5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy

So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?

1. Describe your target audience on Twitter. �If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop�a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.

The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.

2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.

It’s essential to know how success with Twitter will be measured. If it�s just follower counts, heck those could probably be purchased. (Which TopRankMarketing does NOT recommend) �However, that would be a fake network without effect.

Where does Twitter fit in?

3. Where does Twitter fit within your overall online marketing strategy? Is Twitter meant to be a customer service tool? Brand monitoring? Monitoring for sales opportunities? Promotion of other corporate social activities? (ie blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Etc) Does it support some other communications function?

As a communications and social networking tool, Twitter can connect with customers, prospects, journalists, employees, candidates, investors and marketing partners. Understanding where Twitter fits within the overall mix of online marketing and communications will help with: allocating monitoring and engagement resources, establishing a working social media policy, workflow management and reporting. You may very well find a number of synergies available through Twitter, such as connecting with journalists and bloggers for PR purposes but also encouraging link usage when citing the company to assist with SEO efforts.

Twitter is a tool and only as useful as the tactics you use.

4. A firm grasp of the first three steps really needs to be addressed before useful tactics should be implemented. If all you do is focus on Twitter popularity tactics without addressing a plan for reaching other goals (hopefully being popular isn�t the sole goal) then the investment in time and effort becomes more like guesswork.

First and foremost for tactics, the Twitter page needs to be designed and optimized. If a business has the expectation to be perceived in a significant way, then the Twitter page needs to avoid looking insignificant.�Tweets need to be diverse, yet follow a theme that is consistent to the messaging and audience goal. Kudos to customers and offering tips are great but alone are not going to attract followers fast.

There are a few tactics with Twitter that are almost always a good idea regardless of the audience, goals and overall plan:

Having a persona or target profile in mind, research Twitter users and follow them.Associate the Twitter account with something else that is social, such as a YouTube Channel, Facebook Fan Page and/or a blog.Make an effort to link to a small number of high quality and creatively written resources, daily. Mornings are best. Brand these with a hashtag like #yourbrandtips, where “yourbrand” is the brand within your company that this Twitter account is focused on. It could also be a behavior or action. Ex: �#niketips or #runningtips.Schedule a #yourbrandtips Twitter event every month, two weeks or weekly. This would be run like #blogchat where a real person from your company hosts a chat on Twitter about topics relevant to your offering and useful to who you’re trying to reach. Ideally there would be influential guests involved so that their tweets attract new followers to your brand’s Twitter account.The company should really post their twitter handle everywhere their web site address is posted.Find a way to ask followers questions, then use those answers in blog posts, which are promoted via the business twitter account.Create a Twitter list of a segment of the target audience. One list for each segment. Then solicit followers asking for recommendations of people that belong in the �segment one� list or �segment two� list. Ex: �”librarians” or “network administrators”. Mention that anyone who retweets a link to the list can get added to that list � provided they belong. Lists must be relevant and managed to be of any use. Promote lists with Listorious.com.Use #FollowFridays or #FF to recognize people that retweet the brand’s Twitter content the most. Also mention influential Twitter accounts that you have had some connection with. They might retweet the #FF and expose the brand Twitter account to new audiences.

Measure twice, Tweet once.

5. Measurement�with Twitter can be tricky such as identifying referrers via various URL shortening services, but it’s the most important. By “measurement”, I also mean monitoring on an ongoing basis, not just counting outcomes or KPIs. Followers is just one dimension. Based on what the brand is trying to achieve, a mix of data points and measurement tools should be implemented. Some example metrics:

Tweets publishedRetweets & potential reach from those retweetsNew targeted Twitter users that are followed by the brand’s Twitter accountNew followers of the brand’s Twitter�account acquiredDirect traffic from Twitter to brand’s web pages. URL shortening services should be used like bit.lyMentions of the brand�in Tweets without linksHow many lists the brand Twitter account is included inWhat new Twitter users has the brand’s Twitter account added to it�s own organized lists?How many engagements or discussions the brand’s Twitter�account has with other usersConnections (follow, retweet, @message, DM) with targeted Twitter users

Example Tools:

search.twitter.comsocial media monitoring toolsWeb analyticsbit.lycotweet.com, hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com

Obviously, there are many other tools for Twitter out there, including overall social media marketing campaign management tools such as: Wildfire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast, SocialTalk, pop.to and others.

Sure, you can “experiment” with tools like Twitter and find your specific strategy as you go, but you could also find productivity and valuable connections a lot sooner (as well as effective time and resource management) if you create a plan that addresses who you’re trying to reach on Twitter, what goals you hope to achieve and a plan for getting there. Make no mistake, there will always be a component of on-demand and real time �or opportunistic marketing with Twitter. The platform is still so new that the community is finding new and innovative uses every day. You might find new uses too, so don’t get too committed to a single focus in your Twitter efforts. Be flexible, curious and willing to participate.

Some tactics are always a good idea and some will reveal themselves as you develop your Twitter network and participate with the community. �Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals, so make sure you’ve spent at least a little time figuring out where Twitter fits in with your overall social media marketing strategy and then what tools make the most sense to use when measuring success.

The End is Here: Yahoo Closes Geocities

This past summer I wrote about how Yahoo was going to finally shut down Geocities this fall.� That day is finally here, and the internet will never be the same.� Life will go on, of course, but early web adopters will no longer be able to amuse themselves by looking back at their earliest web creations.

After 15 years (it was launched in 1994), GeoCities had long been irrelevant and outdated.� Had it been in the hands of Microsoft or Google, it might still exist as an archive.� However GeoCities had the misfortune to be owned by Yahoo, once a formidable combatant in the search engine wars that is now clearly past its prime.

