Timeline of Search Engines

Hi Again All My Techie Fellows, Today while looking for new thing / stuff of the day to learn, I came across the very basic but new stuff to learn.

That is nothing but all the list of search engines, who is the heart of the internet world nowadays.

Heart because today people have become more paralysed to type the full URL and instead they are more likely used to give keywords or brands or office names etc. and just give enter and browser URL and browser will search for that with its default search engine [e.g. Chrome with Google, Internet Explorer with Bing etc.]

So I searched for search engine’s birth till today and came across long list of search engines and it’s current status from which most of the search engines are not known to me so thought to share with you all my techie followers.

Here are all the list of Search Engines which were / are on web world today.

Year	Engine	Current Status
1993	W3Catalog	Inactive
	Aliweb	Inactive
	JumpStation	Inactive
1994	WebCrawler	Active, Aggregator
	Go.com	Active, Yahoo Search
	Lycos	Active
1995	AltaVista	Inactive, redirected to Yahoo!
	Daum	Active
	Magellan	Inactive
	Excite	Active
	SAPO	Active
	Yahoo! 2008	Active, Launched as a directory
1996	Dogpile	Active, Aggregator
	Inktomi	Inactive, acquired by Yahoo!
	HotBot	Active (lycos.com)
	Ask Jeeves	Active (rebranded ask.com)
1997	Northern Light	Inactive
	Yandex	Active
1998	Goto	Inactive
	Google	Active
	MSN Search	Active as Bing
	empas	Inactive (merged with NATE)
1999	AlltheWeb	Inactive (URL redirected to Yahoo!)
	GenieKnows	Active, rebranded Yellowee.com
	Naver	Active
	Teoma	Active
	Vivisimo	Inactive
2000	Baidu	Active
	Exalead	Active
	Gigablast	Active
2002	Inktomi	Acquired by Yahoo!
2003	Info.com	Active
	Scroogle	Inactive
2004	Yahoo! Search	Active, Launched own web search
		(see Yahoo! Directory, 1995)
	A9.com	Inactive
	Sogou	Active
2005	AOL Search	Active
	Ask.com	Active
	GoodSearch	Active
	SearchMe	Inactive
2006	wikiseek	Inactive
	Quaero	Active
	Ask.com	Active
	Live Search	Active as Bing, Launched as
		rebranded MSN Search
	ChaCha	Active
	Guruji.com	Active as BeeMP3.com
2007	wikiseek	Inactive
	Sproose	Inactive
	Wikia Search	Inactive
	Blackle.com	Active, Google Search
2008	Powerset	Inactive (redirects to Bing)
	Picollator	Inactive
	Viewzi	Inactive
	Boogami	Inactive
	LeapFish	Inactive
	Forestle	Inactive (redirects to Ecosia)
	DuckDuckGo	Active
2009	Bing	Active, Launched as
		rebranded Live Search
	Yebol	Inactive
	Mugurdy	Inactive due to a lack of funding
	Goby	Active
	NATE	Active
2010	Blekko	Active
	Cuil	Inactive
	Yandex	Active, Launched global
		(English) search
	Yummly	Active
2012	Volunia	Active
	Open Drive	Active, cloud file search

Checklist before Your Website Goes LIVE

Launching a website is a little like making homemade soup. You’ve got many ingredients coming together, and before you’re done adding them, you sample it to see that you got it just right. But this step – the testing – is often ignored before a site goes live.

Testing a new website can seem overwhelming. Teams aren’t sure where to start. But you may have more help than you know. Every team member can assist in the pre-launch process.

Most websites have writers, web developers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and network administrators coming together to create the site. These same people can help test it. Here's how.

---

For the Writer or Editor

Writers and editors have strong attention to detail when it comes to the written content on your site. And this attention to detail can also be used for other tasks as well. Here’s what they can do pre-launch:

1. Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation

Check for proper spelling, typos, and grammar site-wide.

2. Forms

Fill out the forms on the site and go through the following questions:

• Can the flow be improved?
• Do you get stuck?
• Are the instructions accurate?
• Does the completed form get sent to the right people or person?

3. Site speed

Check the size of your page sizes and their load time. Here’s how:

• Download Google Chrome
• Navigate to your page in Chrome
• Press F12
• View “network” tab
• Behold!

While Step 3 may appear technical, it doesn’t require a very technical person in order to be useful. The Gantt chart on the network tab will show what a page is doing when it loads in a browser. In the top right corner, they’ll be able to see the total load time.

In the Gantt chart, it shows how much time each element takes to load. Almost anyone can help find the culprit slow page. Just show the long, horizontal bars to your web developers or network administrators, and they can help.

