10 Basic Tips to Keep your Website or Blog Safe from any Google Panda/ Penguin Updates

Google Trends Tool for Blogging and SEO for Webmasters. 5 Tips why Bloggers should use it Frequently!

A 7 From Heaven Basic On-Page SEO Elements Explained

I have performed On-Page SEO Analysis on hundreds of company websites at the market leader for 'Do-it for me' websites in Switzerland. Here I want to share my experience by explaining the 7 most important On-Page SEO factors you should be dead sure to get right.

First of all, there is On-Page and Off-Page SEO. When you are starting out, you will find out that in short term you have full control over your On-Page SEO, whereas Off-Page SEO is an activity that rather pays off in the long term. In the first stage, you want to make sure that your On-Page SEO is THE killer, because your future results can be depended dramatically on how well your website 'enters the market'.

Here is a quick breakdown of my 7 Most Important On-Page SEO Factors which I will explain in more detail:

1. Domain
2. URL Structure
3. Page Title
4. Meta Description
5. h1, h2, h3 titles
6. Image alt & title attribute
7. Linking to internal pages

1. Domain

Your domain name is your brand name and therefore the strongest element in SEO. In the past, people would often choose keyword domain names, because it had a huge impact on the rankings. These times are gone - Google has changed. Today it is not enough to just have a domain like www.seo-tips.com to rank high for the keyword 'SEO Tips'. Try it out yourself by typing it in Google. On which page do you see a domain containing the word 'SEO' & 'Tips'?

Regarding domain names, think of it as a chance to brand yourself. The domain is the address that you are going to present to a lot of people. If your customer asks how your homepage is called, you don't want to say: It's www.seo-company-usa.com. You will not rank high for 'SEO Company in USA' because of it. Chances are high that it will make it more difficult because you forgot about Off-Page SEO. Branding gets more backlinks than a spammy url.

Tip: Choose a domain with a high recognition value. Many times a brand-keyword combination are used. For example: www.spiceupseo.com. The brand is 'Spice Up' and keyword 'SEO'.

2. URL Structure

When you have chosen an appropriate domain name, you want to make sure that your subpages have a good url structure. Let's say you are an Online Marketing Agency called SpiceUp, and are going to create a subpage listing your On-Page SEO offers. A good url for this subpage would be www.spiceup.com/on-page-seo. The proper use of keywords in the url (after domain.com) are a critical success factor.

It gets a bit more interesting when you have more services to offer. Let's say you offer On-Page SEO, Linkbuilding, Social Media Marketing, AdWords campaign etc. In this case you are well adviced to group all similar pages in a subpath called '/services/'. The url of your subpage 'linkbuilding' would be www.spiceupseo.com/services/linkbuilding.

Google loves good site structures. It saves him time to index your subpages. Please do him a favour and he may prioritize your pages.

Tip: For subpages make sure that the variable that will be appended to the url summarizes the content of the page and sound SEO friendly. For example: www.spiceupseo.com/social-media-marketing where Social Media Marketing is the service you offer.

3. Page Title

The page title is both an attention grabber and a very important SEO element.

First of all, when a user makes a Google search, Google wants to return him a result list within 1/8 of second. To decide which webpage to list first, Google will often display one that has the search query in the page title.

The second reason is the stand out effect. Imagine you are walking through a book store, looking for a good SEO book. Which one will you touch first? Probably the book with the best title. A title that grabbed your attention. A title that is different than all others. The same is true in the SERP (search engine results page). If you get 10 results, will you always click on the first result? I don't think so. And even if. When the first page you clicked on, do you assume that you will find your desired information on the webpage in the second result? Google can never deliver all users a result page with all webpages in perfect order.

Tip: Include the keyword you are optimizing for in the page title. Don't forget to make it stand out from all the others. Make it clickable!

4. Meta Description

When you look at several books, you will notice that most of them have a subtitle as a teaser. In the SERP, the text below the Page Title is called the Meta Description. See an example below:

When you ask a book-seller to recommend you 5 SEO books that he has never seen himself, he would go to the stock and choose 5 books with the most appealing Title and Subtitle. Search engines may be no different. If Google was lazy, he would just take 5 webpages from its index that have a good Page Title and Meta Description combination.

