Trying to be the best in something always requires hard work and dedication. This thing goes the same with SEOs who wanted to be on top at all times. For SEOs getting higher rankings in different search engines especially Google means a lot. Sometimes, it could be the basis of success in this kind of business. In line with this, you must have heard already of the news spreading virally on the internet today involving an online marketer named PotPieGirl.

PotPieGirl claimed to have found the Google’s Quality Guidelines documents which is for the search results raters’ guidelines to rating. This document contains all the guidelines made by Google for their contracted search results raters. Hence, SEOs have been eager to see or to read what particular guidelines Google set to achieve higher rankings.

One of the focuses of this document is the guidelines for raters on tagging spam flags to a URL. Upon evaluation of page, raters should use one of the three Spam Flags given by Google. These three Spam Flags are as follows:

• Spam – Raters should give a spam flag to a page if after evaluation of the said page, the rater believes that the page was build or created using the deceptive web-design techniques.
• Maybe Spam – Maybe spam flag will then be given to a page that looks like a spam yet the rater cannot fully say or state that it was designed using the deceptive web-design techniques.
• Not Spam – A not spam flag should then be assigned to a page which the rater strongly believes that is not built, designed or created using the deceptive web-design techniques.

For those who are asking, the deceptive web-design techniques full description and details can be found in WebSpam Guidelines. In connection with the raters responsibility to tag spam flags on the pages as they evaluate them, raters are also ordered to include some remarks or explanation on the rationale of tagging the page as Spam or Maybe Spam.

How not to be considered as a spam page?

• Continuously improve your content and make it sure that you have useful contents to users as raters are ordered to put or tag a ‘spam flag’ to URLs or pages that have no useful or helpful contents.
• If you are in a competitive niche, you might double up your ‘content optimization technique’ so you can maintain a ‘Grade A’ rating.
• If your page is full of ads and if it is only designed to make money, you might want to improve your content as Google instructed their raters to tag such pages with ‘spam flag’ as well.

Generally speaking, the content of the leaked Google’s quality guidelines is not new to experienced and veteran SEOs. However, knowing its content can still help a lot not only those new people in this kind of business but also those experienced as seeing that they are on the same page with Google when it comes to assessing the quality of search results is definitely encouraging!

Trends affect business trade like to how climate affect countries. Those countries experiencing four seasons are affected by weather and climate changes every couple of months, as such, people adapt to these climate changes. Like the ever changing climate, trends affect the business trade in the same way except that change takes years. When trends change, the market follows and the companies adapt to changes as well. Apparently, like the ever changing climate, trend is quite unpredictable.

Video marketing has turned out to be one of the most convenient and effective methods in advertising products and services. Business promotion is made a lot easier by video marketing. The following are some expected trends that most likely will be seen in 2012.

Statistics Doesn’t Lie

Last November 2011, comScore, a world-renowned leader in measuring the digital realm, released the October 2011 United States Online Video Rankings. They revealed that 184 million United States Internet viewers watched videos online 21.1 hours per viewer at an average. The statistics revealed all-time high results of a total of 42.6 billion videos watched by the U.S. Internet audience. And from 2010’s report, this year there is a 5.1% increase in the average time spent on watching online videos per viewer.

This trend shows that this year, the United States population will spend almost 39.7% more online watching time. That is roughly 193 million people who will watch about 29.4 hours in 2012.

Moreover, it was reported that Google sites ranked as the number one online video content property in October 2011 with a remarkably 161 million unique viewers from YouTube.com. They also topped the highest engagement of 7.1 hours per viewer.

The previous year’s report of comScore revealed that Google sites through YouTube.com with a sum of 146.3 million different viewers, topped as Internet video content property in October 2010. Furthermore, Google sites with 4.5 hours at an average topped last year’s average time spent watching online videos.

So, it’s safe to conclude that Google sites will be the number 1 online video content property a year from now.

