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Georgijevic Developer Team

Georgijevic Developer Team

Stop Following the SEO Crowd

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A lot has been written on Google’s updates. So much has been written that I typically ignore new articles on the updates (can we really have anything else to say?). So I will offer you this promise: this article will not talk about animals that start with the letter “P”. Rather, I want to talk … Read more

Contact Form Plugin

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Contact Form Plugin by BestWebSoft is a sweet little plugin that integrates into your wordpress page, or post, by a shortcode. Very useful for blogs, no php or html knowledge required. It is relatively popular among wordpress users, I my self use it on couple of my clients websites, mostly for its multi language support.

Here are the plugin stats from wordpress.org:
Requires: 2.9 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Last Updated: 2012-10-23
Downloads: 373,521

See more of the plugin at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-plugin/

SEO Company Abuses Google+ Local, Infuriates Search Community

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SEO Company Fakes it on Google+ Local

Ever seen that show about the world’s dumbest criminals? Well, it turns out that some SEOs are just as clueless as the jokers featured on that program. It’s really cool to watch how fast the Internet moves sometimes, and the story I’m about to tell you is proof positive that in the search community, when you attack your own, word gets around.

Here’s What Went Down

It all started when Scott Hendison stumbled upon an SEO company called Auroin that had somehow been using a fake location on Google+ Local. He was surprised (to say the least) when he discovered that there was a glowing review from, um, him, right there with the false location info. He dug a little further and found out that many of his colleagues in the SEO world – heavy hitters such as Larry Kim, Jill Whalen, Ross Hudgens, and others – had all added their own near-perfect reviews to the company’s page as well. Each review scored Auroin’s services 29 out of 30 possible points, which added up to a nearly perfect score.

You do the math.

Hendison did, and he publically announced his findings on (where else?) Google+:

After Scott posted his warning on Google+, the announcement gained some lightning fast viral traction. SEOs came out of the woodwork to check out the faux reviews and crazy claims for themselves. I, for one, appreciated the snarky sentiment of the post. The Internet is no longer a cavern in which spammers can hide to make false claims and hatch seedy plans, and these creeps are finally being exposed – one bad guy at a time.

Here’s how the SEO community fought back.

Hell Hath No Fury like an SEO Scorned

After Scott’s post traveled to his extended Google+ circles and beyond, the SEO world mobilized. A swarm of angry SEOs assaulted the page over an impressive 48-hour period. They left searing reviews and terrible feedback, starting with Scott’s flagship contribution:

Others were equally bad, but also pretty funny:

Less than two days after the initial discovery, Auroin was officially toast. Big G stepped in and slapped the page with a big red “spam” badge and all the fake positive reviews were taken down. In related news, the negative reviews remain on the company’s page for your viewing pleasure.

How to Protect Your Identity on Google+ Local

Many SEOs voiced concern about how easy it was for these clowns to impersonate real people and leave fake reviews for the crooked company. Think about it – if you’ve spent years creating an online persona for yourself and you’ve built a brand and a following, how scary would it be to think that someone could capitalize on your good name right on your own turf… overnight?

Yeah, it freaks me out a little, too. That’s why I was happy to discover that Google+ has added a way you can check all the reviews you have left for others. Now, you can also sneak a peek at the reviews you friends have left for others by exploring their Google+ pages, too.

Google announced the new addition (more transparency – yay!) right on Google+, and in the announcement, there were instructions to help users navigate to the appropriate section of friends’ profiles to make it happen. Simply click on the “about” tab and scroll to the section titled “Local”. You’ll find a number representing the total reviews they’ve left, and it’s linked so you can see each review for yourself if you ever so desire. This is great because you can discover any bogus reviews and manage ones you left yourself.

What is even scarier, however, is that the offending party in this case created fake G+ accounts for all the “people” it used to write the fake reviews. So what’s to stop Google from mistaking someone else for you? Not much, as it turns out. But Authorship may play a key role in weeding out the imposters as Google becomes more sophisticated. This is definitely one case where you do want Google knowing more about you.

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/seo-company-abuses-google-local-infuriates-search-community/

Former Google Search Quality Team Member Reveals All

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If you think you have heard it all from the Google front, think again.

