Prepare for the Penguin II Update!

Penguin II: What can we expect?

If you were lucky enough to have come through Google’s first rollout of their Penguin algorithm update, you may have become complacent since so many websites bit the dust never to recover at that time.

Consider this a warning that Penguin II is coming. Google’s Matt Cutts has warned that the next Penguin update is going to be even more stringent. We can expect that lots of websites are going to be hit because of bad linking practices.

SEO is moving away from links and further toward content…

Up until the rollout of Penguin I on April 24 2012, incoming links were a huge part of getting your website to rank well. Webmasters all over spent their days running after links–the good and the bad. Post-Penguin many of them were wringing their hands in shock and disbelief at the sudden loss of ranking and traffic. And it wasn’t until this time that anyone had given much thought to the subject of negative SEO. Here’s just one result of the negative SEO fallout that can be traced back to Penguin.

Penguin has people scared. I’ve just had someone ask me to remove links that they posted in the form of comments to one of my websites back in 2010. Many of my colleagues have also had link removal requests. Webmasters are removing the good with the bad in an effort to recover from Penguin I. It’s important to be objective when removing links. If you have a link from a site with a PR of 3 or 4, it’s unlikely that it’s a spam site.

Anyway, content is suddenly even more important than it ever was, and good content is what will distinguish you from others, now as in the past. But you still need to have relevant outward as well as incoming links, but now, one good link is going to far outweigh even 1,000 spammy links. Go for quality, which is what you should have been doing before anyway.

And I’m not the only one who feels this. Read what J.D. Rucker over at Techi has to say about Penguin II:

The art aspect of it all comes down to getting more value out of higher-quality content that can be enjoyed by real people versus meaningless links outside of content or on sites that have no real value to the search engines.

Steps to take to protect yourself from Penguin

If you know that you have some dodgy links hanging around, now is the time to remove them before you get hit by Penguin II as it rolls out. You may find it easier to stop allowing comments on your blog, since few of those will result in valuable links anyway. Concentrate on the kind of links you’re more likely to get from a contribution to a relevant website or blog, and it goes without saying you should make sure they have great content too. 

Run a tool like Leaping Frog to check your incoming links. If any of them look dodgy, ask for them to be removed and if you don’t get a satisfactory response, go over to Google and us their Link Disavow tool.

Finally, it is worth going over old content and improving it. If you are on WordPress, use Yoast’s SEO Plugin and make sure your articles and posts are relevant.

And that’s about it. See you on the other side of Penguin II and–Good Luck!

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Backlinks Software: Should you use it?

Should I use backlinks software for my website?

We get this question all the time. After all, why pay for someone to build backlinks to your website if there’s a cheap software program that does the trick, right?

Wrong! I have seen more than a few ‘great new’ ideas on how to get Google to rank a site, and I can tell you this: automated software to do anything, but particularly to build backlinks, is a disaster. They invariably do their job by leaving a trail of blog comments in their wake that can only be described as steaming ordure. Before you rush to comment and tell me I’m wrong, and maybe even point me to something that’s working for you (please don’t!), let me make a few points.

How backlinks software can hurt you

1. If an automated linkbuilding software is working for you right now, there are no guarantees that it will still work a few months, or even weeks down the road. Google will get you in the end.
2. If it does turn out that Google penalized for links built with this software, you will probably have to hire someone to try and remove them all. In some cases that won’t be possible and you’ll be stuck with said incoming links.
3. Links from undesirable sites will count as negative SEO. No software can guarantee you (honestly) 100% good links.
4. You and your backlinks software will be contributing to the underbelly of the Internet, and that’s really not something to be proud of.

At the end of the day, ethical, organic methods of getting your website to rank are going to work better for you. They make take a little longer but they actually work and they will stay with you for a long time to come. If you’re a client of Mideast SEO reading through the site, please rest assured that we have never, nor will we ever, resort to using backllinks software.

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Arabic Content Development Rules

Arabic Content Development Rules

Creating great Arabic content should be your goal if you’re serious about your brand and your online business. Arabic content development can be planned in such a way that it enhances your brand and makes your products or services much more attractive to your targeted audience.

Yes, you’re right in thinking that developing Arabic content is pretty much the same as content in any other language. But because of the complexities of the Arabic language, far too many people are writing content in English and translating it into Arabic. This isn’t a problem in itself if the resulting Arabic web pages are of high quality, and ‘add value’ for your audience.

There are a few rules you need to follow to ensure that your content meets Google’s guidelines for web-worthy content. Here are my rules which amount to a grounding in Arabic SEO:

1. Do your keyword research in Arabic and then be sure that you’re using the right terminology for your target marketing. Yes, all the countries of the Middle East speak Arabic, but they have distinct dialects that identify them as unique: Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Palestine/Jordan are the principle dialects to consider.
2. Once you’ve identified your target market and your keywords you can create your content. It doesn’t matter much whether you create it in English or Arabic, but the translation has to be of the very highest quality or you’ll lose visitors and defeat the object which is to ‘convert visitors,’ or to sell whatever it is you’re selling.
3. Research your content thoroughly. See what your competitors are saying and write Arabic content that is better than theirs in terms of language and useful information for your target audience. If you’re not adding value then you’ve failed in your objectives.
4. This is an expansion of the last point: at all times offer your audience information they won’t find anywhere else. This is what will define you as a professional and an authority in your niche.
5. Don’t forget to optimize your pages for the search engines.

