"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google - 2

#3: HELP GOOGLE KNOW WHAT YOUR CONTENT IS ABOUT BY GETTING VOTES OF CONFIDENCE

Google needs to know what your content is about in order to place it in the right SERPs for the right search terms.

One way it does this is through on-page signals–things like the inclusion of keywords in the URL, title, body content, etc.

Another way is through on-site signals— internal links from related pages on your site using anchor text that is descriptive of the content (i.e. it includes the target keyword).

And then there are off-site signals–inbound links from 3rd party trust-worthy sites that have related content linking to your content. A 3rd party citation of your content tells Google that a real, live person who created it thinks your content truly is about “xyz” (aka your keyword).

This is the origin of SEO’s spammy reputation. Bad-actors manipulated off-site signals by fabricating inbound links with things like link farms—clearly not living, breathing humans giving a vote of confidence that the content is indeed about what you claim it to be.

As a result, Google has put great effort into knowing when an inbound link is from a quality, trust-worthy site, versus a fabricated link purely for manipulative gain. The former helps you. The latter hurts you.

So when you hear the term “link building,”forget those old school black hat tactics. The game has changed. When done right, link building can be an extremely powerful way to boost search rankings. As a bonus, it could drive referral traffic too. 

The key here is in building relationships and reaching out to bloggers and journalists to let them know about your awesome content.We’ll need to write a whole other post on white hat link building.

BUT THE POINT IS -

If you followed technique #1 , you’ll have content that’s in demand–and the bloggers you reach out to will know their audience enough to know that.

If you followed technique #2 , bloggers will appreciate the resourcefulness of your content and be more likely to cite it when it is relevant and complimentary to the content they are creating.

IN WHITE HAT

• Reach out to influencers to let them know about your content, pointing out why it might add value to their content.
• Personalize your outreach in a genuine,one-on-one way that shows you know the blogger.
• Be patient. Building mutually beneficial relationships takes time. 

IN BLACK HAT

• Send mass emails to influencers with no personalization. It won’t be effective. It won’t get you to the top of Google. And you’ll burn bridges in the process.

"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google

SEO isn’t about gaming Google. It’s simply about creating content that people want and that satisfies their search intent.Looking at SEO from this perspective can make it easier to understand and easier to execute white hat SEO techniques. By putting aside the spammy tactics of yesteryear, you can produce and publish customer-focused content without that scammy vibe.

#1: USE KEYWORD RESEARCH TO DISCOVER CONTENT DEMAND

A little keyword research can go a long way in helping you understand what your audience wants. Not only will you find topics that are frequently searched, you’re also likely to stumble on search language they are using that you might not have anticipated. One reason for this— your knowledge and expertise in your industry is deeper than theirs. The language you use is probably industry jargon that your audience doesn’t use. This is a great opportunity for you to find long tail keywords that your audience can understand, and create content that speaks to them.Creating content using language your customers use is as white hat as it comes. Forget stuffing your content with a single keyword over and over again. This is about meeting customers on their turf, speaking to them naturally and in terms they understand.

IN WHITE HAT -

• Choose to target keywords that are fairly popular. The ease of ranking for those keywords will depend on the competitive strength of your site. Be realistic in how high of a competition level you can take on and still get results.
• Include the target keywords in all the right places—URL, title tag, alt images, body content, etc.
• Use other keywords that are related to your target keyword within the body of your content.
• Use the target keyword in the anchor text of internal links to the new content.

IN BLACK HAT -

• Don’t — aim for quantity over quality. With all the searches Google receives every day, you can be certain its algorithms understand synonymous phrases. Instead of repeating the same keyword phrase as often as possible, use like-keywords to reinforce what your content is about.

#2: CREATE SEO CONTENT THAT ANSWERS THE SEARCH INTENT

You don’t need to be a technical genius to do SEO right. Like most marketing disciplines, a little bit of empathy for the user searching can go a long way to getting results in SEO.

Think from the perspective of the searcher.

• What are they looking for? 
• What are the problems they are seeking advice or solutions to?
• Are they looking for advice, or are they looking to buy something?