In today’s post, you will learn about an ex-Google employee who decided to share some of his experience at Google and give webmasters some juicy insider tips.

On his site, James Norquay landed an exclusive interview with Andre Weyher, a former member of Matt Cutts’ search quality team. Wehyer is no longer employed by Google and has recently moved to Australia. He worked with the AdWords and Adsense team for two years and moved to Search Quality soon after.

Wehyer mentioned he enjoyed working with Matt Cutts and the team atmosphere was fantastic. He liked Search Quality because there were fewer people and he gained a wealth of knowledge while he got to “investigate the deep and dark corners of the internet, keeping the search index clean from spam and blackhat SEO.”

What were Wehyer’s daily duties?

Wehyer was in charge of content quality and back link profiles. He assessed the quality of web pages and applied penalties if needed. He also created spam reports on specific markets.

He stated a fact we already know:

“The teams main focus is fighting spam and keeping Google’s search results clean so that the user gets the best possible experience. This is a very important thing for Google if you think about it. Google’s entire earning model relies on the good quality of the organic results, if people didn’t trust organic, they would stop using search and not click on ads anymore.”

Wehyer, when asked about Google’s latest slurry of algo changes, said there are many more to come. Google is “fed up” with violators and those who do not follow the guidelines.

In Wehyer’s own words, a webmaster would be “out of his mind to still rely on techniques that were common practice 8 months ago. Purchasing links was always risky but resembled a game of roulette, you could get caught but many people also got away with it. Today it’s not a question IF you get caught, it’s merely a question of WHEN you’ll get caught.”

Another part of the interview caught my attention. Wehyer said this statement…

“Relevance is the new PR.”

With this statement, he is alluding to people trying to get links from high PR sites and how this method is outdated.  Today, it is more advantageous to acquire links from related sites and the high PR is just the cherry on top of the cake.

In the next part of the interview, Norquay asked Wehyer what concepts he used to identify a spammy site while working at Google .

Wehyer said he divided this topic into categories:

On-page signals – Keyword stuffing, hiding elements under the CSS, keywords the same color as the background, etc.

Content quality – Google is not interested in the nature of your content, but more in its authenticity. Poor content could be identified as scraped, synonymized, or poorly written.

Backlink profile – A few questions Wehyer would use to determine a spammy link profile:

How many total links are there?
What is the quality of the pages the links come from?
Are the pages real or just existing to host links?
What are the anchors?
What is the commercial vs. non-commercial ratio of the anchors?

Wehyer said he used a logical thought process when determining if linking profiles were spammy. He imagined what the anchors would look like if the linking happened naturally and then compared this with the site’s actual linking profile. (not entirely scientific, don’t you think?)

On-Page Tactics

Wehyer went on to discuss the most important on-page optimization elements. He says most people overlook these strategies but they are very important.

  • Choose a good domain which is a great head start. Valuable domains are often expensive.
  • Add the basic elements such as titles, descriptions and H1/H2 headers.
  • No more than two commercial keywords in your titles
  • Focus on content quality

According to Wehyer, “Try to work on your website as if SEO was not part of your plan, create content out of a sincere interest and enthusiasm for the topic of your page. This is what Google and your users want form you, I know it’s tempting to think about financial gain but remember that Google’s primary concern is valuable information!”

Off-Site Tactics

Wehyer recommends staying away from anything automatic or your website will be at risk.

  • Link building has changed. It is now focused on building relationships with webmasters who are related to your industry.
  • Directories are still valid link opportunities. Poor quality directories are still out, but moderated, niche directories are still worth researching.
  • Focus on the quality of the links – According to Wehyer, “getting 3 links from authentic pages will do much more than 1000 links from splogs, so invest your time into getting quality, not quantity.”

The Kicker

Here is one of the most interesting statements to come out of Wehyer’s mouth:

…if you want to please Google with your SEO, then forget about SEO. Google wants you to create a site as if you don’t intend to manipulate their algo, but as if you are dinging because your passionate about the topic of your site. If you really are, your content will be great and your target audience will love you, this will do the best possible SEO you can imagine.

