Goolge +1 Impact : Did you tried ?

Innovative SEO : Learn & Share All About SEO

Hello Friends,
Few days back, Google has released a new feature known as Google +1. Its different from Google buzz services & I am sure many of you have read about the same. Initially it seems that, its more like a kind of personal search & help individual to improve the personal search only, but now with the recent research & testing the data says something different.
Google +1 Impact : Improved Organic clicks by 20%

Recently, One of the Dutch SEO Firm has released a White paper on the impact of +1′s on SERPs, reporting that its website reported almost 20 % more traffic after it garnered +1′s. So, How they exactly implemented & tested Google +1 for their website. The story goes like this,

The company asked readers to +1 its website on SERPs in exchange for a service valued at $9, and 73 consumers responded. Once users who were logged into their Google accounts gave experiment pages a +1, they were then asked to re-tweet these pages to let the company know they had participated.

So, that’s it ? Did it improved the traffic ? Well, Answer is not in black & white. There are some more questions which needs to be answered like, what share of increased visibility comes from +1 and what share might be a result of the re-tweets? The company reported that,

It is impossible to measure the effect of the +1 votes on rankings in isolation

The company also acknowledges that 73 participants don’t offer conclusive evidence on the value of Google’s +1 service. So, How can they say that, Google+1 have contributed. The reason behind that statement is, they saw approx 20 % increase in rankings and corresponding gains in clicks and visits for various keywords following the Google +1 experiment. It should be noted here that even Brafton has reported that Google’s Matt Cutts has suggested +1 will become a ranking signal.
But, For me, it still more sounds like a social signal & it can be only counted when people login to their account on Google. Even, Google +1 button only get visible if you login to your Google account. So, Yes, Google +1 button helps to improve rankings & traffic if you are a brand or if website have more amount of social & referral traffic. Its still too early to say that, it will impact the rankings or not, but yes at-least few things are clearing up & people have started implementing it.
What do you think about Google +1 impact ? Do you think that it will help to improve the SERP rankings or just counted as social signal ? Do you think, this will be a new game changing factor ? Eager to see your response on this

5 things you should never miss for a Link Building campaign : Back to Basics

Innovative SEO : Learn & Share All About SEO

Hello Friends,
Its almost mid of 2011 & a great time to re-look at basics once again to get some insights for creativity & missing links. One common issue which always keep SEO’s busy in thinking is Link Building. Here are few known but unexplored or less explored / evaluated ways of generating inbound links.

Link Structure : Back to Basics of Link Building
It adds value to the web, looks natural, and looks social to a search engine. For example, using social bookmarking to point to an article, that references a blog, that ultimately points to the Target URL. This type of natural/social link structure has become even more important since the Google Panda Algorithm update.
Here you goto get your link structure in place,

Google PR Update : June,2011

Innovative SEO : Learn & Share All About SEO

Hello Friends,
Today, On June,27th 2011, Google has updated its long awaited Toolbar Page Rank. Yes, its the first Google Page Rank update 2011 (post panda) & long awaited one. This is really important because, its just released after the important Panda update which make many site up & many down.

Google Page Rank Update : June,2011
To my surprise, this SEO blog which has earlier PR 0 since last many months, post panda update , not only rankings are improved but now Google has assigned the PR 4 directly from 0. Its a huge huge jump.  Many of my friends & client’s sites also have improved in this PR. Few sites got real jump from 0 to 4 & few got jump from 0-2 & 2-3. So, it clearly stats that this udate was purely based on the effect of Google panda update. Its a kind of proof that Google has now fully implemented panda update & also toolbar PR. Thanks to all my friends & readers of Innovative SEO for sharing & spreading the word about each post & keeping this blog moving ahead. You guys rock

Hows this Google PR update for your site ? Is it improved ? Love to hear from you guys. Keep posting, Happy Googling

Google PR Update : August, 2011

Innovative SEO : Learn & Share All About SEO 

Hello Friends,

Its really surprising that, my another post is also on Google Page Rank update , wondering, I delayed my blog post or its Google who updated PR early but, yes, its confirmed that, On 4th of August, Google has updated again its Google Page Rank. If you have read my ealrier blog post, the last Google PR update was on 27th June & now in just 1 month, again Google has updated it Toolbar PR.
Google Page Rank Update : August,2011
Its not that, Google updated this its toolbar Page Rank out of surprise, people who follow this closely must have noticed that, in mid of July, Google has temporarily reevaluated its toolbar PR & some of the site got updated toolbar PR in mid of July itself, but not many sites got affected so it didn’t bring to notice, but now post that update, on 4th August, Google updated its toolbar page rank again & this time its affected many of the websites.