Keep in mind that you don't only need to fill in relevant keywords in the Meta Description, but also try to make it appealing to users. The key ability needed here, is writing for both the search engines and people.

Meta Description are not directly important to search engine rankings. It's the CTR (Click-through-Rate) that Google also uses to determine rankings. In worst case, your webpage will drop from rank 1 when the webpages below you get much higher CTR's. That's why you need to write catchy Descriptions because a higher CTR -> positive effect on your ranking.

Tip: Search the query you want to optimize your webpage for on Google. Look at the Meta Description of the high rankers. Ask yourself which one stands out and why? What do you need to write to appear clickable? Then write a better one.

5. h1, h2, h3 titles

Just like a book, a webpage uses headings to intelligently structure the content. Content is still king, but please don't forget to make the content readable for your users. If the user has difficulty reading, he will not share the post, and not even read it.

Google also uses headings to make their job as a 'result list returner' easier. As the

html tag is the first level heading of a webpage, it puts the most value to the h1, then h2, h3 etc. Google recommends to only use one h1-tag per webpage. For a blog post, you can set the Post Title as a h1.

tags would be good for further headings within the blog post &

tags can be used for other subtitles or navigation titles.

Here is an example of a solid On-Page SEO Structure:

Tip: Only use one h1 title! On the homepage, it could be your header. On subpages, I recommend to use it for Post Titles. As always in SEO, your titles should be SEO friendly and attractive to read. Use h2 to structure your post for better readability.

6. Image alt & title attribute

A lot of people forget or don't take their time to write proper image alt & title attributes.

Here is a short explanation what the difference between alt-tags and title-tags is:

The image title attribute is the text that shows up when you hover over the image. Whereas alt is short for alternative. The image alt attribute is the text that will be shown when the user has turned off images or the browser doesn't display images.

Tip: For the title attribute, choose a title that describes the image and delivers even more information to the user. The alt attribute should describe what would have been there if the user has turned images off. Most often these two attributes have the same text, which is ok.

7. Linking to internal pages

We talk about internal linking when we create a link from one webpage to another webpage of a domain. Internal links are passing link juice to the target link. Let's say you have a Page A that has a PageRank of 2. All links from Page A will be evenly distributed to the pages linked to, but only those links that are in 'dofollow'. You can specify the link attribute by writing . If you write nothing regarding 'rel', the default is always rel='dofollow'.

Internal links are also useful from a usability point of view, especially for blogs. Let's be honest. Blogging is a mess. One day you write about Linkbuilding, the next day you write about How to Write Better Blog Posts and for the next week you write a series about Facebook Marketing. Who will find your post about linkbuilding after a few months?

Tip: Create internal links to your old awesome posts. You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find your most successful blog posts. It's hard to see the articles you've work on fading away. So take your time to link back to it!

Content is King

You have heard this a 1000 times and now you will hear it again.

Getting these 7 Tips right is good, but not enough. You still have to write quality content. The point is to create great content for your readers and at the same time optimize your On-Page SEO Elements wherever possible.

General Writing Tip: Do your reasearch first. For which keyword do you want to optimize? Write it down and add some synonyms in a short list. Put this list away and write the content without worrying about SEO. Focus on creating killer content first. When you're done, come back and check where you can add keywords & synonyms. Change your boring Post Title to a snappy title. Publish.

Content is king, nuff said. And there is more to come from us!

Have a nice day
Stephan Tchen

How To Add Google Analytics To Blogger

Google Analytics is the most popular and in-dept service for tracking your blogs stats.Google Analytics is available for all blog platforms and websites but as it is a Google service like Blogger it's extra easy for Blogger users.In fact Analytics is built into all Blogger blogs you just need to add your Analytics Web Property ID via the blogs settings.

In this post I will show you how to set up your analytics account and connect it to your blog.

Finding Your Property ID

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Surprising Google Page Rank Update December 2013

In January 2011 I wrote a post covering how Google had updated Page Rank for the first time in eight months.Today I can confirm Google have updated Page Rank this time there has been a 10 month gap since the last update.However while the 8 month gap in 2011 was surprising because in previous years we would see three updates yearly this time it's actually surprising we got the update this side of of the new year.

