Upcoming changes in Google’s HTTP Referrer

Webmaster level: all

Protecting users’ privacy is a priority for us and it’s helped drive recent changes. Helping users save time is also very important; it’s explicitly mentioned as a part of our philosophy. Today, we’re happy to announce that Google Web Search will soon be using a new proposal to reduce latency when a user of Google’s SSL-search clicks on a search result with a modern browser such as Chrome.

Starting in April, for browsers with the appropriate support, we will be using the "referrer" meta tag to automatically simplify the referring URL that is sent by the browser when visiting a page linked from an organic search result. This results in a faster time to result and more streamlined experience for the user.

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? You may start to see "origin" referrers—Google’s homepages (see the meta referrer specification for further detail)—as a source of organic SSL search traffic. This change will only affect the subset of SSL search referrers which already didn’t include the query terms. Non-HTTPS referrals will continue to behave as they do today. Again, the primary motivation for this change is to remove an unneeded redirect so that signed-in users reach their destination faster.

Website analytics programs can detect these organic search requests by detecting bare Google host names using SSL (like "https://www.google.co.uk/"). Webmasters will continue see the same data in Webmasters Tools—just as before, you’ll receive an aggregated list of the top search queries that drove traffic to their site.

We will continue to look into further improvements to how search query data is surfaced through Webmaster Tools. If you have questions, feedback or suggestions, please let us know through the Webmaster Tools Help Forum.

What is Responsive Web design?

In the modern era, every website should have web & mobile design versions to reach max audience. From 2011 onwards usage of tablets has increased a lot. If a design isn’t compatible with tablets or netbooks then another version should be designed to reach tablet visitors. 

Instead of having different website designs for web, mobile & tablets, we can have one design which is compatible with all devices and browsers i.e. Responsive Web Design. Responsive Design itself changes automatically based on the width and height of the visitors screen. Irrespective of design, it majorly depends on screen resolution. 

Following are couple of valuable resources for Responsive Web design:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/

Most of organizations and professional blogs already started to have responsive designs for their sites. In future every website owner will prefer to have responsive design. It’s time for designers to learn responsive design tips to have a bright career.

Few Responsive Design Examples:

http://designmodo.com/responsive-design-examples/

How to measure SEO Effectiveness?

Every website SEO performance and results can be measured through following three factors.

1.       Monitor Keyword Rankings

2.       Analyze Monthly Visitors

3.       Track Leads & Conversions

1) Monitor Keyword Rankings

Initially every website will be targeted to few keywords which are relevant to respective website niche. SEO Professionals should make sure that “respective landing pages of the website should be indexed & ranked for targeted keywords”. If your website is started ranking for few long tail keywords in the first month itself, it means “your SEO team is doing the right job”. Also month over month keyword rankings positions should be improved. With the help of following kind of report everybody can measure their SEO effectiveness.   

Note: This will not happen in all cases, because few of the niches are highly competitive, so it will take little more time to get results.

2) Analyze Monthly Visitors

Every website visits can be tracked through Google Analytics. It’s free tool offered by Google, also simple to install & activate on website. Usually for a new website minimum two months’ time required to receive traffic from search engines. From 3^rd month onwards every website will start receiving little traffic and it should be gradually increased month over month. Of course, traffic increase in every month is a difficult task, so at least existing minimum traffic shouldn’t be decreased.

If your SEO team is continuously adding new content pages then the traffic should be improved. So keep an eye on website traffic and measure your SEO team efforts. Ask your SEO team to provide monthly improvement stats and reports for your reference.

3) Track Leads & Conversions

Your website should have Phone number, Email ID and Inquiry box if you are offering services. If your site is an eCommerce portal then it’s important to have online payment facility, so that visitors will purchase your products through online. 

Compare month over month stats whether you are receiving any inquiries or sales from your website or not and calculate ROI. Sometimes cannot expect immediate ROI through SEO efforts as SEO will give good results in longer run. However make sure to push and keep little pressure on your SEO team to have max output. 

Google Local Listings with Zagat Rating in Google Plus

Google made some changes to Local Business Listings from May 30th 2012 onwards.

What are the changes?

1. Google Local Business Listings has a new look i.e Local listings are integrated in Google Plus.
2. Each local business listing rating system has been improved using “Zagat Rating” system.

What is Zagat Rating?