Sure, there’s always archive.org, but due to the fact that few GeoCities sites ever received any notable traffic, the majority are not likely to be found there.� And yea, GeoCities’ old rival�Tripod still exists, but it’s not really quite the same, is it?

There’s not much more to say that I haven’t already said.� You may have been old and feeble, GeoCities, but we’ll always look back fondly upon the good ol’ days.�� RIP.

Where Our Social Media Efforts Are Best Served

For many small businesses, their ability to make a profit or keep their heads just above water hinges on being able to successfully promote their companies.

In today�s day and age, part of those promotional efforts revolve around social media and the ability to interact with both current and potential customers.

As many of us that immerse ourselves in social media on a daily basis know, SM is a relatively free and informative means by which to get one�s message out to the masses. That then begs the question, is a better to do social media promotion in-house or outsource it to agencies that specialize in it?

In the event your small business finds itself dealing with this question, consider a number of factors prior to making any decisions.

Among the things to look at for having your social media promotions staying inside the company would be:Familiarization � It only stands to reason that your in-house team, be in the marketing or public relations folks, have more of a clue as to what is going on inside your business than someone on the outside. If you keep the social media efforts inside the company, you also have greater control as to when the items will run and on what venues;Saving money � If you decide to outsource your social media efforts to a company that specializes in such work, expect to pay for it. If you stop and think about it, promoting social media is not the most time consuming task in the world. If you have it in your budget to spend the funds for social media promotion that is fine, but if you find yourself scrutinizing each and every task your company does, it would make more sense to do the work yourself;One more oversight responsibility � Should you decide to outsource your company�s social media efforts, it only stands to reason that you will do your homework and look for a social media specialist. While you trust them to do the work correctly, this is one more area that you will need to at least periodically oversee, having a line of communication set up for any issues. When you keep the social media efforts in-house, the answers to any questions and/or problems will come much quicker.Among the things to look at for having your social media promotions going outside the company would be:Professionalism � Not to say that you do not have an individual or team on your staff to handle social media, but outsourcing it to an agency that does this for a living takes some of the pressure off of you. As long as you have done your research and found a reliable agency, you can rest easier knowing that it is being professionally handled on a daily basis. This important responsibility can be taken off of your hands so that you can focus on other vital tasks;Money well spent � While all companies want to hold the line on spending, having your social media efforts done outside the company can be money well spent. You are getting an unbiased opinion and approach to your social media needs, and� not from those within your company that will likely agree with whatever approach you take to promoting your company via social media;One less oversight responsibility � Having an outside agency to oversee your social media tasks allows you to have the employee or employees that would have been directed for the assignment to focus elsewhere. With additional companies in today�s trying economy attempting to do more with less, outsourcing social media takes one more responsibility off your employees� to do list.

At the end of the day, whether you outsource or keep your social media efforts in-house, the goal is to properly determine how social media will assist in growing your business.

Until you are able to answer that question, keep all your options on the table, or in this case, your computer.

7 Reasons Why Blogging Is Still Important in 2012

Some people would like you to think blogging as we know it is over.

They share the eye-popping numbers for Tumblr�s growth, for example: 355 million unique visitors per month, and 400 million pageviews per day. And it�s true that Twitter and Facebook have lead many people away from blogging.

But publishing content on a blog is superior to these platforms in many ways, like putting a human face on your brand, differentiating you from your competition and educating prospects and clients.

But I want to expand on seven areas that will prove essential in 2012.

Foundation for All Your Social Media Activities

Just because most of the conversation is moving off of the blogging platforms doesn�t mean that you should abandon ship. See, a blog allows you to create a base in which all of your work is anchored.

I tweet, Facebook, guest post and use Quora, but all of that would be hopelessly messy if I didn�t ground everything I did on Quick Sprout.

But you cannot fully explain yourself on Twitter. It would take me over 500 tweets to share just one of my Quick Sprout blogs with you!

A blog allows you to build a fuller picture of who you are. Most people will meet you through other places�but if they like what they read on Twitter, then they�ll follow you back to your blog and find out more about who you are.

You better have a lot of content to give them.

Build Your Brand As An Expert

Examples of tech bloggers who have used their blogs to build themselves as experts in their field are legion.

Robert ScobleBrian SolisJeremiah OwyangPete Cashmore (Mashable)Michael Arrington (Tech Crunch)Megan McCarthy (ex-Wired, Valley Wag)

These guys and gals now command attention and lead a remarkable life influencing trends, creating breakthrough ideas and giving us some of the best information out there.

That last part is critical. These bloggers didn�t focus on themselves. They focused on publishing long-form, brilliant articles that put their talent and knowledge on display.

Being an expert is not talking about yourself. Do that and your efforts will backfire on you. In fact, as Dan Zarella explains, the more you talk about yourself the less people want to follow you.

So what should you talk about?

Before you even start writing, you first need to do intense research to find out what your audience needs. Where are the gaps that you can provide information? How can you avoid adding noise to the echo chamber and provide that amounts to a unique contribution to the web? What is it you love writing about? And is there any money in it?

Once you figure that out, you then need to clamp down and start writing. Here are 5 guides to help you:

How to Grow Your Blog with the Rule of 105 Lessons Fortune 500 Companies Can Teach You about BloggingA Quick and Dirty Guide to Content MarketingHow to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts with These 13 QuestionsNeil Patel�s Guide to BloggingBuild Trust

People are skeptical. They are skeptical about strangers on the street and they are even more skeptical about strangers on the internet. A blog with consistent, truthful and helpful content will allow you to bridge that gap between distrust to trust.

