Schema For User Actions Now Available

Schema.org announced a new form of Schema they have introduced with support from Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo and Yandex named Actions.

Schema Actions are a way to communicate via markup on your web page the actions they enable and how these actions can be invoked. Technically, Schema.org describes it as:

An action performed by a direct agent and indirect participants upon a direct object. Optionally happens at a location with the help of an inanimate instrument. The execution of the action may produce a result. Specific action sub-type documentation specifies the exact expectation of each argument/role.

It seems like you can communicate the start and end time of an action, the desired outcome, result, location, and instrument used for the action. If I had to guess, it can be used to communicate the time it takes someone to do something, like cook a meal, write a book, and what the action and result of the action should be.

How Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex may use this is unclear. I’ve asked both Microsoft and Google for a comment but I have yet to hear back.

I can see the rich snippets showing more data around specific websites with this markup, so before someone clicks on a result, they know the time it takes on average to go through the process.

For example, the time it takes to complete an online form or exam may be displayed in the search results, with the result displayed as well.

Here is the part of the vocabulary of this new Schema named Action:

• actionStatus: Indicates the current disposition of the Action.
• agent: The direct performer or driver of the action (animate or inanimate). e.g. *John* wrote a book.
• endTime: When the Action was performed: end time. This is for actions that span a period of time. e.g. John wrote a book from January to *December*.
• instrument: The object that helped the agent perform the action. e.g. John wrote a book with *a pen*.
• location: The location of the event, organization or action.
• object: The object upon the action is carried out, whose state is kept intact or changed. Also known as the semantic roles patient, affected or undergoer (which change their state) or theme (which doesn’t). e.g. John read *a book*.
• participant: Other co-agents that participated in the action indirectly. e.g. John wrote a book with *Steve*.
• result: The result produced in the action. e.g. John wrote *a book*.
• startTime: When the Action was performed: start time. This is for actions that span a period of time. e.g. John wrote a book from *January* to December.
• target: Indicates a target EntryPoint for an Action.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson would not add any additional details outside of the original Schema.org blog post.

A Bing spokesperson however gave us answers to all our questions:

(Q) Can you explain this a bit better in terms of use cases?

(A) The Action vocabulary is intended to be used primarily for describing actions that have taken place in the past [past actions] or could take place in the future [potential actions]. Let’s assume Barry shared an MSN article on Facebook yesterday. This is an example of a past action. Facebook might use schema.org to describe the action by indicating that Jason is the subject (agent) of the action, the action verb is sharing, and the object of the action is an MSN article. Now let’s say MSN wanted to expose the ability for applications to programmatically share an article on their website. This would be an example of a potential action. MSN might use schema.org to describe the potential action by indicating the action verb is ‘sharing’ and that you can perform this action by calling a specific URL.

(Q) How may Bing use this in the search results and is it being used now?

(A) Bing currently uses a draft version of the Actions vocabulary to power the recently releasedApp Linking service. You can learn more about that via the Bing Dev Center and associated MSDN documentation. In addition to App Linking, there are a number of ways in which we might use the vocabulary to power new experiences in Bing and other Microsoft products. Unfortunately there are no definitive plans we can share at this time.

Note that Bing uses other schema.org vocabularies to power its rich web result captions as well. More information on that product is available in the Bing Webmaster Tools.

(Q) What are the goals here for webmasters?

(A) The primary goal of schema.org has always been to provide webmasters with a common vocabulary for use in describing their data. The new Actions vocabulary, especially the terms associated with potential actions, extends this goal to include describing services as well. By providing these descriptions, search engines like Bing and other applications that consume them can leverage the associated information to expose the data and services in a relevant and useful way.

Google Slaps Another Guest Blog Network: PostJoint:

Google’s Matt Cutts somewhat confirmed onTwitter that Google has taken action on another guest blogging network. This network is namedPostJoint and claims “there’s no footprints.”

Someone tweeted to Matt that PostJoint was penalized.

