1. It’s the fourth Penguin update, but it is referred to as Penguin 2.0 because it is an update in the algorithm and not a data refresh or an index update (unlike Penguin 2 and 3).
2. It is expected to affect 2.3% of English queries; Penguin 1.0 affected 3.1% of English queries.
3. Penguin 2.0 is focused on catching black hat web spam. Matt Cutts said that it is more comprehensive than the original Penguin 1.0 and is expected to go deeper and have more impact than Penguin 1.0. You can read Matt Cutts blog post here.
4. Ads and paid listings that pass page rank could get you a penalty. Penguin 2.0 will try and find websites that are not in line with its webmaster guidelines, but ads and paid listings that pass page rank were specifically mentioned.

I have personally noticed an extreme increase in clients’ rankings. Here is one example (this is very un-natural and it is happening across many accounts):

Trivia

Matt Cutt’s stated that Penguin 2.0 will only affect 2.3% of all English queries, less than Penguin 1.0 which affected 3.1% of English queries. However, he also states that Penguin 2.0 is more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0 and will have more impact. If it will have more impact, Penguin 2.0 should affect more than just 2.3% of queries!

Penguin Updates Impact So Far

Penguin 1 | April 24, 2012 - Affecting 3.1% of queries

Penguin 2 | May 26, 2012 - Affecting less than 0.1% of queries

Penguin 3 | Oct 5, 2012 - Affecting 0.3% of queries

Since Penguin 1.0 hit, Google has received 700,000 reconsideration requests via the Penguin feedback form in webmaster tools. 600,000 of them were about black hat web spam and less than 25,000 about unnatural links.

Other Points Mentioned by Matt Cutts

• Google’s web spam team is working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated back link analysis.
• Google’s web spam team are working on a way to deny value to link spammers so that link spamming will become less effective (as if it’s not already useless).
• Google is doing a better job in detecting authorities and over the next few months you will see that authorities will be rewarded with better rankings as it may be more appropriate for users.
• Google’s Panda may be softened a little for websites that have been affected if those websites still show some signals of quality.
• People who are link spamming or utilising black hat SEO tactics are less likely to show up in searches by the end of the summer.

The Bottom Line

If you have optimised your website for your users, created high quality, original content and adhered to webmaster quality guidelines then you should be happy. Google will reward you with higher rankings and you have nothing to worry about. If your content is good, people will link to your website naturally and you do not have to worry about low quality link building tactics; instead you will eagerly await the next algorithm update.

By Hamza Afridi

The post Penguin 2.0 is Live, Are You Prepared? appeared first on Chillizone.

If your answer is YES then you have probably received many offers to get more followers, more likes…more and even more.

There is a great temptation BUT is it really an effective approach for your company?

How does it work?

Let me take a minute to provide a small reminder for those who don’t pay attention to these offers. Some websites specialise in the business of fake followers in an attempt to increase your social presence. The competition for popularity, initially reserved for Facebook and Twitter, has recently been extended to all other social networks. You can now buy +1s for your Google+ circle, Views on YouTube, or Likes on Instagram and Pinterest. What is their main argument? “Nothing attracts a crowd, like a crowd”.

Many websites such as the one described exist and they also broadcast their attractive offers via private messages or Twitter accounts. They will even follow you to catch your attention. You can get new followers/likes on Facebook for a few pounds or dollars which they use to sell it per pack. Here is an offer I came across that was selling YouTube Views:

The price depends on the quantity and on the quality (if the account looks real or not) of the fake followers. Sometimes, you also have the option to choose the country of your future followers for which the price is more expensive.

Where do all these followers come from? Well it’s mainly ghost accounts. The easiest fakes to identify are those with few friends, few pictures or news on their timeline and seem to have a passion for one particular company. There are also some fake accounts that are more complex and more difficult to identify.

The extent of the phenomenon

A new report from two Italian security consultants, Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli, estimates that there are now as many as 20 million fake follower accounts. Some companies claim they can make $1 million in one week and can create up to 100,000 new Twitter accounts in just five days. And this is just some data for Twitter. Imagine the amount if we sum it up for all social media platforms!

On the other hand, it’s clear that many companies (large and small) buy or have bought fake likes/followers but it’s difficult to estimate how many have done this because nobody wants to confess.

