If a search is made for [football scores] you would probably want the most recent scores of the football games that just happened, not from games that are a few years old. This new algorithm change is designed to give you the most up to date results, without having to specify 2011 or the actual date the event took place.

To better clarify what content will be affected in the update, Google gives us these varying degrees of freshness.

• Recent events or hot topics
• Regularly recurring events
• Frequent updates

How will Google’s freshness update affect your website’s previous rankings?

If your industry or website content fits the list of the 3 varying degrees of freshness you might see a change in your rankings. For website’s that do not have trending topics or frequent product updates, don’t expect to see too much of a change.

Seeing decreased ranks or loss of traffic?

Our SEO team at WSOA loves new algorithm updates but sometimes for others it can lead to a disaster in your online strategy. If you have noticed a drop in your rankings or a decline in traffic to your website please contact us to see how we can help.

By: +Adam Lang

• Make sure the font size is easy to read and has the appropriate size for each H1, H2, H3, and P tag.
• Stick with a dark font on a light background. White text on a black background can be much harder to read.
• It’s usually best to left align all of your text, especially for large paragraphs.
• Use typefaces such as serif (Times) and standard sans-serif (Arial or Helvetica).
• Only change your font style when you want to make something important or standout. Stay away from always using italic or condensed font styles.
• If you have ads on your site separate it from your content.

• Your navigation structure should include the most important pages that you want your visitors to navigate through.
• Think how the flow of PR works when creating link structure. Create a chart beforehand with all of your pages.
• Visitors should be able to find what they are looking for within 3 clicks.
• Again, separate your content and your ads.
• For ecommerce or blogging sites, a search box is a must along with tagging.

• A consistent design helps with branding.
• Stick with the same layout when it comes to rounded corners, boxes, drop shadows, bullets, colors, or navigation.

• Make sure it is easy to read, find, and click.
• Create a call to action that gets people’s attention and want to click it.
• Look at your analytics and see where people are clicking.

• Today’s websites are created with social interaction in mind and not just information.
• Include icons for all of your social media profile .
• Add Facebook like, tweet, Linkedin share, and Google +1 buttons through your site.

• Stay away from Flash as much as you can! Anything in flash will not count as content for your page and will not help you rank.
• Stay away from too much external linking as this will only give your flow of PR to other sites
• Keep everything on the same domain.

If you have questions regarding designing or creating a website please feel free to contact us, use the live help, or include a comment underneath. Our designers and developers will be happy to take your questions.

Example:

Dash: http://www.wsoaonline.com/web-development

Underscore: http://www.wsoaonline.com/web_development

Answer: Dashes

Why:

As explained by Matt Cutts in the Google Webmaster Help YouTube video, dashes in the URLs are used to separate two words whereas underscores combine both words into one. In SEO terms this means that when using a dash to separate words in your URL, Google will index all of these terms individually. When using an underscore Google will only index your combination of words as one.

What Google Index’s:

Dash: “web development”

Underscore: “webdevelopment”

Question: Should you change your existing pages URL layout to dashes?

Answer: No, if you make changes to your pages current URL layout you will lose your search rankings. If you are just starting out your website or are adding new pages to your site it is recommended that you then use dashes in your URL.

If you have questions about your website’s current URL layout please comment below or use our live chat feature.

Answer: No

Why:

Back in the day the flow of PageRank was spread “evenly” across the links on a web page. No matter where a link was placed on a page, such as in the paragraph or in the footer, each link received the same amount of link juice. However, this does not apply anymore today.

Today’s algorithm change from Google adds emphasis to where the link is actually placed upon the web page. Thanks to what is called the “Reasonable Surfer Model,” each link on a page is calculated with a different weight depending upon how noticeable it is to the web surfer. A good example of this would be to open up any webpage and scroll down the page only looking at the links displayed. Which links are more noticeable first? They would most likely be the larger, more dominant links on the page that get your attention. Google gives a higher flow of PR to these more dominant links because of their importance of getting the surfer to where they want. They also believe that links within the paragraph, also called editorial links, are more likely to be more relevant and withhold a greater reputation.

