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Once again, webmasters are complaining about what may have been a major update from Google. Theyve taken to the Google Webmaster Help forums to express their grievances, although to be fair, its not all bad for everybody. When sites drop, others rise. Thats how it works.

Barry Schwartz, at Search Engine Roundtable, who wonders if it could be the overly SEO penalty Matt Cutts discussed at SXSW last month, points to 11 separate forum threads with complaints. Theres definitely something going on.

Of course, in these situations, the Panda update is always mentioned. Weve reached out to Google for more info. Sometimes they respond. Sometimes they dont. It will most likely be one of the generic we make changes every day kind of responses, and well probably have to wait until the end of April or the beginning of May to get the real list of changes Google has made.

The last time there was a known Panda update, Google went so far as to tweet about it. They know people want to know when this happens. That doesnt necessarily mean theyll tweet every time, but I wouldnt be surprised. This time, no tweet from Google so far.

For a refresher on the overly SEO penalty Schwartz speaks of, read the following:

Google Is Working On Making SEO Matter Less Google Webmaster Central Creator Talks Googles New Google Changes New Google Changes: Really A Matter Of Mom And Pop? SEO DOs And DONTS According To Google: Mixed Signals?

Other things have been costing sites lately. For one, Googles de-indexing of paid blog/link networks caused a lot of webmasters to get messages from Google about questionable links. This week, Google sent out messages to 20,000 sites informing them that they appeared to be hacked.

If youre rankings have fallen, one thing you may want to consider is taking authorship more seriously (and that includes Google+ engagement), though even that appears to be having some issues on the tracking side.

Last week, we spoke with Dani Horowitz whose site, DaniWeb, has been hit by Google, yet again, after recovering from multiple iterations of the Panda update.

Not only does Google make changes every day, it runs even more experiments, with subsets of users. Matt Cutts recently talked about how Google runs 20,000 search experiments a year.

The rest is here:
Major Google Update Suspected, Yet Again, By A Bunch Of Webmasters

Duane Forrester, the Bing Webmaster Tools senior program manager, recently unveiled a slew of new tools that can be found within the Bing Webmaster Tools interface. As Derek Edmond put it in his recap of the SES New York SEO Tools of the Trade session, what caught my eye was:

As an SEO, I find myself doing a lot of key phrase research and the tools of the trade seem like they change as fast as the search algorithms themselves. Over the years I've had the chance to get "down and dirty" with more than my fair share but also over that time more and more tools rely on data pulled directly from Google's AdWords Keyword Tool.

Now Googles keyword tool is a fine tool and has turned into the default for many an optimizer. I myself use it on a day-to-day basis for brief research (like keywords for a blog post). Its usable, but the numbers always seem off. I'm not sure if it's the rounding, the averages, the paid search data, or the fact that time and time again I see SEOs ignoring the match types, but every time I use it, I just feel a little like Google isnt giving me the data that I'm trying to see.

That's why my ears perked up when I heard about the new Bing Keyword Tool. Through Microsoft Ad Intelligence, MSN has been giving away some actual numbers for years. However that Excel plugin has always been buggy and has worked as often as it hasn't for me so I was excited to see what might come from a web interface.

Out of the box, here are the highlights of what you get from the new Bing Keyword Tool:

Admittedly there are some really cool things here and as it's in "Beta", I'm hopeful that there are improvements still to come. It's very nice to see the actual number of queries a term gets and to sort by these as well.

One thing you should familiarize yourself with as you start to use this tool is the "Strict Mode" checkbox. I like it's placement in the interface as it stands out more than Google's "Match Type" menu but the functionality here is slightly different.

If you select the Strict Mode option, it will filter the results to show you only query volumes explicit to the keyword or phrase, excluding phrases which may include the original keyword.

For example, if you type in cars, and leave strict unchecked, the total query volume shown for the phrase cars shows an aggregate number inclusive of all phrases containing the word cars.

Read more:
Bing Keyword Research Tool: Highlights & Limitations

Earlier, we reported that author stats in Webmaster Tools have gone MIA. Its missing because of a bug.

A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews, Weve currently disabled the experimental Author stats feature in Webmaster Tools Labs as we work to fix a bug in the way stats are attributed.

There were some complaints about the features disappearance in the comments section of a Google blog post discussing rich snippets updates. One reader wrote:

I went to check my Author Stats, under the Labs tab in Google Webmaster Tools. GONE!

Anyone else?

In the past, they only gave me credit for about 50% of the pages that I have fixed up with Google-required special authorship tags, according to their specifications.

At the bottom of the Labs page, their disclaimer prevails

Webmaster Tools Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that arent quite ready for primetime (sic). They may change, break or DISAPPEAR AT ANY TIME.

Nothing about the probably of return, however. (sic)

The timing of this was rather coincidental for me, as I just wrote a long piece about the benefits of authorship (for both users and Google), and talked about the feature.