Some social media sites like Facebook have started to crack down on fake fans and accounts. This has become such a problem that you can now find tools on the internet to check how many of your Twitter followers are real and how many are fake. This website for example, calculates the percentage of fake followers that you have.

There are some limitations to such tools. For example, there may be real people who have joined Twitter purely to follow others. Also, some fake accounts can be difficult to recognise and the tool may not pick up on these. For this reason, the tool should only be used for estimate purposes.

Purchasing fake likes/followers is a big mistake

Social media is often seen as a difficult avenue for companies to handle because they are required to be transparent on such sites. They have to interact with their customers or prospects in front of other users and in some cases, they could be receive negative comments. With the business of fake likes/followers, they will not have this problem. You may even get lovely comments from fake accounts and some companies don’t even bother updating maintaining their social media pages because know that they can have hundreds of likes within a few seconds?

Some people defend this practice by saying that it is a good way to get your page noticed initially because more the more likes/followers/views you have, the more you will attract others. In my opinion, I don’t think people are that naive. If we take the example of a restaurant; although you may be drawn to it if you see lots of people through the window, if the food isn’t up to standard, there is no reason to come back.

Without the "quality" factor in your strategy, your social media offering will be of no interest to anyone. Your followers are looking for added value, a platform that allows them to get advice, access to promotions or stay up to date with the latest news at the company. But with fake followers, this point is completely ignored.

In reality, you really can build a trust relationship with your followers but relying on fake likes/followers is a bad way to start. Companies like Orangina were criticised for such practices which brought negative publicity. This is very difficult to recover from.

Having more followers doesn’t necessarily entail strong engagement. You can easily find how many people are talking about your Facebook page i.e. people that are commenting, liking or sharing your social media content. This is the real value of your social media and without this, your efforts will be in vain.

Finally, don’t forget that one of the main rules in marketing is to identify your target market. Where is the target market in a crowd of fake followers? It also means that all the tools available on the social media platform, whether statistical or promotional tools (for example if you want to promote a post on Facebook) will be totally useless.

Conclusion

To conclude, social media has fallen prey to some companies determined to sell you more “exposure” with the wave of a magic wand but this has no benefit for your real followers which in turn impacts on your business. Maintaining an engaging social media plan is not easy but it’s still the best strategy.

By Anais Meyer

The post The Business of Fake Followers in Social Media appeared first on Chillizone.

What is Content and Why the Need for a Strategy?

It is important at this stage to clarify what we mean by ‘content’. Whilst many people confuse the word ‘content’ with pages of text, the reality is very different. Text based content is just one component of the overall body of a website – things like images, videos and infographics also fall under the banner of ‘content’ and as such they need to be incorporated in a strategy which has clear goals.

The goal of your strategy should be to both fulfil the aims of your business and provide visitors with the type of content they are looking for. Any new visitor that comes to your site will have a preconceived notion of what he/she expects to see in terms of quality of content. Whether its relevant articles, images or animations, it is important your content is laid out in a consistent and engaging manner whereby the visitor can find what he/she is looking for and derive benefit from it. Of course, before developing a content strategy, it is imperative that you define your target audience and establish what type of content they are looking for. Once this has been achieved, you can begin to formulate your content.

Your Five-Point Plan for Effective Content Strategy

When it comes to developing an effective content strategy and creating relevant content, there are five important points to remember. To ensure your strategy is sound, ask yourself the following five questions:

What – What is the message you wish to put across to visitors and what are your business goals?

Who – Who is your target audience and does the content appeal to this audience?

Where – Where will the content be located and where will it promoted?

How – How is the content to be presented – in what format?

When – When will the content be created and is it up-to-date and relevant?

This simple checklist encompasses all the major aspects of an effective content strategy and can be used to ensure your strategy is hitting the right marks.

The post A Straightforward Approach to Effective Content Strategy appeared first on Chillizone.

Every business has its own social media goals. Small businesses usually shout and scream in the hope that they are acknowledged whilst larger brands typically use social media as a communication tool. Whatever the goal may be, I have noticed many businesses place too much importance on social media to the extent that they flood their websites with plug-ins.

I too, was once keen about the use of social media on client websites until I thought about it logically. We are driving traffic to our websites (WIN!) only to drive them away to a social media site (FAIL!) in the hope that they come back. The fact of the matter is that even if they like or follow you on Facebook or Twitter, you will need a great social media strategy to re-reach (yes, it’s a word) them. Facebook, for example will only show your posts to 10% of your fan base unless you attain lots of engagement with fans or promote via paid methods whilst Twitter will require frequent posting activity if you hope to be recognised at all.