In fact, if you check out Google for a search on their name, their web site no longer ranks on the first page.

Matt Cutts this morning confirmed it on Twitter saying “any link or guest blog network that claims to have “zero footprints” is waving a giant red flag.”

Google recently also penalized My Blog Guest, another large guest blogging network.

I do not see a statement from PostJoint on this penalty yet.

PostJoint, like MyBlogGuest, did talk back to Matt Cutts early on about guest blogging being done. And then after MyBlogGuest was penalized, PostJoint explained how they are different. I guess not different enough?

                                                                                                           #PoorneshMishra

7 Local SEO Tips For Better Local Search Results

By Chris Sheehy | Local SEO Services| Written for Mopar Masters Dealers
Everyone wants their business to rank #1 on Google search, but achieving and maintaining high visibility online is a lot harder and more complex than the simple acronym SEO makes it sound. Add multiple locations into the mix – and your difficulties are compounded.
Identifying the SEO techniques for auto dealer marketing that most effectively pull in local traffic is a moving target.
Last year Google alone made over 500 changes to how they rank and index a business website on their search engine, and with their latest Hummingbird update that essentially rewrote their entire search engine, they are on a collision-course to best that number in 2013. Therefore it is highly probable that some website changes you may have made a couple years ago are now obsolete (if not downright banned), while new standards and best practices for local SEO may be absent from your website as well as your off-page assets like social media and business listings.

So if you’ve been thinking that your online visibility seems to have crashed lately – you’re probably correct.
But where there is difficulty – there is opportunity, and if you are not satisfied with your local search engine results, here are 7 SEO tips that are sure to drive more local discovery to your business - no matter if you have one or multiple locations.

1. Keywords

The single element driving traffic to most websites is not the visual part of the website – it’s the wording. Search engines do not see the visible parts of your website – they only see the words. That said, it makes sense to focus as much attention there as possible.
Keyword research will help discover the words and phrases best suited to help the search engines know what you do (i.e. wholesale Mopar parts, wholesale Jeep parts, wholesale Dodge parts), and where you do it (location) as well as identify what words people are typing into their search bar to find businesses like yours. You can use a Free Tool [http://goo.gl/m21uP] like Google’s Keyword Planner to build your keyword strategy. Download your list of keywords into Excel for further editing and filtering on a regular basis – quarterly review works great but definitely no less than twice a year. I’m a big supporter of quarterly audits for most business analysis, marketing and performance KPIs.
Ranking for a hundred keywords that nobody is searching for is a waste of energy, identify the words most likely to drive the right kind of traffic to your business and build your site (and off-page activity) around those. Better to rank highly for 5 words that drive traffic, than for 100 that don’t. You’re just fueling your ego with the later.
As a rule, I focus on about 35 targeted keywords & phrases for most local-business clients, and spend several hours’ fine-honing keyword selections. Every keyword strategy is unique, even for clients in the same business vertical – like auto dealers.
TIP: Filtering results of the Keyword Planner tool by geographic regions (country, state, county, and city) will display the regional demand for your keyword entered as well as project a sense of how competitive it will be for you to rank for those on local search.

2. Keyword Mapping & META

Now that you have your keywords strategy down – let’s put it to good use.
Looking at your keyword list (Excel spreadsheet), you will probably notice that you could group together similar keywords to form categories (I call these silos).
Does your website have a page for each silo category listed on your spreadsheet? It should.
You don’t need hundreds of pages for your website – but your pages should target the primary aspects of your business. Your list of keywords is the starting point. As a best practice, your website should have no less than 6 pages, and be no longer than it needs to be (if people don’t read it – you don’t need it).
Looking again at your keyword list, make sure the primary keyword for a page is used as close to the front of the opening sentence of the website as possible and consider highlighting your keyword in bold. Same goes for the administrative elements of the website called the META - the part people cannot see, but search engines can (not all website platforms permit using bold here, don’t freak out if yours doesn’t).
Definition: META
Short for metadata – loose translation “data about data”
There are three elements of META on a website to concern yourself with:
o META Title
o Meta Description
o Meta Keywords
Make sure each website page has unique META elements (each of the three) and position your major keyword as close to the front of your wordings as you complete these elements.
TIP: META Title and Description have character limitations you should be mindful of, they are 60 and 160 respectively (conservatively). META Keywords are not a ranking element, so use them sparingly – no more than 10 words/phrases – and don’t sell-the-shop by listing your most important keywords for your competition to discover. Do however be certain to list your state, town, and zip code along with the terms “auto parts”, “Mopar parts”, and “auto body parts”.
Two of the most common SEO errors for small businesses I see are META that is not optimized and/or that is not unique for each page.