Search intent tends to fall into one of these categories:

• Learn something
• Find solution to a problem 
• Purchase something

When evaluating your list of keyword opportunities, think about whether a person searching That phrase is hoping to learn something, find a solution to a problem, or make a purchase.

The phrase they’ve entered reveals a lot about their intention.

When you create your SEO content be sure to give users what they are looking for. If they are looking for an educational “how to” article,don’t create content that pushes a sale.

IN WHITE HAT -

• Think of your content as a Q & A. The keyword query is the question. Your content is the answer. 
• Be a useful resource by giving the searcher what they want.
• Be clear in your title tag and meta description about what your content promises.

IN BLACK HAT

• Don’t— bait and switch the searcher with misleading click-bait titles. Your title should always tie directly to your content. If it doesn’t, the visitor is more likely to bounce, sending Google a signal that your content didn’t serve their search interest. As a result, Google will drop your position in the SERPs like a hot potato.

Source : Alexa e Book

How did Google Maps brand JNU as Antinational?

Google Map is showing Jawaharlal Nehru University if you search "anti-national" or "sedition ". For a company like Google, this is a major problem. Suddenly it has found itself in middle of the loaded -- and viciously political -- debate about JNU and some of its students. And it is a debate that Google would like to avoid. So how did it happen? Why one of the most used products of the company has suddenly gone wonky and is branding JNU with certain words?

The Map Maker, a Google tool, that gives people ability to edit map information and supply additional information seems like the obvious culprit. It looked like someone made some JNU related edits in Map Maker so that Google deems it "anti-national". After all, in the past we have seen Google Map vandalism through Map Maker. Remember the Android logo pissing on Apple logo? That was done through Map Maker.

But in this case, Map Maker is not at fault. The problem this time seems to be the Google Maps algorithm and how Google uses data from all of its services to improve what it can offer to consumers. The problem in this case is with the keywords that Google deems important.

Google is a company that utilises the user data in a big big way to power its services. Almost all Google services, from Google search to spam filters in Gmail, use the data generated by users to improve services. In the case of Google Maps, the company apparently sees a lot of keywords, even outside Google, and apply them to various installations in Google Maps to give richer information to users.

This has seemingly happened in the case of JNU, which is being described by many people as "anti-national". For example, in the reviews for JNU on Google Maps there are tens of spam entries describing JNU as anti-national.

Although Google has officially not commented on how and why "anti-national" keyword is pointing towards JNU, some information has trickled out. A senior Google executive aware of the JNU issues told IndiaToday.In that it is definitely connected to keywords.

"This is a bug. Google Maps results take signals from many points on the web -- including top news outlets. The terms "Anti National and "Kanhiya Kumar" and JNU have been in the news so much recently that they became associated in Maps which is why this is triggering. This is a bug and we're working to fix this as quickly as possible," said the executive.

The fact the issue is not due to the Map Maker edit but because of keywords also gets confirmed by the time Google is taking to fix it. It is possible that to fix the issue, Google may have to change the way it processes "signals" in Google Maps, and tweak algorithm. That will not only require some serious work but also several approvals from the company headquarters in Mountain View. So for now, it seems JNU will continue to be "anti-national" on Google Maps, at least for another several hours or even a few days.

Source : India Today

SEO,PPC Updates: Google Removes Right-side Ads & Drops Flash Ads

• No More Ads on the Right-hand Side of SERPS

Google “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”

There are only two exceptions to this: Product Listing Ads (PLAs) and Knowledge Panel ads. They may show a fourth ad above the search results now, but only for “highly commercial queries” such as “hotels in New York City” and “Car Insurance.”

How is this affecting people in the industry? For smaller advertisers, this change has had a minimal impact. They haven’t seen much of a change in clicks. For organic search, this probably won’t impact visibility that much. They’re not going to show up as every single query.

I was happy to see Google’s comment on PLA listings, because I have said over and over that they are going to take over the right side due to their higher CTR and visibility: “Interestingly, as an aside, PLAs demonstrate strong user interaction when they’re on the right side, so they’re staying put.”