How do you build trust? The more you can build these trust elements into your site the better:

Clean and beautiful designCorrect spelling and grammarThorough about pageHigh-quality photo of the authorSigns of social sharingLinks to trustworthy sourcesHigh-quality images and visualsShort, easy-to-read domain nameProfessional logoSolid, detailed content updated frequentlyPresence of community and conversation through comments

Back when blogging was the only game in town, it was easy to build trust in a short period of time. Now it could take you six months to a year to even get a few hundred faithful followers. To be frank, it could take even longer. But be patient and persevere because the time you invest will eventually outlast those who can�t hang and you will win the trust game.

Exercise Your Creativity

You might wonder why creativity is important in a world where business and hard-hitting metrics seem to dominate, but the answer is simple: in any competitive field it is the most creative who will succeed.

Look at the rise of the infographic. By employing the use of infographics GOOD magazine got put on the map. Many businesses noticed their success and followed suit.

But they must evolve�and they only way they can do that is to employ creativity.

If you think about it, there is nothing that might lead anyone to use infographics in the early days except as a hunch. �Why not explain complex data in a simple picture?� That insight comes from someone who is constantly trying to be creative.

You can encourage those insights by blogging. Here�s how:

Create content that stirs up conversation and communities that generate new ideasBlogging can reduce stress as you work out ideas or problems that might be weighing on your mindThe process of blogging unlocks hidden ideas in your own mind, leading to insightsHelps you maintain a focus on what needs to get done.

But ultimately, blogging will lead to growth as you learn about yourself, your audience and the world around you�leading to further creativity and profitable insights. As you can see by the examples I�ve shared, creators of great achievements always walk down this line.

Growing Stream of Organic Search Traffic

It�s hard to think that anybody would doubt the benefits of blogging to improving your organic search engine efforts, which in turns drives more traffic to your site, but in case there are any unbelievers out there�here�s the evidence: �people who�ve blogged five times in the last 7 days will get 6.9 times more search traffic.

That�s hard to ignore, don�t you think?

Active blogging drives more traffic to your site�and more traffic to your site leads to more leads. And when people show up to your site and find well-reasoned and useful content, they are going to learn more about you.

Furthermore, as more posts increase, your overall site traffic will increase also. In other words, accumulating posts on your site over time is like a snowball growing in size as it rolls down the hill.

If you think about it, the more content you have the more likely you are going to have something that a reader wants. Why not try and give it to them?

Consistency is the Key

Do you know who Kevin Rose is? He�s the guy behind Digg�so he�s pretty famous. Do you know that he bailed on his blog when Google+ rolled out?

Many of us found that unbelievable.

But this actually happens a lot. A new technology comes out and people flock to it, giving up on what they were building prior to that. In fact, lots of big name companies gave up on their blogging for Facebook. Perhaps the numbers are better for them, but from an individual viewpoint, that will hurt you.

Look at all the famous bloggers today. People like Hugh MacLeod, Fred Wilson and Rand Fishkin. One of the reasons they are famous today is because they worked hard year after year producing attractive, useful and powerful blog posts.

And get this: the size of your blog will also affect your monthly leads. Accumulate over 52 posts a month and your business will definitely benefit:

If 52 posts a month is too many, keep it growing by at least feeding it 2 or 3 posts a week. This consistency will pay off over time as you start to see results in about 6 to 12 months. So don�t give up.

Proven Business Model

Finally, the best reason you should continue to blog 2012 is that it�s a proven business model. How you define that business model is up to you.

Some have used it to get book contracts:

Ben Huh – Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic FailsPamela Slim � Escape from the Cubicle NationWalker Lamond � Rules for My Unborn Son

Others used it to build a business, like Brian Clark or Darren Rowse.

Still others, like I mentioned it above, used it to brand themselves. This model has been proven over and over that it is strange that some people would ignore it or run to the latest social media fad.

Conclusion

2012 is a great year for blogging. It�s still one of the best tools in your SEO toolbox, a great way to brand yourself as an expert and even improve your life by being a great way to make money.

So, whether you have been blogging for years or this is your first, invest in building a blog that becomes something remarkable and profitable and try not to get distracted by those who say it�s dead.

What other elements of blogging do you think will be especially important in 2012?

Whiteboard+ on Google's Penguin Update

Yesterday, I filmed some quick thoughts on Google's Penguin update. You can find the full video on our Google+ page:

In it, I cover a few unique items about Penguin:

It's (weirdly) not focused on improving search qualityIt appears to affect some of the worst spam (but not all) and some very light forms of spam/manipulation (oddly)Not tied to on-page or on-site necessarily, though outlinks may be looked at and several other updates occurred at similar times (making it tough to reverse engineer what might have caused a penalty)Appears to affect a disproportionate number of web service industry sites (though that could be correlation, not causation)Not yet clear if this a rolling update (though there are signs it may be)Left a lot of very strange, "empty" types of results in many of the spammiest verticals/SERPs

I wanted to crosspost about it here so those asking for my opinions about Penguin could check it out. Look forward to some great discussion on G+ (or here in the comments). Oh, and if you haven't encircled SEOmoz on Google+... You totally should! We've got another WB+ video coming out very soon :-)

Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

It’s been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google’s happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about “negative SEO” as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, on these and some related questions.

Penguin: “A Success”

The goal of any algorithm update is to improve search results. So how’s Penguin been for Google?