Zagat Rating system will have 30 point scale. Mostly this system used for hotels where customers will rate food, décor and service. It seems that Google has applied the same rating system to all of the local business listings in Google Places. However Google is displaying only the total score instead of individual Zagat Score of each service. Refer following screenshot for a better idea.

Following is the example of a restaurant along with Zagat Rating Scrores:

Difference between Old & New Local Listings:

4 Health Tips for Professional Bloggers

gym. Or spandex. Exercise is just movement, and it’s up to you how to move. I think group fitness classes are really fun and motivational.

You might not. How about a peaceful walk through the park? Or riding a bike to pick up a few groceries? Exercise doesn’t need to feel like exercise. Pick something that you enjoy doing and do it as often as you can. Aim to do a movement activity at least 30 minutes a day for at least four days a week. You’ll end up feeling happier, sleeping better and writing with more enthusiasm.

4. Practice breathing and relaxation

Sounds silly, right? When we get stressed, we sometimes actually forget to breathe. Our breaths become short and shallow, just stressing out our bodies even more. Stress then contributes to weight gain or more of a struggle in weight loss.

When you feel yourself tense up at a project or client, just sit up straight in your chair, close your eyes, and breathe. Count to five on your inhale, then count to five on your exhale. Breathe like this for at least 10 breaths, or until you feel more calm.

There you have it. The healthier you are, the better you can conduct your daily blogging chores with confidence and less stress. How about you? Do you have any practical tips you can add to the list?

8 Cool Tips for New Bloggers

New Bloggers in 2011 have got their job cut out for them! The Internet is a crazy place and there are people out there saying crazy things. How do you know who to believe? All the scams, schemes, and push button software that have promised to make you a millionaire.

Luckily most people are now coming to the conclusion that the only true way to make money blogging is through hard work and dedication.

Here are some important tips that I have gathered on my journey.

Tips for New Bloggers

Limit your learning

New Webmasters often get caught up in learning how to build websites and how to make money blogging. The best learning experience that I can recommend to you is to get in there and do it! Do not try learning how to blog in theory when you can simply start a blog or a website today!

The first thing I would do is create a free blog and write about my learning experiences for the day.

Do not buy Internet marketing course after IM course. If you failed at the first course then go back and finish it.

Scrap that attitude

If you want to be successful at blogging you will need to get rid of a few built-in attitudes that might be hindering your performance.

• I will do it tomorrow
• I don’t know how to do it
• I am not smart like you
• I do not have time
• I have a degree, I am better than you
• I am an expert on every subject
• No one is making money online

A bloggers attitude is sharing, caring, networking, and cool. Be that person.

Create a schedule

Working on a computer on the Internet can be very distracting as there are e-mails coming in, comments to answer, and interesting articles posted every second. These distractions can delay your success and productivity time by possibly years. This is why I recommend that you create a timetable or schedule when participating in this business.

I have a timetable for each day. It starts with opening emails and answering comments and moves on to other particular tasks. If I have committed my self to working I need to accomplish my set tasks for the day.

Use a paid WordPress theme

You can build a website on practically zero dollars but buying a paid WordPress theme is something that I do recommend for new bloggers. The reason I say this is because you can get free support with your purchase.

It can be hard choosing the best WordPress theme for your website but if your theme comes with backup support this will save you hours of frustration. Most new bloggers can spend weeks and weeks customizing their blog theme. However if you purchase a WordPress theme you can simply go and ask a question in their forum and they will help you.

I have experience in HTML, PHP, and CSS, but why would I rack my brain when I can get the solution to any problem using my WordPress theme support.

Do not wait for the traffic

Website traffic does not simply appear on your blog. You have to get out there and work very hard to get website traffic. I could narrow the two main traffic sources down:

1. Hard slog promotions to get traffic
2. Search engine optimization to get traffic

The both these ways a great, but in essence, you will need both to succeed. For example when you have a new blog you will need to go build back links to your content via guest posting, article marketing, commenting, forums, and so on.

Some back linking brings traffic, but most back linking does count the search engine optimization. Therefore while you were generating traffic, you are also performing search engine optimization.

Never stop promoting

There will come a time when you have done so much promotion; you will see traffic coming for free from the search engines. People see this as a sign to relax, however you need to keep going and build the momentum. You need to keep the ball rolling when your website is in the growing stages.

Do not neglect SEO

Webmasters often get onto a new promotion method and run with it. This could be guest posting or article submission, which all eventually leads to search engine optimization. However you need to finish the job, by performing onpage search engine optimization at your website.

