Wednesday, July 17, 2013

How To Manage Your Site Through The Google Penguin

After the significant effects that the Google Panda has made on how websites are ranked, the latest Google Penguin update has again made a lot of changes that can affect how many websites are ranked in search results. The latest Google Penguin update was released last May 22, 2013 and has been dubbed Penguin 2.0. It might be noticeable to many website owners because 2.3% of English-US queries are reportedly affected.
Unlike other updates that are just considered to be data refresh, this fourth Penguin update is an actual algorithm update. Hopefully, if you have an SEO company handling your website, they will be able to handle and manage any effects that the Penguin update might have on your website. If you do not hire any company, you can get some SEO consulting services or you can read below to help you manage your website through this Penguin update.
  • Make use of various media for your content. Do not limit your website content to articles and posts. Content does not mean text alone. Expand the media of your website content by putting in videos, slideshows, PDF files, infographics, and podcasts. The same rule for text content applies to these other media content – the higher quality they are, the better.
  • Market your content. Your content will not serve its purpose unless you market them so that they can be seen by others. Promote your website content through other websites especially through social media networks. Share links to your website’s videos, infographics, podcasts, articles, and images through Facebook, Twitter, and Google plus. Good content that can pique the interest of others can easily go viral amongst your target market. You can also put up your videos on YouTube or Vimeo, your slides and PDF files on SlideShare and Docstoc. 
  • Link pages in your website internally. Internal linking is self-love and it works with Google. If you have created your content well and you have enough relevant yet diverse content on your website then you should be able to link them to each other. You can make use of good anchor text and this practice will also help your visitors explore other pages in your website as well.
  • Optimize your site structure. The Google Penguin 2.0 update rewards websites that provide a good user experience and the goal is to reward high quality websites. Hence, the structure of your website is also very important. Apply sound web design practices that make your website easy to navigate and well organized.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Online Shopping: How To Know If An Online Store Is Trustworthy

Online shopping has been a very engaging activity for many Internet users. Instead of going to actual physical stores, the Internet has it possible to shop for almost any kind of product from the comforts of your own home. However, just like with every Internet activity that you engage in, it is very important to exert caution when shopping online and to make sure that your financial and personal security will not be compromised.
Among the things that you can do to ensure your security, one of them is to make sure that the website you are buying from is trustworthy. Unfortunately, it is quite easy to find websites that offer great deals that just seem too good to be true especially with the link building services that these sites make use of to increase their popularity. Once you found a website like this, how do you know that the website is trustworthy? Below is a guide to help you.

·         Customer feedbacks and reviews. The best way to find out if an online store will deliver the services and products that you are expecting, is to read feedbacks and reviews from previous customers. While some online stores have a section where they publish customer feedbacks and reviews, do not just rely on these because you will not see a negative feedback there. Research online for more accurate feedbacks and reviews. Even if an online store uses excellent SEO strategies, you should be able to find these accurate feedbacks and reviews by typing the store’s name in the Google search box.
·         Website security. The rule of thumb for online shopping is not to shop in a website that is not secure. Make sure that the website can securely process all your payment and personal information. Check that the website uses SSL technology by looking for the closed padlock image on the lower right hand corner of your browser or in the address bar. The address bar should also have ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’ Some websites even use Verisign or other security measures to make sure that all your financial information is not compromised.
·         Check contact information. An online store that only has a contact form for you to fill up and no other contact information seems suspicious. If it is a trustworthy website then it should provide you with several ways of contacting them by providing a phone number, an email address, or an online chat support.