In Front Media's Tips on How to Survive Google’s 2012 Updates in 2013

Why would anyone need an SEO website assessment? Well, thanks to the many major and minor Google Panda and Penguin Updates of course. So what’s next for 2013 - the Possum update?

Toronto, Ontario (PRWEB) November 28, 2012

In Front Media Web Services advises of the major updates Google has made to their search algorithm this year and how to ensure a website will not be affected by these past updates and any future updates as well.

For a Web Design company, an SEO Service or even a website owner, surviving the algorithm updates Google has included over the last year, has been a full-time job plus overtime, trying to keep up with all the algorithm changes. In Front Media knows this so well.

Most good Search Optimization companies know that the search engine giant has updated it's search algorithm between 300-500 times over the last 12 months. That's more than one update per day. But, the good thing is that most of those updates have been and will continue to be small and mostly unnoticeable. It's the bigger ones that have many site owners scrambling to either change the way they do business on the internet or update their resumes.

Many businesses that have invested in Facebook Fan Pages and other area of Social Media have found they have less dependence on the search engines for traffic.

So, how did most businesses fair this year? How did these major updates affect website traffic and sales? Well, there has been a lot of complaining heard throughout the internet on just this topic. So, here's a list of some of the major updates that shook the internet over the past 11 months.

January – Ads above the fold. Websites with too many advertisements “above the fold” were devalued.

February – A refresher of the original Panda update which filtered out more low quality sites or sites with “thin content”.

April – Penguin update. This update mostly comprised of an “over optimization penalty” or “Webspam update” dubbed “Penguin” filtering unnatural links, keyword stuffing and other sneaky tactics.

July – Link warnings. Warnings were sent to site owners with unnatural backlinks advising they are “on Google’s radar”.

August – DMCA Penalty for websites that repeatedly abuse copyright infringement.

September - EMD Exact Match Domain Penalty. Website with thin content and were determined to be low quality sites using EMD for optimized positioning are now filtered.

•November – Panda update (21st update) minor updates to penalize low quality websites.

December - ??? Who knows? Maybe Google programmers will take the month off and vacation somewhere warm and forget to come back to work.

So how does one battle the Google updates? It's really simple.

Give users good content.

Make sure content is unique and well written.

Do not "stuff" website code or content with keywords.

Do not get involved in "link schemes".

While on the subject of "links", do not be afraid to link-out to authority websites.

Update web page content often.

Get involved in Social Media.

Participate in blogging, forums and other Web 2.0 platforms so as to communicate with others to learn and offer advice where possible.

These are just a few of dozens more good things website owners can do to combat changes to search. No one knows what 2013 will bring us except the R&D employees at Google headquarters. The best plan would be for website owners to follow some or all of the guidelines above, along with the basic guidelines that can be found on Google's website, and we'll all will be a little better for it.

Above all else, if a website offers good content and the site is built for "humans" first, that site will do well in 2013 and beyond.

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/bmbolt7

How to Use Panguin to Find SEO Issues

Google’s algorithm updates can have a big impact on organic search traffic and sales. Now that the search giant has ramped up its algorithm tweaks to occurring an average of one to two per day, it can be difficult keeping track of them all. The recently introduced Panguin Tool simplifies this process.

Named for this year’s largest Google algorithm updates, Panda and Penguin, the Panguin Tool overlays a timeline of Google’s algorithm updates on your Google Analytics data. Panguin requires integration with your Google Analytics account to run, and unfortunately doesn’t yet work with other analytics programs.

Set up is simple: Log in with your Google Analytics account information and choose the analytics account to associate with Panguin. In a couple seconds a chart loads displaying your Google organic search visits overlaid with Google’s major algorithm updates.

Panguin allows daily and weekly views of the data, as well as the ability to select a custom date range. Mousing over any of the color-coded algorithm update milestones displays a quick description of that particular update. Keep in mind the chart only shows Google’s organic search visits and not paid search visits or Bing’s search traffic. This restriction makes sense because the algorithm updates only impact Google’s organic search traffic. As a result, the relationship between the peaks and valleys in the analytics shown and the algorithm update milestones is as close to apples-to-apples as you can get.

A coinciding dip in your analytics data and an algorithm update could mean that that update impacted your site’s Google SEO performance. When I say “coinciding,” I mean on the same day. If the dip in organic search traffic first and then an update came a week later, it’s unlikely that the two are related. If the algorithm update came first and then a dip in organic search traffic came a week later, it’s possible that the two are related but I’d still be looking for other causes like changes made on your own site.