Google to stop showing ads on right side of SERP

• AMP Pages Now Live

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are now fully rolled out globally. And apparently, this is very important to Google.

Image Courtesy : conductor.com

Google’s VP of Engineering stated at SMX West that, “everywhere we use content, we want to embrace AMP.”

• Google Allows Changes to Knowledge Graph Data

Bill Hartzer on billhartzer.com wrote a great article about the ability for Official Representatives to suggest edits to their own Knowledge Graph.

According to Google, “If you officially represent a topic that has a Knowledge Graph card in Google search results, you can request changes to that card. To be recognized by Google as an “official representative,” you need to be signed in as an owner of the topic’s official website, YouTube channel, or Google+ page.”

Before, you never really had any control over this (Google would normally pull from Wikipedia or other sources).

• Google Drops All Flash Ads and Goes for HTML5 Ads Instead

Starting June 30th, 2016, display ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into AdWords and DoubleClick Digital Marketing.

Starting January 2nd, 2017, display ads in the Flash format can no longer run on the Google Display Network or through DoubleClick.

This is going to affect anyone who is running display campaigns. This should not be a surprise to anyone because Flash has been out for awhile. Google has put together a help document on how to move from Flash to HTML5, which can be found here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6249073

For people who are running really large display campaigns, you should start changing now, so you have enough lead time. Start switching to HTML5 now and get out of Flash!

• Penguin 4 Update

Gary Illyes announced at SMX West that he’s not going to give out release dates for Penguin anymore.

They’re going to stop commenting on when it’s going to happen but just keep hanging on: they’ll eventually roll it out…

• Google Launches “Google Analytics 360 Suite”

Though this wasn’t discussed in this month’s webinar, Google has launched their Analytics 360 Suite, which they have been working on for quite some time now. This is their enterprise solution that is more likened to Adobe’s analytics suite than anything else.  Per Google, the 360 Suite is “a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers.”

It’s currently in beta but is most likely going to be released very soon.

Source:Conductor Spotlight 

Do not use these, when using Digital Marketing 2016 ?

Digital marketing in 2016 comes with a new set of problems, pitfalls, technologies, innovations, strategies, and opportunities.Analyse yourself, and avoid these silly digital marketing mistakes.

1. Failing to identify your target audience.
Identifying your target audience is the initial step in any type of marketing endeavor. Tragically, it’s also easy to overlook. Don’t make this mistake. Study your audience, and much of your marketing will take care of itself.

2. Not having a strategy at all.
Yes, it happens. Sadly, much of digital marketing relies on “tactics” and “techniques” rather than solid strategies and goals. Before you ever pick a tactic to try, form a strategy to rely on. Your Online marketing strategy will be your guiding light as you engage in the wild world of marketing.

3. Forgetting about mobile.
Mobilegeddon may have happened in 2015, but we’re still living in the wake of its impact. If you aren’t functioning with a mobile-first strategy, you are alienating more than half of your potential audience. Mobile optimization is a key ingredient both for conversions and content, so keep it at the front of your mind when forming your digital marketing strategy.

4. Rejecting SEO.
The SEO-is-dead myth has been around almost as long as SEO has been a thing. Now, in an age of artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms, more marketers are willing to say “What gives?” and leave SEO well enough alone. This is a mistake. Why? Because SEO remains (and will continue to remain) one of the building blocks of a technologically sound and competitive web presence. Without an understanding of SEO, your marketing presence will falter and fail. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about SEO. Just get the basics, and you should be fine.

5. Not doing any conversion optimization.
There was an era in digital marketing when it was okay not to do conversion optimization. That time is far gone. Failure to conduct regular and careful split testing is a recipe for decline. Don’t be afraid of it. Yes, it requires some technical chops and an eye for analytics, but most CRO software eliminates the need for in-depth knowledge.

6. Trying every digital marketing tactic .
The best method for avoiding tactic overwhelm is to

•  figure out what your audience wants, 
•  identify where they are,
•  adopt a strategy to reach them. With this kind of laser focus, many tactics will fall to the wayside.