3. SCHEMA

A relatively new tool for local marketing (circa June 2011) has to do with using a simple html code called SCHEMA [http://goo.gl/kdDRY] - also referred to as structured data or microformat - to better identify and classify some of the most important information on your website to search engines, such as your location and contact info.
This code is universally accepted by Google, Bing, and Yahoo making it a must-have for every local business.
Speaking of search engines, keep in mind that Google isn’t the only option worth courting. As I write this, Yahoo has just taken the #1 Search Engine spot from Google and Bing has picked up a ton of search traffic since the Amazon Kindle Fire and many smart phones now come default with Bing as the native search engine. Facebook has also integrated a search feature called Search Graph this year, and with one-in-seven people on the planet having a Facebook account that makes them (technically) the largest search engine in the world.
BONUS: Replace the SCHEMA code in RED (below) with YOUR INFORMATION and insert on your website page.
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AutoDealer">
<div itemprop="name">INSERT BUSINESS NAME</div>
<div>Email: <span itemprop="email"><a href='mailto:INSERT BUSINESS EMAIL>Email</a></span></div>
<div>Phone: <span itemprop="telephone">INSERT PHONE #</span></div>
<div>Fax: <span itemprop="faxNumber">INSERT FAX #</span></div>
<div>Url: <span itemprop="url"><a href='http://WEBSITE URL>Website</a></span></div>
<div itemprop="paymentAccepted" style='display: none' >cash, check, credit card</div>
<meta itemprop="openingHours" style='display: none' datetime="Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr,Sa,Su 09:00-18:00" />
<div itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates" itemscope="" itemprop="geo">
<meta itemprop="latitude" content="41.840748" />
<meta itemprop="longitude" content="-71.349611" />
</div>=
<div itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress" itemscope="" itemprop="address">
<div itemprop="streetAddress">INSERT YOUR ADDRESS</div>
<div><span itemprop="addressLocality">INSERT TOWN</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">INSERT STATE ABBREVIATION</span> <span itemprop="postalCode">INSERT ZIP CODE</span></div>
</div>
</div>
SCHEMA TIP: Consider replacing <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AutoDealer"> with <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AutoPartsStore"> for the parts page of your website.
If you have the option to use an html editor, use it. Otherwise, copy the code into Microsoft Notepad (it’s somewhere in your programs list) and make your edits there. When you’re done, copy from Notepad directly to your website. Do not copy to Microsoft Word as it will add additional and unwanted lines of code.
TIP: These tools will help you complete & test your code:
 Find your latitude & longitude HERE [http://goo.gl/dPSYvY]
 Test to see if your code works HERE [http://goo.gl/AhPN]

4. Footer

Completely underused, the area at the bottom of your website (footer) holds tremendous usability and SEO value.
First off – if you have a lot of html code in the header of your website - validation codes are most common – you can move it here. Doing so will reduce the amount of html coding that search engines have to read as they load your page making your page load faster - and the speed that a website page opens is an SEO element that affects ranking. Fast is good.
TIP: Test Your Page Speed [http://goo.gl/cr6YzA]
Additionally, adding things like your contact information here will make it easy for people to connect with you – no matter what page of your website they are on. This is especially true on mobile devices. Have multiple locations – consider using a split footer where one side is for the local or satellite business | the other for the main location.
As an added benefit, having your contact info on every page could also increase local indexation of your website by search engines, making it easier for local searchers to find you. A Trifecta win!

