Just thought I’d add that about 10 days after posting that I removed the +1 buttons from the news articles and within 48hrs the traffic to the news section was back to normal levels (up to about 150/200 uniques a day). Two note: 1) adding +1 was the only change I had made to the news section in months and 2) during all that time, traffic to other parts of the site always remained consistent.

It should go without saying that adding Google +1 button to your site will not affect your rankings. We have added it to over 200 websites in our own network and have not seen a major drop in our traffic. Having a lousy site structure or terrible content could come back to haunt you though.

If your content is so terrible that people won’t +1 it to save their life, then you are in trouble. You may get a ton of traffic to your garbage content today. But Google and other search engines will eventually catch up with you. Those of you who have slow sites probably should focus on tricks to speed it up before adding too many social media buttons.

If you have watched any TV recently, there is a good chance you have seen those Geico commercials about whether the service can save you 15% or more in car insurance. These commercials are useless and not even too funny. But they do apply to many things that Google does. Take the idea of Google using auto-responders to reply to webmasters. Google has come a long way when it comes to handling reconsideration requests. But it still has ways to go.

Based on our own experience, Google’s team seems to be using a combination of templates and individual responses to get back to webmasters who file for reconsideration. So it is not surprising to see these types of comments in top forums such as Webmaster World:

I do think the RR team now has a number of quick reply buttons they can click for standard actions, and it’s not impossible that the “no manual spam actions” look-up could be automated. But it is frustrating that algorithmic spam actions might still catch an occasional false positive, and now it feels like you can’t get a human look to overrule that – to see if your site might be worth putting on the “exception list”.

Google probably gets a ton of reconsideration requests on a daily basis. It is not that hard to categorize these requests to handle them more easily. If you thought Google is just sitting and waiting for you to file a reconsideration to review your site’s information, you are mistaken. Most large companies automate things. Google is no different..

Overstock was very deserving of the punishment it has received. Asking people to link to your website is one thing. Giving people discounts and other incentives (essentially) to get links from .edu and other hard-to-get-links-from types of site is a whole other thing. According to Overstock, they have stopped this practice:

We enabled university webmasters to provide discount links to faculty and students. Google has made clear they believe these links should not factor into their search algorithm. We understand Google’s position and have made the appropriate changes to remain within Google’s guidelines. In fact, we discontinued this program two weeks ago.

Did Overstock get penalized just for this practice? Absolutely not! As someone who has worked in the SEO industry in the past, I can tell you that many large companies buy links and are not even remorseful about them. For some of these companies, it is just too hard to play by the rules. Besides, if you can throw money at your problem, why not do it, right (not suggesting that’s what Overstock did)? This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but no real black hat will actually show you how to get things done. It’s like a magician telling you how to do magic tricks. You are never going to learn the most complicated tactics. My guess is, Overstock was doing a whole lot of things. This linking scheme just happened to be the one that was made public.

Being penalized for having duplicate content on your website is never fun. As Google aims to fight off spammers, more websites will get flagged as being spammy or having thin content. If your business is reliant on your website to stay afloat, getting penalized that way by Google can put a lot of stress on it or kill it completely. Thankfully, there are simple steps you can take to avoid getting flagged by Google. Here are 5 ways to do just that:

• set your content apart: copying and pasting other people’s content to your website without making any modifications or adding your own unique content is not a smart idea. Even if you are not prepared to write a full article on a certain topic, you can always quote someone and add your small tidbit to it. This should not take too much time.
• original content matters: if you are in the business of publishing (e.g blogging) or your business is dependent on articles and reports, there is no excuse for not working on original content for your website. Relying on other people’s content can only get you so far.
• use plugins for internal and external linking: plenty of plugins for WordPress and other platforms can help you enhance your content with internal and external links. Linking to your other content and other people’s work is another good way to make sure your website does not get flagged.
• watch your keywords: do not overuse keywords. Some newbie publishers tend to get overexcited about certain keywords and use them over and over again in their content. Not a very good idea.
• focus on social media: putting all your eggs in one basket and relying on Google and other search engines for the majority of your traffic is going to leave you heartbroken. By taking advantage of social media sites to get likes and retweets you can decrease your dependency on Google somewhat.