History Repeats Itself
The August 2009’s On the Predictability Of Search Trends by Niv Efron, Yair Shimshoni and Yossi Matias of Google revealed the following:

• Of the most popular Google searches more than half are predictable.
• While almost half of the most popular Google searches are not predictable

From these findings, Google launched a feature in the Insights for Search. For instance, the term “snow” spikes in February to December 2012. This means video marketers can start planning now to create and release content themed events like the holidays.

One of the most talked about Google tools is Google Analytics. Google Analytics became popular among users because of its brilliant and very helpful features not to mention that it’s free. Being free, many users thought of Google Analytics as a low-class web tool. However, due to the big organizations that proved this belief otherwise, Google Analytics has earned a lot of positive feedbacks from users. Some of the known users of this web tool include the following: RE/MAX, Agency.com, American Cancer Society, CKE Restaurants and Yelp.

What can it do? If you are not yet familiar with Google analytics, here are the things you need to know:

1. Google Analytics segments your website into different areas so it can help you see the amount of traffic for each area. This can help you determine the area that needs more improvement.
2. By Google Analytics you can also see if your newest contents like videos, articles and photos are performing well or driving more traffic or not. This can help you determine what kind of topic your visitors are really searching for. Hence, improving your conversion will be easier.

Google Analytics main purpose is to help you see or determine your website’s performance through the easiest possible way. Google Analytics can be compared even to the most expensive web analysis tool you may know of.

Pros

1. The most important and definitely the main advantage of using Google Analytics rather than other web analysis tool is its being free. Nowadays, finding web tools that are free is definitely a challenge. Hence, the mere fact that you can use this brilliant tool for free is definitely a blessing!
2. Another important advantage of using Google Analytics is that it allows you to track multiple websites.
3. Google Analytics can also help you monitor the activity of social networking sites for your reference.
4. It also has the ability to track users that are using mobile phones.

Cons

1. The number one cons of using Google Analytics is the fact that the status it’s giving is not real time. This means you have to make some adjustments on reading reports from Google Analytics.
2. Google Analytics cannot collect or gather data from users that have disabled their cookies.
3. There is limited support. You can only depend on the support center and forums if you need help using or if you encounter problems with Google Analytics.
4. You need to put on some codes on every page you want to track or monitor. This means additional time to spend on it.

Overall, Google Analytics is a helpful web analysis tool that you can definitely use if you want to track your website or if you want to determine ways on how you can improve your traffic. The mere fact that this tool is being offered free is already a piece of good fortune especially to those who can’t afford buying expensive web analysis tool that is necessary especially if you are into SEO campaigns.

One of the most talked about Google tools is Google Alerts. Google Alerts for those of you who haven’t tried to use it is a web tool from Google itself that automatically sends you an RSS or an email alerts for particular things you are concern of. In the world of online marketing or SEOs, Google Alerts can definitely move things. But the most important question here is “how”.

Many people who have online business or website to grow and protect may be looking at other things and may not notice the importance and the usefulness of using Google Alerts to their advantage. The only reason for this would be the ignorance of the real value of Google Alerts for online businesses.

Some of the most important things you can do with Google Alerts to your advantage are the following:

Google Alerts can send you great topic niche which you can write about to improve your content. A good website that generates traffic should never fail to have robust content. Google Alerts can definitely help you with this by sending you the latest and hottest topics in town!
Google Alerts can feed you with information regarding your competitors. Yes you can definitely watch over your competitors by using Google Alerts. You can let Google Alerts send you information on a certain brand name or site and from it you can totally see what your competitors have and you can do it to your business as well if you think it can do better or you can simply think of more effective strategies to outrank them using the information you got from these alerts.
Google Alerts lets you monitor your keywords. This is also one of the most important advantages you can get from Google Alerts. You can determine who’s also using your keywords by setting up an alert for it. Moreover, you can use these alerts to help you find the best topics that are related to your keywords that you can write about.
Google Alerts allows you to keep an eye on your domain. This could be the most basic yet the most significant use of Google Alerts. You should never forget to keep an eye on your reputation. Set up an alert that will notify you right away when your domain is being dragged to something or talked about and see if it’s good or bad. Seeing it right away can give you the opportunity to make an action right away.