5. Blogging & Social Media

I’m not going too deep into blogging and social media, there’s already been so much published already on the topic, but suffice to say – you need to be actively creating content (story telling).
Most small businesses start to sweat at the thought of writing blog & social media posts, but here’s a simple strategy that will get your content marketing roaring like a 440 Six Pack.
 Gather 12 images (digital) that best illustrate your primary keywords and location
 Cool car part images and “name the part” quizzes also make great content
 Describe who, what, when, where, why, or how about the image
 Make sure your keyword is at the front of your title, description, and message
 Add a link back to the page of your website that this keyword belongs to (Step 1.)
 Use a scheduling program to automate these 12 posts to publish once a month
You now have one story to post every month. See, wasn’t that easy?
Now create 12 more over the next six months and add them to your queue and keep adding and writing. It’s literally that easy.
As to what blog platform to use - my blog is on WordPress, but SquareSpace [http://goo.gl/Numl] is also worth looking into (that’s what my website is on). My preference is to have a blog separate from a website to double a business’s marketing channels. You can also have an on-site (website) blog to curate the posts from your off-site blog, no harm there - just be certain to give new blog posts a few days to populate on search engines before re-publishing them.
TIP: Sendible [http://goo.gl/0VHS8] has a content marketing tool that automatically picks the best time to schedule your blog and social media posts based on when your readership is most likely to read them. It could take a few months for it to get a good read on your followers & friends, so hang in there - it works great. This tool also allows you to set up automatic re-posting, just be sure to write with an ever-greening tone so your copy doesn’t date itself and put a realistic end-date into play.

6. NAP Consistency

One of the largest local-SEO changes from 2012 to 2013 is the importance of properly formatted and correct business contact information.
Any reference of a business’s name, its physical address, local phone number, and website are referred to as a business citation. The elements tied to a business location (name, address, phone) being referred to as NAP. The pin-point accuracy of this dataset is critical for local marketing as it provides search engines validation of your location and contact information. Sounds simple enough but nearly 50% of small business have formatting or data errors in their citation NAP – their local visibility on search is sure to take a hit for it.
Consider this business:
Bob’s Mopar Parts, 10 Main St, Your Town, ST 09876, 123-456-7890
If there are online citations for 10 Main St, 10 Main Street #345, or 10 Main Street, Suite 345 – search engines will treat these as individual businesses not crediting them as being associated with Bob’s business. So Bob’s Mopar Parts received diluted market share as a result. Not a good thing at all.
Add to that, Bob’s Mopar Parts, Bob’s Mopar, and Bobs Mopar Auto Parts are also seen as different businesses. In all – there are 720 combinations of businesses NAP errors that can be made with the incorrect information cited above. Variations in your town name (i.e. N
Attleboro vs. N Attleboro) or inconsistencies in using your state name (MA, Mass, Massachusetts) would make matters even worse.
Discovering and correcting citation errors isn’t a glamorous task and it could take months to make any appreciable progress, but in the big picture, correcting your NAP data will pay huge dividends for your local visibility.
Automation (service company or software program) doesn’t work well for citation or link building. Not only are you likely to create duplicate listings (not good), but you cannot construct as detailed a listing using automation as you could by hand (typing). And you can ignore the “Your profile is 100% complete” directives – that usually just means you have completed 100% of the required minimum fields – there’s usually a lot more work to do.
SEO is in the details, and in a hyper-competitive market such as the auto parts industry, the small details could make the difference between #1 ranking on the first page and #11 ranking on the second-page. If you are considering subscribing to a local link building service like Yext, know that your listings will revert to the state before you hired them should you cancel your working agreement, and you are responsible for finding and correcting any duplicate listings their service creates.