4. Context

When giving a critical eye to the pages within the site, ask:

• Why would I visit this page?
• Is the content ready for visitor?
• Does the page address the audience?

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For the Web Designer

Web designers know what the original design intent is, and they have an eye for the visual details. They can usually spot when things don’t look quite right pretty quickly.

5. Compatibility

Multi-browser rendering is the bane of the Internet, but as website creators, we have to live with it. Check to make sure the pages render well in common browsers. Browser share is a moving target so to help prioritize efforts, here’s a site that continually examines it.

6. Fonts

Sometimes font codes get dropped into a page inadvertently and make a letter or a word look funny. Check to see that the formatting is consistent, and look for odd blips in the copy.

7. Images

Make sure all display text renders on the image when you hover over it (the alt attribute). Make sure the images display correctly. Are they larger than 120 kilobytes? If so, find out of there is a good reason for that. You really only need 72 dots per inch (dpi) for web images in terms of quality.

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For the Web Developer

Web developers know the inner workings of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and how browsers handle those languages. There are some important technical items that a web developer is best suited for when it’s time to go live. Here are a few.

8. Live URLs

Often, sites are built at a URL (uniform resource locator) that isn't the website’s final destination. When a site goes live, the URLs are transferred from a staging area to production. All the URLs change at this time, and they need to be tested.

On small sites without any tools, you can navigate to each page to make sure they all work. On a site with fewer than 500 URLs, you can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool for free to find bad URLs. For larger sites, there is a modest annual fee.

9. Validation

W3C-valid code is the one thing you can do prior to launch to have some confidence around a search engine spider being able to crawl your site. It’s pretty simple to know if a page is valid. You just paste the URL in question here, and you’ll get a report almost instantly.

With that report, you can attack the issues and get the page into compliance. To help even more, here are 10 common fixes.

10. Minify

This is a technique that combines and compresses website code into smaller chunks to speed up your site. You can read more about it at Google. Then, look at the website pre-launch to see if the site is using minify where it can.

11. 404 pages

When a 404 (“page not found”) error occurs, make sure you have a custom page to help your visitor find something else of use, even if it wasn’t what they were looking for. Do you have an HTML sitemap there? Does the 404 page include a site search?

12. Favicon

Favicons are those little iconic images that show up in the address bar and tabs of your browser. How does it help? It’s a small branding opportunity that lends credibility to your site. It’s nice to have one when you launch.

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For the Search Engine Optimizer

SEO professionals bring an understanding of the web marketing focus. They can look at a number of things with perspective that can help the site right out of the gate with search engines.

13. 301 Redirects

Sometimes content is repurposed or gets moved to fit the new navigation structure of a site. If you have an existing site and you are changing the URL structure with your new site, you’ll want to make sure you’ve mapped the old URLs to the new ones.

The Screaming Frog spider mentioned earlier can be run on both the old site and the new. An Excel spreadsheet is a great way to document this effort. Column A has the old URL, and you place the new URL in Column B. Each row represents a redirect from old to new. On launch day, it’s time to execute.

14. Title Tags/Meta Data

This may sound like old news to some, but this easy-to-fix mistake happens every day. Make sure every page has a title tag, and make sure they are unique.

Also make sure each has a meta description. This is still a common source for search engine spiders to draw from to understand what the page is about and provide visitors with a sneak peak into the page contents from the results.

15. XML Sitemaps/HTML Sitemap

Make sure your new website has an accurate site map in both XML and HTML format. Both users and search engines care about this important element as it helps them find the pages they are looking for when other methods fail.

16. Tools

Make sure Google Analytics or the analytics package you’re using, and Google and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up and ready to go.

17. Social Media Integration

Do the social media icons on the site go to the correct pages? Do you have the right buttons and social plugins installed for what you are trying to accomplish and what you want the user to be able to do? (For example, share a page versus “Like” you on Facebook.)

18. SERP Display

Are the search engines displaying your pages correctly in the search engine results pages? Did you write proper meta descriptions, but they aren’t being used? Are the images you placed on your Places page being displayed in the SERP?

19. Search Engine Submission

It used to be that all new sites needed to submit to be crawled and indexed. Today, the search engines are more sophisticated, and will likely find and crawl the new site anyway, but it is helpful to include this in your launch checklist.

20. PPC Setup

Make sure if you are running any PPC campaigns that it’s set up and ready to go with the site launch. To avoid a lapse in service, if you have a Google PPC rep, you can set and pause all your campaigns to the new URLs prior to launch, and instead of the ads getting disapproved, your rep can approve them manually.

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For the Network Administrator

These folks manage your web servers, the software that runs on them, and all the traffic components that keep your web traffic coming in. Their technical expertise on some of these tasks is like gold.

21. Monitoring

A site monitor checks pages regularly to make sure it is available for visitors. Basic monitors check if the page is working.

