This past weekend, Saba was honored to be part of the great Entrepreneurial Round Robin event hosted by Accion, an organization dedicated to giving individuals the financial tools they need to improve their lives through successful business ventures. The professionalism and friendliness that was shown to us made for a great atmosphere and made us feel welcome! Continue reading “Saba Shares Wisdom with Entrepreneurs & New Business Owners”
The purpose of Penguin, a filter that sits on top of Google’s regular algorithm, is to reduce search engine rankings that violate Google’s ranking guidelines. The current update, introduced in October 2014, is Penguin 3.0, affecting less than one percent of search engine queries. While Google describes this update as a “refresh with no new signals added,” it’s still important to understand the guidelines if you want to get the most out of your SEO efforts.
The main purpose of Penguin is to catch and flag so-called link spam while cutting down on deceptive and/or manipulative practices incorporated into the design of a website to achieve an artificially inflated Google ranking. The Penguin 3.0 updates (really the 6th version) are designed to demote sites implementing bad practice “black hat SEO” linking techniques, including:
• Creating one page for the “bots” and another for human users, known as “cloaking”
• Purposely overusing “hot button keywords” and creating a link based on those words
• Excessive use of exact-match keywords in links
• Executing link schemes, such as buying and selling links and excessive link exchanges (“you link me, I’ll link you”)
• Excessive internal linking
Keep in mind that Penguin updates only impact links to a site, not the content of websites. The primary goal of the Penguin guidelines is to encourage website developers and designers to use multiple link-building techniques rather than simply relying on those methods solely designed to entice clicks. While Google won’t reveal exactly how much weight is given to each ranking factor, it’s no secret that there has been an increased focus on the quality and authenticity of links.
If you’re concerned about how your business is faring after the recent Penguin 3.0 changes, contact Saba SEO at (858) 277.1717. Our dedicated team of web designers, content writers, and marketing experts are fully prepared to make sure all of our clients thrive after every new update.
Google takes several different factors into consideration when determining how a site will show up after that initial search request is entered. Understanding Google’s search criteria can help you optimize your own website so that it will rank higher, preferably somewhere within the first page of returned results, since searchers aren’t likely to browse through multiple pages.
Here are just some of the ways that top internet marketing companies, such as Saba SEO, work to get clients to that esteemed first page.
Google’s spiders do more than search for keywords, they determine how many times keywords are used within a page and how “organic” or natural those keywords and phrases are in relation to the surrounding content. In general, you need to have a keyword density of at least 2 percent for a word to rank. However, you don’t want to go beyond 5 or 6 percent or you’ll get a flag for keyword stuffing. You’ll also want to use keywords for your:
• Image and photo captions
• Headlines and subheads
• Root domain name
• Page name URL
• Internal and external link anchor text on a page
Google uses title tags, meta descriptions and file names to find your webpages, so you want to make sure you’re using relevant keywords and phrases that accurately reflect your content. Google will flag sites that use misleading keywords just to generate clicks, which won’t lead to many conversions anyway. Google also searches for meta tags containing hidden keywords, and phrases in the header of site that are invisible to the user yet still considered by Google for indexing purposes.
If you’re going to use links to other sites within your content (which can be a good thing), make sure the links are valid. Google will flag content if the links are bad or direct users to poor quality sites. Google also considers the quality of inbound links, referring to the process of someone linking back to your site while your site links back to their site.
Google uses over 200 different factors in determining how a site ranks. While the search engine giant won’t reveal how it weighs each factor, having an understanding of some key ranking criteria can definitely give you the upper hand when looking to put your content in front of the right audience.
It also pays to have an expertly trained and experienced team on your side. If you’re looking for a company who can help get your business on the map, turn to Saba SEO. Our team of web designers, content writers and marketing specialists can work with you to help you target the right audience effectively and affordably. Give Saba SEO a call at 858-277-1717 to get the ball rolling.