A simple explanation of Onpage SEO is:

1. Target a keyword for each page or post
2. Make a list of related keywords (LSI keywords)
3. Find some good longtail keywords
4. Create a killer title using your main keyword
5. Use the keyword and LSI keywords in the tags, description
6. Use the main keyword in the first and last line of your article
7. Use H1,H2,H3 tags using the keyword and some LSI mixed in
8. Have the main keyword density around 2% (some say more)
9. Use LSI keywords throughout the article
10. Add longtail phrases scattered in only in appropriate places

If you follow all of these instructions above, I guarantee that you will have a post that is full of information and really covers your subject. This will also make your posts longer an easy to read.

Never pretend

Never pretend that you are successful and making money when you in fact are not! Don’t be a know it all when you actually know nothing at all.

How will you ever become successful if you are already pretending to be successful?

New bloggers have 100% more to learn, 100% more distractions, but still have a 100% chance to succeed. It’s all up to YOU!

Important Tips To Select Domain Name For New Bloggers

It is a great task to select a new domain name for your business niche. The importance of a domain name is realized by entrepreneurs because of its significance in SEO, among other things. To achieve success in business you should utilize all the possible means. And it all starts with an address – the domain name.

Having realized the importance of keywords in SEO listings, you cannot be ignorant of the selection of the most appropriate domain name for your niche. With that said, here are a few tips which will be definitely useful for those who would like to pick up a new domain name.

To select a unique name

The domain name is the starting point where your web journey begins. Domain name is the foundation for the very existence of your online presence.

The domain name selected should be as catchy as possible. It should be closer to your business niche. The domain name should set expectations for visitors about the type of content that will be presented on your site. In this way, people can fittingly recollect your site and refer to others as well.

The time you spend in the selection of an artistic domain name will fetch you many times by returning benefits in the years to come. Hence, you should pick a domain name which qualifies the following characteristics:

• Easy to remember
• Easy to type
• Related to your business niche
• Search engine friendly
• KISS (Keep It Short and Simple)
• Relative to the content on your site

You should avoid names with the following characteristics:

• Names similar to existing popular sites (although I totally understand the urge to do so)
• Domain names with hyphen
• Misspelled domain names

For branding

If you are very serious about branding and want to establish your business on a long-term perspective and would like to cover customers catered throughout the world, .com is a viable option.

Even though top level domains such as .net, .info, .org, etc. can be leveraged to imbibe all kinds of SEO benefits, .com gives a professional appearance. Most of the people try .Com as it was very popular since the advent of the internet. It is useful to get global image.

Growing businesses will also buy domain names with .net, .org, .info so that even if customers try to visit your site by typing other top level domain names, they will be redirected to your .com site.

For instance, if my blog is myname.com, I could also purchase myname.net, myname.org and other TLDs and redirect them to myname.com. This way I won’t miss those visitors who type the TLDs as well.

Keyword popularity

You can check the popularity of a keyword. There are various online tools to check the value of a keyword in various aspects. The free and the most convenient tool is the Google Keyword Tool.

But if you want to go the extra mile, you’d want to use a tool like Market Samurai.

You will be able to find the worth of keyword in SEO aspect, the competition for the keyword, unique keyword, etc. Market Samurai is a great tool that will definitely help you in this aspect.

You can include keyword in your domain name that will have less competition. In this way, you will be able to promote your site very well in the coming days.

Check the availability

After having clarity about the domain that you would like to choose, you should check the availability of the same on sites that offer domain registration facility. You can try sites like hostgator.com or godaddy.com to register your domain names.

If the desired domain name is not available you should be flexible enough to choose the one closer to your expectations. As you type a domain name of your choice, if it is not available, you will be provided with a list of available alternative site names.

Used domain names

Domain names that are already used by others and set for sale are not as attractive as used cars. In case of used cars, you will be able to check the performance of the car. The same will not hold good for purchasing used domain names.

You may need to pay a hefty price for good and popular niche sites if they are available for sale. You can take advantage of back links and Google PR in such cases.

On the other hand, if domains were involved in spamming activities and completely banned by Google and other search engines, you cannot invite furthermore trouble by purchasing such kind of domain names.

Hence, you should be very cautious in the purchase of used domain names. And, it is advisable to go for brand new domain names rather than for a used name unless you have specific justifying reasons of business interest (unless you are a savvy to drill deep and analyze the history of the old domain name; especially, given the recent Google changes).