Have you noticed this update ? Innovative SEO even got updated toolbar page rank, what about your site ? Does your site also get updated toolbar Page rank by Google ? Look forward to hear more interesting responses, till then happy Googling

SEO News Updates - Flash Makes Further Improvements

Google have recently updated their strategy to indexing Flash. Previously an SEO No No, Google are able to index and understand “almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site.”
Google can now index most text within a Flash file. They have been working with Adobe of the last few years to crack this barrier to SEO.  Google is also starting to get better at indexing meta data from Flash Video Files.

While this is a gret leap forward for Flash users I would still recommend avoiding using Flash for major projects. It can slow down your page speed times and the development of indexing the technology is still in progress so I would not rely on everything inside the Flash getting indexed.
From Google: "While we’ve made great progress indexing SWF content over the past few years, we’re not done yet. We are continuing to work on our ability to index deep linking (content within a Flash technology based application that is linked to from the same application) as well as further improving indexing of SWF files executed through JavaScript."
As you can see Google is still working on indexing Flash technology. So good news if are a web designer who loves the cool visuals of Flash, but I would't go building a complete Flash website just yet!

Reasons Behind Bad Seo Services

Recently Seo Scams are getting increased day by day. Reading so many stories in the forums by stating that I have cheated by this seo service. Few clients are personally shared with me their experiences that how they have cheated by the services.

I have did a little research why all this was happening. At last i came to a conclusion now why this is repeating. People who don't have a long vision would do these kind of mistakes. They thought that their knowledge is enough to establish and run a company. They never look and thought of long term results. Feel that they could do it. 

Professionals with little experience who are working with a good seo companies will come out side and establish an organization. Now they will look for clients. Getting clients and satisfying them is not an ordinary matter, so they will promise everything what the client asks while taking the project. At the moment when they are taking the project they won't bother about results. They are in a dilemma that they will try for it, however they will promise to client that they will give it. At last they will often fail and receives a bad reputation in the market.

Few people will promise to the clients that they will get sales and leads through SEO. SEO helps you in getting the leads and conversions, however it won't give directly leads and conversions. That's a wrong statement. SEO guys can promise about search engine friendly optimization, page rank and SERP's.  Search Engine Marketing professionals should promise about leads and conversions. 

For a successful online business an organization should have :

• SEO Professional
• SEM Professional
• SMO Professional
• Web Designer
• Programmer 
• Quality Professional
• Leader
• Investor

To run a successful business at least we should have the above professionals.  All those guys should have well expertise in those respective fields then only organization will move towards success. I request to the guys who are establishing new companies, Never start a company with half knowledge. It's not good for you and also your clients.

How important are web analytics?

Web analytics have major importance in on line business. Tracking the history of visitors and keep doing research on analytics is must and should. We can know about visitors and their views through these analytics.

Analytics usage are increasing day by day. Analytic professionals have higher demand in the market. Everyone can't become an Analytic expert. It needs great thinking, visualization and case study.  

Every On line business should take care about :

Bounce rate :

Bounce rate is something which will helps you to know that how visitors are going away from your site. Higher bounce rate means visitors aren't interested on your site. Lesser means visitors are happy to stay on your site. It's always better to make bounce rate 0%, however it's not possible, so it's better to keep it less. 

Visit Length :

How long visitors are staying on your site in average? If most of the visitors are staying good amount time on your site means they are reading some thing on your site which is useful for them. So visit length always matters to know the interest of viewer on your site. According to this metrics you can optimize your site.

