them lower in its rankings.

Additionally, Panda 2.0 would evaluate the results of “long tail” websites.  “Long tail” keywords usually refers to key phrases made up of 3 or more words.  These words typically return lower-quality results than shorter key phrases of 2 words or less.

Panda 2.0 would delve deeper into those long-tail results and increase Google’s ability to return quality results.  Amit Singhal, one of Google’s lead engineers, noted that about 2% of U.S. search queries would be affected.

Also at the time, users could block certain sites from their search results, and Panda 2.0 took this block data into account when ranking sites.

Google stated that it was very pleased with the results of this update, and while it wouldn’t consider any exceptions to the rule, it would nonetheless take feedback from website owners into account.

How Could Panda 2.0 Affect Your Site?

As with all recent Google updates, you are being increasingly forced to focus on having high-quality content on your site.  No longer can you slam down the first thing coming to mind, spatter some keywords in it, and publish it.

Now, you have to think it through and write something people will like.  

• What is “High-Quality” Anyway?
• What is considered “high-quality” on the internet is much different that what is high-quality for print publication.  But, that’s because online reading is a much different animal than reading print publications.
• Online, people are looking for an answer to their question while having to read the fewest words possible.  Most articles go no longer than 500 words, and most people don’t even read all of those words.

Online, basically if you do the following, you should be all right:

• Make sure your content is engaging
• Ensure your content solves a problem people have
• Make sure that just about anyone can understand it
• Proofread to make sure you have no spelling or grammar errors

By following that simple procedure, your content should have no problem being labeled “high-quality”, under seo services standards.

Be sure to stay tuned for more parts in this series!

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What was the Goal of Panda?

In this part of the Google Updates series, we’ll take a look at Google’s attention-getting Panda Update.  Many steps that Google had taken previously, including the Attribution Update, were hinting at Google’s increased focus on quality.

Google aimed to provide users with higher-quality results in this update.  If you were searching for a solution for a complex health condition, results from a federal government website should rank above other general information sites.  This wasn’t always the case in the past.

The update was targeting content farms like Associated Content.  If you’re not a techie, you might be wondering what a content farm is.

Content farms pay writers a very low wage to produce large amounts content.  The content is then designed to take advantage of the current search engine ranking methodologies to rank as highly as possible.

While the content may have ranked highly, quality was never a concern for these sites.  You could write just about anything you wanted.

Since Google’s goal is to return the best possible results to its users, the rankings of content at these sites were lowered.  Neither of Google’s spokesmen, Amit Singhal or Matt Cutts, would officially say they were aiming at content farms.  But, they did say that people knew what kinds of sites were targeted.

How much of an Impact Did Panda Make?

The Panda Update made a huge impact!  It affected about 12% of all searches performed.  Many websites experienced deep traffic and rankings losses.

One observation made by Jill Whalen of Highrankings.com was that sites with a large amount of content hidden behind tabs also experienced a loss in rankings.

You’re familiar with those kinds of sites.  These are the ones where you have a menu across the top of the page, with what appears to be file-folder-like tabs.  Google chooses to see sites with tabs as one large page.

Since Google chose to see those sites as one large page, they appeared to not be user-friendly.  Google then lowered the rankings of these sites.

An additional observation she made was that the rankings of those “merry-go-round” sites were also lowered.
You’re familiar with this type of site too.  You’ve clicked on a result in Google, only to be sent to a page that didn’t show what you say in Google’s search results.  Then, you clicked on a link at the website.  Then you realized you either clicked on an advertisement or another link that takes you to somewhere else you didn’t want to go.

Everyone can thank Google for lowering the rankings of those sites!

What to Do in the Future?

Basically, the Panda Update aimed to improve the quality of Google’s search results.  And, Google is only interested in continuing to increase that quality.

If you’ve owned a website for some time now, or if you’re planning to start one, Google has made it clear that your first concern should be quality content supporting quality seo.

IF you found this information even kind cool or useful, Thank us by leaving a “REAL COMMENT” !   THEN LIKE, FOLLOW and Share!

Here is a continued look at Google Updates from 2011:

Earlier this year on January 28th, Google released its’ new Attribution Update.  If you’re not aware of this update, that’s okay.  Absolute Placement Today is here to help make all these complex technological terms simple enough for anyone to understand.

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s lead engineer, the main point of the update was to help reduce the spam levels in Google’s search results.  Sites that copied the content of other sites and sites with low levels of original content were specifically targeted.

