Matt Cutts – Keep Up With The Web

How Can You Get Started With SEO? #FridayFinds

Love it or hate it, organic search traffic is a very effective method of driving free traffic to your website. People search the Internet when they’re researching and buying. It’s a fact. So, what can you do to optimize your website to be search engine friendly while still writing quality content that your visitors will want to read? Last week, in my #FridayFinds series, I focused on new SEO tactics that you can use to help website visitors find your blog in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages). One of the resources that I cited suggested that we limit the length of our post titles to 55 characters. In this week’s finds, you’ll learn SEO tips and tools to either get you started with SEO or help take you to the next level.

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Do You Comment for Backlinks on DoFollow Enabled CommentLuv Blogs?

Last week, Matt Cutts got the blogging community in an uproar over whether or not guest blogging was dead. (It’s not.) Actually, what Matt said was that guest blogging for “backlinks” was no longer going to be tolerated by Google and that we should be especially concerned with spammy links in guest posts intended for SEO. He cautioned us to only accept guest posts from trusted bloggers who we could vouch for. That got me thinking about the backlinks that are left in the comments of blogs that use the CommentLuv WordPress plugin.

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How Do You Know Which Bad Links Caused Your Google Penalty?

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you haven’t been affected by the recent Google algorithm updates. Unfortuately, my site did fall victim to the recent updates. In May, I was hit by Penguin 2.0. In mid-June, I was hit by the spam query update and in late June, I was hit again by the massive update that was rolled out June 25th. I’m currently waiting for a response from the Google Webspam team regarding my Google Penalty Reconsideration Request. Meanwhile, what can you do to prevent this from happening to you?

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Friday Finds – Facebook Hashtags, Google and CommentLuv do-follow Links

This week’s post in the weekly “Friday Finds” series raises the questions: Do clickable Facebook hashtags raise privacy issues? Are you concerned that Google will penalize your CommentLuv enabled blogs for do-follow links? Would you buy a book to teach your toddler how to code a website in HTML?

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Friday Finds for Weekend Reading – Google Penguin 2.0 Updates

This week’s “Friday Finds” highlights Matt Cutts’ recent announcement that Google will soon be releasing Penguin 2.0. In his video, Matt talks about Google looking closer at advertorials that violate Google’s quality guidelines. He also talks about new algorithm changes that attempt to detect links to “authority” sites and rank them higher in the SERPs. Another article that you may find interesting addresses speculation (among some SEO experts) that Google+ may come into play when it comes to detecting authority.

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How Do You Avoid Keyword Stuffing on Your Website Blog?

According to Google Webmaster Tools, keyword stuffing is defined as “the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results”. They go on to say that it “results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking”. So, how can we write good content that our blog readers will enjoy while not getting penalized by the search engines?

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