7. Link Building Via Business Citation Building

You have most likely heard of the business review site “Yelp” and have probably heard that both Google and Bing offer directory listings for businesses, but did you know these review and business listing sites can actually give your business a significant boost in local visibility?
The local bump happens in a couple ways. These directory and search engine listings add a credibility element to your business by verifying the consistency of your NAP (name, address, and phone) and your keyword focus as taken from the narrative of the listing. Many of these listings also add a “category” element further classifying your business. Additional information like your hours of operation, and the types of payment you accept can also be noted and verified through these business listings (also referred to as backlinks because they all have a link pointing back to your business). NAP verification increases trust by the search engines of your business and in time, increase your online local visibility.
If citation building and link building pains your brain, think of it like filling a hot air balloon, it takes a lot of air to get the balloon off the ground and required frequent action to keep it afloat. When you run out of fuel or stop hitting the burners, the balloon comes back to ground. Now consider your marketing actions as if a single link from a directory listing, search engine, blog, or social media post were the equivalent of one cubic-foot of air. It would take a while before you started to see your ranking and visibility rise – but like the balloon, once it took off, it will remain flying high as long as it is tended to.
NOTE: Search engines cross-check your phone number with online phone directory listings as part of their business NAP verification process. For instance, it is well known that Google Maps verifies data with YP.com and other citation data providers, so be certain to only use the local phone number registered for your physical location and do not list a call-tracking number on your website or for any online citations. Also, don’t use scripts that show the local number but hide the call-
tracking one, showing a viewer different information than what search engines see is referred to as cloaking - and it’s a violation of search engine rules that if caught could earn a hefty penalty from search companies.
A properly formatted and optimized directory listing can also show up on search engines when someone is looking for the things you have to sell. Think of the times you have seen a LinkedIn, Yelp, YP, or Manta listing when you were searching for something. Well, if you had just one of those elements show up along with your website you would double your online market share! Have 2 and you would own 30% market share on the page. It is easy to assume that a business with the most (and most complete) listings on a local search result page is the local expert.
The trend of search engines to apply significant weight (called PageRank [http://goo.gl/lfAh]) to link building stresses its importance for local business discovery, trailing just behind the bumpers of keyword research and website SEO.
Sites with higher PageRank - show up higher in search.
All combined, focusing on these 7 elements of local SEO will raise your visibility on search engines and drive more traffic to your website. Progress takes several months, especially for link building (backlinking) – so hang in there, stay focused, and stick to your strategy all the while keeping a vigilant eye out to see how tomorrows changes in SEO can drive additional opportunities to your business.
Tags:
Local SEO company, dealer marketing, auto dealer marketing, local marketing
Hashtags:
#seo, #dealermarketing, #localmarketing, #localseo
Photo credit:
Sidewalk Branding Company
About:
Chris Sheehy - Founder of Rhode Island’s Sidewalk Branding Co., an award winning & globally published Local SEO company in Rhode Island. Sheehy is also an automotive industry veteran with a solid footing. Getting local businesses discovered since 1997 BG (before Google).

How to Use Hashtags to Increase Your Online Presence

Chances are you know what hashtags are, but you probably don’t use them. I know I’m guilty of neglecting hashtags.

So, why should you use hashtags? To start with, tweets with hashtags tend to get twice as much engagement as tweets without them. Plus, they can help you gain more followers, improve your reputation, and help your customers find information faster.

To show you how you can use hashtags to increase your online presence, I created an infographic that breaks down the correct way to use hashtags.

Click on the image below to see a larger view:

Click here to view an enlarged version of this infographic.

Conclusion

Adding keywords within your hashtags isn’t enough to increase your online presence. You need to make sure your hashtags are concise, conversational, and unique.

In addition to that, if you are not sure when to use hashtags, consider using them for contests, education, events, and news oriented topics. You can also monitor how well your hashtags are doing through tracking how many reposts, replies, and visits you get every time you use them.

Analyst: Mobile To Overtake PC For Local Search By 2015

• inShare444

Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs  in the US. It’s a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on the PC (per Google) it’s at least 40 percent of smartphone queries, also according to Google.