Footer links will always receive less of a flow of PR to them than editorial paragraph links because they are positioned lower down the page.

After the release it affected many sites, either boosting or decreasing their ranks. Google’s explanation to this was simply that it was not a temporary algorithmic change and that it was implemented to give more credit to the websites who had greater domain authority and offered better original content on its individual pages. The result to the change was pages on websites with lower authority decreased in ranks. They declared it as a quality win as most long tail searches were now querying better matches.

Listening closely to what Google had to say on their Mayday algorithm change gives an assumption that websites who have original and quality content along with authority will rank higher. Taking this and putting it into SEO terms means that link building strategies, on and off page, need to be geared towards long tail keywords.

The chart below shows an example of the list of key phrases a website ranks for. The key phrases to the left are the highly competitive, but highly searched for key words, while the key phrases to the right are the less competitive, less searched for long tail key phrases. A look at the chart shows that even if a site is getting 5-10 referrals for that long tail search, when you add up all of the small searches, they exceed the big boys.

In addition, these long tail keywords are also easier to rank for and as well convert at a better rate because they are more specific. If a site is ranked for “football uniforms” it will get a lot of traffic, but if it is ranked for “Nike men’s football uniforms” it will get much more qualified traffic looking to actually buy a football uniform.

If you need help deciding which long tail keywords to go after comment below and we will help you do a free keyword analysis for the homepage of your website.

On Page:

• Create a custom URL for your page that fans can remember
• Post regularly with exciting information
• Ask questions in the newsfeed
• Tag other pages or people in the newsfeed
• Offer deals and discounts
• Create contests with prizes to build interaction
• Bring in a guest speaker  to post about your product or answer questions
• Create either online or offline public events that your fans can attend
• Send out updates
• Create custom tabs within Facebook to build interaction along with a call to action to like the page
• Create a Facebook applicaton
• It’s okay to ask your fans to like the page every now and then
• Ask for fans to post reviews, pictures, or videos
• Ask fans to subscribe via SMS or RSS
• Combine your Facebook Places page with your Fan Page

Off Page:

• Do a search in Facebook and make sure there are no other pages or place pages with your brand or company name in it. If so report it to Facebook.
• Contact other related Facebook Pages to see about helping each other out mutually. This includes sponsored posts, tagging each other, events, etc.
• A bit spammy, but as the Facebook Page make posts on other pages
• Promote you Facebook Page in store, on your business card, in your email signature, and anywhere else you can get the name out.
• Create a Facebook Ads Campaign to build traffic to the fan page
• Add Facebook widgets to your website
• Add Facebook social plugins likes, send, and share button to your website and blog
• Connect your page to Twitter
• Turn your customers into fans
• Send out an email to notify them your brand is on Facebook
• Word of Mouth Marketing

If you have any more ideas or questions on ways to build fans on Facebook please list them at the bottom.

• Each website must have a “radically different layout
• Each website must have a different selling approach
• Each website must have a different structure

Overall each website must be completely different in all ways to not be considered spammy. Google’s spam team believes that if a person is creating a lot of duplicate sites they feel as if that person will try to cut ways to get their sites up quicker, such as using auto generated content, syndicated feeds, and cookie cutter themes. This does nothing but add clutter to the search results, which Google does not want.

Will you get more traffic though from creating multiple clone websites?

The answer is no. It would be much smarter to focus your time in creating one site and building authority to it. Spending time creating original dynamic content and getting links to it will build your PR and boost traffic to your site. Having duplicated content and cloned sites will only get you penalized and not even seen in the search results.

If you have multiple websites that all sell the same products try this quick test to see if your products are being indexed in Google:

Copy a line or two of your product description and paste it into a Google Search. If your page comes up then you are being indexed, but look for other duplicate sites that have the same text in the search result. If there are other sites that do then your page could be getting penalized.

For more information about this please leave a message below, click on the live help, or fill out the contact form.

Note: Create a Fan page not a Personal Profile

Why: It is against Facebook’s rules. Personal Profiles are for real people not companies. If Facebook finds out about your fake Personal Profile there is a good chance they will delete it. Personal Profiles are also limited to 5000 “friends”.