7. Using social media platform .
A close cousin of the “trying every digital marketing tactic” mistake is “using every social media platform.” I’ve watched hundreds of digital marketers make this massive mistake. It’s obviously important to have a social media strategy. But when you try to blanket the social media universe with your brand presence, you’re going to fall short. Why? Because social media channels require a ton of time and energy. If you try to go all out on each one, you’re going to burn out very quickly. A better approach? Pick the top three platforms where your audience hangs out, and give these all your energy.

8. Link building.
Link building (done wrong) is an old SEO tactic that got websites into trouble. Thankfully, most SEOs and marketers are beyond this point, but it bears repeating: Don’t do “link building” as it was traditionally performed. There are ways to do it correctly, so take heed.

9. Avoiding content marketing.
Content marketing should form the core of any digital marketing strategy. We have not yet reached the point at which content marketing has diminished in effectiveness. Using content aggressively, strategically, and expertly will take your marketing where you want it to go.

10. Having no marketing budget.
If you get stingy with your marketing budget, one of two things will happen. First, you realize your mistake and get desperate, dipping into other funds, which messes up your entire business plan. Second, you have no budget, so you do no marketing, and your business fails to take off. Either way, you run the distinct risk of destroying your business. Instead of shortcircuiting your business with no marketing budget, release a few funds to get the ball rolling. This is especially critical for startup businesses that have little to no market penetration.

Source : Forbes

Google AdWords Best Practices

Google's Best Practices Series provides strategic advice on core search engine marketing tactics. It's intended to help you get the most out of AdWords. Based on Google's internal data and vetted by the people that built AdWords, this series helps form the foundation of your paid search strategies.

1.Keywords & Targeting

• Keywords to the Wise 

Keywords connect your ads with users and their searches. Effective keyword management helps you reach the right customers and grow your business.

• Winning the Second Chance 

RLSA helps put your ads in front of highly qualified customers who have already shown interest in your business or products. This guide covers how to tag your site, set up remarketing lists, and bid effectively.

• Beyond Keywords 

Dynamic Search Ads reach customers as they search without you needing to stay on top of a detailed keyword list. Learn how to get the best possible performance from your DSA campaigns.

2.Ads

• Creative That Clicks

One of the most important things to get right in your search ad is the creative, or messaging, you put into it. Better creatives improve ad relevance and drive more qualified clicks.

• Settling the (Quality) Score

To provide a great experience for both users and advertisers, Google measures the quality of your ads. Ad quality is a part of Ad Rank, so the better your ads are, the more competitive you'll be in the AdWords auction.

• Fully Extended

Ad extensions appear alongside your ads and deliver additional information to users. Extensions are also part of Ad Rank, so the better your extensions are, the more competitive you'll be in the AdWords auction.

3.Bidding & Conversions

• Bid Like a Pro

Bid adjustments are an integral part of AdWords that can help you save time and improve performance. This guide provides an outline for how you can align your bids with your business goals to make smarter bid adjustments.

• A Bid for Every Auction

Automating your bids with AdWords can deliver better, more informed bids while saving you time. This guide covers the benefits of auction-time bidding, then goes deeper into testing and optimization.

• Making a Bid For Profit

Maximizing profit should be the performance goal of every AdWords account. Use bid testing to learn how you can maximize profits for your account.

• Cross-Examine

It’s imperative to understand, and act on, how your marketing drives actions across phones, tablets and desktops. This checklist covers what you can be doing to take full advantage of cross-device conversions in AdWords.

4.Display

• Remarketing Right on Cue

Turn window shoppers into buyers. Programmatic Remarketing on AdWords Display helps you engage site visitors with personalized ads even after they've left your site. Learn how to set up effective tags, remarketing lists, bids and ad formats.

• Put Your Best Image Ad Forward

Three of the most important elements of a display ad are the message, image and design. This checklist outlines how to create effective display ads so that advertisers can improve conversions, brand recall and engagement.

