Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. This week, most noteworthy news include “a hint” from Matt Cutts saying in an interview that Google is thinking of devaluing links from infographics.
“In principle, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of an infographic,” Cutts says in the interview. “What concerns me is the types of things that people are doing with them. They get far off topic, or the fact checking is really poor. The infographic may be neat, but if the information it’s based on is simply wrong, then it’s misleading people.”
He further adds that “… people don’t always realize what they are linking to when they reprint these infographics. Often the link goes to a completely unrelated site, and one that they don’t mean to endorse.”
This is quite interesting and if you have been using infographics as part of your SEO link building campaign, you may want rethink your strategy. When Matt “hints” about something, usually they are already doing something about it. Anyway, this also takes me a bit further and wonder about “how would they treat images” from Pinterest? Yeah, that’s because its where I see tons of infographics all together. Do you think that Pinterest has any SEO value at all?
More from Google, and this time, webmaster are starting to get messages about “crawl errors”. Google says that if your site often returns, 404s, 403s, 503s, etc., you probably would want to do something about it. If your site is timing out or is exhibiting systemic errors when accessed by Googlebot, other visitors to your site might be having the same problem! Hmmm, all the more reason to use webmaster tools. Here is the official announcement.
Finally, and as you may already know, BetaWorks (owner of bit.ly and more), has acquired DIGG probably with a coupon code. Yeah!, $500K is the reported amount, and that is absolutely a shocker. Anyway, what’s interesting is part of the statement that reads … “to make Digg as good as it used to be. Then we plan to make it even better, through innovations in both Top News and My News.” – Something to look forward to?
As usual, in no particular order:
Content Marketing/Online Business Bites
- 7 Content Marketing Links Worth Clicking
- How to Boost Your Brand on Facebook and Drive Traffic to Your Blog
- Why You Ought to Build an Online Brand Through Guest Blogging and Not Just Chase SEO Tricks
- 54 Quotes from Startup Leaders on How to Improve Conversions
Search/Marketing
- The Strategic Inbound Marketing Guide to Big Results Without Big Budget
- Road to MozCon: The State of SEO in 2012(Looong post, but highly recommended read)
- An In-depth Analysis of Authorship, Google+ and Snippets
Social Web/Other Cool Stuff
- Yahoo Password Breach Is Worse Than Originally Thought
- Social Media Content Marketing & Search Engine Optimization
- 12 Tips to Optimize Facebook Page for Maximum Reach and Brand Visibility
Around the Web [more roundups]
Help Desk Hangout- SEO and Webmaster Academy
This week, we’re joined by Alexi and Michael, two SEO experts, to talk about how to build a website that really works with Google Search. We were also joined by Google celebrity, Matt Cutts, who shared some tips, tricks, and information about the Knowledge Graph.
That’s it! Enjoy and have a great weekend.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: RyanBiddulph
July 15, 2012 at 3:04 am
Hi Tesco,
Google’s updates seem brutally obvious to. The issue? People see one marketing strategy as popular and go bananas with it. Going over the top, they never stop to check facts, or see if they are linking to a relevant site. Smart tips here.
Google wants you to:
1 – Tell the truth.
2 – Be relevant.
Simple, right? Getting all too excited about Infographics or any other strategy causes folks to stop telling the truth or remaining relevant. They are penalized, and rightfully so. Never deviate from the 2 basics and you will do just fine in the SEO department.
Thanks DiTesco!
Ryan
Ryan Biddulph invites you to check out ..Cash Gifting Training – 4 Cold Hard Facts About Prospects You Need to Know
Thanks for the info. Digg acquired by Beataworks at $500 K, well I don’t believe this news at all. Even a domain name Digg will cost above 1 million dollar. There something fishy going on here. Thanks.
Twitter: marginhound
July 16, 2012 at 10:03 am
Good link to the Matt Cutts interview – I saw Eric Enge speak last week at SEMPO Atlanta and he discussed that interview.
From his talk, I got the general opinion that Google is starting to take a very deep look at link quality. Obviously we just finished Panda and Penguin, which went after thin content and links from thin content). However, it sounds like they are moving quickly (faster than they did on Article Directories and Forums) to go after non-editorial links. I suspect (my thoughts, not his) that their semantic recognition technology is getting better, to the point where they can parse the intent behind a link.
Probably not an issue for folks who build links via guest posting but I suspect those of us who appreciate the SEO value of a blog comment are going to need to find alternative sources in the next couple of years…
Just an aside, but on page factors & search index performance seem to be picking up more relevance in today’s searches as well – I’ve been able to rank fresh content faster based on onpage optimization than I did before. Anyone else noticing this?
John invites you to check out ..How a $2 Discount Coupon Dispute Turned Into $150 of Lost Profit and Annoyed A Regular Customer
Good video… Actually if you wanna be stable in the eye of Google then just do the ethical seo….. never go with unethical things. And relevancy is key to success after new updates.
Alina Clark invites you to check out ..The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society
One more SEO strategy gone. First, farm links, now infographics, how is the poor regular guy starting up a blog supposed to get some backlinks, to get known?
Brian invites you to check out ..Dining Solutions Direct – Apple Crumble
I would have thought that Digg would have been worth a little more than 500 thousand. It probably would have been worth a little more if it weren’t for all the competition and sites like Facebook and Twitter. I used to visit Digg fairly often, but I haven’t used it in months now.
Ray invites you to check out ..Technology – It’s not always perfect
Twitter: breaking_zero
July 17, 2012 at 9:54 am
That’s pretty bad actually. Regarding DIGG, the acquirement by BetaWorks would mean better performance to their sites. I’d definitely be looking forward to that
You have a good point, I guess the next thing that will be declared bad in the SEO games are the infographics. That will be bad for visual learners…
On another note, I wonder if Google still has a black and white colored animal to name a possible update after.
Twitter: itechcode
July 17, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Hi,
Sounds interesting. Seems like Google wants to revamp its strategies. But they have given enough reasons for doing so, I guess. Hope it is being done for a better cause.
Amit iTechCode
Amit Shaw invites you to check out ..How To Sync Your Program’s Data With Dropboxifier