No one likes getting flagged or classified as a spammer by Google. The above steps are not revolutionary or earth shattering but can reduce the chances of your website getting spanked by Google.

I have always been an advocate of overpaying for hosting. As long as you get a decent service in return, there is no reason you should hesitate in paying an extra $10 or even $50 a month to keep your business websites up and running at all times. If you own just a personal blog, you can probably survive the down-time that poor web hosts offer. But if you care about your business and are serious about it, you should go with a premium hosting plan.

Here are just 5 reasons you should do so:

• Site Speed: Google is not the only thing you need to worry about when it comes to your site’s speed. Your visitors do care about your site’s speed as well. If it takes people a few seconds to just visit one of your pages, they are just going to leave your website. As simple as that. Cheap hosts are notorious for offering slower services. Not something you want to deal with as a small business owner.
• Security: you get what you pay for. You can’t expect your web host to protect you against hack attacks and other security threats when you are paying just $10 a months. We have all heard horror stories about web hosts that don’t do their homework when it comes to securing their servers.
• Up-time: this goes without saying. If your site is down all the time, people are going to leave you and go to sites that can stay up 24/7. No web host can offer 100% up-time. That is just too perfect. But you should not accept your site being down everyday or every other day. That’s why paying a bit more for a web hosting plan is a smart business decision.
• Support: cheap web hosts don’t offer a decent after-sale service. Think about it. Your $10 a month only goes so far. Your cheap web host won’t probably have enough resources to help you get out of trouble. Some that do offer help do a lousy job in that.
• Scalability: unless you intend your website to stay as small as it is today, you want a web host that can handle traffic spikes and growth for your business. You can’t expect your cheap web host to be there for you when you are ready to move your site to the next level.

It’s not overpaying if it means your business survives and thrives. You just don’t want to deal with those lousy, cheap hosts. They are not good for your business nor for your health .

It’s always problematic when you search for a specific topic and all you get are blog posts that are clearly not news and don’t even link to their source. Google does give people the option to sort through the news, but some of the results you get from Google are anything but relevant.

Just as YouTube has a big issue with affiliate marketers and their fake videos, Google News seems to be infected by splogs and portals that offer no value. Adding a regular website to Google News is not that hard (as long as you have multiple authors or can fake it somehow). Google will have to do a better job to catch splogs and the ones that do not offer any relevant piece of news. As we know, no system is foolproof. So it’s not clear how Google can fix this.

There is no need to panic about Google Instant. For starters, you should never rely on Google alone to run a business. That’s too much of a risk to take on. Google Instant could change the behavior of searcher and gets more impressions for marketers ads, so it’s not all bad news. Even if you start losing your traffic due to the introduction of Google Instant, it could be a good learning lesson:

• Keyword research just got more important: if you thought keyword research was something you could just wing, think again. No longer can you afford to go with too generic keywords for your SEO campaigns. In a Google Instant world, it’s all about understanding your audience and figuring out what phrases and terms they may use to search for what they need.
• Long-tailing lives on: people have been doing long-tailing for a long time. It is now more important than ever to target those specific phrases in your content. Google Instant does offer relevant and popular queries to searchers. It could mean that you will have to work harder to meet all those searches. Take advantage of tools such as Google Scribe to figure out how to master Google Instant.
• Behavioral SEO marketing is here: Google Instant could change the way people search for things. You may not like it as a webmaster, but Google Instant can be very helpful, especially for those who are looking for information. Those who are shopping and buying will use more specific keyword phrases. As a SEO, you need to understand at what stage of the search process your audience is. That information leads to more effective SEO campaigns.
• Content is still king: Google Instant or not, content is still king. Don’t forget that social media is still a biggie here. Google search is still used by many but don’t forget the power of Twitter and Facebook. If your content is not getting enough love on Google, you still have ways to compensate for that. You do want to optimize your content for Google but don’t let the process affect the quality of your work.
• Spammers will continue to spam:  spammers have already started playing around, trying to game the new system. That will continue to happen no matter what Google does. Google Instant would be more impressive if it actually stopped splogs and farms from making it to the SERPs.

Google Instant may affect your traffic negatively, but that will be a good thing in the end. You should never ever rely on Google only to build your business. Being lazy with SEO is not smart either. Google Instant will make you work harder for your leads. You will have to produce higher quality content and understand your audience better. But you should have been doing that regardless.