5.Mobile & Local

• Create Effective Mobile Ads

People love their smart phones; they've become an integral part of how people search and browse the web. There are a host of ways to effectively speak to mobile users within AdWords, and getting mobile advertising right can grow your business.

• Tapping into Mobile App Installs

Getting your mobile app discovered can be challenging. Learn how to drive downloads of your app and grow a valuable user base.

• Tapping into Mobile App Engagement

Once you've built a user base for your mobile app, getting people to continue using it is important. Learn how to market to your user base to drive re-engagement with your app.

• Good Call

A customer’s interaction with you can be carried out across different channels: online, in your store or over the phone. This guide will cover all of the ways to drive phone calls to your business and optimize them for success.

• What's In Store

A customer’s interaction with you can start online and then finish in store. This guide will show you how to enhance and target your online ads to drive offline sales and how to optimize them for success.

6.Shopping

• Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns

Shopping campaigns give you the chance to feature product images and information directly in your ads. This guide covers how to create high-quality data feeds, structure effective campaigns, set your best bids and simplify the mobile shopping experience.

• Holiday Planning Guide

Setup your Search and Shopping campaigns for success during the holidays. Planning for the season's increased shopping demand can help you win more customers over this critical time period.

• The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Assess how your search campaigns did over the holidays. Analysis of your past performance will help you prepare your campaigns for the next holiday season.

7.Reporting & Analytics

• Better Together

Both AdWords and Google Analytics offer insights into the performance of your campaigns, and those insights get better when you use GA + AdWords together. Improve your bidding, messaging and performance through these analyses.

• Special Reports

Smart analysis and reporting in AdWords highlights what matters to you and your bottom line. That information can directly improve the performance of your account. This guide covers how to surface the right insights and turn those insights into action.

For More AdWords Help Visit This Page 

Not earning revenue from govt's content, Google to HC

Google India Pvt Ltd Monday told the Delhi High Court it has not earned any revenue out of the agreement with the government or any other monetary benefit from content uploaded under the deal.

The company also told a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva it has no contractual relationship with the Centre regarding content uploaded by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on YouTube or any other of its sites.

The submissions were made on affidavit in response to the court's query to it and Google Inc, on an earlier date, as to whether YouTube was generating revenue from contents uploaded by the government.

Google Inc, the parent company of Google Ireland which operates YouTube, in its affidavit stated that "no advertisements appear on the content owned by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India and provided/uploaded on the YouTube platform by the ministry".

The Centre, meanwhile, told the court that it has no "customised agreements" with Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

There are no customised agreements with YouTube (Google) either, except the one (with Google Ireland/YouTube) mentioned above".

This submission was made by the government in response to the court's earlier query as to whether the ministry has any agreement with these social media entities.

The affidavits were filed in a PIL by former BJP leader K N Govindacharya raising questions on social media usage by the government.

Appearing for Govindacharya, advocate Virag Gupta told the court that Google Inc was "misleading and silent on the crucial issue of income generated by Google Ireland and if any revenue is shared with the Union of India".

The bench, thereafter, sought an additional affidavit from Google Inc on whether it is making any money out of the content uploaded by ministry and listed the matter for further hearing on April 27.

On January 27, the government had filed the content licence agreement entered into with Google Ireland in 2013 regarding content put up on YouTube.

The government had earlier in an affidavit told the court that its media wing and IT departments were using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter by entering into standard agreements and not any formal or separate deals.

Gupta had told the court that as per contracts the government has with these companies, it was "transferring/ surrendering" all intellectual property rights of the data being uploaded.

Source : India Today 

Game over for humans! Google's AI beat Go world champ 4-1

Google's artificial intelligence (AI) program beat South Korean professional Lee Sedol in the ancient board game Go on Tuesday, recovering from Sunday's loss to win its fourth match in a five-game series.

AlphaGo, developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind, had already clinched a series victory with its third win on Saturday in a result that shocked the world.

The program made history last year by becoming the first machine to beat a human pro player, but 33-year-old Lee was seen a much more formidable opponent.