Visit Depth :

Visit Depth means "Are the visitor is showing interest in visiting the other pages of your site too?" If a visitor visited most of the pages on your site and spent good amount of time on each page says your site awesome. visited all pages and spend less amount of time is not good. Not visited other pages is bad. So higher visit depth helps to grow your business as well as brand.

Returning Visitors :

More returning visits means you have loyal readers for your site. If a visitor come again and again to your site means he liked your site and found it useful. These kind of readers are called as loyal readers. More loyal readers you have, that much popular your site is. It's very important to have more returning visits. Always try to increase the number of normal visits as well as returning visits.

... Most of the search engines will consider all these factors, to show up your website in top search engine results for a particular keyword. So it's important to make note of all these topics and keep working and optimizing it to succeed in your business. Comment your thoughts :)  ...

Twitter is making it's search better

better

Twitter is planning to make  their search better to give better user experience. Santosh Jayaram (Twitter VP of Operations) confirmed that some changes are going to happen in twitter search. He was earlier worked as a VP in Google Search Quality team.

We all should feel glad to know about these changes, because twitter usually away from major changes. Any ways because of this most of the third party twitter tools making good money. Let them be happy.

Mainly Two things they were looking to change :

• Indexing links in tweets
  
• Reputation ranking system for tweets
  

Indexing Links in Tweets :

Currently search engines only able to crawl the text in the tweets but not links. They were planning to make the search engines to crawl the links too along with text in the tweets. So that people can get real time twitter results in the search engines too. Especially it gives users better search experience to those who are looking for timely content.

Reputation ranking system for tweets :

We all know that whenever we click on the trending topic, able to see lot of retweets. They are planning to give Reputation ranking system to these tweets. No one knows how the system is designed. Even the twitter engineers also not aware much about this, why because they are still figuring out that which works better. Hope this ranking system will give a great user experience.

The whole world is awaiting for these changes. 

Wolfram Alpha is completely different from Google

Recently on web, there are so many conversations are going regarding Wolfram Alpha. WolframAlpha is a new search engine which is going to be released on May 18th 2009. It's developed by Stephen Wolfram (creator of Mathematica).

Stephen wolfram planned to release it on May 15, 2009.  As planned they have released on the same date, however due to over load they have shifted the public launch date to May 18, 2009.

Do you know the caption of Wolfram Alpha, it was “computational search engine”. It's completely a different concept of search. It's not at all a competitor for Google or any other search engine. Till now I was in assumption that it will occupy the position of google in future. Just now I have watched a scree cast from Wolfram Alpha  blog. 

In this video they have clearly explained that how it displays results for different queries. It was really interesting. If you would like to watch that video just click below. Wait for few mints it will take time to load.

Watch the Real Search of Wolfram Alpha Video

Here I would like to place few screen shots of different searches of  Wolfram Alpha, so that you guys can have a better idea about this computational search engine.

Search for "2+2" in WolframAlpha, to see the result click on the below image to have a larger view :

Search for "integrate x^2sin^3 x dx" in WolframAlpha, to see the result click on the below image to have a larger view:

Search for "gdp france" in WolframAlpha, to see the result click on the below image to have a larger view :

Search for "internet users in europe" in WolframAlpha, to see the result click on the below image to have a larger view :

Search for "springfield" in WolframAlpha, to see the result click on the below image to have a larger view :

Hope you guys have some better understanding that how this search engine will display results in a computed mathematical way. In the above video every thing is explained well. Hope you have watched it and understand the concept of Stephen Wolfram. Feel free write your thoughts in comments.

Bing - Microsoft New Decision Engine

Microsoft is going to release a new search engine which is called Bing. Microsoft team is saying that "people would find a new search experience through Bing, so they are calling it as a decision engine. People would get world class search experience through it which has most latest features and for sure give fine results. In future people would take decisions through Bing only."

Microsoft Bing Profiles on the web :

• Introduction of Bing
• Bing Images
• FaceBook Profile
• Twitter Profile

Few people are saying that Microsoft is giving old wine in new bottle. Bing would be same as Live search. However few people are eagerly waiting for the new search experience with Bing, why because people are got bored with google. Google is Everywhere, Everyone looking for a change. Wait and see what's going to happen.