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YouTube Marketing

Value of YouTube Marketing

If you’re serious about your online presence you will already know that YouTube marketing can be a huge source of traffic as well as an effective branding tool for you, if you know how to use it. The first thing you’ll need to take advantage of video marketing is your very own video clips to upload to your website and to YouTube. They don’t have to be world-class as long as they offer some tangible benefit to the viewer–and that benefit can be simply beauty or amusement. You can get your message across very effectively while entertaining.

Too many marketers assume that if you don’t have a video go viral it’s not worth the effort. Nothing could be further from the truth, and there are some dangerous flaws in this way of thinking.

YouTube: Viral or Nothing?

First, it is next to impossible to predict which video will go viral. If you take a look at 20 videos that did go viral, you’ll find that nearly all of them were amateur videos with no production to speak of, and the owner did not upload it to YouTube planning for it to go viral. It just happens! So if you spend six months and thousands to try and ensure that your video will take off you’re pretty much missing the point. In that time you could have made several videos that are good-to-great, without nearly so much time, energy and cost. Who knows, one of them might go viral but if not you still have steady streams of traffic, and some of those visitors will convert. The important thing here is that you’re reaching your targeted audience and they are responding. Remember that when a video goes viral, in all likelihood only a tiny percentage of the resulting traffic will be relevant. The rest are mere sightseers!

Video Production

Often it is worth calling in a professional video production team to create a video that gets your message across in an entertaining way. With the right marketing production, costs can be recovered many times over. There’s no doubt about this and thousands of successful companies are testimony to the facts with only one or two videos that successfully market them and brand them with a little help on YouTube.

If you already have clips, we’ll help you use them to maximum effect to establish your brand and increase your website traffic with effective promotion that will get your link in front of the people who most need to see it.

If you need video production help, we collaborate with the best talent in the Middle East for Video Production Services.

There are ways of testing how effective your video is and how it is being received by viewers. This Mashable article on video marketing has some good tips.

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Are you using Google Plus for business?

Bad Idea: not using Google Plus for business!

This will probably come as a surprise to you, after all the talk about Google Plus being a non-starter, but Google Plus is already the #2 social media site! Yep, it is only bested by Facebook according to stats.

Personally, I still believe that since so many Google Plus members are not that active, Twitter should still take the #2 social media spot. Even so we need to start learning about Google Plus as a serious contender in the social media world, because users are obviously starting to put it to a lot of good use.

We also need to take note of the fact that Google is in a unique position to make sure its own social media platform succeeds. If you see that, then you will also see that you can only benefit by including Google Plus in your social media strategy.

So, if you haven’t started using it for business yet maybe it’s time you did. Even I had been putting off learning about it, until I learned about Google Author Rank.

A fact about Google Plus that caught my eye recently is that seemingly Google will give you credit for being on Google Plus and using it in coordination with your other social media activities. Many industry professionals are sitting up and taking notice of this because it could have huge ramifications to the world of search in the coming months.

Perhaps the most important thing for online businesses to learn at the moment are the ramifications of Google Author Rank. You need to connect up all your social media accounts on Google Plus for this to work for you. Yes, it is a lot of work to orchestrate it all and to provide the required content, but it will be more than just worth it when Google gives you the rank of an authority in your niche.

The important takeaway from all the articles about this subject is that you need to engage. You’ve heard it before but now it’s more important than ever. Comments from your network are going to be counted by Google as votes in your favor. So if you want to increase your Google author rank, engage for all you’re worth!

Is Google Moving Away from Links as the Major Ranking Factor?

I believe, judging by the sudden importance of Google Author Rank, that this just might be the case. This is definitely going to be the subject of a future article.

You might be wondering if you use social media services of some kind do you still need to know about social media and how Google Plus can help? I would say yes. It always pays to increase your knowledge of how social media works and how it can help your business–that way you can make great use of any opportunities to interact that come your way on a daily basis. Educating yourself will help you recognize those opportunities too.

I came across a Slideshare presentation that explains Google Author Rank in detail, created by Bill Slawski, someone whose writing I have trusted for a long time. This presentation will raise your Google Author Rank awareness level even if you’re already an expert.

For more tips on how to use Google+, we go to Search Engine Journal again for this Social Chat synopsis.

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Business Growth Strategies

What Strategies for Business Growth Have You Employed This Week?

Hard Work = Business Growth

The post Strategies for Business Growth appeared first on Mideast SEO.

Content Arabia Conference 7-11-2012

Content Arabia Conference–A First in the Region

On Wednesday I attended the Content Arabia Conference at the Hotel Meridien in Shmeisani. This event was organized by Haitham Masood of Mjalati.