Important pages within the site should have enhanced monitors that test if a completed form behaves the way it should. Enhanced monitors are more expensive to setup and keep running so the page in question needs to justify the additional expense.

22. Backup System

Have you thought about what happens if the server goes down? Make sure the backup system is configured properly, and the recovery process has been tested so you know it works.

23. Traffic Loads

Think about what might happen to your site if it gets an influx of heavy traffic. There are load test software tools that allow you to simulate heavy loads. If you are expecting big crowds, this is a must.

24. Protected Pages

Does your site have pages that require user credentials to view? If so, do the credentials work? From the opposite angle, also check to see that the pages can’t be viewed without proper credentials. Make several attempts to get to those URLs without proper credentials to make sure the security is working as expected.

25. Secure Certificate (if Required)

If your site is ecommerce, or you’re using encrypted pages to protect visitor privacy on a form or elsewhere, you’ll want to check your certificate on launch day.

To do this, go to the encrypted section of your site. When the lock appears in the address bar, right click on it and read the message your visitors will read. It should have your name on it and state that it’s valid. If the lock doesn’t appear or the name isn’t right, let your provider know.

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Summary

Hopefully you can see that everyone on a marketing and web team can be assigned tasks to test leading up to a site launch. This team approach does the best job for the diverse challenge of testing a website. If you can rally your team around these tests, no one person needs to bear the full weight of a site launch.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2287002/Website-Launch-Checklist-25-Things-to-Test-Before-Your-Site-Goes-Live

Tips to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties

Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEOand online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists.

It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?

For brands publishing a press release or an article on your site and distributing it through a paid wire service, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or through an article site, you must first make sure to nofollow the links if those links are "optimized anchor text."

Is This a Big SEO Deal? Yes. No. Maybe.

Google has been slowly squeezing the SEO life out of press releases for a while now.

"In 2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much," said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator "Online press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining. However, I still thought it was a good part of a large organic link building strategy until the new guideline changes."

But what about the anchor text links in past press releases? Will the ghost of Google past haunt companies with surprising penalties in the future? Will brands have to back track to older press releases to protect themselves.

"The real concern for the SEO industry right now should be backdated enforcement. If this is now considered a 'penalizable' tactic, how are companies that have been using this tactic for over a decade going to deal with the old content and links?" Laratro asked. "How quickly can the online newswires update their systems to support the rel nofollow? In my opinion this will have a fairly large effect on the online paid newswire release business."

Many more SEO industry experts agree. The clean up work with old press release content that's been spinning links across the web for years is a big SEO issue.

"There are press releases archived across the web that you will have no control over – how do you clean that up?" asked Bruce Clay, president of Bruce Clay Inc. "Even if press release distribution companies do something to address their archives, like noindexing old pages (and this is a big if), you're still looking at the larger problem of pruning links on the many sites that have republished those press releases."

Don't Optimize Links, Do... What?

Organizations are now left wondering what they can do with press releases past, present, and future.

"If a client has real newsworthy content, an online press release is worth doing, but I would be very careful with the links at the moment, at least until the rel=nofollow options are live," Laratro said. "Companies should still include one or two links in order to get the reader over to the website or blog. This may cause a shift back to more traditional types of PR work – not necessarily a bad thing."

The Ghost of Press Release Past

The first press release was written in 1906 by Ivy Lee and actually published verbatim in the New York Times. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that wire services began releasing news direct to consumers vis the Internet. Since then, journalists have relied on press releases to help track company news and come up with story angles and sources.

Today the digital press release reaches beyond the journalist and carries company news direct to customers, prospects, bloggers, and more. The press release lifeline streams through the veins of search engines and flows into social media.

Google might have killed the link juice, but press releases are still alive and kicking according to media experts.

"While most of the companies using PR Newswire (and our competitors) are doing so to build awareness of their messages, garner media pick up and to deliver their messaging straight to their target audiences, there is a contingent that are issuing press releases for the sole purpose of generating inbound links, and this is the practice Google is discouraging," said Sarah Skerik, vice president, content marketing, PR Newswire//MultiVu. "This is not an indictment of PR."

The Digital Path of a Press Release: It's About Content Discovery

Press releases are more than a simple SEO tool. Press release content helps reach journalists, influencers, and consumers.

The AP, Dow Jones, Reuters, Bloomberg, and thousands of other major newsrooms worldwide have feeds of press releases piped directly into their editorial systems. And almost 8,000 websites, including some of the world's largest news sites, publish stories as a result of wire services such as PR Newswire.

Let's not forget the social media intersection of press releases. They help fuel the content fire and drive social interaction, sharing, and engagement – and are the launching pad for company news. Taking a drive off main street, press releases are part of the Wall Street creed, meeting financial disclosure.

