It’s an aspect that almost every SEO company and practitioner has been unsure of for a long time, namely how Google assigns SEO value to the comments posted on websites? This is another piece of the very large, secretive and complicated puzzle that is the Google SEO Algorithm. Google is rumoured to have recently purchased and implemented 3^rd party software which allows it to better allocate SEO value to all comments on websites. This looks to us like another attempt to force people away from Facebook towards using Google+ as their preferred online social media platform.

The main problem for Google in the past was deciding which comments were legitimate and which could be considered “comment spam”. This 3^rd party system would allow Google to assign less value to comments that would be seen as manipulative and more value to “useful” comments. Google would track the overall Google activity of the author of each comment by tracking their Gmail, Google+ and Youtube usage. Commenters would have to build up their credibility with Google to have their comments seen as having SEO weight.

It goes without saying then that we have seen the end of “NoFollow” tags on comments and as long as Google sees the authors of comments as credible, link juice will be passed on to the sites which they link to in the comments. Google will however limit the value of excessive links from legitimate commenters over a short period of time, so commenters would be advised to use this tactic sparingly. The highest value would be given to links that are on-topic, haven’t been posted an inordinate amount of times and have good click-through rates.

So it would appear that Google has created a very enticing commentary system that webmasters should definitely consider implementing on their websites, although it’s way too early to say if Google will give adopters of its commentary system preferential treatment in their algorithm. We feel that the SEO implications of this system are significant enough to warrant adoption. Promoting Google+ does seem to be the priority of Google at the moment, and this system proves that point.

We have written quite a bit about White Hat vs Black Hat in the past, in case you want to go have a look.

People have been using black hat SEO techniques to artificially manipulate organic rankings for a long time. And it worked. These individuals did everything from using invisible text stuffed with keywords to building massive link farms. The SEO professionals that strive to perform white hat Search Engine Optimisation and sticking to Google’s guidelines have often felt that their success is somewhat unfair. Sites with obvious black hat SEO often outranked their white hat competitors. To be fair, Google has improved this over the years. In the late 90s you could get away with basically anything. However, although the ethical route does pay off with hard work, even today certain black hat strategies still work.

Could it be that the game might finally change for good?

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team recently made the following statement:

“What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working on in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.“

A popular example of Google’s recent crackdown is the link network, buildmyrank.com. The site has openly admitted defeat and offered a refund to their customers after Google deindexed the majority of their network.

I am not sure if Google will phase everything in gradually. We have, however, seen some surprising results during the last month. One of our clients’ sites was competing with a website that was using obvious black hat SEO techniques. This site dropped out of the SERPs completely a few weeks ago. We have also seen quite a few dramatic positive shifts for our clients, possibly this is due to Google penalising all the black hat competitors and therefore shifting white hat sites up the rankings.

All this cracking down proves that you need to be very careful about anything you do. You might get penalised even if your intention was not to be black hat. Be sure to read up on Googles guidelines and remember that if you always strive to optimise for the user, you can feel safe. Google has sent a message to the webmaster tools interface of sites that violate their guidelines. If you find that a site you manage might possibly be one of these, take the steps to remove all suspicious SEO activity. Remove bad backlinks where possible, remove spammy content and meta data.

If you’re like me you hate it when you have to scroll down endlessly on a webpage for that piece of content that you were searching for. We expect the important content to be at the top of a webpage above the page fold, and yet many sites have adverts and other worthless info here. In Google’s quest to make the web as user-friendly as possible, they have also picked up on this and have made an algorithm change to counter it.

Many sites out there are in existence to make money and one of the most common ways to do this is through advertising. Google understands this, especially as it is thanks to advertising that Google has become the internet giant that it is. However there are sites that go overboard in this respect with big blocks of ads above the fold. Google says that less than 1% of searches will be noticeably be affected by this algorithm change, but webmasters and designers alike should take note of this. Using this method of adverts first and content later could negatively affect a website’s Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Google stated that webmasters who believed that their websites were negatively affected by this should consider how the website uses the above-the-fold area and whether the content on the page is hidden or otherwise hard for users to read quickly. The type of device used to view the website is also a factor. Webmasters are encouraged to use Google’s Browser Size tool to see how their website is viewed on screens of different sizes and resolutions. A webpage’s content might be easily accessible on a PC, but hidden on a mobile device.