If you suspect your site’s performance was affected by an algorithm update, the best thing to do first is to head to leading SEO industry sources like Search Engine Land or SEOmoz to read up on the update. They’ll have news straight from the search engines, thoughts on what it means on a more practical level for site owners, and some tips on what to do next.

Jill Kocher is a seasoned SEO professional and all-around technogeek. By day, she manages Resource Interactive’s SEO practice here in Chicago and serves as contributing editor at Practical eCommerce. By night, Jill landscapes her home in the far northern suburbs of Chicagoland while enjoying a glass of wine and thinking about SEO some more. Family discussion centers primarily around SEO, analytics, social media, mobile apps, android, iOS, how-was-your-day and cats.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/ceqa5o2

Why Ecommerce Sites Get Penalized by Google and the Panda Update

Google released the friendly sounding update Panda into the wild over a year ago, and the bamboo it was supposed to munch on were content farms. Content farms included sites such as eHow and typically had a lot of content written by a lot of people on a lot of different topics, all  highly SEO’d to rank for a multitude of search terms, such as “How to Bath Your Dog” or “How to Get Dressed in the Morning in Richmond VA.”

Bluntly, content farms were asking for a Google update to take them out: they provided very poorly written content, churned out by ‘professional writers’ who could barely string two words together without using an exclamation point!

Point?

Panda targeted “thin content”, which broadly means poorly written English, repetitive regurgitation, low word counts, a large number of pages on the site and providing little in the way of value to human readers.

The problem with this description is we are also describing an eCommerce site and Panda cannot tell between a badly written content farm and high-value, commercial site delivering real value.

Ecommerce sites typically have:

Lots of Pages

Because they offer lots of products, and even where the product line is restricted, there will be lots of options. Think colors and sizes for one V-Neck T-shirt and suddenly you see how many pages can be created for one very simple product.

Duplicated Content

Duplicate content provides zero SEO benefit, and with Panda it is waving a red rag at a stampeding bull. But use our t-shirt site again, and you can see you cannot really write something that different about a red t-shirt or a blue one: the only difference is the color.

Another issue for Ecommerce sites is that they frequently take a product description, especially if it is technical in nature, from the manufacturer or master distributor’s site and paste it into their own product pages.

Low Word Counts

Again, just how much can you say about a t-shirt?

Seriously, try to write 400 words on t-shirts of any kind…and then think of the task extrapolated out for S, M, L, XL and XXL variations then multiplied out further by color variations and this is even before we get to different styles.

It is usual to see a product page which is heavy on images with a light touch when it comes to the word count.

Read more at http://tinyurl.com/cs2868d

Latest SEO Updates - Enhancing the Optimization of Your Websites

It is an important part of the media and business to earn more users and traffic on websites. SEO plays a vital role in it. Businesses and sites are only working because of SEO. It is really needed that a user gets the exact information he/she wants. There is a way through which SEO's can provide all of the information properly to the user under one single website. Already the sites have become so damn heavy that it is tough for a normal working user to find things easily on the website. Web sites have information about their products and promotions but, have no such way to provide all of it in a few seconds, even through Latest SEO updates. Users are never pleased by such unfriendly sources. SEO can work on it.

Latest SEO updates tell that new records have been set about the search engines. Social sites and the search engines have been given advanced features and thus SEO's of each site need to see if their site is in a condition of top ranking or not. Latest SEO updates also show that all search engines have been given a look of the beginners' guide and hence, sites now have to work on their growing social sharing traffic.

SEO's are designed in such a way that it becomes easier and faster for people to load their work on a website and take help in seconds. Well, nowadays it is the opposite of it. Spammy links are now provided and thus viruses are also being uploaded on and through such websites. Latest SEO updates tell you about collaborations and every outgoing problem as well as the top ranking of each most-used website. Latest SEO updates are surrounded by upcoming techniques of the new era. The latest SEO update provides you the help of a keyword, multi search tool and as well as a user-friendly environment to work in. All of this is classified under a single website.

Latest SEO updates are mostly for the help of SEO's itself. By making a new guideline for the SEO, it is now far better and easier to search about things on a search engine. No luxury could be seen in here. There comes a question like about what type of thing you want to search about. There are websites like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail and pronews.com that provides all kinds of information. They also contain basic and helpful information about new techniques for SEO's to work on.