In 140 characters or less: Press releases drive broad discovery of your news message in search and social.

"None of this has anything to do with link building and SEO," Skerik said. "We believe the value press release distribution provides is in discovery, not links. Driving messages deep into audiences and generating authentic reads, clicks and visibility among relevant audiences and social shares – that's where press releases add value."

Hybrid search industry vet Greg Jarboe, president and founder of SEO-PR, specializes in both PR and SEO and zeroed in on the fact that the PR industry still hasn't fully embraced the concept of public relations optimization, so they might not realize the missing link.

"This is a big SEO deal," Jarboe said. "And it would also be a big deal for PR, if more public relations people were optimizing their press releases. But most of them still aren't."

Less than 15 percent of press releases in corporate newsrooms and posted on the wire services are optimized for search, according to a PressFeed Online Newsroom Survey.

12 Things You Can Do With Digital Press Releases

1. Adding links still helps drive traffic to a website. "Driving traffic is one of the primary objectives of website SEO, according to the SEMPO State of Search Report, published by Econsultancy. It can be one of the important objectives of press release SEO, too," Jarboe said.
2. Improve the user experience.
3. Increase visibility in search and social.
4. Use press releases as inroads to more information and details on a blog or website.
5. Spark a story idea and attract a journalist or blogger to do a larger story that might gain a natural link.
6. Educate and inform your audience.
7. Build relationships.
8. Report company news or industry data.
9. Use images and video to increase pageviews and attention.
10. Embed video and multimedia.
11. Create an infographic version of press release tell your story.
12. Broaden your distribution and use social networks to report news – both paid and organic.

5 Things You Can't Do With Press Releases

1. Generate inbound links.
2. Add link juice to your SEO campaign.
3. Use press releases as part of your link building strategy.
4. Optimized anchor text links, Google now says this equates to unnatural links.
5. Keyword stuffing.

Summary

Google may have taken away the anchor text links in press releases (and guest posts and articles), but there is still room for press release optimization opportunities like in any other digital content using:

• Optimized keywords.
• Headlines.
• Title.
• Description. 
• Hashtags.
• Photos.
• Videos.
• Social media messaging.

Gaming the system is yesterday's news. Today's press releases still work the natural, social, and mobile way of tomorrow.

Image Credit: PR Newswire

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2287902/12-Ways-to-Optimize-Press-Releases-Avoid-Google-Penalties

New Definition of SEO

The way we market, sell and deliver SEO services has undoubtedly changed. Google's algorithm updates have made content marketing and social media the core of a strong organic search strategy. So while the practice of SEO evolves, the definition of SEO ought to evolve as well.

Other digital marketing tactics such as email marketing, paid search and search retargeting have very clear, undisputed definitions. The definition of SEO, on the other hand, seems to be just as unclear as the practice itself.

Current Definitions of SEO

Even when you Google the phrase, "definition of SEO", nothing really concrete is returned.

Wikipedia's official definition is, "the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page."

Search engine optimization is about way more than this.

Webopedia's definition is, "a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines."

SEO is more than this too.

Is Web Presence Optimization the Evolution of SEO?

So what is an accurate description of SEO given the changes to the industry?

Web presence optimization is an all-encompassing approach to optimizing an entire web presence for organic search including the website, social channels, blogs, articles and press releases. Where strategies, techniques, and tactics are still used, but content marketing and social media are strongly incorporated.

What's Your Definition of SEO?

Here are some new definitions of SEO to consider, and I invite you to comment below with your own.

1. SEO is the ongoing process of uncovering and discovering non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, then publishing content optimized for those keywords.
2. SEO is the process of producing optimized content that is discoverable by the target audience as they progress through the buying cycle.
3. SEO is about a prospect discovering a brand's content and web presence through search and social, and the owner of that content being able to understand who consumed the content and the impact of the content across the organization.
4. SEO is the outcome of a content marketing strategy that makes use of highly converting keywords that your target audience is searching on.
5. SEO is the process of enhancing the visibility of a brand's web presence in organic search.

SEO in the digital marketing mix is here to stay. Standardizing a definition of SEO will help buyers better understand the importance of it, the reason for committing to it, and the short- and long-term impact an SEO strategy has on a web presence.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts about the definition of SEO.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2288392/Time-for-a-New-Definition-of-SEO

How to resize image dynamically using C#

Resizing an image using HTTP Handlers. We can specify the image height and width and resolution of all images, not particular for an image. So network traffic will be reduced in Web Browser. In this article I'm specifying the image height and width to 100px and resolution to 72DPI. So if any image loads from server it will reduced to 3KB size from any size, and the loading time will be reduced to 2 sec to 500 millisec. If resolution is will be not a great, we can increase the resolution.