The best advice is to keep the advertising near the bottom and the sides of the webpage and the content near the top. This will also help the Googlebot read / index your website quicker.

In true Google philosophy and all in the name of making the web a friendlier, easier place to be, this is just one of the 500+ changes that Google has undertaken to make to their algorithm in 2012 .

As I sit down to write this article, it occurs to me that this will conclude an unintentional 3 part article series on the impact of social search (the newly introduced Google algorithm basically) and my thoughts on the future of SEO. This topic has grabbed my attention since the start of 2012 and although I plan on continuously monitoring it, this will be my last post on the topic. I do however plan on reflecting back on this article in about a year’s time.

As mentioned in my previous post(s), it seems that Search Plus Your World has caused quite an uproar. When Twitter accuses Google of manipulating search results and not having the best interest of users at heart, you should take notice. In this article I will attempt to wrap up my thoughts on this issue.

Will Google Plus survive?

I have not touched this issue before in depth, but it has been lingering in my mind for quite a while now. Last month Larry Page announced that Google Plus reached 90 million users. Facebook has about 800 million users. To the casual observer this might seem that Google Plus is gaining significant ground on the social giant (it has managed to get more than 10% of the amount of users in less than a year!).

For the following reasons, I do not think that this is the case…

There are a few problems and gripes I have with Google Plus. As much as I love Google and what they do, I’ll quote a post I read from one of my ‘friends’ on Google Plus (just before he abandoned using the Social Network) : “I do not want all my eggs in one Google basket”. This however, might be a personal thought process and not the consensus of the majority. What bugs me personally though, is that although I have a significant number of people in my circles – my news feed is basically empty. When I scroll down for a couple of seconds, I already start seeing posts from weeks ago. I am sure many people will echo my conclusion : there is nothing going on on Google Plus. You might be asking yourself – ‘Why do they then have 90 million users?”. The answer is simple. Because every person with a gmail account got signed up to Google+ automatically when it officially launched. I have a Google Plus account, I am part of the 90 million, do I ever use it? The answer is no. Technically, there is nothing wrong with Google Plus – but when no one uses it because there are no others using it, it creates a vicious cycle. I predict that Google Plus will die slowly (although I hope not). Facebook is just too big and established.

The only saving grace will be if Google Plus fills a different segment of the market – perhaps a social network focused on businesses…

SEO in 2012 and beyond

One cannot predict what changes Google will make to their algorithm in the future, perhaps links will play a smaller role, perhaps social search will dominate or (as discussed above) Google Plus will fade away.

I cannot foresee search evolving into something inherently social unless Facebook, Twitter etc decides to play along and open up all public content for Google to index. This will in turn depend on Google to position results in an unbiased manner. If and when this happens on large scale, SEO will be a totally different ballgame. As I have mentioned in the past, SEO ultimately boils down to ensuring that a website is optimised for the user. This aspect will never go away. Websites will always need relevant quality content, the site will always have to be user friendly and designed in such a way to deliver a great user experience.

At this point in time however, an SEO specialist cannot ignore the social aspect of search, it should benefit your SEO client noticeably if you include social in your SEO efforts.

During the last month, I have been keeping a keen eye on Google’s new approach to search. In my previous article, The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO, I mentioned that the decision to include Google+ social content in search results might not be welcomed by everyone. This especially stems from the fact that it seems as if Google places priority to Google+ information in its search results. One can argue that Google is entitled to include Google+ content, since they own the search engine. Also, Google mentioned that they would index data from Facebook and Twitter if they made their platforms open. One thing that is certainly sure however, is that Google has received significant backlash because of the decision.

Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

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