“It’s been a success from our standpoint,” Cutts said.

What About Those Weird Results?

Of course, soon after Penguin was released, people quickly started citing examples of odd results. The official Viagra site wasn’t listed, while hacked sites were. An empty web site was listed for “make money online,” and there were reports of other empty sites ranking well. Scraper sites were reported outranking the sites they scraped.

How could Penguin be a success with these types of things happening?

Cutts said that many of these issues existed before Penguin launched and were not caused by the new spam-fighting algorithm.

Indeed, the Viagra issue, which has now been fixed, was a problem before Penguin hit. Penguin didn�t cause it.

False Positives? A Few Cases

How about false positives, people who feel they’ve been unfairly hit by Penguin when they weren’t doing any spam?

“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,” Cutts said.

The�Panda Update�was Google’s big update that targeted low-quality spam last year. The Florida Update was a major Google update in 2003 intended to improve its search quality.

I’d agree that both of those seemed to have impacted more sites than Penguin has, based on having watched reactions to all these updates.�Not everyone will agree with me, of course. It’s also worth the regular reminder that for any site that “lost” in the rankings, someone gained. You rarely hear from those who gain.

Bottom line, Google seems pretty confident that the Penguin Update is indeed catching people who were spamming, as was intended.

Why Spam Still Gets Through

Certainly when I’ve looked into reports, I’ve often found spam at the core of why someone dropped.�But if Penguin is working, why are some sites that are clearly spamming still getting through?

“No algorithm is perfect. While we’d like to achieve perfection, our litmus test is, ‘Do things get better than before?’,” Cutts said.

Cutts also explained that Penguin was designed to be quite precise, to act against pages when there was an extremely high-confidence of spam being involved. The downside is that some spam might get through, but the upside is that you have fewer false positives.

How Can You Recover?

One of the most difficult things with this update is telling people how to recover. Anyone hit by Penguin was deemed to be spamming Google.

In the past, if you spammed Google, you were told to file a reconsideration request. However, Google’s specifically said that reconsideration requests won’t help those hit by Penguin. They’ll recover naturally, Google says, if they clean the spam up.

However, one of the main reasons I’ve seen when looking at sites hit by Penguin seems to be bad linking practices. People have used sponsored WordPress themes, or poor quality reciprocal linking, have purchased links or participated in linking networks, such as those�recently targeted�by Google.

How do people pull themselves out of these link networks, if perhaps they don’t have control over those links now?

“It is possible to clean things up,” Cutts said, and he suggested people review two videos he’s done on this topic:

“The bottom line is, try to resolve what you can,” Cutts said.

Waiting On Penguin To Update Again

If you do clean things up, how will you know? Ideally, you’ll see your traffic from Google recover, the next time Penguin is updated.

That leads to another important point. Penguin, like Panda, is a filter that gets refreshed from time-to-time.�Penguin is not constantly running but rather is used to tag things as spam above-and-beyond Google’s regular spam filtering on a periodic basis.

Is Penguin a site-wide penalty like Panda or page-specific? Cutts wouldn’t say. But given that Panda has site-wide impacts, I think it’s a fair assumption that Penguin works the same.

What that means is that if some of your site is deemed Penguin-like, all of it may suffer. Again, recovery means cleaning up the spam. If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said.

New Concerns Over Negative SEO

Before Penguin, talk of “negative SEO” had been ramping up. Since then, it seems to have gotten worse in some places. I’ve seen post-after-post making it sound as if anyone is now in serious danger that some competitor can harm them.

At the core of these fears seems to be a perfect storm of assumptions. Google recently targeted some linking schemes. That caused some people to lose traffic. Google also sent out warnings about sites with “artificial” or “unnatural” links. That generated further concerns in some quarters. Then the Penguin Update hit, which caused more people to lose traffic as they were either hit for link spam or no longer benefited from link spam that was wiped out.

These things made it ripe for people to assume that pointing bad links at a site can hurt it. But as I wrote before, negative SEO concerns aren’t new. They’ve been around for years. Despite this, we’ve not seen it become a major concern.

Google has said it’s difficult for others to harm a site, and that’s indeed seemed to be the case. In particular, pointing bad links at a good site with many other good signals seems to be like trying to infect it with a disease that it has antibodies to. The good stuff outweighs the bad.

Cutts stressed again that negative SEO is rare and hard. “We have done a huge amount of work to try to make sure one person can�t hurt another person,” he said.

Cutts also stressed again what Google said before. Most of the those 700,000 messages to publishers that Google sent out earlier this year were not about bad link networks. Nor were they all suddenly done on the same day. Rather, many sites have had both manual and algorithmic�penalties attached to them over time but which were never revealed. Google�recently decided to open up about these.

After Negative SEO Campaign, A Link Warning

Of course, new messages do go out, which leads to the case of Dan Thies. His site�was targeted by some trying to show that negative SEO works. He received�an unnatural link warning after this happened. He also lost some rankings. Is this the proof that negative SEO really works?

Thies told me that his lost rankings were likely due to changes he made himself, when he removed a link across all pages on his site that led back to his home page. After restoring that, he told me, he regained his rankings.

His overall traffic, he said, never got worse. That tends to go against the concerns that negative SEO is a lurking threat, because if it had worked enough to tag his site as part of the Penguin Update, he should have seen a huge drop.

Still, what about link warning? Thies�did believe that came because of the negative SEO attempt. That’s scary stuff. He also said he filed three reconsideration requests, which each time returned messages saying that there were no spam actions found. Was he hit with a warning but not one that was also associated with a penalty?