Background

The images will load in web pages as we uploaded to server. This may cause performance issue. Because of images may be in various size. So we'll develop HTTP Handlers to handle any request before it send to browser. 

Using the code

Add the three namespaces to your handler file

using System.IO;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;

The image handling will be processed in ProcessRequest method. Here mainly we need the image path, including the image name, like "\pathtoimage\image.jpg".

Just copy and paste the code in your handler file. If needed change string imagepath according to your requirement.

public class ImgHandler:IHttpHandler
{
    public ImgHandler()
    {
    //
    // TODO: Add constructor logic here
    //
    }

    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    {
        string imagePath = context.Request.QueryString["image"];
   
        // split the string on periods and read the last element, this is to ensure we have
        // the right ContentType if the file is named something like "image1.jpg.png"
        string[] imageArray = imagePath.Split('.');
   
        if (imageArray.Length <= 1)
        {
            throw new HttpException(404, "Invalid photo name.");
        }
        else
        {
            if (File.Exists(imagePath))
            {
                //--------------- Dynamically changing image size -------------------------- 
                context.Response.Clear();
                context.Response.ContentType = getContentType(imagePath);
                // Set image height and width to be loaded on web page
                byte[] buffer = getResizedImage(imagePath, 100, 100);
                context.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
                context.Response.End(); 
            }
        }
    }

    public bool IsReusable
    {
        get { return true; }
    }

    byte[] getResizedImage(String path, int width, int height)
    {
        Bitmap imgIn = new Bitmap(path);
        double y = imgIn.Height;
        double x = imgIn.Width;
                   
        double factor = 1;
        if (width > 0)
        {
            factor = width / x;
        }
        else if (height > 0)
        {
            factor = height / y;
        }
        System.IO.MemoryStream outStream = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
        Bitmap imgOut = new Bitmap((int)(x * factor), (int)(y * factor));
       
        // Set DPI of image (xDpi, yDpi)
        imgOut.SetResolution(72,72); 
        
        Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(imgOut);
        g.Clear(Color.White);
        g.DrawImage(imgIn, new Rectangle(0, 0, (int)(factor * x), (int)(factor * y)),
          new Rectangle(0, 0, (int)x, (int)y), GraphicsUnit.Pixel);

        imgOut.Save(outStream, getImageFormat(path));
        return outStream.ToArray();
    }

    string getContentType(String path)
    {
        switch (Path.GetExtension(path))
        {
            case ".bmp": return "Image/bmp";
            case ".gif": return "Image/gif";
            case ".jpg": return "Image/jpeg";
            case ".png": return "Image/png";
            default: break;
        }
        return "";
    }

    ImageFormat getImageFormat(String path)
    {
        switch (Path.GetExtension(path))
        {
            case ".bmp": return ImageFormat.Bmp;
            case ".gif": return ImageFormat.Gif;
            case ".jpg": return ImageFormat.Jpeg;
            case ".png": return ImageFormat.Png;
            default: break;
        }
        return ImageFormat.Jpeg;
    }
}

Points of Interest

Don't think image will be resized if we mention image height and width in control like <asp:Image ID="Image1" runat="server" Visible="true"  ImageUrl="imgHandler.ashx?image=d:\\pathtoimage/image.jpg"width=150 height=105></asp:Image>>.

Source: http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/550728/Resizing-image-dynamically-using-Csharp

Graphical Representation to Recover from Google Panda Updates

Image Source: http://brandongaille.com/how-to-recover-from-a-google-panda-update-penalty/

How to Recover from Google Panda Update Traffic Loss

If you got hit and are still confused about how to bring back the lost traffic, this tutorial is will help you solve this problem. Take note that the Google Panda recovery process can be broken down into 4 major phases:

• First phrase: Determining the issues present in the website.

• Second phase: Implementation of corrective actions.

• Third phase: Re-indexation phase

• Fourth phase: Final recovery phase

You may be asking how long it will take to recover from this update? Well, if you can spend one entire week examining your website for issues, then spend another entire month on implementation, Google will re-index your site completely in around 2 months after the implementation (for an average website with an average amount of inbound links from other websites). Bigger websites can re-index within up to 3 to 5 months.

Re-indexation is important because this is where Google picks up your improvement actions. The final recovery phase is where affected posts and content starts to pickup traffic again like it did prior to the update. The final recovery phase will happen after 2 months of full website re-indexation for an average website.

So for an average website, the entire process to recovery can take around 6 months on the average. This is a game of patience - you really need to wait for Google to pickup your improvements - there is no shortcut.

