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On 29 August 2014 Switzerland based John Muller (Google Webmaster Trends Analyst) announced the end of Google Authorship. Since then all photos and references to Google+ profiles have been completely dropped from Google Search listings. When explaining the reason for this change John says that the decision was founded on feedback from webmasters, authors and users who said that the platform was becoming too much of a distraction when finding search results.

Regardless of how sophisticated Google’s search algorithms get there will always be people trying to manipulate the system. Black Hat SEO has been around for a long time and may never go away. With the growing importance of Social Media it was inevitable that Black Hat Social Media would become a thing. But what effect, if any, can it have on your SEO efforts?

An unfortunately common misconception amongst those who engage in SEO is that it is not an ongoing concern. Too many people think that once you rank, you rank. This is simply not the case.

Fiction #1: The more rankings the better. Fiction #2: Rankings = Business. Perhaps I should clarify here a little. The above points don’t have to be fiction. But whether or not they are depends entirely on you.

Fact: Too many people engage in SEO without a full understanding of what they can really expect from it and what constitutes a good result. This blog series will focus on what constitutes a good result and how to plan for maximum return on investment. So let’s get started with Part 1: Keywords!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (provided you’ve read the previous 4 parts of this blog series): USER EXPERIENCE. It is the primary driving force behind everything Google expects from a website and Genuine Relevance Gets Results (GRGR).

We often hear from clients who have received an email from an SEO company claiming there are severe problems with their website and they urgently need SEO services. Most of these are templated emails blasted out to thousands of recipients. Their salespeople then follow up on any leads brought in by reply emails. But how
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So far in this SEO blog series you will have noticed a common theme: user experience. When writing content, encouraging links to grow your link profile or entering the world of Google+, if you keep that in mind and apply it to everything you do it will be hard to steer yourself wrong. But despite
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If you’ve been keeping up on this 5 part blog series (and I’d strongly recommend you read parts 1 & 2 for context if you haven’t) then you’ll be aware that we’ve been talking a lot about what is now meant by “content” and why it has been given such value as part of the
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Over time Google has been making steady improvements to their search results, with the goal to make selecting a good and relevant website easier for Google users. Google is now using more image based snapshots in the search results; this feature is known as Google Instant Preview. In November 2010, Google introduced Google Instant Preview.
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