View original post here:
Google Author Stats In Webmaster Tools Disabled Due To Bug

In parts one and two of our series on conducting SEO site audits, we looked at how to price and scope your SEO audit as well as questions to ask, accounts to gain access to, and tools to have at your disposal.

In this section I want to look at the overall approach an SEO takes in putting together an audit, as well as some presentation items like formatting and report layout.

There are some strong arguments to be made that you might want to be somewhat guarded or careful with the information you give away in an SEO audit, but as I pointed out in the last post in this series, my personal approach to executing an SEO audit is to:

be completely sales-agnostic: I want to charge appropriately for the value Im delivering, so that the audit itself is a valuable project that Im not relying on as a lead-gen tool or loss leader. This allows you to make completely unbiased recommendations about what to outsource, what to keep in house, etc. By charging fairly for your services you mitigate the risk of giving away value (youre charging for it, after all) and you also position yourself as an expert who does good work, which is a better sales pitch than under-delivering and offering to bridge the value gap for a price after the fact.

This doesnt mean that you do an unreasonable amount of work and put your business at risk: it just means that you charge a fair price for your time and expertise, and then generate the best, most complete document possible. My suggestions here and in the next section will assume that this is the general approach to the auditing process that youre taking.

First, as a general rule with SEO audits I find it best to assume your reader has a limited knowledge of SEO unless you know otherwise. As I mentioned in section two of the series, if you know for a fact that the only one poring over your audit will be a savvy SEO, you can adjust your audit accordingly and not over-explain or come off as patronizing, but if youre not entirely sure, the document is likely to be read by folks with a range of SEO expertise, etc. I think its valuable to educate throughout your audit dont just make a recommendation, explain why you made the recommendation and how it will help their business.

One positive here is that as you start to do multiple SEO audits, youll have some explanations you can re-use. I like to start various sections of the report with an explanation of what Im trying to accomplish with my recommendations. This doesnt mean I need to explain the history of keyword research or copy/paste a Wikipedia-style synopsis in the keyword research section, but it does mean I want to help he client understand why Im making the recommendations Im making. Heres an example of a summary of the logic behind recommended keyword strategy:

We want to identify the terms that represent the best balance of these three factors, and in some cases exploit inefficiencies in one or multiple areas (ie if competition is low in areas with low volume but high likelihood to convert that may represent an opportunity even though search volume isnt high).

The intent here is to help the client understand the thinking behind the recommendations so they can intelligently implement them.

If youre recommending a site-wide, systemic change its helpful to go beyond simple statements of what youre suggesting and use hard and fast examples. For instance lets say you want to recommend to the client, who sells widgets, that they not just use their company name as the title tag on every page of their site, and rather create title tags that dynamically insert the product name into the title tag. Rather than just writing this out, give them a real-life example:

See more here:
An SEO’s Guide to SEO Audits Part 3: SEO Site Audit Approach & Layout

DORAL, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

If landing on page one of a Google search for plumbers in your city remains a top priority, Plumber SEOs new book can help. The company helps contractors acquire search engine page one placement within their markets. Plumber SEOs new book The Complete Guide to Internet Marketing for Plumbing Contractors offers a comprehensive manual detailing how contractors can effectively position their plumbing business online.

This book provides readers with a detailed action plan for increasing a plumbing companys online visibility. The 20 chapters encompass a range of SEO core functions, such as using frequently searched keywords and social media marketing, and distills these broad principles into clear step-by-step instructions proven to garner results in web search results placement.

"We wanted to provide a solution to the most common problem affecting all contractors - how to make sure new clients can find their business fast online, and before finding their competitors," Dean Iodice, social media consultant of Plumber SEO, said. "Our conversations with contractors revealed a common theme. Most of our clients ran ads in the Yellow Pages religiously for years, but as Google, Yahoo! and other search engines evolved as a more popular and effective resource for researching and contacting local service providers, phone book advertising wasnt generating the same number of leads it used to. Contractors recognized online presence was vital to the survival and growth of their business, but they didnt understand what they could do to change their current status online. Our goal is to explain how search engine optimization works and how readers can increase their Internet search result ranking to dominate the online search engine real estate within their market.

With more than 25 years of experience in online marketing, Plumber SEO executes online marketing and SEO functions on behalf of plumbers, HVAC contractors and other contracting businesses nationwide. The firm helps obtain Google search page one placement and strictly honors a no-competitor agreement, working with no more than one contractor in each market. For more information, call Dean Iodice or Josh Nelson at 866-610-4647 or visit PlumberSEO.net.

The Complete Guide to Internet Marketing for Plumbing Contractors is available for $14.99 on Amazon.com.

Note to editors: Images of the book cover and authors are available.

See the article here:
SEO Expert Publishes Book for Plumbers