Note: Fix your profile picture’s thumbnail if it is offset

Why: Make sure the thumbnail of your profile picture is centered to show your logo.

Note: Be sure the company name and custom url you choose is really what you want

Why: Plan After 100 fans you will not be allowed to change this

Note: Make sure your report all other fake Facebook pages that has your company name in it, including places.

Why: Multiple company pages do not only clutter Facebook but they also make it confusing for fans who are looking for the “Official” page. There have also been a few instances where individuals not involved with the company have started a page for it and it is crucial that as a company you take control over this page.

Note: Do not deny posting rights from fans

Why: Denying posting rights from fans creates a boundary between your company and its fans. Facebook is about being social by listening and communicating with your fans. Yes every page will get a few negative comments every once in a while but look at this as a chance to show your fan base that you really care about your customers and are not just shutting your doors to them. Later on when you get the loyal Facebook fan base you will see that when a negative comment is posted your fans will stand up for you.

Note: Don’t blow up your fan’s newsfeed with spam or advertising

Why: No one wants to have to read through 5 different advertisements before they can see what their friends are up to, so don’t spam. A few promotions or deals every once in a while is great though! If you are posting these regularly though your fans will hit the unlike or hide all by this user button and then you have lost them forever.

Note: Be careful of what you post in the newsfeed

Why: Once you click the share button your post will be made public going out to all of your fans as well as your fan’s friends. Use proper grammar but speak in your own voice. Have a sense of personality in your post and feel free to use to humor every now and then but stay away from posting anything that can cause conflict.

Note: Don’t leave your fan’s hanging when they leave you a post!

Why: If you don’t leave a reply why would your fans leave you another message?

Note: Don’t abandon ship!

Why: If you put your daily Facebook posting on hold your fans will lose interest and forget about your page. If you have to take a week or a weekend off just let your fans know.

If you have more questions regarding this or need help with your Facebook Fan page please leave a comment below or click on the live help box to the right.

Today, Facebook unveiled some exciting new features to its over 750 million person user base. The biggest feature being unveiled is a video chat powered by Skype that lets Facebooker’s video chat with each other without ever leaving Facebook. To see how the Facebook video chat works, click on the link from Facebook below to watch the video which introduces Facebook’s new feature and then click the get started button to download the chat interface. Once downloaded your Facebook messaging system will be updated with a new video call button at the top of your chat messages.

http://www.facebook.com/videocalling

Sharing through chat has become easier than ever, say goodbye to having to link that video file over and over to your friends. Now you can invite your friends to one chat box with Facebook’s new multi-person chat. This group chat adds an add friend button to message boxes which allows you to invite more friends to chat together.

As more and more features roll out with Facebook we, as an Orlando website design company, are beginning to think someday people will never need to leave Facebook. With this thought in mind it is getting ever more important as a company to have a presence on this huge social networking site.

How does Schema.org work?

Essentially Schema.org works by assigning each type of data entry a term. Schema.org provides the terminology for an entity, for example if you have a section on your webpage about a particular restaurant you can reference the Restaurant terminology page. Schema.org is based on Microdata, to implement Schema.org’s terminology you only need know the basics which can be found at the getting started page. Having the ability to properly identify a section, or your whole site may go far for SEO. Imagine search engines being able to identify between the car “Eclipse”, the moon-phase “Eclipse” and a restaurant called “Eclipse”.

Structured data has been seen previously via various features, such as “Googles recipe search”. If you haven’t used this feature before, it allows the user to search through recipes based on multiple factors including ingredients, cook time and calories. This is now kicking everything up a notch and allowing websites the capability to categorize multiple sections (Maps, Addresses, Phone Numbers, and Content etc.)

Will Schema.org phase out?

Some people may be questioning Schema.org and/or comparing it to that of sitemaps. As with many things SEO, it changes on a daily basis. We can only utilize what we know works and if it changes, we move on to the next phase. Will the time investment converting your site to Schema.org standards pay off? I don’t think anyone at this point can answer that. But it will be an indicator among many, and it won’t hurt!

Have you utilized structured data in the past? We would love to hear about it!
Have any questions regarding Schema.org or Microdata? Feel free to comment below.