We all know that Google changes it’s algorithms a lot within a year, but 2011 is by far a year with the most significant changes rolled out by Google. There’s been a trend of more personalized and social driven algorithm changes made by Google in 2011.

See the below chart of Google Algorithm changes made in 2011, courtesy of HigherVisibility

Top Google Algorithm Changes of 2011 by HigherVisibility

For all those SEOs with a few minutes to kill, try this cool SEO Crossword puzzle to test your knowledge

SEO Crossword Puzzle

Enjoy!

Okay, yes I know… I also thought this was a hoax. But I actually did more research on it and came across the below video in which MC Hammer is interviewed by O’reilly Media at the Web 2.0 Summit 2011. I was quite amazed by the “Can’t Touch This” star’s knowledge of tech and his different thinking around search.

His search engine called WireDoo will offer more filtered and targeted search results, which will return not only your query results but also related content to your query which he refers to as “deep and relationship search”.

The search engine market is a very hard one to crack with the giant Google, Yahoo! and Bing.You can watch the below video for more insight on this new upcoming search engine and check out the site here (not launched yet, just a login page and weird logo), and you can judge for yourself. I wonder what the search button will be called… “it’s hammer time”? LOL

MC Hammer interviewed at Web 2.0 Summit 2011

A collection of Interesting Online Trends have been lined up for the year 2011. As social networking and other online marketing forms continued to grow in 2010, we definitely expect this trend to continue developing and becoming a more integral aspect of any business that wants to trade in this new age.

We have summarized the trends that we feel will play a major role in online marketing and advertising this year.

Facebook
Facebook will pass 1 billion users. Facebook has 550 million members and is said to be adding 700,000 per day. That would put it over 800 million in 2011 at its current pace. But with the potential of China letting Facebook into the market, this may surpass a billion users and continue to command more web traffic than Google.

Continue reading

It has been rumoured by many and mentioned by Google since late last year that the speed of a website is a very important factor. It should come as no surprise then, that Google made the official announcement that they are including a new signal into their search ranking algorithms: site speed.

Simply put, site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to a web request. The speed of a website (time that it takes to load) is very important, to all Internet users and specifically, site owners.

Google says that their users place a lot of value in speed and after doing some internal studies they have found that if they slow users down [on Google.com] thay have seen less engagement. They have come to the conclusion that users love fast sites and that a faster web is a good thing for everyone.

Faster sites create happy users, improves user experience and reduces operating costs. If a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.

This is enough motivation for Google and why site speed is taken into account in search rankings.

How does Google measures page speed?
There are two primary ways Google will measure page speed:

1. How a page responds to Googlebot
2. Load time as measured by the Google Toolbar

Tools for you to test your site’s speed
If you are a site owner or webmaster, here are some free tools that you can use to evaluate the speed of your site:

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.
• Many other tools on code.google.com/speed.

According to Google, site speed is a new signal and it does not carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. They are saying that currently there are fewer than 1% of search queries affected by the site speed signal and that the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com.

Your site may, or may not, be affected, but it is widely suggested that you start looking at your site’s speed to improve your ranking in search engines and improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.

Sources:
Using site speed in web search ranking
It’s Official: Google Now Counts Site Speed As A Ranking Factor

Images are important elements in any website as they can be used for various purposes such as delivering a visual attraction, relaying a specific message, used for branding or enhancing the feel of a brand. Images, in general, are used to illustrate what we are saying and it is used commonly on millions of websites to help people understand what they see or read. Without images, the Web would be a very bland experience.

That of course is great when people stumble onto your website and have the opportunity to see it, but what can you do to get your images onto the Web?

Most of you have heard of Image SEO, optimizing images by adding an alternative image desciption and by giving images keyword related filenames, etc. That is certainly the way to go, but as of yesterday, Google is making it even easier for us to inform them of the images that we think are important.

Google announced that you can now use a Sitemaps extension to provide Google with exactly this information. By using the Sitemaps extension you can, for each URL you list in your Sitemap, add additional information about important images that exist on that page. Sitemaps are an invaluable resource for search engines as it can be used to highlight important content on a site and allow search crawlers to quickly discover it.

To add your image URL’s, it won’t be required to create a new Sitemap, you just add information about images to the Sitemap you already use. Follow the instructions in the Webmaster Tools Help Center or refer to the following example:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:image=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1″>
<url>
<loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>
</image:image>
</url>
</urlset>

Today I am deliberately taking a lighter approach to blogging with a collection of my ’5 Funniest SEO Cartoons’.

I know what you are thinking – and the answer is Yes!! I am lazy to write a blog that some of you may not have time to thoroughly read through. Besides, like Mani Karthik says, “SEO is not always serious stuff you know” (I also took the liberty of adding a short explanation to the terms in each cartoon: For my non-SEO folk). Enjoy

Happy Birthday

Keywords and phrases strategically placed and crafted into your website can significantly boost your ratings in search engine results

Rankings

SEO is no longer about ranking anymore. The significance of ranking has disappeared with the use of personalized search, universal search, real-time search and local search in the SERP’s. Search Optimisers are crazy about this factor, often worrying about drop in their rankings for competitive keywords.