I asked Cutts about the case, but he�declined to comment on Thies’s particular situation. He did say that typically a link warning is a precursor to a ranking drop. If the site fixes the problem and does a reconsideration request quickly enough, that might prevent a drop.

Solving The Concerns

I expect we’ll continue to see discussions of negative SEO, with a strong belief by some that it’s a major concern for anyone. I was involved in one�discussion�over at SEO Book about this that’s well worth a read.

When it’s cheaper to buy links than ever, it’s easy to see why there are concerns. Stories like what happened to Thies or�this person, who got a warning after�24,000 links appeared pointing at his site in one day, are worrisome.

Then again, the person’s warning came after he apparently dropped in rankings because of Penguin. So did these negative SEO links actually cause the drop, or was it something else? As is common, it’s hard to tell, because the actual site isn’t provided.

To further confuse matters, some who lost traffic because of Penguin might not be victims of a penalty at all. Rather, Google may have stopped allowing some links to pass credit, if they were deemed to be part of some attempt to just manipulate rankings. If sites were heavily dependent on these artificial links, they’d see a drop just because the link credit was pulled, not because they were hit with a penalty.

I’ve seen a number of people now publicly wishing for a way to “disvow” links pointing at them. Google had no comment about adding such a feature at this time, when I asked about this. I certainly wouldn’t�wait around for it now, if you know you were hit by Penguin. I’d do what you can to clean things up.

One good suggestion out of the SEO Book discussion was that Google not penalize sites for bad links pointing at them. Ignore the links, don’t let the links pass credit, but don’t penalize the site. That’s an excellent suggestion for defusing negative SEO concerns, I’d say.

I’d also stress again that from what I’ve seen, negative SEO isn’t really what most hit by Penguin should probably be concerned about. It seems far more likely they were hit by spam they were somehow actively involved in, rather than something a competitor did.

Recovering From Penguin

Our�Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice�post from two weeks ago gave some initial advice about dealing with Penguin, and that still holds up. In summary, if you know that you were hit by Penguin (because your traffic dropped on April 24):

Clean up on-page spam you know you’ve doneClean up bad links you know you’re been involved with, as best you canWait for news of a future Penguin Update and see if you recover after it happensIf it doesn’t, try further cleaning or consider starting over with a fresh siteIf you really believe you were a false positive, file a report as explained here

Just in, by the way, a list of WordPress plug-ins that apparently insert hidden links. If you use some of these, and they have inserted hidden links, that could have caused a penalty.

I’d also say again, take a hard look at your own site. When I’ve looked at sites, it’s painfully easy to find bad link networks they’ve been part of. That doesn’t mean that there’s not spam that’s getting past Penguin. But complaining about what wasn’t caught isn’t a solution to improving your own situation, if you were hit.

Related ArticlesWhat Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking FactorsSearch Engine Land�s Guide To SEOGoogle Launches �Penguin Update� Targeting Webspam In Search ResultsDid Penguin Make Google�s Search Results Better Or Worse?Penguin�s Reminder: Google Doesn�t Owe You A Living, So Don�t Depend On ItPenguin Update Peck Your Site By Mistake? Google�s Got A Form For ThatPenguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice

Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

It’s been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google’s happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about “negative SEO” as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, on these and some related questions.

Penguin: “A Success”

The goal of any algorithm update is to improve search results. So how’s Penguin been for Google?

“It’s been a success from our standpoint,” Cutts said.

What About Those Weird Results?

Of course, soon after Penguin was released, people quickly started citing examples of odd results. The official Viagra site wasn’t listed, while hacked sites were. An empty web site was listed for “make money online,” and there were reports of other empty sites ranking well. Scraper sites were reported outranking the sites they scraped.

How could Penguin be a success with these types of things happening?

Cutts said that many of these issues existed before Penguin launched and were not caused by the new spam-fighting algorithm.

Indeed, the Viagra issue, which has now been fixed, was a problem before Penguin hit. Penguin didn�t cause it.

False Positives? A Few Cases

How about false positives, people who feel they’ve been unfairly hit by Penguin when they weren’t doing any spam?

“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,” Cutts said.

The�Panda Update�was Google’s big update that targeted low-quality spam last year. The Florida Update was a major Google update in 2003 intended to improve its search quality.

I’d agree that both of those seemed to have impacted more sites than Penguin has, based on having watched reactions to all these updates.�Not everyone will agree with me, of course. It’s also worth the regular reminder that for any site that “lost” in the rankings, someone gained. You rarely hear from those who gain.

Bottom line, Google seems pretty confident that the Penguin Update is indeed catching people who were spamming, as was intended.

Why Spam Still Gets Through

Certainly when I’ve looked into reports, I’ve often found spam at the core of why someone dropped.�But if Penguin is working, why are some sites that are clearly spamming still getting through?

“No algorithm is perfect. While we’d like to achieve perfection, our litmus test is, ‘Do things get better than before?’,” Cutts said.

Cutts also explained that Penguin was designed to be quite precise, to act against pages when there was an extremely high-confidence of spam being involved. The downside is that some spam might get through, but the upside is that you have fewer false positives.

How Can You Recover?

One of the most difficult things with this update is telling people how to recover. Anyone hit by Penguin was deemed to be spamming Google.

In the past, if you spammed Google, you were told to file a reconsideration request. However, Google’s specifically said that reconsideration requests won’t help those hit by Penguin. They’ll recover naturally, Google says, if they clean the spam up.