A wise man once told me that if something was easy, everybody would be doing it. That really applies to all aspects of life. Most people are not willing to step out of their comfort zone and endure hardships to achieve their goals. After all, why do that when you can take short-cuts. Unfortunately, short-cuts are going to get you only so far. To pick up a cause (whatever it is) and truly push it, you need to be creative and willing to go places where others have not been or won’t go to. That’s what Nick Newcomen has done. He is the individual behind the World’s Biggest Writing. Nick used a GPS data logger to travel around the U.S. and send a message to the world.

Credit: worldsbiggestwriting.com

Would you travel around the world (or over 10K miles) just make a point? Nick has been very creative with his efforts. It does not really matter what he needed to accomplish with this move. It could have been even a more successful campaign if he used social media and other channels to promote his move. The site behind this project is going to get a decent number of links just for the effort. Many major media outlets have already reported and linked to it. It could have gotten even more links if Twitter, Posterous, Facebook, Foursquare, and all these other sites were involved. Nick has recorded videos of places that he has visited (and posted them to YouTube). These videos could have been even more viral (especially if they were aired live on Ustream, BlogTalk, and …).

Pulling off a project of that magnitude (the right way) would not be easy. But if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. That’s the goal. There are plenty of traditional ways to get media coverage and build links. But moves such as the one made by Nick have the potential to go way beyond what one can accomplish behind a computer.  I am sure Nick did not do this to increase the ranking of his website in the SERPs. But he could have if he intended to. At the end of the day, it’s not about how hard things are but how badly you want to achieve your goal. Would you travel 10K+ miles for your cause?

Targeting Twitter, Facebook, and Digg is a no brainer move. A site such as Mashable gets millions of visitors on a monthly basis, which explains why their articles get so many tweets and retweets. The content posted on these sites shows exactly why content is king. Quality still matters and most of these sites have quality posts each and everyday (multiple times).

Recently, we have started adding Posterous buttons to our websites, and we have gotten amazing results in the process. We do get millions of hits in our network, so it’s tough to give Posterous full credit for the growth in our traffic. But based on our experience, people do take the time to write a post about top quality articles, especially with Posterous button present at the top of posts.

Adding a Posterous button to your website is actually pretty easy. They already provide you with the code. All you have to do is customize it for your CMS (e.g. in case of WordPress, use Permalink function):

Posterous may turn out to be a flash in the pan. That does not mean you shouldn’t test it out on your website to see if it can help your business. Plenty of people are excited about this platform, and that’s a good thing.

Have you seen any results (in terms of traffic) from Posterous?

1. Don’t Panic + Monitor: do not panic. Google changes things around from time to time. Your ranking may drop for a week and then go right back to where it was. You don’t want to go insane and make lots of changes the very minute your ranking drops.
2. Go through changes you may have made: we all make minor changes to our websites on a consistent basis. If you have changed your .htaccess or  robots.txt, you may want to go through those changes to figure out what you may done wrong. Sometimes, adding a wrong line could lead to major issues for your website.
3. Refer to your stats: it’s often tough to figure out when your ranking has dropped unless you have installed an analytics package on your website. Going through your analytics data could give you ideas what may have happened to your website.
4. Check with your web host: websites get hacked left and right all the time. It could be that your web host has been experiencing downtime on a consistent basis. Whichever the case, you should take time to find out.
5. Check market trends: has something happened to your industry or niche recently? If you have been paying attention, you probably haven’t missed it. If your market is becoming more competitive, it’s only normal to see many more competitors in it. Not everyone is going to stay on the first page when there are too many sites going for it.
6. Check out your competitors: going back to the previous point, you should always check to see who’s replaced you in the rankings. Going through their sites and analyzing their strengths should give you ideas.
7. Go back to basics: just because you have experienced a drop in the rankings does not mean that you should take drastic measures. Links and good content still matter.
8. Diversify your traffic sources: relying on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your traffic is too risky. That’s why you should focus on multiple sources to drive traffic to your website. Twitter, StumbleUpon, and PPC ads can all help you make up your lost traffic.

These 8 steps will not guarantee you’ll get your rankings back. Nevertheless, you don’t want to lose it after every drop in your rankings.