Thursday, October 25, 2012

Google Adds “hreflang” Link Element For Multilingual Content


Google announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders.
The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area.
Here are examples of how you may use it respectively:
  • http://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish
  • http://es-es.example.com/ – is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish
  • http://es-mx.example.com/ – is the version for users in Mexico, in Spanish
  • http://en.example.com/ – is the generic English language version
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="http://es-es.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-MX" href="http://es-mx.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" />
For more details on how to use this, see this Google help document or Search Engine Land
Further information about international SEO and hreflang tags visit:
Other useful resources:

Friday, October 12, 2012

Importance of Guest Blogging Can Grow Your Online Business


Importance of Guest Blogging
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is an amazing marketing Strategy for online business, and can be a great way to build up your brand, earn recognition, and even get great links back to your website which also helps in getting higher search engine rankings. Guest blogging involves writing and publishing content across websites to get exposure for your own website. It is successful technique use to attain high quality links, as well as well as building relationships with other Bloggers online. Guest Posting also enables you to share your professional opinions within the Niche, covering highly-targeted audience at specific platform.

Guest Blogging Strategy:

  • Niche Browsing: Primarily, locate your target for publishing your content, hunt for valuable and high profile blog that have guest authorship opportunities with quality targets; and it also covers more and more readers. Posting Content where only handful readers are there didn’t bring much value to the website. So focus on your niche and look for high traffic blog and also examine its value, related to how frequently blog is updated, Blog Consistency, its regular readers and subscribers their participation etc.
  • Audience Centralized Content: Always write Content thinking to the point of reader as you are targeting them just by making your content best and advanced. Pen down content which is unique add images; break it in points and Heading. Writing good and fresh content will enhance your Guest Post and certainly you can expect more Guest Blogging offers. Before writing Spend some time reading the website you’re going to be published on so you get to know the style and tone of voice it uses and then base your content thinking upon previous posts and comments from the site’s audience.
  • Build Relationships: To be successful and have a renowned name in Guest Blogging you need to maintain and build strong relations with Blog Owners. If once your relationship is established, you will get more opportunities for guest blogging. The best way to build relation with them is; be active on their blog and participate smartly and show up the kind of blogger you are, it will add up more trust within the community and you can gain credibility with that audience.
  • Interaction with Readers: After your post is published comments from regular readers will start popping up, so here is the best chance communicate with them and build a good reputation for yourself. Participation in comments is a great way to build relation with regular readers.
Few Quick Tips for Guest Blogging: 
  • Make a refined research for the blogs for which you will write.
  • Come up with the best blog post or content you can, it determines your creativity and involvement with the related Topic.
  • Include links to your own websites and social media profiles in your byline.
  • Spend your some time in understanding the blog you are writing for so you can match up with their flow.
  • The content surely must be fresh, unique and best in it and should not be identical elsewhere on the web.
  • Promote the blog post through social media channels.
Importance of Guest Blogging
  • Guest blogging gets extra traffic to your website rather quality traffic.
  • Brand exposure and awareness is also gained through Guest Blogging.
  • It also helps in creating Social Media Profiles.
  • Also helps in gaining more traffic for our own blog/website.
  • Helps in increasing your subscribers are they are soul of blog.
  • Guest blogging helps in gaining more writing skills because you every time employ a different style of writing for another set of audience.
  • Guest blogging helps in being recognized as authority and credibility among people also builds up.
  • You become relatively expert within that Niche.
  • Through guest blogging you are promoting your blog to reach out to more people.
  • Guest Blogging helps in links and through it links gained aren’t just links but relevant links.
Take a look and let me know what you think by including your comment below. Thanks and have an amazing day! Follow him on TwitterGoogle + & Pinterest.

Welcome Back Keywords Meta Tag For News Websites


On 19-Sept-2012, Google has announced the brand new Meta tag called the “news_keyword”. The purpose behind news_keywords meta tag is to “empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users” according to Rudy Galfi, Google News Product Manager. The Google News blog  states that it will be an additional way for Google Crawlers to categorize an article for Search Engine and Google News.
News_keywords metatag code looks like:
<meta name=”news_keywords” content=”World Cup, Brazil 2014, Spain vs Netherlands” >
News keywords or each phrase must be separated by commas and you can add up to ten phrases for a given article. Here all keywords empower same value. For instance, it’s nothing like first keyword are given more value all keywords are given equal value. The Google blog explains the development Similar in spirit to the plain keywords metatag, the news_keywords metatag lets publishers specify a collection of terms that apply to a news article. These words don’t need to appear anywhere within the headline or body text. 
Quick Few Tips to implement news_keywords Meta tag:
  • Commas are used to separate keywords and this is the only punctuation allowed in this field.
  • All keyword empower same value.
  • Keywords can be used to clarify between like terms. This is possibly the most useful feature of the new tag; publishers can notify Google when an article is not relevant to a similar topic.
  • Each article you can add up to ten phrases.