Followers of Matt Cutts the head of Google Webspam might have seen Matt had predicted there would be no update at least until next year.In fact some had predicted Page Rank was dead.

Check Your Page Rank Here

For those of you looking to check if your Page Rank has changed you can use our Free Page Rank Checker Here.

What Is Page Rank ?

For those who are unfamiliar with page rank check out the video below with the aforementioned Matt Cutts doing the explaining.
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How Does Google’s Hummingbird Update Affect Bloggers ?

Guest Post - Our host is Louise Harper, here Louise will run you through he latest Google algorithm update and how it will affect your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

The Internet is agog with talk of the Hummingbird update so when the guys at Spice up your Blog suggested I cover this as a topic I jumped at the chance as it would give me a chance to fully understand what it is all about and hopefully help educate you, the reader. I quickly realised I needed some expert assistance if I was to unearth what the Hummingbird was all about so I called a ‘techy’ friend of mine who works at a creative agency in London. Big thanks to Ben for his time and I hope you enjoy this article and learn everything you could need to know about Google’s latest update.

On August 30, 2013 Google launched a brand new search algorithm called Hummingbird. For those of you who don’t know, an algorithm is what Google uses to sort through websites in order to return the best answers to search queries. In a way you could think of it like a spell. It combines lots of different elements in order to concoct the desired results. In this post we will explain the purpose of Hummingbird and how it will affect us bloggers.

Google named their new algorithm Hummingbird as the two have speed and precision in common.

Not another algorithm!

Oh yes, we’re afraid so. As you may already know, Google regularly designs new algorithms like Hummingbird, Panda and Penguin in order to improve the quality of the search results they provide. Although Panda and Penguin lead to many changes for website owners and bloggers, Google claims that Hummingbird may possibly be the biggest algorithm change since the early 2000s!

One of the best analogies of Hummingbird we have come across is a comparison to a car engine. Whilst the old car engine may have worked fine, it wasn’t offering the efficiency and output that a newer engine could offer. If you think of the old algorithm as the old engine and Hummingbird as the new engine, you’ll get the hang of where we are going with this.

If you are wondering what has happened to the much talked about Panda and Penguin, then you will be pleased to know they are still being used as part of Hummingbird. Basically Hummingbird is making use of the parts of old algorithms which worked well and has replaced the parts that were not up to scratch. Google claims that the new algorithm is capable of serving the search demands of today, rather than what was required a decade or so ago.

Launch date
Google carries out the act of being sneaky pretty well and appeared to get away with launching Hummingbird back in August with us being none the wiser until early October.

Purpose of Hummingbird
Google designed Hummingbird to deal with ‘long tail’ search queries which are becoming more and more widely used. Developments in voice activated technology have influenced the need for search engines to be able to handle more conversational-like queries. Whilst it is still in the early stages of handling long tail and conversational search queries, the aim is that Hummingbird will be able to return high quality search results that will have geographical relevance to a user’s location.


Benefits of Hummingbird
They key benefit of Hummingbird lies in its ability to handle conversational search queries. The rise in mobile Internet usage over the last few years has influenced more and more people to speak searches conversationally, rather than just typing phrases. Hummingbird has been designed to focus on the meaning of the words spoken to it, matching pages to the meanings, rather than just matching words. By considering all of the words in a search query, rather than single keywords, it should be able to produce more accurate and relevant results.

An increasing number of people now perform searches using the voice activated technology on their smartphones.

Changes to SEO
New algorithms usually send website owners and content creators into a state of panic, however so far there have not been any reports that suggest we should dramatically change what we are doing. Google’s guidelines for creating unique, high quality content have remained the same. Social signals are also still extremely important, so keep this in mind when creating content for your blog. You should be aiming to produce interesting and engaging blog posts that will captivate readers’ attention and influence them to share it with their peers via social media.