"One of the most incredible games ever," DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis tweeted following the match. "To come back from the initial big mistake against Lee Sedol was mind-blowing!"

Go, most popular in countries such as China, South Korea and Japan, involves two contestants moving black and white stones on a square grid, with the aim of seizing the most territory.

The game is perfect for AI researchers because there are simply too many moves for a machine to win by brute-force calculations, which is how IBM's Deep Blue famously beat former world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

You read out more on original source @ India Today
All about Go, the ancient Chinese game in which Google's robot bested a master

Internet & Types of Web Hosting

By 2015, around 40% of the world population is connected with internet. Means 4 out 10 person using internet , where in 1999 it was 4.6%. The third billion was reached in 2014.These figures are enough to speak about the volumes in terms of market reaches.The interesting part of this technology is that it is easily applied on all ages, internet is being used for social networking, blogging & shopping etc.

A website, also written as web site, or simply site, is a set of related web pages typically served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a uniform resource locator (URL).All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.-wikipedia

Website can be broadly divided into two categories - Static & Interactive (Dynamic).

Front end which is designed using design software or programming language like PHP/Perl/ASP.net and a back-end like MySQL database; these are the two main component of a website. You can develop a static website on which you might not get updates easily and the website might require a periodic update or you can have a dynamic website which gets updated automatically using databases.

For these two types of websites, database or files needs to be accessed time to time, so it is imperative to store the data on servers. Here, website hosting services providers play an important role. They act as owners of server space which you can hire or lease for a stipulated period of time.

Types of Web hosting

There are different types of web hosting available to host your website. Before you move ahead for web hosting services, it is very important to understand which type of web hosting service your website  or business requires, and suited to your budget.

Free web hosting: Free web hosting is good choice when you just want to create a simple website . Very often in a free hosting environment, connection speed might slow, website can be down frequently, without any prior notice and third party ads will be displayed even if you don't want . Some free web hosting providers are like weebly.com, webs.com and webSiteBuilder.

Shared web hosting service: In a shared hosting environment, your website shares the same server. This includes sharing the physical server and the software applications within the server. Shared hosting services are affordable because the cost to operate the server is shared between you and these other owners. There are, however, a number of down sides, such as single IP is allocated to all the share holders .

Re-seller web hosting service: This web hosting service allows you to host the websites via re-seller account. The size of re-seller account may vary, It may have both virtual and collocate server based on the requirement. Re-sellers provides technical assistance via email or chat support to their clients.

Providing virtual dedicated server: Being a private server it has acronym as VPS (Virtual Private Server). VPS works on division of server resources into virtual servers. Here, you will be having access to the virtual servers and you can maintain the servers as well.

Dedicated Hosting Service: In a dedicated hosting environment, you have the entire web server to yourself. This allows for faster performance, as you have all the server’s resources entirely, without sharing with other website owners. However, this also means that you will be responsible for the cost of server operation entirely. This is a good choice for websites that requires a lot of system resources, or need a higher level of security.

Managed Hosting Service: If you are planning to get managed hosting service, though you might not get full control over it but you are allowed to manage the data through File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Colocated Web Hosting Service: This is the most powerful and expensive among all web hosting services. The colocated web hosting service has its roots in dedicated web hosting service but the difference in between the two is that in colocated web hosting service the user practically owns the colocated server. You can have your administrator visit the data centre and do the required updates.

Cloud Hosting: This is all proof method of hosting and is widely used especially after people have started using cloud. It only incurs charges for the resources which are exactly consumed by the user. Thus, saves you some money as compared to other web hosting services charging you flat fee for the amount of space which is expected to be used. Cloud hosting has its concerns over security of data and privacy.

Clustered Hosting: If you are looking for optimum resource utilization, clustered hosting is the answer. You have a website which for now is preliminary and you have plans to scale it after some time, then clustered hosting indeed provides you better options as it is known for scalable solutions.

Grid Hosting: In grid hosting, the cluster is composed of multiple nodes and acts like grid.

Home Server: You can also use your own PC as a server which can use multiple websites from broadband connection.