Mobile vs. PC Local Search Volumes (BIA/Kelsey Forecast)

Source: BIA/Kelsey (2012)

In some categories such as restaurants and travel, mobile searches represent 15 – 20 percent or more of overall query volumes. There can be no dispute that mobile search is now a huge phenomenon. But will it eclipse PC local search query volume in three years?

Let’s think out loud a bit, shall we?

50 Billion Local Queries on the PC

Using the Google 20 percent figure as a guide we can estimate that in March there were approximately 3.7 billion local searches on the PC in the US. In the absence of significant month over month growth that would translate into roughly 44 billion annual local queries coming through US search engines on the PC. But let’s assume modest local query growth and say there will be something on the order of 50 billion local queries on search engines in the US in 2012. (The number could be higher of course.)

Now, how many local-mobile search queries are there?

Answering that question depends on whether we include app-based local search (e.g., Yelp, Foursquare, yellow pages apps, Urbanspoon, etc.). Data from comScore, Localeze and 15 Miles finds that half of US mobile consumers (survey respondents) say they use apps at least some of the time for local search. However, we don’t know the frequency or the volume of in-app search because no one is really tracking those numbers today.

Let’s limit the definition of “mobile search” to browser based search through one of the major US search engines. However right now Google represents about 95 percent of the total “mobile search” market in the US.

12 Billion Local Queries on Smartphones

If there are roughly 125 million smartphone owners in the US (50 percent of 250 million mobile subscribers) and a large number of smartphone owners do an average 20 mobile searches per month, then there are something like 30 billion mobile searches annually right now in the US. (Let’s leave out tablets of this discussion.) If 40 percent of that overall mobile search volume is local, that would mean roughly 12 billion annual local searches on mobile devices. (This number may be slightly inflated today.)

We can assume growth in smartphone penetration and some growth in per-person mobile search query volume — though this assumption is a wild card for several reasons. It also may be a bit risky to assume that the percentage of overall mobile search that is local will continue to climb significantly, though it could reach 50 percent (which is what Microsoft says it is today on Bing).

Let’s assume smartphone penetration reaches 75 percent (say 187 million people) and each person does 40 mobile searches per month (doubling our per-person monthly query assumption). That translates into 90 billion annual mobile queries. If the local percentage of mobile search volume grows to 50 percent, we’d have 45 billion annual local-mobile search queries.

That event would get us pretty close to PC-mobile local search parity, if there weren’t dramatic PC local search growth. However a number of factual assumptions must come to pass. And the future is not guaranteed to look like the past.

What If the Paradigm Shifts?

The proliferation of mobile apps (whether native or HTML5) combined with the rise of Siri and other voice assistants could mean that browser-based mobile search doesn’t grow much over time. Google has cited figures of 130 percent year over year mobile search growth. But there are reasons to believe that the current PC search model on the smartphone small screen will be supplanted, at least to some degree in the relatively near future.

More than a couple of years out it all starts to get very speculative, since mobile is evolving so rapidly. However, regardless of whether the BIA forecast comes true in three years — I don’t think it can without including in-app search volumes — it’s certainly directionally accurate. And one day in the relatively near future it’s clear that people will be using mobile devices to find local information as much or more than their laptops and desktop PCs.

What does it mean “not set” in Google Analytics reports??

by Poornesh Mishra 

We always getting this question when we look at our Google Analytics keyword traffic and see “not set” or “not provided,” what does it mean?

When you see “not provided” in your keyword reports it tells you that someone was either logged into their Google account when they were searching or that they were using a browser that is specifically keeping their searches hidden (Chrome does this and calls it “incognito” mode).

In an effort to adopt stronger security standards as they move into the realm of personalized search results, in late 2011 Google started encrypting searches. When people are logged into their Google account, the URL changes from http to https and Google Analytics will still capture that your visit came from Google but it no longer tracks each individual query and the associated information.  The reason we have seen more and more “not provided” keyword traffic in our analytics is most likely due to the growth of people using Google accounts both personally as well as professionally.

