SEO Blog

Last week Google merged their Trends and Insights for Search products into one behemoth of a search traffic tool. Now unified under the banner of Google Trends, we thought we’d take a look at a few of the ways you can use Google’s new Trends tool to gain insight into search traffic and boost your […]

Myth 1: The disavow link tool can be used for negative SEO The only way someone could use the disavow link tool to harm your site is if they gained access to your Google Webmaster Tools account and disavowed a bunch of high-quality links. Now might be a good time to clean up your WMT […]

Today Google has confirmed that negative SEO is a reality. Webmasters for years have been claiming that negative SEO is possible simply by backlinking to your competitors sites in a way that violates Google’s quality guidelines. I have not seen any data that conclusively points to negative SEO working even though I have seen a […]

Remember Penguin 2.0? The Penguin update to end all Penguin updates that Google’s Matt Cutts described as a “jarring and jolting” update that SEO‘s and webmasters “don’t want”? Well it launched last week. Oh, you didn’t hear about it? That’s because the update ended up being nothing more than a data update that only affected […]

Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts took to Twitter last Friday to break a quiet algorithm update that’s had anything but a quiet response. Hear that? That’s the sound of affiliate marketers everywhere running for cover. But before we take a look at the changes let’s cover the basics about EMD’s What Are EMD’s? EMD’s […]

Google’s Chief Technology Advocate Michael Jones took some time out to speak with our friends over at smartCompany yesterday, giving them a quick 10-step guide on how to make your business Google-friendly. While the guide could be helpful to small businesses looking at getting into search for the first time, there’s some glaring holes in […]

What a week it’s been in the news. Kate Middleton had nude photos splashed across French newstands, violent protests erupted after an anti-Islamic film debuted its trailer online and Apple released their highly anticipated iPhone 5 to a rabid preorder reception. As always, a good news week means a fascinating insight into search, so this […]

We got a question this week from Steve Abey that’s about targeting users in search by their location. Steve asked: “I have a business site targeting Australia and a separate one for the NZ market. Most content is similar, but customised a little specific for each. In the eyes of Google is it better to […]

There’s been a lot of buzz in SEO circles over the last week about a patent granted to Google on August 14th that could cause some serious headaches for webmasters and SEO’s. The patent covers a system that governs how Google’s algorithm might respond when it detects a website is engaging in webspam to manipulate […]

Taking the stage at SES San Francisco, Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts announced that Penguin 2.0 is on it’s way, describing the update as a “jarring and jolting” update that webmasters “don’t want”. Likening the Penguin-refining process to the same ones used by Google during the Panda updates, Cutts warned that it’s still early […]