Phase 1: Problem Definition

There is an old adage that says: “A problem well defined is a problem half solved”. This is true if you got hit by the Panda update. Can you confirm the cause? Google webmaster central blog released a very important list of checkpoints  here:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html. It is elaborated further below. You should examine and admit the mistakes as honestly as possible if you want to move forward. Write each problem on a piece of paper. The check points below require you to check your entire websites content, not just a few sampled pages.

The 9 most important checkpoints are as follows:

1.) Users trust in your article.

• Do you commonly receive negative user comments or feedback? If you are receiving a substantial amount of negative comments about your content because of inaccuracies, etc then the majority of your website readers are not trusting your website and its content.
• Scan your entire websites content and look for posts that do not receive any comment, Facebook likes, inbound links, etc. Confirm this data with the bounce rate of that page as well as average time the user spends on that page.

Content that is not trusted has very low average user time and a very high bounce rate. If Google analytics data correlates strongly with social indicators, then users might not be trusting your content. Do you have a substantial amount of content that is not trusted by users?

2.) The amount of expertise shown in your content

• If your content is written by somebody else, are you sure they are an expert of that topic? 
• Do you have a reputation of being an expert in your own field in which your website niche belongs?

For example, if you have an SEO blog, then at least you have some reputation and contribution within the SEO community. If you have a cooking blog, at least you are a chef of a prominent restaurant or a certified chef. Expert authors write better content than non-expert authors. These types of content are loved by Google.

3.) Do you have duplicate content issues in your website? Do you have a lot of redundant articles – the same content and thoughts, but rewritten with different words and title tags?

4.) Does your content have substantial spelling errors?

5.) Do you have original content published on your website or do you just scrape and copy content from other websites?

6.) Does your page content provide a substantial, insightful, complete, and detailed analysis and discussion? Or just consist of very shallow explanations?

7.) Has the content published been reviewed or seriously edited before publishing?

8.) Is your site an authority of the subject? You can tell this by logging in to your Google webmaster tools and check if you earn natural links from related websites or forums pointing to your content. Or if your content has been cited in other places in the Internet.
9.) Do you receive complaints about your heavy advertisements or having a higher percentage of ads compared to original text?

Phase 2: Implementation of Corrective Actions

OK, now you know the problems in your website. It’s time to implement some corrective actions. Below are the recommended actions for the common problems stated previously:

Problem 1.) Do you have substantial content that is not trusted by users?
Solution:
To get the readers trust, first you need to implement the recommendations stated in this tutorial:http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-To-Increase-Google-Trust/  – particularly those listed in this section:http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-To-Increase-Google-Trust/2/
The next thing will be hard. If the issue of mistrust results from low quality content, then you really need to rewrite your content. Add more details and encourage user discussion. Removing the content will be fine but since you already invested some time in that content, rewriting seems to be a better idea even if it requires more time on your part.
Problem 2.) Content lacks expertise and detail
and
Problem 3.) Do you have duplicate content issues in your website? Do you have a lot of redundant articles?
Solution: You might need to rewrite your content to give more details. The main problem is if you have 20,000 pages of low quality and thin-content - the recommendation is to combine similar content.
200 high quality and useful article pages is better than having 20,000 very low quality pages of not useful content.
301 redirect all of the combined pages into the canonical/rewritten version:http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394. If you cannot implement a 301 redirect, you might need to take a look at link rel canonical version.
Example:

Let:
URL1,URL2,URL3,URL4, URL5 as 5 low quality content in your website. If those URL1, URL2 and URL3 are very similar, you can write a 600 to 1000 words high quality article on URL1 (revising URL1 content).
Then also if URL4 and URL5 are of similar content, you can then combine by rewriting only either one of them (e.g URL4).
Finally, implement 301 redirect or link rel canonical tag to combine low quality content into their high quality content equivalent:
URL1<==301 redirect URL2 and URL3.
URL4<==301 redirect URL5.

The result is that you have fewer pages or URLs but they are very high in quality, unlike before. For link rel canonical, you can read this update: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/
Problem 4.) Does your content have substantial spelling errors?
Review all of your content for correct spellings. It is important that before any content is published, it is thoroughly checked for correct spellings.

Problem 5.) Is all of you content original?

If there is substantial content on your website that is copied from other websites, then the recommended solution is to remove it from your website and the Google index. After deleting this content, make sure it returns a 404 header status.

Read this update about removal of URLs:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=164734
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/overdoing-url-removals/

Stop scraping content from other websites if you are currently doing this practice.

Problem 6.) Does your page content provide a substantial, insightful, complete and detailed amount of content? Or just consist of very shallow explanations?

You can start by reading some content guidelines here: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-To-Increase-Google-Trust/

Spend some time writing content (e.g. 1 to 4 hours for a 600 words to 1500 words content). The more time you exert on your content, the higher quality it will be. Spend some time thinking about it, explaining the details, doing some research and putting together some credible references.