However, one of the main reasons I’ve seen when looking at sites hit by Penguin seems to be bad linking practices. People have used sponsored WordPress themes, or poor quality reciprocal linking, have purchased links or participated in linking networks, such as those�recently targeted�by Google.

How do people pull themselves out of these link networks, if perhaps they don’t have control over those links now?

“It is possible to clean things up,” Cutts said, and he suggested people review two videos he’s done on this topic:

“The bottom line is, try to resolve what you can,” Cutts said.

Waiting On Penguin To Update Again

If you do clean things up, how will you know? Ideally, you’ll see your traffic from Google recover, the next time Penguin is updated.

That leads to another important point. Penguin, like Panda, is a filter that gets refreshed from time-to-time.�Penguin is not constantly running but rather is used to tag things as spam above-and-beyond Google’s regular spam filtering on a periodic basis.

Is Penguin a site-wide penalty like Panda or page-specific? Cutts wouldn’t say. But given that Panda has site-wide impacts, I think it’s a fair assumption that Penguin works the same.

What that means is that if some of your site is deemed Penguin-like, all of it may suffer. Again, recovery means cleaning up the spam. If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said.

New Concerns Over Negative SEO

Before Penguin, talk of “negative SEO” had been ramping up. Since then, it seems to have gotten worse in some places. I’ve seen post-after-post making it sound as if anyone is now in serious danger that some competitor can harm them.

At the core of these fears seems to be a perfect storm of assumptions. Google recently targeted some linking schemes. That caused some people to lose traffic. Google also sent out warnings about sites with “artificial” or “unnatural” links. That generated further concerns in some quarters. Then the Penguin Update hit, which caused more people to lose traffic as they were either hit for link spam or no longer benefited from link spam that was wiped out.

These things made it ripe for people to assume that pointing bad links at a site can hurt it. But as I wrote before, negative SEO concerns aren’t new. They’ve been around for years. Despite this, we’ve not seen it become a major concern.

Google has said it’s difficult for others to harm a site, and that’s indeed seemed to be the case. In particular, pointing bad links at a good site with many other good signals seems to be like trying to infect it with a disease that it has antibodies to. The good stuff outweighs the bad.

Cutts stressed again that negative SEO is rare and hard. “We have done a huge amount of work to try to make sure one person can�t hurt another person,” he said.

Cutts also stressed again what Google said before. Most of the those 700,000 messages to publishers that Google sent out earlier this year were not about bad link networks. Nor were they all suddenly done on the same day. Rather, many sites have had both manual and algorithmic�penalties attached to them over time but which were never revealed. Google�recently decided to open up about these.

After Negative SEO Campaign, A Link Warning

Of course, new messages do go out, which leads to the case of Dan Thies. His site�was targeted by some trying to show that negative SEO works. He received�an unnatural link warning after this happened. He also lost some rankings. Is this the proof that negative SEO really works?

Thies told me that his lost rankings were likely due to changes he made himself, when he removed a link across all pages on his site that led back to his home page. After restoring that, he told me, he regained his rankings.

His overall traffic, he said, never got worse. That tends to go against the concerns that negative SEO is a lurking threat, because if it had worked enough to tag his site as part of the Penguin Update, he should have seen a huge drop.

Still, what about link warning? Thies�did believe that came because of the negative SEO attempt. That’s scary stuff. He also said he filed three reconsideration requests, which each time returned messages saying that there were no spam actions found. Was he hit with a warning but not one that was also associated with a penalty?

I asked Cutts about the case, but he�declined to comment on Thies’s particular situation. He did say that typically a link warning is a precursor to a ranking drop. If the site fixes the problem and does a reconsideration request quickly enough, that might prevent a drop.

Solving The Concerns

I expect we’ll continue to see discussions of negative SEO, with a strong belief by some that it’s a major concern for anyone. I was involved in one�discussion�over at SEO Book about this that’s well worth a read.

When it’s cheaper to buy links than ever, it’s easy to see why there are concerns. Stories like what happened to Thies or�this person, who got a warning after�24,000 links appeared pointing at his site in one day, are worrisome.

Then again, the person’s warning came after he apparently dropped in rankings because of Penguin. So did these negative SEO links actually cause the drop, or was it something else? As is common, it’s hard to tell, because the actual site isn’t provided.

To further confuse matters, some who lost traffic because of Penguin might not be victims of a penalty at all. Rather, Google may have stopped allowing some links to pass credit, if they were deemed to be part of some attempt to just manipulate rankings. If sites were heavily dependent on these artificial links, they’d see a drop just because the link credit was pulled, not because they were hit with a penalty.

I’ve seen a number of people now publicly wishing for a way to “disvow” links pointing at them. Google had no comment about adding such a feature at this time, when I asked about this. I certainly wouldn’t�wait around for it now, if you know you were hit by Penguin. I’d do what you can to clean things up.

One good suggestion out of the SEO Book discussion was that Google not penalize sites for bad links pointing at them. Ignore the links, don’t let the links pass credit, but don’t penalize the site. That’s an excellent suggestion for defusing negative SEO concerns, I’d say.

I’d also stress again that from what I’ve seen, negative SEO isn’t really what most hit by Penguin should probably be concerned about. It seems far more likely they were hit by spam they were somehow actively involved in, rather than something a competitor did.

Recovering From Penguin

Our�Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice�post from two weeks ago gave some initial advice about dealing with Penguin, and that still holds up. In summary, if you know that you were hit by Penguin (because your traffic dropped on April 24):

Clean up on-page spam you know you’ve doneClean up bad links you know you’re been involved with, as best you canWait for news of a future Penguin Update and see if you recover after it happensIf it doesn’t, try further cleaning or consider starting over with a fresh siteIf you really believe you were a false positive, file a report as explained here

Just in, by the way, a list of WordPress plug-ins that apparently insert hidden links. If you use some of these, and they have inserted hidden links, that could have caused a penalty.