Things for bloggers to keep in mind
In light of the new algorithm and improvements in conversational search queries, bloggers should be aiming to tailor their content to meet the basic needs and intentions of readers. In order to be able to produce unique content that addresses the needs of users, you need to have a clear idea of who you are targeting with your content and what they require from you. If you want to stand a better chance at showing up in search results you need to present yourself as an expert in your field. Whilst other Google signals will play a role in this, the ability to create in-depth content on a particular subject can also influence your authority as a blogger.

Conclusion
Although many bloggers and content creators fear new algorithms, we should actually embrace them as they help to filter out spam and ensure that users receive quality answers to their search queries. As bloggers we should be looking to adapt our keyword strategies for conversational queries and focus on producing authoritative, relevant content in order to keep up with the requirements of not only Hummingbird, but our readers too.

Have you had any first hand experiences of Hummingbird or noticed any drastic changes be that positive or negative? Let us know if the comments below.

By Guest Author - Louise, a born and breed London girl currently work part time as a business writer. Having agreed with Spice Up Your Blog, Louise worked alongside Ben at The Pink Group to create a essential guide on how Google's latest update will affect bloggers.

Keeping An Eye On Your Blogs Health: Google Analytic Dashboards

Guest Post - Our host is Marcela De Vivo, Marcela shows us how to utilize Google Analytics to keep a check on your blogs health.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

By utilizing custom dashboards, you can keep an eye on specific aspects of your blogs health. Doing this will give you a greater overall picture of how your site is performing, as well as how it may need to be improved.

The real benefit of using multiple dashboards is that you can easily segment the data, making it easier to understand and digest. Using custom dashboards, you’ll be able to see a spike or loss in traffic, whether or not your landing pages are performing well and if your social mentions have increased from a social campaign, and much more.

There are several dashboards available to use, but these five should give your site an immediate boost if you use the data they provide properly.

(Note: To use the links make sure you’re logged in to Google Analytics, or the links will appear broken!)
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The Future Of SEO And The Application Of Guest Blogging

Guest Post - Our host is Chris Gunn, Chris takes an interesting look at were SEO may be heading in the future.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

The SEO world has been very shaky lately as those who have dedicated their livelihoods on the development of websites and blogs have seen a shift in Google’s algorithms on the horizon. There is definitely a legitimate change coming, but is it truly worth all the hype? Does Google really want to eliminate all forms of link building, even the honorable, fair whitehat approaches? What about the people who want to have a successful site and truly follow the rules? There’s been too much doom and gloom on SEO, and it’s time to tame it down. Below is Matt Cutts’ most recent vlog “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?

CHILL OUT

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The Changing Face Of Back Linking And Traffic

Guest Post By Daniel Vassiliou.

I lose track of the conversations I have with marketing agencies, looking to hire my services as a link builder, who only have one goal in mind. Build links, whatever the cost, and the more the merrier. Of course they all know about Penguins and Pandas, oh my, and are quick to add things like, “high DA”, or “PR over 4”. The trouble is I don’t think they have understood quite how dramatically the SEO scene has changed, and still is changing.
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Google+ Today For Tomorrow’s SEO

Over the last few years, the significance of social media in SEO has increased manifolds. If you are really serious about obtaining the top positions in search engine results, you should devote adequate time building your social media influence. Search engines like Google have taken several big steps to integrate social media with search engine optimization. Google’s social network Google+ (or Plus) is, therefore, one of those social networks that you can never ignore. The kind of influence you build on Google+ will play a vital role in ranking your site in SERPs.

But do you know how to boost your site’s SEO with Google+ ?

Though the roll out of Google+ has also led to a lot of debate as to whether it has the potential to last, it’s quite evident now that the social network is making its present felt quite strongly in Google search results.

One thing that you should always remember is that Google+ should not be treated in the same way as Facebook or Twitter. In order to improve the SEO of your web properties, you should treat Google+ as an indispensable web marketing tool. And it’s just the right time (as the competition is yet to build) to increase your Google+ usage and create an online presence that supports your website’s SEO.

