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So we hear that on the 22nd May 2013 Google released Google Penguin 2.0. It looks like they are specifically targeting spammy links that have low page rank value. I assume that they are banning and penalizing certain directories too that they feel are of low quality.

Luckily none of my clients have been effected due to our diligant approach to SEO and using only white hat natural link building techniques.

Here is the article from Search Engine Round Table http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-deep-16837.html

Many online companies and website owners look for effective SEO services to help them gain awareness of their site. When looking for an SEO service, there are many things that you have to keep in mind. While there are a number of companies offering these services, not all of them are going to give you the results that you want. It is important to know what to look for in an effective SEO service and ensure that you are getting great results from the service that you hire.

You may want to choose a company that operates in your local area. While this is not a crucial step, it is important for certain companies. If you deal with local services or products for instance, then a local SEO company will give you better results simply because they will have a better idea of your target audience. For instance, if you have a bakery in London then you may want London SEO services because companies located in London will be better able to speak to your target audience.

Of course, there are many exceptions to this rule. The company that you choose should have your best interests at heart. You want an SEO service that provides results so a bit of research on your part may be in order. Find out about other clients that each company has had and look for testimonials from others. Keep in mind that while saving money is important, a service that seems much too cheap may not provide you with quality services. Compare rates to see the average for the services that you need and choose a company that offers a competitive price as well as effective results. Hiring based on experience and samples of previous work is always a better idea than going by price alone.

It looks like Google has penalized Interflora as they no longer rank for their key terms such as Flowers, Flowers Online plus they are not even ranking for Interflora. Google fails to comment on this.

See here for full article http://searchengineland.com/google-says-no-comment-on-why-interflora-was-penalized-149308 & http://searchengineland.com/will-google-penalize-chromebooks-advertorials-149452#1

Google's new algorithm has been specifically targeted to knock off low-quality exact-match domains (EMD's). It's no surprise really that in there quest to remove low quality sites from the top of Google's search results pages here is one more action from them that re-inforces this strategy.

To see full article visit : http://site-reference.com/articles/new-google-update-kills-exact-match-domains/

Being able to get in front of trending keywords can be a valuable but difficult task. Not only does the world of keywords move quickly, the Search Engines are doing their part to change things up so we don't get too comfortable.

Here is a great article by Rand Fishkin at SEO Moz about predicting keyword volume before they appear in google adwords. This technique also falls within your content marketing strategy and has a useful checklist of points to follow when following this technique.

Click here for SEO Moz whiteboard Friday

We at Go Mungo SEO are pleased to announce interior design company The House Clinic's website, our latest website project has gone live. Sarah Pritchard owner of The House Clinic is so pleased with the website and our services that we are now running her SEO too. This has been an exciting project to work on and we are all very pleased with the results.

Please visit www.thehouseclinic.com

Just what you want to hear, right?

After pandas, penguins, penalties, and panic, Google is now adding salt to our wounds and stealing any shred of hope we had to re-gain our rankings or compete for any decent spot in the search engine.

Many of our readers have spent thousands of hours learning about and applying SEO practices to their websites, only to find the game changing and their rankings failing.

click here for more info...

Lately I’ve seen that a tight relationship between SEO and startups has been something of a foregone conclusion within the SEO industry: “Of course startups should be engaged in SEO!” Perhaps, and perhaps not. In fact, some start-up communities have taken up a stance in direct opposition to this, stigmatizing SEO as manipulative. Personally I’m just a humble consultant who has never started a company of his own, so I think it would be presumptuous of me to arbitrarily declare SEO a high priority for any start-up in any field.

If doing SEO isn’t a foregone conclusion, then, it bears further discussion as a marketing strategy. I want to approach this topic from a different angle. In any successful startup there will be someone with good business sense, someone who can look at the evidence in front of them and make their own decision about what is best for their company. So let me put some premises on the table about what SEO offers the start-up and why start-ups are uniquely positioned to leverage their position for SEO.

View http://www.seomoz.org/blog/is-seo-the-answer-for-startup-marketing for the full Blog at SEO Moz.

Head of Google’s Webspam Team and Software Engineer, Matt Cutts and the Features Editor of Search Engine Land, Vanessa discuss about Google Page Rank update and its affects all over the globe. Recently Aviva Directory has been penalised second time by Google. Aviva directory lost Page Rank from 6 to 0, Can’t believe. Well at present Google is on hunt to penalise Web Directories. CoolSeller SEO Friendly Directory got his Page Rank back after 2 months.

In the below interview they discuss the number of topics especially page rank reduction and its affects. Also tips to stop web site hacking and best practice. Then the recent change in Google algorithm regarding the sub-domains and Google’s policies for the page rank and indexed pages. Vanessa Fox tells us about her current endeavours and what she looks forward too in her career. Matt Cutts and Vanessa Fox talk about the changes in Google WebMasterTools as well and how they are expanding to different languages all over the world. For all of the details of the interview please view the below interview clip.

For latest SEO news visit us at SEO Blog

Click here to view the video

The Penguin update sent a strong message that not knowing SEO basics is going to be dangerous in the future. You have to have the basics down or you could be at risk. Penguin is a signal from Google that these updates are going to continue at a rapid pace and they don't care what color your hat is, it's all about relevance. You need to take a look at every seemingly viable "SEO strategy" with this lens. What you don't know can hurt you. It's not that what you are doing is wrong or bad, the reality is that the march towards relevance is coming faster than ever before. Google doesn't care what used to work, they are determined to provide relevance and that means big changes are the new normal.

1. Understand your link profile
2. Learn what makes a good link
3. Map out your crawl path
4. Know about every page type and noindex the low value ones
5. Almost never change your URLs
6. Setup SEO monitoring
7. Embrace inbound marketing

Read the complete blog at SEO Moz http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-achievable-steps-for-great-seo-after-the-penguin-update

So we’re about two weeks in from the latest major Google update. This week we came across a good post that does an analysis of the Google Penguin update. Some of the results are well worth looking at in more detail.

So the Penguin update was meant to reward sites engaging in very white hat, or even none at all, SEO. At the same time it sought to penalize sites that Google considered ‘over optimized’. Since Google does not come out and say what indicators it is using, it is up to us to look at the post update movement of sites to uncover just what signals they may be using.

At the root of the update is links. They want only natural links to count. By looking at and analyzing many sites, the engineers at Google were likely able to come up with various link footprints. At one end is the 100% natural link footprint, and at the other end is the massive spam link footprint. Where a site is within that footprint range likely will dictate post Penguin success in Google.

On Micrositemasters.com, they posted a quick study they did on their results. There are some nifty charts, and you can see that there are common themes among sites that lost rankings in this update. Among those are having too many of your main keyword phrases as anchor text pointing back to your site, having most of your incoming links from sites not related to your niche and not having the appropriate percentage of URL based links pointing back at your site.

It does not seem like any one factor of these dictated a site’s post Penguin results, but it starts to give us an idea of the types of triggers you want to avoid.

So what does this mean? It means more thoughtful link building campaigns, but it also means more on site optimization. On site optimization is something that we’ve talked about a lot, and the importance of proper site structure and on site optimization just increased. With proper on site optimization, and links on highly related websites, Google should not have to rely on anchor text to tell them how to categorize that link. At some point, anchor text is going to become irrelevant.

Looking to the future, this is an opportunity for site owners to quickly adjust to what Google wants, give it to them and solidify your rankings for a long time to come. We’ll be looking more at this topic in the near future, and should have an analysis from sites we maintain over the next few weeks, which we will certainly share!