Attending at all was a serendipitous stroke of luck, and came about because I happen to know the charming MC for the occasion, Farah Taher. I have to say in all honesty, that while the conference shows a lot of promise for future related events, there was nowhere near enough publicity and some of the speakers were somewhat lackluster. I spend half my life online and I am well connected across the region, but I did not read one word online about this event. In addition, it was really hard to even find out who organized the conference–hence the fact that I’ve updated this post twice so far.

Also, I have to say that I personally didn’t learn anything new–not surprising since I’ve been in the industry since 199!

But as I said, we have to start somewhere, and kudos to Haitham Masood and his team for staging the event. They deserve a huge round of applause for that. The move to open regional discussion on the subject of digital content was long overdue.

Takeaways from Content Arabia

Here are my takeaways from the event:

• The Arab World is now on a par with the US and Europe as far as Internet participation is concerned with around 40 percent saturation from country to country.
• There are a myriad of opportunities in the Middle East right now for companies that are prepared to do the work and identify gaps in services–and fill them with quality offerings: the time is right for research, investment and development.
• There is an urgent need for home-grown social media channels that more appropriately meets the social and business needs of the region.
• Yahoo is so far doing the best job of providing content in Arabic but there is still scads of room for improvement.
• And here’s the kicker: People are posting content across the region but no one knows because it’s not optimized (yes, you DO need SEO), and it’s not posted to Social Media with knowledge of how social media works–and hence no results.
• And one last not-so-fun fact: Guess which were the three most searched words across the region for 2011?

Spongebob

Al Jazeera

Miriam Fares

Makes you cringe doesn’t it? I hope that we can all work hard across the region to bring our content up to the standard required, and to make us truly competitive with the US and Europe.

The post Content Arabia Conference-Takeaways appeared first on Mideast SEO.

Don’t stop there though. Good websites need great, optimized web content and an effective social media presence in order to really flourisha and benefit your business.

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How to create backlinks that are the DNA of your website!

Getting backlinks into your site should be a priority if you plan to be successful online. But it’s time-consuming and if you pay for link building services it can be prohibitively expensive. Unless you go with a cheapo link building service which can cost you your business when they hook you up with all sorts of bad-neighborhood sites. This applies now more than ever, after the latest Penguin Google algorithm update.

How to Get Backlinks

But it is possible to get good backlinks at a reasonable price using software. Just be very careful which software you use.

Here are some methods we approve of (because we use them ourselves):

1. Create quality content that other websites will want to refer to: become an authority in your niche. Lists are particularly popular, especially series of lists. Examples of titles might be ’20 of the best (fill in your subject here)’. Interviews with personalities associated with your niche are also great if you can get them. You may need to get out of your comfort zone for this, but it will be well worth it.
2. Link out to other quality sites: it is part of a process that will establish you as an authority and make it more likely that people will link to your content. Your pages and blog posts should contain links to quality content that enhances the information you have on your site. Make the links open in a new window though so that you don’t send visitors away from your site.
3. Get active on social media: this cannot be stressed too highly. Your incoming social media links are your site’s lifeblood so get busy! Create a strategy for yourself, say to contact two thought-influencers daily on your chosen social media channel, by commenting on a post of theirs, or submitting a link from their site where you @ them on Twitter or mention them on Facebook.
4. Create an infographic that will be super-useful to your visitors. They will link back to it! I particularly like this how-to on creating infographics.
5. Guest post for a site that’s popular within your niche. The very fact that SEO and social media people do this should tell you about its effectiveness.
6. Give away a gift in exchange for links, or run a competition where people have to link back to your site. This is an all-time favorite of some of the most successful websites on the Web.
7. Here’s one you’ve overlooked for sure: don’t forget to link between your own site pages and blog posts. These links count and they’re a good way of leading your visitors around inside your content in a meaningful way. Don’t overdo it though, and only link if it’s relevant.
8. Buzzstream

This is not an exhaustive list. There are other ideas that you’ll come across, but if you implement five of these you’ll be well on the way to collecting an envious selection of backlinks. Just be careful not to build your list of backlinks too quickly, opr this could ring warning bells over at Google. Also, guard your link neighborhood fiercely, which means be ultra careful not to link with a site in a bad neighborhood. Use your common sense here–you know what Google disapproves of! Good luck.

The post How to Get Backlinks–the Low-Cost Effective Way! appeared first on Mideast SEO.

• Website Creation and Design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Content Development
• Social Media Strategy
• Social Media Campaigns

A typical website audit for a website with ten pages, competitive analysis, keyword research for 20 keywords, content creation, link strategy and social media strategy is going to cost in the region of 2000 JD, with a recommended monthly retainer of 100 JD for tracking and analysis and ongoing work to ensure that you reap the rewards of great organic SEO. But this is only a rough guideline. There are a lot of variables.

Please remember that, while it is in our best interests to do a good job, we can’t make guarantees. You will notice that no respected SEO consultant will make guarantees (although plenty of spammers and scammers will–they’ll give you a quick result that will likely end by your website being penalized by Google). We prefer to under-promise and over-deliver.

If someone has promised you a page one ranking with Google, that’s great. You go and let them SEO your site. But remember us when you realize you’ve been scammed–we’ll be here to pick up the pieces and turn your website around for you.

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