For more information on the news_keyword tag, see Google’s Help article on the topic.

Google Authorship Confirms: Additional link After Hitting Back Button


If users point backs to the search results after reading the author tagged article for a certain period of time, Google will add three more additional links to similar articles referring to the same author below the clicked link.  If the user clicks on the search results with author tagged, and after reading a post on a site, he hits back button to return to the Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page), then the original result will show several extended links referring to other content by the same author. But result only triggers if user stayed on the page for some amount of time. Google will add a new “More by Author Name” indicating three more additional links to the article. Refer to Snapshot below:
Authorship Before
Authorship After
If user makes use of back button very quickly or go back to the search result page fast then no extra links will appear, as Google is measuring the time that the user spares on reading that article, if Google thinks that you enjoyed reading the article or was informative then only it will show up extra links. In this case, engagement is measured in the amount of time user spends on that piece of content. This also confirms that creating content that actually engages people and gets read will be an important factor in AuthorRank, as Google obviously wants to show more results from the same author in that event.
Google did, though, confirm that this is part of the authorship feature:
If a user visits an article by an author and it seems like they’d be interested in finding more articles by this author, when they click the “Back” button to return to the results page, we’ll show more results by that author. His article is highly recommended reading.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Local Search Rankings – Google Place Page Optimization Tips


Google Places primarily known as Google Maps are the best way of maintaining your online presence. Google Place page is the fantastic method to describe your business location with its products and services and some brief information about its operating hours, Location, Contact no, and website URL. You also can add images and interesting videos to make your place page more descriptive about your business. Including Google Place page as a local SEO Optimization strategy is a good addition for small business promotion which will probably help in getting more customers.
This add on feature provided by Google is free and increases business profile page, with direct growth in prospective customers and clients for knowing more about our services and products. More importantly Google Place may also help in gaining rank for local search results.
Google Place Page Optimization
Google Place Page Optimization Tips
1. Claim Your Google Places Listing and fulfill Your Business Profile:  There might be chances that Google has already created a Google place page for your business, but for making it your Business Page you have to claim it and need to build your profile. Complete your business profile with all its business offerings and important information. Make the place page identical the same as your website.
2. Categorize Business Properly: Use categories which nearly describe your business products, this will help in ranking better in search results. Google provides you five opportunities to fill in categories about your business on your Place Page. Categorization makes it easier to be Searched and Get Found.
3. Add Keywords in Business Description: Be concise and précised while describing your business services, use relevant keywords within the description, do not stuff unrelated keywords just for gaining high ranking. Description of 200 words is allowed for briefly describing your business.
4.Encourage Interaction & reviews: Encourage your satisfied customers to write a review which creates a positive point for your business. The more reviews you have the better it is Reviews helps in influencing other customer and also in gaining trust and reliability of the business.
5.Images & Videos: You have an opportunity of uploading 10 Images and 5 videos. To attract more customers upload appealing images of products you deal in, and videos as they are the best one to easily describe the business. Geo-tagged photos and videos give your business an advantage in local search result. Make professional looking and high quality videos to your business page which gives visual idea about your business premises or say your products.
6.Get Listed in Local Business Directories: Look for local directories, business listing sites and get your business listed there. Locate for local based sites and get your business listed there which may help to boost your Place page’s ranking. Some top Local Directories are:
  • Local.com
  • Yellowpages.com
  • Yelp.com
  • Foursquare.com
  • CitySearch.com
Google Place optimization is a effective and impactful marketing technique, so be sure to promote your business in the places people are looking to do business, and one of them by far  Places is Google. These above tips have helped to rank business Place Pages at the top of the results. Let’s learn more about getting started on Google Places!
Alok Raghuwanshi is an India-based SEO Professional, and author of an SEO and social media marketing blog. I hope you enjoyed today’s post. Now go out and implement! Follow him on TwitterGoogle + & Pinterest.