Find all domains hosted on an IP in Bing

Recently I came accross an interesting post in Labnol. In this post Amit explained about a new operator in Bing. Ofcourse we all know that Bing is a new search engine which is released few months back from Microsoft. Using this operator we can find out different domains which are hosted on an IP.

Search for "ip:(IP address)" to get the all different domains which are hosted on the same ip. For example I have taken domain www.educationinandhra.com. It's hosted on ip 66.147.242.170. Now I have searched for the all different domains which are hosted on the same ip as shown in the following screenshot.


Thanks Ba;aji

Google Search in Color Interface - Looks cool

Google is always used to do different kind of experiments for all products and keep the best in live which are selected and voted by most of the visitors. As a part of this process Now Google is testing New Color Search Interface. We have to wait and see, whether the whole world will love it or hat it. Would you like to test it now then Here is a simple trick to make your google search colorful.

Follow the below steps:

1. Open Google.com
2. Search for the below code in Google instead of Keyword:
   javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/;
   domain=.google.com");
3. Now you will see New colored Google interface

Step 1 :

Step 2:

Step 3:

Source : Blogoscoped.com

I am using Firefox 3.5.3 Version and It's working fine for me. Just have a check guys and let me know if it's working for you people or not.

How many Hats in SEO?

As per my knowledge is concern only 3 Hats matters most in SEO:

1. White Hat SEO
2. Grey Hat SEO
3. Black Hat SEO
   

1. White Hat SEO:

White Hat SEO means completely following the ethical methods to acquire good rankings in search engines for a website. If a website really providing good information to visitors then white hat SEO works very well
and gives the best results. Now you have question that “what are white hat SEO methods?” All the methods which aren’t trying to cheat or manipulate search engines or visitors are called white hat SEO methods. I hope only few sites like Wikipedia, Google etc... follows white hat SEO methods.

2. Grey Hat SEO:

Grey Hat SEO means following combination of ethical and unethical methods to get fine rankings in Search Engines for a website. Most of the SEOs use Grey Hat SEO Methods to attain rankings. Grey Hat SEO works fine most of the time and most of the professionals recommend it. Grey Hat SEO methods aren’t unethical, it includes little stuffing of keywords in the site and back links etc. Now a day’s these methods are quite common while promoting website. Most of Corporate websites, Personal Blogs etc … follows Grey Hat SEO Methods.

3. Black Hat SEO:

Black Hat SEO stands to follow completely unethical which are used to cheat, manipulate search engines as well as users. In the past years search engines aren’t able to recognize these methods and difficult to find out and filter the websites which use Black Hat SEO techniques. Search engines are became smarter now and able to find out and blocks websites which use black hat techniques. Search Engine Quality Professional are working hardly and updating regularly the SE algorithms to give the best results to the visitors.

Google Webmaster Tools Updates in 2011

We have three Google webmaster tools updates in 2011 till now. Following are three updates were live on Feb, 2011. Following are the details:

1. Check your website instant preview in Google Webmastertools - May 18th 2011
2. Better way to Remove URLS from search Engine Results - May 17th 2011
3. Suggestions to build high quality sites in the web - May 6th 2011
4. Google is supporting flash in instant previews - May 6th 2011
5. Wordpress Plugin for Google Webmaster tools verification - Apr 19th 2011
6. New Methods to verify websites in Google Webmaster tools - Apr 21st 2011
7. Google Panda Update goes Global for English Users - Apr 11th, 2011
8. Now Pagespeed online with Mobile Support - Mar 31st, 2011
9. Detecting Mobile User Agent - Mar 30th, 2011
10. Introducing Google Social +1 button - Mar 28th, 2011
11. Video Sitemaps Help - Mar 24th, 2011 
12. Google Panda / Farmer Update - Feb 24th, 2011
13. Making Websites Mobile Friendly - Feb 22nd, 2011
14. Advanced features in Webmaster tools with analytics data - Feb 18th, 2011
15. Single Login for Analytics and Webmaster Tools -  Feb 07, 2011
16. Webmaster Tools Search Queries Update - Feb 03, 2011

1. Advanced features in Webmaster tools with analytics data:

Two weeks before Webmaster tools team has released a feature to merge analytics data with Webmaster tools data. As we expected Google team started releasing more advanced features by combining data of GA and GWT.