Name registration plus hosting

There are very many sites which will help you register your domain name as well as help you with web hosting. As you opt for both of these services from the same service provider, it will be easy for you to renew the registration and to get extended help from them.

It is always advisable to select services from a reputed service provider which has presence in the market for a considerable period of time. You should be able to reach them through various means including chat, email and voice channels.

Takeaway

Even though selection of a domain name is not the ultimate factor that decides the success of your business, you should be cautious and can take advantage of the name by following the above mentioned tips. You are invited to share your views.

SEO Myths, Yahoo Axis, Microsoft Socl, Facebook IPO, Speedlink 21:2012

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a great week. This week, there has been some interesting stuff going on in the search industry and on the social web. Yahoo has launched Yahoo Axis, their new search engine/browser, which as they say is aimed to redefine what it means to search and browse the web. Pretty bold statement but at first glance, they just might be up to something. I installed the “desktop” addon on my FireFox browser and started to play a bit with the interface. Let’s see how it goes. Have you tried Axis yet? How about DuckDuckGo? Looks like they are attracting more users…

Another interesting stuff that happened this week is the launch of Microsoft’s new social network Socl, pronounced “social”. As with Axis, I also jumped in to see what it has to offer, and first impressions reminds me of certain features (named differently), available on another network. At first, it may look complicated, but once you get the hand of using Socl’s interface, it is actually not that difficult to use. Danny Sullivan wrote a great coverage about Socl, so if you are interested, read what he has to say. Will Microsoft be a major player in the social arena? Remains to be seen. Too early to make any judgements.

On another forefront, I really wanted to skip the whole hulabahlooh related to FaceBook’s IPO. Share price has dropped roughly 17.5% from its original IPO offer price. Scary, if you ask me, and still not sure where all this will end. We’ll see.

Finally, this week’s WhiteBoard Friday of Rand from SEOMoz, is really worth watching. In case you missed it, he explains in detail, why you should not worry about certain “SEO advices” popping up here and there, due to the latest updates from Google. All in all, just apply the most ethical search engine optimization practices, and you should be fine.

How To Build High Quality Sites?

Building High Quality Sites

Building high quality sites is really not that new if you consider the countless amount of information available to you on the internet. As a matter of fact, I think that it is widely spoken about topic, the difference being that most of the information out there are just being said in several different ways.

The Panda algorithm change, has apparently given quality a new meaning. It is now all about “quality”. Quality content, quality links, quality websites, quality navigational structure, and so on. Come to think of it, was this ever really an issue? I don’t think so. It just gotten more attention now because “someone” decided that enough is enough, and those who were affected by Panda, now seems to realize that search results has always had only one main objective in mind, provide users with meaningful, useful and top notch search results.

Google, determined to provide a better and faster web, recently announced that Panda is just but one of the 500 search improvements they are expecting to roll out this year. If you were one of those affected by the devastating effect of Panda, then you should know that it isn’t over and continued efforts should be made to improve your websites quality (if needed) in order to protect yourself from any similar moves in the future. As a matter of fact, Google also mentioned that after Panda, several other tweaks have already been made and that up until now, many sites and users are assuming that changes in their rankings is still related to Panda, whereas, it is no longer the case.

As Google states:

Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.

That said, and with the purpose of improving websites quality, Google has taken the time to create a shortlist of questions, one should be asking, about the quality of a page or an article, which are really the important components to assess the overall quality of a website.

What Is Considered A High Quality Site?

As I said before, there are many great articles out there that are indirectly giving you advice, where ultimately, contributes towards what is deemed to be a quality website. If you really want to stay ahead of the pack, and improve your rankings, then here is the shortlist that Google suggests to ask yourself about your site. This will help you step into Google’s mindset and provide you with guidance on how to build quality websites.

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

What You Can Do Now To Improve The Quality Of Your Site?

If you are amongst those that feel were impacted by Panda, rather than looking for ways to game the algorithm, focus on improving your pages and articles based on the above list (those that apply) and pay special attention to this message given by Google. I think this is extremely important.

One other specific piece of guidance we’ve offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.

There you have it. While you may already be aware of this shortlist provided by Google, I thought I’ll share it anyway, in case you missed this one out.

Have you been affected by Panda? Was it positive or negative? Is there anything else you can add to help us improve and build a high quality site?