Here are some of the best tips to follow.
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SEO Techniques To Recover From Google Penalties

Google is a great source of vast information. In fact, all search engines are indeed most efficient and cheapest way to reach masses. So it is obvious for any business to rely on them for promoting themselves and gaining more and more traffic. But for the past few months, all those websites who were top rankers on Google are now suffering from major drops in Google ranking.

What is Google penalty- Google penalty can be defined as the manual actions which are taken by Google against various websites who seem to use such techniques which add to the violation of Google webmaster’s guidelines.
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3 Ways To NOT Build Links For Your Blog In The Penguin Era – And 3 Ways To Do It Better

By now if you have a blog you’ve no doubt heard all about Google’s Penguin update. If you haven’t, here’s a quick recap from an earlier post on Spice Up Your Blog, How Google Penguin Update Will Affect Your Blog ? .It’s been many months now since the hammer fell on some webmasters and it always takes a while to adjust and learn how to go forward. Of course every major update has its casualties and you rarely hear about people having Panda issues any more. Strategies change and every new update strikes even worse fear in the hearts of some webmasters. If it wasn’t clear before it’s pretty obvious now that if you want to succeed on the web, then you need to be ‘doing it right’. So without further ado I’m going to explain what strategies you shouldn’t be doing and explaining how to ‘do it right’.
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5 Tips To Avoid SEO Penalties

SEO penalties can cause a lot of trouble for website owners, and can prove to be a big hindrance to marketing a website effectively.

Google has a very stringent method of checking websites, and if you wish to avoid penalties – the biggest penalty would be being blocked from Google’s search rankings entirely – there are a number of steps that you need to take. Getting a higher ranking on Google is not easy, and the rules change frequently, but there are a number of tips and tricks that will certainly be to your benefit.

Please note: If you are trying to take a shortcut or the ‘easy way out,’ your website is bound to suffer, which can have a direct and powerful negative impact on your business. Google will easily detect your actions. In the following paragraphs, you will learn about a few tips to help you avoid penalties. Read on to find out how to avoid SEO penalties today!
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SEO Content Writing: The Google Formula For Success

Google threw the SEO efforts of the content writing world a huge curve ball with the implementation of the Penguin update. Many were still thanking their lucky stars after the Panda update of April 2011 only to be wiped out from utilizing too much search engine optimization within their content.

What did this mean for everyone else?

It meant taking the art of content writing back to its very roots: writing for people, not spiders. It meant that many people who had spent thousands of dollars for SEO link building services were suddenly in the dark.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team said it best in his latest interview,

"..People understand good content, research, unique content with value is essential to SEO... sites that have social sharing, natural sharing – instead of buying links – are generally not going to be hit. By next year, we hope marketers/ webmasters get that and natural linkbuilding [sic] becomes the norm.."

So does this mean search engine optimization is out of the question for content writers? Absolutely not! Google actually encourages good SEO to help enhance both the user experience and the quality of writing presented within the content they see. It’s the Google formula for success, and it’s the reason their users have come to trust them since their inception.

Keyword Optimization + Original Content = Relevant Traffic

Successful content writing lives and dies on proper keyword optimization. I mean think about it, how many of you can write an article on the newest pair of Nike’s and beat out Nike on the SERP’s? This means you have to choose your SEO competitors wisely, and that starts in Google’s keyword tool. For those who do not already have a high page rank on the search engines you will want to concentrate on medium competition keywords for your content, not the high or low.

I already know what you’re thinking so I’ll tell you why you don’t go for the low competition traffic with 2,000,000 monthly searches. You’ll either be up against too broad of a term to ever beat out the sites on the front of the SERP’s (I mean seriously, you’d have to have the writing skills of Steven King and the SEO skills of Aaron Wall to create that level of content), or you’ll be dealing with long tail keyword phrases like “me like a me them new Nike Zooms”. Try integrating that into your content enough times for Google to recognize that as your main keyword phrase.

Creating your Content Outline

So you’ve selected the keyword you feel confident will be the goose that lays the golden egg for you. Now what? Good SEO is synonymous with good structure. Any copy writer worth their salt will tell you just as much. Start with your main keyword for the niche you are writing the content for. Make a list of all the industry terms you can think of, both antonyms and synonyms. These will be your main keywords support. Remember what I said earlier? Good SEO relies in providing rich original content for your reader.