Google describes the “not set” data as a placeholder when it does not have the information for a particular dimension. Many times, in our experience, it’s found in the Advertising reports. We love this support page created by Google Analytics that describes various items to review in order to get access to the “not set” data in your reports.

It has created quite a headache for many internet marketing professionals who rely on keyword data to understand site traffic and improve organic rankings and paid performance. A blog posted by Kissmetrics has been very helpful in learning new ways to “unlock” the “not provided” data set in your Google Analytics.

One of the most common ways marketers are overcoming this challenge is by utilizing Webmaster Tools and integrating that data with Google Analytics. This way you are able to get a better overview of keywords that are bringing people to the website under the “Search Queries” menu; as well as organic impressions your website receives for particular keywords.

What Are The Characteristics Of Penguin 2.0 & Why Should I Care?

If you’re a big brand owner, then you’ve likely dealt with the impact from Penguin 1.0 and its updates in the past. In particular, you may have discovered that your legacy backlink profile was causing serious ranking issues. If so, you’ve no doubt struggled to replace your old link building strategies with more effective, ethical and content-led ones.

Penguin 2.0 is a “more comprehensive” and “deeper targeting” (Matt Cutts) update that was aimed at explicitly black-hat techniques — so, if you’re still struggling from Penguin 1.0, your woes have just gotten worse.

Matt lays down the law.

Many big brand websites have been around for quite some time and have built up a hugely varied backlink profile over the years. This often includes links that, if built today, would be seen as black hat. These don’t technically fall afoul of Penguin 2.0, as Google has gone on record to state that they don’t retroactively apply spam penalties to sites for links that become black hat after a guideline change. (However, your rankings can still drop significantly due to these low-quality inbound links being given less weight.)

This makes auditing a big-brand backlink profile extremely difficult. You need to match up the date when a backlink was first detected to a record of what Google (and Bing, Yahoo!, Naver, Yandex and Baidu) stated was allowable at the time. That backlink “event calendar” can then be used for a more sophisticated bulk audit to identify offending backlinks where a penalty has been levied.

So, if you’ve been building links that are in contravention of Google Webmaster Guidelines, then you now have even more reason to stop. You also have a reason to start auditing anything that’s been built in the past that was unethical and disavow it.

For big brands, this also puts management of your SEO more closely in your control. It’s a lot easier for a single person to effect change through a Google account than for a group of internal content teams or development agencies to implement technical and on-page changes or develop stand-alone “content” sites that serve no purpose (other than to provide external links that would be more useful within the main site domain).

Sophisticated Backlink Analysis Started, What’s The Competitive Advantage?

Well, digging into Matt’s comments a bit further, there are a few standout items that will allow for optimisation. In particular:

• “Authorities” in niches will see their visibility increased in the next update round.

This impacts authority optimisation: the use of content strategies that leverage authoritative voices in your market are now much more valuable. This is an extension of Google’s doubling-down on gathering more social signals and incorporating them into Google’s main algorithm — beyond simply surfacing the benefits to logged-in searchers.

For big brands, this means that outsourcing your content creation entirely to PRs or SEM agencies will now be less effective. Instead, they will have to implement more integrated campaigns, centered around authoritative content that is set up to deliver SEO benefit to the site.

Project management will be more highly valued in agencies, as that’s the key to delivering this type of integrated content strategy. It bodes well for the health of the SEO industry as a whole that the authenticity of a voice is given further weight, as it incentivises the right behaviour for the benefit of the searcher (and therefore, the consumer).

To wrap up on the prevailing trend for big brand SEO: get control of your existing SEO efforts; and, if you haven’t already, get your team working to a coherent content strategy that uses your thought leaders’ own voices to get the good word out about your brand.

Then, follow that up with marketing and social promotion that serves a dual purpose for SEO and brand awareness.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.