SEO is made just for the success of a particular website. Latest SEO updates links to the part that shows one need to build up such an SEO for its own website that it earns more traffic and makes it up on a table. It is a humble duty of every search engine to go through the key points of SEO and its particular references and techniques. Latest SEO updates are really very useful in earning a bright name and making money online. They play an important yet a prominent mark in a success and present condition of a website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7341638

Tax fears make overseas investors pull out Rs 1 trillion from India:


NEW DELHI: Rich overseas entities, investing in Indian markets through 'participatory notes' (P-notes/PNs), are estimated to have pulled out over Rs 1 lakh crore (about USD 20 billion) in less than three months on fears of getting caught in the government's taxation net and its black money trail. 

As a result, the quantum of money invested through these PNs has hit its rock-bottom levels of just about 10 per cent of total FII (foreign institutional investment) holdings -- which used to be more than 50 per cent a few years ago. 

The participatory notes (PNs) allow foreign HNIs (high networth individuals) and other rich investors to invest in India through already-registered FIIs, while saving on time and costs associated with direct registrations. 

The flight of PN investments began late in March after the government in its union budget proposed new taxation regime of General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) and certain retrospective amendments for taxing offshore transactions.

Sources said that PN investors have already pulled out close to Rs 1 lakh crore (about USD 20 billion) from Indian equity and debt markets, while they might have decided against putting in fresh investments worth at least Rs 50,000 crore ever since the new tax policy was proposed.

While GAAR has been deferred by a year, the tax proposals for offshore transactions could apply to FIIs as well.

It is feared that the new taxes could lead to heavy tax burden for the foreign investors investing through tax-friendly jurisdictions like Mauritius. Most of the overseas entities route their investments into India through such places to take benefit of their tax-friendly regimes.

There are apprehensions that FIIs could be forced to pass on their tax liabilities to their PN clients, thus adversely impacting their overall returns on investment.

Many hedge funds and ultra-rich investors from abroad prefer PNs, which are sold by India-registered FIIs, as it allows them maximise the returns through savings on costs and rigmarole of various regulatory processes.

As per the latest data available with market regulator Sebi, the total value of PNs in Indian markets stood at about Rs 1,30,012 crore (about USD 25 billion) at the end of April 2012, down from Rs 1,83,151 crore at the end of February and Rs 1,65,832 crore as on March 31, 2012.

This figure was on a sharp uptrend this year till middle of March, but started declining sharply after tax proposals came to be known. While the mid-month figures are not shared by Sebi, the industry sources said that the total value of PNs are estimated to have reached near Rs two trillion (about USD 40 billion), before it started sliding in late March.

Sources said that the total value of PNs is estimated to have fallen further to near Rs one lakh crore level (about USD 15 billion) currently, marking a fall of nearly same amount from its late-March peak.

The share of PNs in total FII holding stood at 16.4 per cent in February, but fell to 11.4 per cent by April. It has now further fallen to near 10 per cent level, sources said, while adding that most of the FII outflow currently taking place is in the PN accounts.

The PNs have been accounting for mostly 15-20 per cent of total FII holdings in India since 2009, while it used to much higher in the range of 25-40 per cent in 2008. However, it was as high as over 50 per cent at the peak of Indian stock market bull run during a few months in 2007.

In addition to the new taxation proposals, the government's recent white paper on Black Money has added to the flight of PN investments from India, sources said.

The white paper, tabled by the Parliament on May 21, said that PNs were being used by Indian citizens to re-invest the black money in the country.

"Investment in the Indian stock market through PNs is another way in which the black money generated by Indians is re-invested in India," it said.

Participatory note is a derivative instrument issued in foreign jurisdictions, by a foreign institutional investor (FII) or its sub-accounts against underlying Indian securities.

"... through the instrument of PNs, investment can be made in the Indian securities market by those investors who do not wish to be regulated by Indian regulators due to a variety of reasons," the white paper noted.

The reasons could include the desire of investors to keep their identity anonymous, which is possible also for the reason that PNs/ODIs can be freely traded and easily transferred without disclosing the identity of the actual beneficiaries, it added.

As per the white paper, since PNs are issued from offshore financial centres (OFCs) such as the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, it is possible to hide the identity of the ultimate beneficiaries through multiple layers.

Amid rising concerns that some of the money coming through PNs could be unaccounted wealth under the of FII investment, market regulator Sebi has already taken various measures to ensure that these instruments are not used for black money laundering. It was due to the steps taken by Sebi that the PNs' share in total FII holding had previously fallen from over 50 per cent to 15-20 per cent.

Source:http://tiny.cc/0r9pfw  

Times  Of India