Definitely, there are a lot of things you can get from Google Alerts but like any other web tools you know, there are also some few disadvantages like the following:

Google Alerts algorithms are definitely not perfect.
You can only get alerts from data or info that has been indexed by Google.

Though Google Alerts may have disadvantages as well, you can without a doubt ignore those disadvantages and use it to your benefits as its advantages can definitely offset whatever drawbacks it may entail!

Have you heard or use Google Webmasters Tools yet? If you do then you probably have some ideas on how this exceptional tool from Google works. For those who haven’t use Google Webmaster Tools here are some of the reasons why you should:

Google Webmaster Tools is free of charge – Who would not want something very helpful and free of charge? Yes the great news about Google Webmaster Tools is that you can use it for free and it’s being offered to everyone. However, for you to use Google Webmaster Tools you need to know few more things about it. And you must make yourself familiar with online stuffs.

Another great reason why you should start on using Google Webmaster Tools is the fact that it is very easy to set up. Unlike other expensive web tools you can find nowadays, Google Webmaster Tools is definitely the web tool you can set up yourself. You just need to undergo some verification process which is very much painless and you’re good to go.

Everything needs improvement all the time. And that’s another good reason why you should use Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools is continuously improving. Google definitely knows the webmasters and site owners needs as they work tirelessly on improving intelligent and helpful web tools like Google Webmaster Tools. Evident to this is the features being added to Google Webmaster Tools every few months.

Google Webmaster Tools allows you to get all the helpful and important information you need to grow your business or to improve your organization. One of the main reasons for Google to develop Google Webmaster Tools is to help the site owners and webmasters on developing their business by giving helping them do their job easier and by giving them the most useful tips and techniques on how they can improve their current system or website.

Generally, Google Webmaster Tools can provide you with all your needed information in the form of detailed reports. All you need to is to add your website to Google Webmaster tools and get verified. After which you can start seeing useful information instantaneously.

Google Webmaster Tools is definitely an ideal web tool that you can depend on especially if you want to improve your website today. The only thing that you should be aware of as well is the fact that it could also entail some disadvantages. Like for instance, this web tool can expose as much as information about you which your competitors can use to their advantage as well. Furthermore, this information about you can also be used by Google and use it for their advantage. But this thing can always be avoided. You just have to be wiser and you must not forget to learn about everything about the world of online marketing, website building and how these stuff works for you to be able to come up with a more boosted technique on how you can make your business increase its sales and profits!

2011 was a year of rapid development in search engine optimization. It was probably the year of changes in search engine algorithms. Looking forward, most online marketing experts expect changes for 2012. This is why new strategies are necessary in order to be more competitive online.
Here are the top predictions regarding online marketing:

The Importance of Social Media in Search Engine Algorithms
The use of social media networks boomed in 2011. Just look at the hundreds of millions of Facebook users and you will understand the importance of social media today. According to online marketing experts, it will become official this year and most search engines will make social media an important factor in search algorithms. This is why social media presence will become critical for online marketing success this year.

New Scenarios Brought about by Mobile + Social Advancement
A bigger percentage of internet users will be using mobile devices as a primary tool for online shopping. This is the reason why websites need to be mobile friendly. In fact, a recent study indicated that about one-third of adults in the United States use a smartphone. This year, the number is expected to rise significantly. Also, it was noted that travel click-through-rates are considerably higher on mobile devices compared to PCs.

Google estimates that around 44% of last-minute shopping on the internet is done using smartphones or tablets. This is an obvious opportunity for marketers to focus on specific user scenarios that haven’t been addressed before using traditional SEO tactics.

The Prominence of Daily Deals in SERPs
Right now if you search for a specific service like a massage or pedicure on Google, you will be given images, a list of establishments that offer such services and other related information. This year, most experts believe that the top search engines such as Google will be including daily deals to help end users find great discounts. Daily deals and such offerings have become so popular today that it should be included in SERPs. This will contribute to the goal of search engines to provide a great customer experience to each searcher.