…if you want to please Google with your SEO, then forget about SEO?

Even Cutts recommends sound SEO principles. I think Wehyer was referring to manipulative SEO here. Maybe he should have clarified that.

Wehyer concluded with mention of his new project NetComber which will be a fingerprinting website that uses over 3,000 factors to determine if websites are owned by the same person. Search engines use this data to fight spam and now this tool will be available for users to check the quality of a directory, get ideas for potential linking partners, spy on the competition, and more. The tool is currently free to use.

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/former-google-search-quality-team-member-reveals-all/

WordPress Statistics Plugin

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WordPress Statistics Plugin, or short WP Statistics is a very useful and easy to use plugin to keep track of your blog visitors. The programming behind the plugin is very simple, witch is the thing that makes it so genius. I use it on all my sites, and all my client sites. It has proven to be stable and reliable.

I did made a very small contribution to it by translating the plugin on Serbian language for use, of course in Serbia an the ex Yugoslavia region.

See more of the plugin at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-statistics/

Akismet

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What is Akismet?

Akismet is a hosted web service that saves you time by automatically detecting comment and trackback spam. It’s hosted on our servers, but we give you access to it through plugins and our API.

How can I use Akismet?

There are a couple of ways:

The easiest is through pre-built plugins. WordPress is our most popular plugin, but there are over 20 others to choose from.

The other way you can access Akismet is through our API. The API gives you direct access to the Akismet service. In fact, it’s what all of the plugins are built on.

Whether you use a plugin or the API, you’ll first need to register an API key with us. The API key is a string of letters and numbers that acts like a username/password, allowing you to login to the Akismet service. You should never give your API key to anyone, as this will give them access to your account.

How does it work?

Each time a new comment, trackback, or pingback is added to your site it’s submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down. As a result, you don’t have to waste your time sorting through and deleting spammy comments from your blog.

5 things every blogger should know about spam

1. Web spam is different from email spam.
Email spammers want you to buy their product. You are the target of the ad contained in each email spam you receive. Comment/web spammers want your readers to buy their product. You (the blogger, author, moderator) are not the target.

2. Web spammers are social engineers.
Email spammers write messages to get your attention. Comment spammers write messages to escape your attention. They want you to believe they are real bloggers, real people, writing real comments, so you’ll approve the comment and publish it on your site. They use flattery, appeal to your good nature, and simply lie in order to convince you to give them the benefit of the doubt.

3. Web spammers are basically advertising on your blog..
..and they’re keeping all of the profits. They’re not even asking your permission first. Right now someone is offering to sell links from your blog to anyone willing to pay a few dollars (or a few cents). If your blog is well known, it may even be listed by name, with backlinks for sale at a set price.

4. It’s all about the backlinks.
Web spammers are selling links from your blog to their clients. They do this to game the search engines and trick your readers into visiting dubious web sites. Their clients are sometimes seemingly harmless, but are often peddling fake pills, porn, scams and malware. Sometimes they’ll use “buffer sites” – that is, innocent looking web pages intended to disguise the fact that they’re really advertising something more sinister.

5. Spammers employ humans.
Not all spam is delivered by spambots. Spammers are increasingly using humans to write and post comments by hand. Typically they are exploiting low-paid workers in internet cafes, schools and factories. Sometimes they are viral marketers paid to promote a new product. Either way they are trying to exploit your blog for their profit – and hoping to do it without you noticing.

How can Akismet help?
Akismet monitors millions of blogs and forums, watching the methods and tricks used by spammers in real time. We know all about their spambots, comment factories, buffer sites and social engineering tricks. Akismet will use this knowledge to warn you when a spammer – automated or human – tries to sneak a spam comment past you. So if you notice a comment in your spam folder from someone you don’t know, or linking to a web site you’ve never seen before, take a good look at it before you hit the Unspam button: in all likelihood, Akismet put it there for a reason.

Source: http://akismet.com/how/

How to Score Guest Post Opportunities out the Wazoo

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guest_post

The last wave of Google changes has left everyone in the world of SEO with bewildered brains and sweaty palms. We’re trying to regroup, make sense of the madness, and scrambling to create another cohesive SEO strategy for our websites. But in the aftermath of all these algo updates (and promises of plenty more to come), is more SEO really the best strategy?

