JUNE 2012 SEO UPDATE

July 17, 2012

June updates included two Panda updates, version 3.7 and 3.8, a first Penguin refresh, but there hasn’t been much chatter about those updates meaning they were probably pretty minor. Google did confirm that links still carry more weight and are more important to your core rankings than social media. Also, there are no “No Follow Penalties” from Google for including several no follow links on a site.

Other updates in the search engine blog-o-sphere included talk about how to manage multiple listings or locations on your website without having too much duplicate content. For example, many of our clients own businesses with multiple locations throughout the Metroplex. A question we are often asked is, “Can we use the same information on each of our unique location pages?” Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer at Google, leading the webspam team, says that rather than repeat the whole history of the company or a long pitch, it is best to just list the address and contact information for the location and 2-3 sentences about what is unique to that location. This will prevent Google from flagging your site for too much duplicate content.

Google Product Search has now become Google Shopping. Google is for the first time discontinuing their free product shopping search in exchange for a “paid inclusion model.” A paid inclusion model is “a model where companies pay to be listed, but payment does not guarantee that they rank well for any particular terms.” Product listings will now need to be created through Google AdWords in campaigns for Google Shopping. If you are already running Product Listing Ads, then you will be familiar with the process because Google Shopping campaigns will be very similar, so similar in fact, that once Google Shopping is fully released, Product Listing Ads will be phased out. Google Shopping will offer benefits of allowing merchants to advertise their special deals and offers as well as present potential customers with better quality pricing information.

One change to the shopping experience you may notice right away is Google has shifted shopping results to the top right of the page as opposed to the top of the listings. This will help keep organic results at the top of the page. See the below for an example of a search I did for “laptop computers.”

PPC Update

Online Marketing continues to be a growing and evolving space. It’s been reported that in the 1st Quarter of 2012 online advertising spend increased 12%, a healthy growth rate. This should come as no surprise, if you’re reading this summary then you’ve already made online marketing a priority in your efforts and chances are your competition has as well.

Globe Runner Update