Now we can differentiate search queries information based on search type, location and impressions vs clicks. Have a look at above screen shot for clear understanding. This kind of data segmentation will help SEO team for better understanding about search queries, so that they can deliver quality results.

2. Analytics to Webmaster Tools -  Feb 07, 2011

Another update from webmaster team that linking Google analytics to webmaster tools. Many SEO’s have a common questions that “Is it a good idea?”. Yes, it is. Linking analytics to webmaster tools will give more accurate impressions vs clicks count in webmaster tools. It helps SEO professionals to find out the best keywords which are converting well in delivering results.

In future we can expect many changes in webmaster tools relevant to analytics data. We might see like updating current sections and including new sections in webmaster tools. Let us see the future changes in webmaster tools dashboard.

Official Source: Analytics to Webmaster Tools

3. Webmaster Tools Search Queries Update - Feb 03, 2011

Google webmaster team has updated a feature in search queries section based on several webmasters feedback. Before Feb 02, 2011 webmasters are able to see the impressions count in two or three digits. After Feb 03, 2011 onwards count will be shown in one to two digits.

For example instead of impressions count 74,000 it will show 75000, instead of 146,000 it will show 150,000. Google team said that “reason behind this update to represent numbers nicely and to decrease the confusion to webmasters”. Internal ranking and impression counting systems are same, only the outer display will change.

Official Source:  Search Queries Update

Google Analytics New Interface

Google has released upgraded analytics interface for limited number of users. Selected users will find the new version link in their analytics interface. We can check the same on Google official blog too with a Sign-up link. If anyone interested in doing in beta-testing of new dashboard, they can put a request here to Google team.

Seems Google Analytics team did major functionality changes in old interface and made the new dashboard more flexible and faster to access. Multiple dashboards in one much waiting feature has been included in the new release.

Analytics Team has given more importance to the usability and data visualization in the upcoming version. Few features like multiple dashboards with bunch of graphs helps a lot to users, especially useful for big companies.

Analytics New Dashboard Screen-shots:

Sign-up for the new interface here

Source Links : Search Engine Land, Analytics Official Blog

Page Speed Extension for Chrome

We are much awaiting for Page Speed Extension for Google chrome from past few months. Now it’s available in 40 languages. Page Speed is a good extension which clearly explains you technically what areas need to optimize to make your site faster.

Here are the detailed instructions to Install Page Speed for Chrome

 I feel comfortable using it on Firefox till now. Let’s see whether I will shift to chrome or not. Based on my experience I always used to get the following areas to optimize for my clients websites.

• Optimize images
• Minify HTML
• Minify CSS
• Minify JavaScript
• Enable compression
• Combine images into CSS sprites
• Combine external JavaScript
• Minimize DNS lookups
• Leverage browser caching
• Specify image dimensions
• Combine external CSS

Page Speed Extension Observations:

 

I have checked with few domains and found different scores for same domain in Firefox and Chrome. Here is the list.

   Domain                          Firefox Score       Chrome Score

Google.com                             96/100                  94/100

Yahoo.com                              86/100                  84/100

Bing.com                                 95/100                  95/100

AOL.com                                 86/100                  80/100

Chrome is giving less or equal score compared to Firefox. If you have any observations, suggestions feel free to comment.

SEO Process Tips to Rank in 2011

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most trending word in online marketing. Google always keeps changing their algorithms and SEO Professionals will break their heads to run with the latest algorithms. Good SEO Professionals always suggest using White hat methods as they will help to stay longer in search engine results. Here are few white hat SEO tips to follow according to the latest search engine algorithms in 2011.