Summary
Online marketers who are likely to succeed this year will be those who are quick to embrace changes and create appropriate tactics for such changes. Remember that what are stated in this article are only predictions and are not 100% accurate. These are only ideas that will help you anticipate what will happen this year.

A little while back, it was very easy to trick search engines into believing that your site was useful. All you had to do was publish content that is rich in keywords and your site will be considered very useful and have good rankings. Now, all of the top search engines have more considerable algorithms that make this scenario almost impossible.
Here are other reasons why you shouldn’t have rehashed content in your website:

Considerably High Bounce Rate
Even if your site performs very well in search engine results thanks to your useless but keyword-rich content, you also need to follow up or make sales. Cramming keywords will usually repel potential customers. Also, high bounce rate is now a very important factor that affects rankings negatively. Significantly increasing traffic is obviously useless if it doesn’t result to more sales.

Because Google Says So
Use some common sense and it’s very obvious that in order to perform well online, you have to do whatever Google says. There is no possible way to succeed in your online ventures if you go against the search engine giant. The Google Webmasters Tools should be like your online Bible. Use it as reference regarding what content you should and shouldn’t have in your website. One of the top rules according to Google is to have high quality content. This will usually result to higher rankings.

No/Very Small Number of Links
Having “thin” or low quality content will usually result to a very low (or zero) number of links to your website. Inbound links are a very important factor when it comes to search engines and deciding on the importance of a page. Having high quality and useful content will almost guarantee higher rankings and a very high number of links to your site.

Duplicated Content Filtering
Google is very sensitive to scraped content. Usually if they decide that your site has a very high amount of copied content, you will not be visible in the search results page. This means that potential customers will have a lower chance of finding you and your online efforts will be useless.

Summary
In short, you really need to generate useful and original content in order for your website to perform well. You can no longer get away with low quality and rehashed content. You have to work hard in order to be competitive nowadays. There really is no shortcut anymore when it comes to good content.

Search engine optimization tools have become almost critical when it comes to attaining online success. This is the reason why you really need to take advantage of these tools and include them in your SEO arsenal. These tools will make even the most complex and time-consuming SEO tasks easy. You will surely save a lot of time and money by taking advantage of these SEO tools. For 2012, it is not really very different. All you need are the 3 basic SEO tools and you will surely have a higher chance in succeeding with our online marketing efforts. Here are the three basic SEO tools that you need to have in your arsenal:

1. Keyword Tools
Because of the importance of keywords in SEO, you need to at least have one SEO tool in your arsenal. You need to use the best keywords that will have significantly higher chance of getting the best rankings. Some examples of this type of tool are Google Adwords Keyword Tool, WordStream Keyword Resources and Wordtracker. Traditional keyword research takes a lot of time but using a good keyword tool will definitely make this a simple task that can be accomplished in a few minutes.

2. SERP Trackers
You need to know your current standing in the SERPs of the top search engines. This is very difficult especially if you don’t have good rankings. You might need to go through a hundred or more SERPs before you find your site. Using a good SERP tracker will help you determine your standing in a few minutes. It will also help you monitor changes and ranking fluctuations easily. Some examples are LinkAssistant’s Rank Tracker, Rank Checker and googlerankings.com.

3. Backlink Checkers
Every SEO practitioner knows the importance of building backlinks. If you don’t know this, you’re either an SEO newbie or you’re not a good SEO practitioner.A good backlink checker is an excellent tool for numerous functions such as reviewing site profiles, locating new link resources, spying on your competitor’s backlinks and many more. Some examples are SpyGlass from Search Engine Marketing, backlinkwatch.com and LinkScape.

Summary
If you want to succeed in your online marketing efforts this year, you need include these SEO tools in your SEO arsenal. You will surely save a lot of time and money by doing so. With the resources you save, you can focus on other more important matters that can help you achieve SEO success.