Changed Algorithm

Search engines like Google are frequently changing their ‘algorithms’ that can help your site rank number 1 for targeted keywords. Just imagine there was an algorithm to get to heaven?! – a constantly changing one at that.

No Follow

Basically the No-Follow attribute instructs the search engines how they should value a particular link, in this case not to index the link.

Socialitis

Not only Search Engine Optimisers suffer from “Socialitis” – addicted to social media (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr).

Click here to see more SEO cartoons. Props Mani Karthik for insipiring this blog with his blog post.

The growth in the Mobile Industry over the last decade has made it paramount for all businesses to have Mobile Sites in order to reach this growing new target market.

Current local (South Africa) trends show that:

• There are ten million mobile Internet users in SA (Five million PC Internet users in SA)
• One in six Google searches in SA originates off a mobile device.
• In South Africa about 40 percent of mobile phone users have WAP-enabled phones.
• The top Mobile Applications currently in South Africa are: Mxit – with 15 million+ users – and Facebook.
• Mobile search and eCommerce will be a large area of growth in 2010.

In short, this indicates an importance for businesses to target mobile searchers and users of mobile applications.

Some of the best Mobile Site examples I can give include BBC, the Goal mobi site, and College Humour (N/B: “these examples obviously look better on your mobile phone – feel free to suggest your favourite mobile sites below“).

However, when creating a Mobile Site it is also imperative to build and optimise the Mobile Sites so it is user-friendly and accessible on the Mobile Web.

Mobile Design and SEO Best Practices
When designing a Mobile Site one aspect to consider is that one must understand that mobile searchers/users are different from PC searchers/users. In order to cater for Mobile users designers must:

• Provide an elegant experience by considering whether individuals possess a smart phone (for example an iPhone with fully featured web browsing) or a standard mobile phone (with stripped site features).
• Consider that phones are not used like PC’s – users are usually on the go therefore the site should be more goal oriented – Relevancy and Simplicity is key.
• Mobile designs are to conform to the new W3C standards in order to create mobile-friendly style sheets (CSS).
• Mobile Sites must be small, lightweight and fast-loading site – (< 20kb / page).
• Consider User Agent Detection –  this is another form of transcoding which takes into consideration the type of mobile phone an individual uses to search and provides more uniform browsing experience for various device types.

Once the Mobile Site has been built, Mobile SEO steps can now come into play. These include:

1.    Validating the page with the .Mobi Validator or the W3C Validator
2.    Following ‘traditional’ on-site  SEO Best Practices such as:

• Major keywords in the title tagging
• H1′s and body text
• Rich keyword Meta Titles and Descriptions
• Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links

3.    Mobile Search results tend to reflect ‘Local Search results’ – your site must be optimized for local type searches. Also submit your business info to local directories making sure your site is verified and included in sites like Google’s Local Business Center.
4.    Get the Mobile Site spidered and indexed – submit to major search engines:

• Google Sitemaps
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

In short, the above Mobile Design and SEO factors are to be strongly considered when building a Mobile Site. These aspects help provide a solid Mobile Site foundation for your Mobile Campaign or Strategy. For further Mobile Campaign or Strategy enquiries, visit our Virtuosa website.

Chris Crum from Web Pro News covers the topic of how the search industry is constantly changing and how SEO’s and businesses must adapt to this change.

SEOs know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The problem is that businesses don’t always understand just how much the search landscape actually does change. This can present a whole different set of challenges for both the small business and the professional SEO.

In the following Video, Searching for Profit founder Amanda Watlington recently discussed some arising trends in the search industry and how understanding the changing search landscape is of vital importance.

Chris continues to cover some of the things Amanda mention in the video and ends by saying that if you are the client of an SEO or a business trying to get things done yourself, don’t stay hung up on old tactics that might be outdated. Here are things you should keep in mind:

• Site Speed (it’s going to matter, so don’t ignore it…here are some things to consider)
• Personalized Search (Not everyone is going to see the same Google results)
• Universal Search (Showing up here requires attention to different indexes)
• Real-Tme Search (look for more evolution in this area)
• Changes in Local (there are frequently tweaks made by Google here)
• Some things do stay the same (things like reputable links will always be in style)
• Most importantly, stay informed (just keep up with the latest in industry developments)

If you were a Indian Webmaster, why wouldn’t you want the Google Search Quality team to analyze your website and offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility for your website in Google’s search results?

According to the official Google India blog a new Site Clinic launched yesterday and will accept site submissions until 20 January 2010. Indian Webmasters can register their sites for the site clinic by simply filling in all the information requested on a form and by complying to some guidelines such as being registered on Google’s webmaster tools and by meeting Google’s quality guidelines.

There is also a Site Clinic especially for the Spanish-speaking market launched by the Google Webmaster Central blog in Spanish in September 2009.

For the rest of us, it seems we simply have to do the work ourselves via our own Google webmaster tools accounts and by meeting Google’s quality guidelines. Who said everything is fair?