Another writer here at Site-Reference thinks maybe the answer is no, and she’s compiled a killer list of alternative marketing channels for your website. One of the methods she suggests is guest posting, which we’ve discussed here quite a bit. Guest posting is the single best way to beef up your backlink profile at this point. That’s probably why it seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to wrangle as many backlinks from high quality sites as possible.

The frenzy has left us with a sort of “market saturation” situation. Regardless of the niche, well-known bloggers and site owners are now dealing with inboxes full of guest post requests every day – and they’re starting to shut off. Some are even charging hefty fees for what they’re calling “sponsored posts”. Yes, this is a paid link situation, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Today, I want to focus on ways in which you can bypass responses of “no” to your guest post queries by building relationships with other bloggers in your niche. More than that, though, I want to reveal to you how to get leaders in your niche to come to you asking for guest post contributions.

I’ve talked about the power of community-building frequently over the past few months (check out my posts here,here, and here, for example), and for good reason. The practice will hand you the virtual keys to the kingdom if you’re serious about growing your site, and once you’ve become a force to be reckoned with in your niche, pitching guest post queries will quickly become a thing of the past.

Write Great Stuff

It doesn’t matter how much you schmooze with others in your niche, if your website doesn’t have killer content, there’s no real incentive for other webmasters to want you writing stuff for their sites. When you pitch a guest post query, the first thing the site owner will do is check out your website. If your content leaves something to be desired, you’re unlikely to receive further contact about the deal (unless it’s a paid post situation, in which case it can get pricy in a hurry).

Even worse, if your site is full of articles with terrible grammar, atrocious spelling, or even just plain lack of insight and creativity, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Whatever’s on your website is what your peers will expect on theirs, so make sure your content is killer. Here’s a little help with that.

Network, Network, Network

When you’re working to build your website, creating a supportive community should be high on your list of priorities. Why? Well, once you’ve found the key players in your niche, you can leverage their traffic by way of guest posts without needing to email site owners cold.

Instead, comment on their posts. Make your presence known. Reach out by email, Twitter, or any other venue to establish and nurture a real relationship. Then, when it feels right, reach out and ask about guest posting on the site. Once you’ve been accepted into your community, you’ll be surprised how many people will say yes.

Promote Others Like Crazy

It’s the golden rule, and it works: you need to give in order to receive – selflessly. It’s vital to establish relationships with others in your niche, yes, but for optimal results, consider taking it one step further. After you’ve made connections, begin looking for ways to help your fellow webmasters with their own site promotion efforts. For example, try tweeting a handful of their posts each week. Create a “best of” piece with dofollow links to posts you enjoyed within your network.

Are you good at something – website design, SEO, plugin support? Seek out some small task you can perform for website owners and offer to help. You may have the chance to ask for a guest post as repayment. Think creatively and maintain a helpful mindset instead of an opportunistic one. This will allow you to come from a genuine place, and other webmasters will appreciate that. In fact, you’ll likely begin to see other websites linking to your content naturally in acts of reciprocity for all your kind deeds and support, so the need to guest post will eventually lessen as you network more and more.

Funny how that works, right?

As an aside this week, I’d like to point you to a new Google Webmaster Help video that was uploaded to YouTube on October 9. Ironically, the video tackled guest blogging for links. Here’s the stance taken by Matt Cutts, which I’ve summarized in my own words:

Guest blogging Is good (yay), but low-quality guest blogging is bad. Cutts specifically points to 200-300 word articles on low-quality websites. Keep your content rich and make sure you choose websites that are sporting some PageRank to host your guest posts. Remember Google judges backlinks based on the quality of the sites they come from, so make your choices count.

Google approves, everybody! That means an onslaught of new guest post seekers will be stalking the ‘net over the next few months – you can take that to the bank. Site owners will be guarding their space on the Web like jealous lovers, so community-building is now the primary strategy going forward if you want to get the backlinks that count.

So what are you waiting for? Start connecting!

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/how-to-score-guest-post-opportunities-out-the-wazoo/