These sites would either be ranked much lower or entirely eliminated from Google’s search results.  The update would affect about 2% of all searches.  However, you would probably only notice about a half percent change in the search results.

Before this update, Google was actually ranking copied content higher than its’ source.

Many SEO professionals were somewhat concerned about this update.  A part of many SEO strategies is article marketing.

“Article marketing” is when you either manually or automatically spread your articles across the internet.  The basic idea is that your website will gain links and free traffic.

Now that Google has decided to reduce the rankings of copied content, the question to ask is,“How did this end up affecting SEO?”

Google’s Focus on Quality is Sometimes Questionable

Well, first take a look at how Google could easily be tricked into ranking websites much higher than they should be.  The guys at SEO MOZ did their own study and found some interesting results.

First, they decided to study a pretty popular brand of merchandise, “nfl jerseys.”  Many of the results Google returned first included sites offering up to 75% off the original price.

At the time of the search, every result on the first page was fraudulent!  If you searched on other popular brands, you would get the same results.

By the process of elimination, SEO MOZ determined that the text in the back links was helping these sites to rank highly.  Not surprisingly, most of the links resulted from forum spam, blog spam, and hacked websites.

Owners of these fraudulent online shops would use special programs to post thousands of forum posts and blog comments.  On the surface, this doesn’t sound so bad.  But, since these posts and comments are generated by a computer program and not a person, they are often completely unrelated to the topic of discussion.

They’re called “spam “ because they rarely make any sense and are only present to get someone’s website a back link.

Keep in mind…Google’s Not Perfect!

What is interesting is how invested Google is in returning fresh and high-quality search results.  At the same time, Google still has difficulty in returning high-quality search results.

The Attribution Update acted as a step in the right direction.  But, it also only applied to content, not back links.

In terms of content, Google seemed to be returning higher-quality results.  But, in terms of quality websites, Google was still struggling at this time.

If you’re an SEO Service provider or if your site uses SEO services, you may or may not like this update.  In the end, it all really depends on your SEO strategy.

Stay tuned, and be prepared to learn more about future Google updates next week!

On October 18, 2011, Google released its’ query encryption update.  The new update protects organic searchers using SSL (Secure Sockets Layers).  Keen observers may have noticed that by default you are now sent to https://www.google.com instead of http://www.google.com.

Google noted on its’ support page that the primary motivation for this update is to protect the safety and security of its’ searchers.  In terms of concrete effects, this means that any websites searchers navigated to from Google can, in a certain percentage of cases, no longer see which keywords referred the person to that site.

If you take the time to examine your Google Analytics data to see which keywords are driving traffic to your site, you may see “not provided.”  This is the direct result of Google’s Query Encryption Update.

In some cases, the amount of data that is “not provided” is 10%, 20%, 30%, or even more.

Two authoritative organizations, Search Engine Watch and Conductor have each conducted their own small studies.  Conductor found that, on average, about 2% of results were affected in late October, with that number rising to nearly 18% by late November.

Conductor found those numbers to be 6.5% in late October, nearly 11% in mid-November, and 9% in late November.

With these fairly different results, it’s hard to determine what the overall trend really is.

So Why is Google Really Doing This?

Of course, few people buy the idea that Google is acting to protect the privacy and security of people performing organic searches.  Most searchers are more concerned with paid advertiser tracking of their data than organic tracking.

The first theory about Google’s real motivation behind this update is that it is doing so in order to squeeze out competition to its’ Google Adwords service.  Interestingly, while some keyword data is not available for people performing organic Google searches, all keyword data is available for one of Google’s moneymakers, Adwords.

How come the rule doesn’t apply when Google stands to profit?  This is a very fair question that Google is yet to answer.  What Google will say is that they are concerned about the privacy of their searchers, and only a small percentage of traffic will be affected.

Another proposed theory is that Google is doing this in order to appease the political elite in Washington.  No one can cite any current legislation or political moves that would force Google into such a move, but Washington does have a history of protecting the privacy of its’ citizens on the internet.

The whole SEO community is in an uproar over the update, as it makes the job of SEO professionals that much more imprecise and difficult to perform.  Most take it as another move by a powerful corporation to maintain power over the search engine results.

Whether you like it or not, there’s not too much that can be done about the whole situation.  As long as searchers prefer Google, nothing can be done to change what it decides the rules of the game should be.