So by compiling these words you will have an arsenal of industry slang that users will be searching Google for. Too many people believe using the main keyword a hundred times is optimizing it for the search engines when in reality the moment Googlebot crawls their site they’re sitting 100,000 pages back in the SERP’s. Use your main keyword sparingly and your supporting keywords to help maintain your contents relevance.

Headings Can Kill Your SEO Efforts

Your content writing can easily live or die through grammatical errors such as improper heading structure. Now Google isn’t anal when it comes to grammar/ spelling errors, but skipping from a heading 1 to a heading 3 or a heading 2 to a heading 4 will set off red flags that will surely hurt your SEO efforts. Going in reverse is fine as it’s grammatically correct.

Google Loves Ordered/ Unordered List

Providing relevant original content is only half of Google’s formula for success. The other half, as previously stated, lay in providing their search base the best user experience possible for the results they provide. Here are a few reasons why you should be including bullet points in your writing:

• Both lists demonstrate structure
• Both list help pinpoint relevant content vital to their users needs
• Bullet points are now shown in search results proving the added strength ordered and unordered list lend to your SEO efforts in the eyes of Google

Gain SEO Points For Acronym Meta Tags

Copy writers who market offline don’t have the added luxury online content writers are afforded when it comes to sharing the meaning of a particular acronym to their marketing base. The acronym meta tag not only provides the better user experience Google aims to deliver its search base, but simultaneously enhances your search engine optimization efforts by delivering the acronyms proper terminology when the user hovers their mouse’s cursor over it. Here’s an example:

SEO = SEO
Hint - Place your cursor over SEO to see the acronym.

Final Thoughts For Content Writing Success

Too many people have erroneously confused search engine optimization with manipulation. The sole purpose behind Google’s algorithm is to provide good solid writing that provides the user with both unique and original content. Think really hard for one second. When was the last time you searched a specific keyword or phrase and Google took you to a front page where the top websites were spam? Make no mistake, Google is one of the most artificially intelligent designs in existence. Even more so since implementing the Panda and Penguin updates. It would be better for you to write one solid and well thought out piece of literature that is rich in content, both for SEO and user success, than to write 10 weak articles that no one will want to read. At this point the user will immediately click back on their browser and go somewhere they feel actually deserves their time.

Google keeps detailed records of where searchers go even after they have entered a website. If they click your search result and are gone in 2 seconds flat your site is clearly demonstrating to Google that your content isn’t worth doo doo and perhaps you’re not actually as relevant to that search after all. It’s called your bounce rate and I’d advise everyone to read it and figure out a way to keep users moving through to at least one other page on your website to maintain its balance. If you hold true to the Google formula for success your writing assignments will become an arsenal of marketing firepower.

Bonus Tip Too Maximize Article Success Rate

Anyone who has heard of ad blindness knows it as the effect of automatically tuning out the ads after years of online exposure. Well we’ve now stepped into the age of “Social Media Blindness.” We easily tune out the social media buttons when we read an article without even thinking about it. So here’s an easy solution to remedy that problem and provide you with not only well honed SEO power for the search engines, but the greatest opportunity to gain maximum exposure for your blog post and articles. Are you ready for this?

Ask. It’s that simple. Many people will have no problems helping you out if you Simply ask your readers to click them. It’s called permission marketing. Your basically stating that you need their help and that you are dependent on them for your success. Not only that, but make sure you ask at the end of the post or they may forget. To take it one step further put it under its own heading (with a heading that is integrate to your article’s focus), figure out a way to use your keyword and a few synonyms and antonyms that are actually relevant to the content you have written and slide it right in there. “Please take a moment to share my post on your social media. It’s only takes you two seconds but would mean the world to me. Thank you so much.” Voila, instant win.