I’d also say again, take a hard look at your own site. When I’ve looked at sites, it’s painfully easy to find bad link networks they’ve been part of. That doesn’t mean that there’s not spam that’s getting past Penguin. But complaining about what wasn’t caught isn’t a solution to improving your own situation, if you were hit.

Related ArticlesWhat Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking FactorsSearch Engine Land�s Guide To SEOGoogle Launches �Penguin Update� Targeting Webspam In Search ResultsDid Penguin Make Google�s Search Results Better Or Worse?Penguin�s Reminder: Google Doesn�t Owe You A Living, So Don�t Depend On ItPenguin Update Peck Your Site By Mistake? Google�s Got A Form For ThatPenguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice

Mobile Sites: Choosing an Implementation Process & Strategies

The world is going mobile and with that so are our websites. Device and platform fragmentation are the new norm.

No matter your approach, the mobile landscape is a tricky, expansive space of uncertainty filled with twists and turns that would give even the most solid minded developer or site owner points to pause. So what to do?

Code Well - Don’t Worry About Mobile.

We're borrowing this first step from Opera’s “Mobile Web Optimization Guide“, but it is really where every website should start no matter the approach.

Going Mobile Without Creating a Mobile Site

Going mobile can be a time consuming and daunting project, so what do you do if you cannot add mobile site creation to your current project plan?What do you do when a lack of time, budget and resources actually prevents you from creating a mobile site? What’s next?

Alas all is not lost. Clean code and a secret ingredient called the WCAG AA Accessibility Standards can take your site from hot mess to mobile ready in a relatively short time.

Will it be a perfect? No. However, it will give you a site that works in all devices and platforms fairly well.

The Secret Ingredient: WCAG AA Standards

Take your W3C valid and semantically compliant HTML, throw in CSS 2 and 3, add WCAG AA accessibility standards and you now have the basics of a site that will render in all feature and smartphones as well as tablets, laptops, and desktop devices (even better if you can use the HTML5 doctype!).

What is WCAG AA & How Does it Help?

There are three levels to the WCAG standard A, AA and AAA. These set the level of code and design compliance a site needs to follow to meet the needs of people with challenges such as blindness, dexterity or color.

This standard guides your website design and implementation in such as way as to make sure that your site is not dependent on your device functionality (say a mouse to click), or the user’s ability to interpret non-standard indicators (say color only to display links).

Code such as

Image Alt Text: Tells users what an image is, no need to wait for the downloadonClick event handler: Replaces onMouse, so users do not need a mouse to interact with the code object.Contrast ratios: Sets colors to proper contrast ratios, so foreground text can easily be seen on the site background.

As you can see what helps users with usability challenges, also helps your site’s usability for all users on mobile devices, tablets and feature phones. Plus the search engines like accessible friendly sites.

The bad news, the recipe of W3C compliant HTML + CSS + WCAG AA is not enough to make your site fully mobile capable, but if you are not able to do more this will help and if you are able to do more, well you should be doing this first anyway.

All sites should start from here, mobile or not.

Besides, studies show, your current code probably could use some cleaning up, so in this day of Panda, Penguin and site speed factors what do you have to lose?

Build Two Sites – M. Your World

Oh the often dreaded M. I could write a whole article on the how to’s and not to’s of the m. site, such as don’t force your users to such a site using such aggravating tricks as device detection redirects and not allow them to go to your standard site. But just why is the m. so controversial, why not just build two sites? Seems like the obvious answer right? Well not too fast.

M. Why the Fuss?

Well the idea of the m. is basically flawed. Generally, CMS systems have built in M. output. So while this may seem like a perfect solution for a difficult issue, M. sites have issues of their own.

The One Site URL Issue: Bing & Google

Bing will no longer index your m. site under their “One URL Per Site” policy.

OK well they will if it is the only site URL and you have quality indicators and you have traffic and you have links coming to it and well you get the idea. If your m. site is more valuable site than your standard www. site, it could, but would you want it to?

Google has never been as clear about its position on m. URLs as Bing, but given Google treats smartphones as desktop browsers (even with the new smartphone crawler) and your content rankings are not gaining any benefit from your shared m. links and..and.. well again, why would you want two domain URLs? Remember an m.domain.com is still a subdomain.

Multiple Content Delivery

With two sites comes two sets of content, there is a myth you need two sets of content one for desktop users and one for mobile.

Users are users. They come to your site with a task in mind and your content generally does not need to change because users come from different places.

If you need to revamp large portions of your content for your mobile users, chances are the lack of screen space just highlighted an existing content issue that you always needed to correct.

NOTE: Now don’t confuse different content, from content delivery. You may very likely deliver a geolocated-based page or ad to a mobile user that you would not to your desktop user. This is not what multiple content sets refers to, multiple content sets are when you create two vastly differing sets of content for users based on site type.

Verdict?

So extra time and resources, multiple content delivery and search engine issues, the M. site is an option that you should work to phase out if you have it and one to avoid if you are just getting started.

Responsive Design: One Site to Rule the World

“The mobile pundits got it right: sites should be minimal, functional, with everything designed to help the user complete a task, and then go. But that doesn’t mean that you need to make a separate mobile site from your normal site. If your normal site isn’t minimal, functional, with everything designed to help the user complete a task, it’s time to rethink your whole site.