Even better, spend time rewriting and editing the content. Some freelance writers, bloggers or authors rush their schedule by publishing a lot of content without paying serious attention to details, substance, and quality.

Problem 7.) Does your site manage to become an authority of the subject?
You can read this article about measuring authority of your website in Google: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Measuring-Website-Authority-in-Google/
A great place to start is your content. Then once you have it, try to get some links from reputable and trusted websites. Those top quality websites that belongs to your niche can help your site become an authority.
Problem 8.) Do you receive complaints about your heavy advertisements or have a higher percentage of ads compared to original text?
Solution:
Put on a user hat and try to read the content on your website with all those ads. Can you comfortably read it? If not try changing the layout of your ads or even consider minimizing them if they distract the readers experience.

You can also hire some beta testers to get input from them regarding their experience reading your website. If some of their comments are focused on the ads, you can remove them until the reading experience of your visitors is not affected.

Third phase: Re-indexation phase

Now that everything has been implemented, try to submit another new XML sitemap of your website URLs. You can also review your robots.txt file to make sure there are no mistakes.
Make sure your website has quality internal links. This is one way of speeding up the indexation of your website. Continue to get quality links from other related websites. As discussed previously, it will take somewhere between 2 to 3 months for full website re-indexation.

Fourth phase: Final recovery phase

Starting one to two months after implementation, start monitoring your Google analytics results for your website. You should see some traffic improvement after 2 months. A conservative estimate is that you will regain your lost traffic level after 6 months.

Source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/search-engine-optimization-help/how-to-recover-from-google-panda-update-traffic-loss/

How To Stop The Panic Before Asking “Have I Been Panda Slapped?”

You may see a drop in rankings or traffic and immediately panic. Have I been Panda-slapped?

But, how can you tell? Instead of watching rankings overall, watch categories of keywords. If you separate your keyword categories by topic, you can more easily spot trends that have to do with a particular content area of your site. Typically, if there is a problem, it’s going to start there.

To evaluate symptoms of a bigger issue, I’ve created this handy protocol to get you started:

Help, My Rankings Dropped!

1. Have they really dropped?

• Do you see a corresponding decrease in traffic?
  • If yes, wait two days and check again, they may come right back up. Rankings and traffic bobble all the time.
  • If no, there’s probably not anything to worry about. Recheck in a week or so.

Keep in mind, there’s dozens of reasons a report may not be accurate. If analytics doesn’t show a corresponding decrease in organic traffic, there’s probably no problem.

2.  Ok, I’ve double checked and they really did drop. My analytics show a decrease, too.

• Don’t panic!
• Look at how the drops are correlated. Are they all from one group of keywords? Are they associated with certain pages of the website?

3.  If they’re all from a particular category of keywords, read on. If not, skip to Step 4.

• Check the sites that are ranking for these keywords. Are there new players? Has someone shot to the top that wasn’t there before? If so, investigate what they are doing differently. Is the content fresher, better optimized, more shared in social media? It may be that you just need to keep up with the Joneses.
• If no one has shot to the top lately, check to make sure no one has made any major changes to the site. It could be a technical issue.
• Still no luck? Sorry, you’ll have to hire an SEO to do a deeper analysis.

4.  If they aren’t from a particular category of keywords, but are from the same pages or section of the site, this could be a problem.

• Check the pages that used to rank/have traffic. Are they still live? Any major changes to them lately?
• Evaluate the content with an open mind. Is it really quality content? Or do you have duplication or poor quality? You can find a complete checklist here.
• Have any of these pages been duplicated elsewhere? Take a snippet of unique text from the page and search it in Google with quotes to see if someone’s been copying your content.
• Any technical issues, such as an accidental noindex or canonical tag?

5.  If you identify any of the above (except tech issues), you could be looking at the first stages of a Panda penalty.

You need to clean up this content asap, as the trend you are seeing could be an early warning sign that you could be impacted by Panda.

Truths & Myths About Panda

• Panda is an algorithm, not a manual penalty. It is only refreshed periodically. If you see early warning signs like the ones described above, you usually have plenty of time to clean up the content before the next Panda refresh.
• Panda, when applied, typically affects an entire domain or subdomain. You will likely see a significant drop in organic traffic as a result.
• It is still possible to maintain some rankings (especially in the 30s-40s and up) when hit by Panda. You probably won’t disappear completely, although it may feel like you did.
• There are usually early warning signs that you’re about to be hit, unless what you’re doing is blatantly spamming and it triggers a manual penalty.
• Most sites will never be affected by Panda.
• Panda is not only about duplication, although that is one of the most common forms of it. It’s also about poorly written or unsubstantial content.
• Duplication of a few pages, or a small percentage of poorly written content is unlikely to trigger Panda. The ratio usually needs to be pretty high.