Latest Google Page Rank Update August 2012

I know you all keep a close eye on the page rank for your blogs, I have to admit I also look out for it.Google usually update toolbar page rank four times a year so around every three months.Well today we we have noticed a Major page rank update taking place.A number of my sites have seen a page rank change, at the time of writing Spice Up Your Blog is holding steady with a page rank of 5.You can quickly check the page rank of your blog to see if there was any change using our free page rank checker tool. :

Google Page Rank Tool
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Why I’m Sick Of ‘SEO Is Dying’ Posts

Guest Post - Our host is Jessica, In this post Jessica gives her opinion on why SEO is not on the way out.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Every day it appears some self-appointed ‘expert’ has declared the industry of SEO dead on its knees, this time next year we’ll all be flipping burgers, stacking shelves or asking people if they’d like a copy of The Big Issue. Whilst I don’t have the advantage of having a time machine (some guy with floppy hair wearing a bow tie stole it) I think we really do have to stop with the doom and gloom before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why Is SEO always about to die ?

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5 Top Tips For Optimizing Images For Google Search

Guest Post - Our host is August Drilling, August takes an in-dept look at optimizing your images for search along with tutorials for WordPress and Blogger.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

If you haven’t noticed, a new visual trend has hit the web, and Pinterest is a prime example of this image-based trend in action. High quality, engaging images receive tons of love on Pinterest, generating loads of traffic back to the originating website.

Besides Pinterest, though, even images found in the classic Google Image search provide great potential for increased site traffic. But, similar to ranking well in Google’s traditional search, your images must be optimized to win this extra traffic.

So to capitalize on the image-based trend, lets go over the top tips for optimizing your images for Google. It’s quick and easy, so let’s get started.
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Google Release New Must See SEO Videos To Help Your Blog On Google Search

You know when I started Blogging like all new Bloggers I immediately wondered how will I get my blog on Google.How can I get my Blog and posts to be displayed in search results and have visitors sent by Google.Once I started to learn about how Google works and the steps I could take to help my blogs rank on Google I somehow felt like I was in a way 'Fooling Google'.By optimizing my site I was for the want of a better word 'Tricking' Google into displaying my content in their results.

But the truth is Google want to crawl your content, Google want your content to be easy to crawl, They want your site optimized and if your content is unique and useful they want to rank it on the first page of their results for related searches.

It seems a lot of posts I have published recently especially guest posts have been on the topic of Search Engine Optimization; and many new Bloggers think SEO is somehow a shady thing.But Google through sources like webmaster tools openly promote the use of SEO and Google employees like Matt Cutts Posts on his blog through Q&A videos helps webmasters and bloggers improve their sites for search.

So in this post I have added 10 videos the Google search quality team created this week to help beginners get their sites and blogs on Google.These videos are listed in a 'Step By Step' format and I highly recommend everyone from beginners to experienced bloggers take a look.

In the final video Google Search quality team member Maile Ohye becomes your personal SEO adviser.

10 SEO Videos From Google

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Content And Blog Marketing In The Post-Penguin Era

Guest Post - Our host is Jenny Rasmussen, who looks at Blogging and SEO in the wake of the Google Penguin algorithm change.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

With the “Penguin” update that launched on April 22, Google changed the search engine optimization (or “SEO”) game more significantly than ever before. Originally announced as a means to penalize webmasters who had over-optimized their webpages and link building efforts, the Penguin filter is now here to stay and ignoring its effects could cause your blog and website to plummet in Google’s search results.

So – what is the answer? How can a blogger continue to rank highly on Google and Bing without resorting to the SEO tactics of yesteryear? Let’s take a look at content – in the form of images, videos or written pieces – and how it can greatly improve your inbound traffic and where you show up in the search results.
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How Google Penguin Update Will Affect Your Blog ?

Guest Post - Today's host is Roger Collings, who looks at the recent Google algorithm change.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

In April, Google launched the Penguin algorithm aimed to detecting and filtering out websites and blogs classified as ‘spam’ from its search results. A month later, Google released an update to the Penguin algorithm to identify and blacklist websites which violate its quality guidelines.

While implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a standard practice for websites and blogs, the Penguin update is aimed at scrutinizing over optimization and spamming. As a blog owner, if you’ve adopted over-optimization techniques, there’s a good chance that the Penguin update has already hit your blog.

Let’s try and understand what is the Google Penguin update and how does it affect you and your blog?

What is Penguin Update

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