1. Research and pick the right keywords which drive quality traffic, leads and conversions
2. Analyze competitors who are running with success in similar business and checkout the methods they are following and the keywords they are optimizing
3. Pick the right Domain extension based geo – targeted business like ‘.in’ for India, ‘.com’ for USA, ‘.co.uk’ for UK etc.
4. Plan a user& search engine friendly design & navigation with good link architecture
5. Hire a professional content writer to write good quality content to catch user as well as search engine attention
6. Plan different sub sections with relevant content for most targeted keywords
7. Make sure that site has no broken links, timed out urls, high loading time etc. Tools like Xenu and extensions like Pagespeed, Yslow will help us to develop technically clean site.
8. Use robots.txt file to block all unnecessary pages which are indexing by the search engines.
9. Create Xml & HTML sitemap for users and search engines
10. Submit Xml sitemap to search engines webmaster tools account and fix the errors if any
11. Build only quality back links using White hat link building methods.
12. Analyze traffic and plan or change the strategies to drive quality traffic which will convert to sales

Are shorten urls SEO friendly? …. Yes

Shorten URLs will be used especially at Social Media sites to share web pages and interesting links. People are spending hours and hours in front of Facebook, Twitter etc, so URL Shortener services are increasing day by day. Most of people have this question that whether these short URLs are SEO friendly or not. 

Usually shorten URLs will redirect to destination URLs. We need to find out whether these redirections are permanent (301) or temporary (302). We have few free tools on the web to check it. Yes, URL Shorten Services are using permanent 301 redirection which is search engine friendly. Please have a look at the following screenshot and video for better understanding.

 

Mattcutts explaining the same in the following video:

Google New Products in 2011 - Inside Search

Google has launched three new features in recent event at San Francisco on June 14^th 2011. Following are three new features. This event is officially named as “Google InsideSearch”. 

1. Voice Search
2. Instant Pages
3. Search by Image

1. Voice Search:

Google has announced voice Search for desktop computers. At present Google users are typing keywords to get the relevant information on search results. Now users can speak words so that Google will understand the word and display relevant search results. According to the survey, Google is able to recognize 80% of the words and displaying relevant results.

2. Instant Pages:

This is another great feature which will improve the visitor usability a lot. Usually 40% of the Google visitors will click on the 1^st link, so it will take little time to load respective site and visitors have to wait. With new feature “Instant Pages”, visitor will able to see the site instantly. Reason behind this is technique is Google will load it already in the backend and displays it instantly when user clicks it.

3. Search by Image:

Initially people used to search images by name and getting relevant images. Search engines inserted few other features for user convenience.  One feature i.e. “Search similar images” that we always use this feature to find out the right image with desired quality and size. Now Google went a step forward and made an awesome feature live. Visitors can drop image file on Google search bar, so that it will display all similar images with different resolutions and sizes.  This feature would be helpful in finding out your personal images at other public places posted by someone else.

Mobile vs Desktop Internet Usage Stats 2011

We all know that mobile usage is drastically increasing from the past 2 years. Couple of smart mobiles are releasing often in the market with latest advanced features. Most of the Internet users will use Google for their search. Let’s consider Google Usage as Internet Usage in this case.

According to the following stats and graphs users are using more mobile internet when they are away from desktop.

“Google” usage on Desktop Internet:

Have a look at the following graph i.e. “Google” usage on Desktop. We can see drop on Saturday. It’s usual because visitors are busy in weekends with their families. 

“Google” usage on Mobile Internet:

Below graph indicates “Google” usage on Mobile in a week. We can see growth on Saturday. It seems visitors are using mobiles more in weekends for their web activity as they are away from desktops.

Mobile vs Desktop Internet Usage in a Day:

Mobile Search is high compared to Desktop search in lunch and dinner times & while travelling from office to home. Have a look at following graphs for better understanding.

Mobile vs Desktop Internet Usage in 3 years:

Following graph is the comparison between Mobile Internet vs Desktop Internet from the past 3 years. Blue line indicates desktop graph and redline indicates mobile graph. We can see some drop in blue line occasionally because of Christmas Eve. However Mobile Internet usage has slight hike in Christmas. It’s a great signal that Mobile Web has great future in the coming days.