“And once you’ve done that, serve it to everyone, whatever the device.” - Bruce Lawson

This is going to be the most difficult method to implement. No easy way to get around it. You will need HTML/CSS developers who are not reliant on Dreamweaver code assist and JQuery/Ajax junkies who know what to do with all things web to mobile.

That being said, once you have completed the Responsive Design process, you will breathe a sigh of relief because your site will not only work on all devices and platforms as the sites in Strategy #1, but it will appear as you want it to appear, work as you want it to work.

Another plus. as more devices come to market adapting to those will be as simple as adding more code to style sheets to change what appears on the screen.

Responsive Design not only gives you greater control, but also helps to “future proof” your site.

“Future Proof”

Future Proofing your site is the task of using standards and processes that allow whole site changes to be implemented in strategic ways with segmented layers of functionality, presentation, and structure.

Responsive Design – Stepping Forward Into the Future

As mentioned before the HTML5 doctype and clean, compliant, accessible, code is the very first step into your new future proof, responsively designed, semantically correct, progressively enhanced and yes, accessible website.

Don’t skip this step!

Many articles will ask, do you create for web or mobile first. First you create a site framework that has semantically correct W3C compliant HTML and CSS utilizing WCAG AA standards. This is your basic mobile site. It is also code for a good desktop site. See no decision needs to be made it does both.

What is Responsive Design?

Responsive Design is just what it sounds like. A site that is responsive to the devices (and platforms) you use.

With the endless creation of new mobile and tablet device types, eventually there was just no way to code for each and every one, so sites had to become flexible. Like a type of byte contortionism, sites have had to become as flexible as plastic wrap to account for them all.

Responsive Design accounts for these changes by making changes to the layout, flow or display of a site based on what device it is presented on. Screen size, device type, browser etc. is accounted for by utilizing code that is not based on browser / platform detection, but feature detection. These are called Media Queries and are part of the CSS 3 specification.

Media Queries

Media Queries simply put, control how your styles are applied based on the device being used. We have been using print style sheets for years, media queries are similar and allow you to control what a user sees by using the inheritance property in CSS combined with the CSS3 mobile attributes.

NOTE: Make sure to check your media query support, before implementation to save yourself time in browser fixes after site testing.

Media Queries are great for turning off items you don’t wish to load into the browser. This is not the same as the CSS values “display: none” or “visibility: hidden”.

In these cases the items are still loaded into the background, with Media Queries the code or images are never downloaded and save the user time and possibly money, by not downloading what they don’t need.

Media queries can also turn off resource hungry CSS such as shadows, transitions and transformations, making your site users happier, especially those in countries where they pay by the byte.

Viewport

We can’t have a discussion on mobile sites without some mention of viewports. Viewports are simply how you present your site when the user loads it.

For example on a smartphone, without a viewport setting the user will see the site, full screen much like on a desktop computer. The user can then zoom in and out to read the site contents.

The viewport allow the user to received your site already at a set zoom settings, so you can deliver your content in a more controlled method. This is commonly used for apps, but can also be used for websites that have removed design elements and are delivering straight content.

Progressive Enhancement

When making the move to universal design, there is one tenet of website design that will have to be completely removed from your team’s vocabulary: Pixel Perfect.

There is no more pixel perfection. The plethora of devices and user experiences now make the concept one that only will cost you time, money and most likely your sanity.

Progressive enhancement is the concept that you let the content be your site’s guiding force and some of your design details differ as browsers fall out of majority. It doesn't mean that if you have X% users on IE8 you just stop supporting it and leave those users with a poor user experience, so you can move on the “shiny stuff”.

What it does mean is you can't waste a week in design and implementation to put image based rounded corners on a site because X% of your users still use IE7. They just get square ones because you have decided it makes more sense to use CSS to round your corners.

So let’s review. If you practice Responsive Design and allow for Progressive Enhancement some of the benefits for your site are:

Future ProofingLowered costs in time, resources, support and development.One content set to maintainBetter SEO value and increased site speedDecreased download time for mobile usersRetained inbound site links when share links all point to one URLAvoiding one URL issuePotential increased market base with addition of accessibility enhancementsAnd a site that works on ALL Devices and Platforms

Very Important Note: Your website is not an app. Don't make the mistake of confusing your mobile website for an app.

Website/mobile users are task based (goal and explorer functions), while application users are goal focused.Don't think your mobile site is an app, don't make it into an app, don't make it look like an app, and always make sure you have a link to your full site on any mobile version.Be Like Apple (Or Google)

Apple does it, so does Google. Yes, both companies serve one URL, one site, one set of code and one set of content. They don't think that mobile users are different users.

While Apple and Google may create a slightly altered experience based on the device their user uses to access their content, they aren't creating secondary sites or secondary content sets. (Some content may be differently delivered. This is different than maintaining different sets of content.)

So in these days of endless platforms and multiple device creation, it is time to move away from the outdated concept of two-site methodology. It is time to create one site – one to rule them all.

Embrace universal (responsive) design. Do it and learn to love it, because device fragmentation is here to stay and being a website contortionist might decide who thrives and who dies, figuratively of course.

Responsive Design Resources.

The topic of responsive design is very detailed and would need far more than one article to cover to the implementation level, so here are some excellent resources to help you.

Opera’s “The Mobile Web Optimization Guide” Bruce Lawson “Why We Shouldn’t Make Separate Websites”Adobe Introducing Media Queries PART 1Adobe Introducing Media Queries PART 2 (HANDS ON) Media Queries – Sites using Media Queries