So now you’re empowered to fight the Pandas in the room. The best advice I can give you is to remember that you are fighting a computer. Computers do make mistakes, but they are rare.

If you’ve been hit by an algorithmic update, you probably took short cuts that you shouldn’t have taken. Also keep in mind that no one but Google knows for sure how this all works. Although my opinions are based on experience, there are always aberrations and dissenters. Feel free to debate in the comments.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-stop-the-panic-before-asking-have-i-been-panda-slapped-149034

Tips to Recover from Google Panda – Part I

One piece of advice I give to SEO masters is, don’t chase after Google’s algorithm, chase after your best interpretation of what users want, because that’s what Google’s chasing after. – Matt Cutts

Google continuously updating the search algorithm to make search results more perfect. Now its Google Panda, which might hit your site to check the quality of your site. Even many sites lost traffic and ranking because of Google Panda search algorithm.

What is Google Panda Updates?

Google Panda is an algorithm to change google search engine rankings and was first released in 2011. The basic idea behind the change is to lower the ranking of low quality sites and mark the high quality sites in the top search results. It affects the ranking of an entire site rather than just the individual pages on a site.

(Image Source: famousbloggers.net)

Google Panda was built through an algorithm update that used artificial intelligence in a more sophisticated and scalable way than previously possible. Human quality testers rated thousands of websites based on measures of quality, including design, trustworthiness, speed and whether or not they would return to the website. Google's new Panda machine-learning algorithm was then used to look for similarities between websites people found to be high quality and low quality.

1. Get Rid of Low Quality Content

Quality content is a most important factor of a website or blog, not only for the panda but also to get quality traffic. Don't write simply one or two paragraphs with 50-100 words. This will mark your site in low quality list of Google search phenomenon.

Block the indexing and crawling of all low quality content to prevent it from lowering the ranking of your entire site. Low value content can cause the algorithm to slap down your entire site even if a great deal of your content is unique and valuable.

To know whether your site content is low quality or not, here are some helpful questions asked by Google Webmaster Central Blog to aid you in determining the low quality content:

• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

There is no any exact word limit for qualifying the Google Panda. But if you check the result websites in top search of google, you will find the site contains more then 300-400 words. Which means that the article containing more then 300-400 words might recover panda.

2. Website Load Speed

Another great factor to recover from Google Panda is to speed up the site. Site speed is also most important to make visitors coming back to your site. There are many ways to speed up your site, some of them are:

• Get rid of large images from your web pages
• Try to put CSS in a single page, don't split up into many pages. Also the Javascript.
• Split the page into two, if your article is too long
• Check the website page size on different tools. For e.g. http://tools.pingdom.com/ , http://www.gtmetrix.com/

3. Outbound Links

Don't use too much of outbound links, this is a very bad factor for SEO. I will not write much about this, as this step is familiar to all of us. Remember one thing lower the outbound links will help your site to recover from Google Panda.

And by providing outbound links to other website, user will be redirected to other websites and won’t stay on your website and thus it’ll increase the bounce rates of your websites.

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a well known factor of Google Panda. Continuous increase of bounce rate state that your site doesn't have high quality contents. If a visitors comes to your site and finds that your site is not interesting, he/she might close your site.

So try to lower the bounce rate by writing quality contents. Choosing interesting topics will help to lower the bounce rate.

To decrease the bounce rate of your website / webpages, keep analysing the analytics on regular basis and follow any of below steps:

•  Remove the pages which has the highest bounce rate Or,
•  Update the content of that page with some unique content
• Place some videos on direct play mode to make interest of user to stay on that page
• Key point to decrease bounce rate is, Analyze the landing page in Analytics and follow any of the above steps to decrease bounce rate of landing pages.

5. Remove Unnecessary Pages from Google Search

The very first step is to see what all pages or  posts are part of Google search from your domain. In the past, it’s good to have more indexed pages but now it’s important to have only important pages and posts. Useless posts or pages just become a part of search engine and doesn’t add values. Specially if you have your tags indexed in Google, you might like to noindex it as Tags and categories doesn’t help search engine much. Imagine you used 6 tags with in posts and have written 100 posts. 100*6 =600 tags (Assumption) and now your tags are indexed in Google, imagine 600 low quality pages being a part of search engine, that will make your blog look like content farm or at least website with low quality content. Same goes with contact pages, disclaimer, privacy policy, newsletter page, which doesn’t add much value to search engine. You might like to use noindex tag for such links. You can search all indexed pages for your domain by typing Site:Yourdomain name.com in Google.com