I found this social media traffic flow and the blog post correctly shows the order in which traffic should flow from social media. It also states that we should never go in reverse order.

What I Suggest

• Researching a company (prior to engagement) may take you through their social activities so place your social buttons somewhere in sight but don’t make them the centre of attention.
• Ask the user to follow or like your page after they have completed your primary objective i.e. completing a purchase.
• Emphasis should be on gaining email subscribers rather than social followers. Email marketing has the highest ROI from all online marketing activities and social media has the lowest but again, it depends on what your goals are (For most businesses, engagement on social platforms is a secondary goal).​

What Not to Take Away From This Post

• Social media marketing is useless.
• I don’t need to spend time working on my social activities.

Everything has a place, you just need to prioritise according to effectiveness. Social media will never drive the highest converting traffic but it is not supposed to. There are various other benefits that you can reap from social media.

The Bottom Line

The post Is Social Media Taking Over Your Website? appeared first on Chillizone.

A few days ago, I was searching the internet for some work related information (of course) when I came across a website that can only be described as [insert expletive here]. Many of you may be wondering which website it was but I’m afraid I can’t name and shame as it would be very unprofessional of me to do so (please don’t send me private messages to tell you either!).

I couldn't believe a designer would actually “design” something as bad as that so I decided to write this post in an attempt to deter others from making the same mistakes. After making an initial list of web design flaws, I managed to narrow it down to a list of the three most annoying mistakes using a very scientific method – things that annoy me the most!

1. Page Load Speed

It surprises me how some designers and developers fail to understand the importance of page load speed. Not only does a slow loading site cause visitors to leave, it also impacts directly on your search engine rankings. The funny thing is improving page load speed isn’t always as complicated as many people think. Sometimes, all that’s needed is a good old image optimisation exercise.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a very useful tool for identifying aspects of your website that may be slowing the site down.

2. Poor Navigation

Put it this way; if you owned a physical store on the high street, you wouldn't create a maze for customers to go through before getting to the checkout, would you? So why do it on your website?

The best websites are those that simplify the journey visitors take to get from A to B. If you can’t navigate around your own site then your visitors most definitely can’t! Keep it simple and logical so that even the most basic user can perform the action that you want.

Here’s an example of a website with poor navigation. Yes, the orange circles are the things you use to navigate. Now, to figure out which circle takes me to the Services page…

3. Horizontal Scrolling

Yes, horizontal scrolling can be used to great effect if your site is image based as demonstrated on Future of Car Sharing but if you’re simply using it because you can’t fit text vertically on to the page then please don’t.

Although there are many reasons why it can be bad, the main one is that internet users around the world have become accustomed to vertical scroll bars. Any change from this can cause confusion amongst visitors which will most likely result in them leaving your site.

The World’s Worst Website Ever demonstrates just how irritating a horizontal scroll bar can be if not used properly.

By Arham Khan

The post 3 Annoying Web Design Mistakes appeared first on Chillizone.

With countless businesses relying on quality traffic for success across the world, it is vital that these few seconds are used to appeal to the user.

There are three simple yet crucial steps that web designers can take to ensure quality user interface design:

• Consistency: There should be uniformity in user interface between all the various pages of a website. For example, if the navigation bar is on the top of the page for some pages and at the bottom for others, it can confuse the user as they aim to navigate around the site. This simple example can be enough to frustrate users and drive them away.
• Simplicity: Creative and original designs are all well and good but when it comes to user interface, complex sites are likely to drive traffic away. It is considerably easier for customers to achieve objectives with a simple and efficient user interface design.
• Labels: A common issue that arises with a lot of websites is the use of icons without labels. The designers may assume the icons are self-explanatory but this won’t be the case for intermittent web users. It is important to always label icons appropriately so as to avoid confusion.

The most popular sites on the web are the ones that fuse these vital ingredients. Facebook and YouTube are just two examples of immensely popular sites that generate high levels of traffic due to the user interface design. Both sites are easy to navigate, easy to understand and offer a consistently high level of functionality on each page.

The post The Importance of Simple User Interface appeared first on Chillizone.

You will start to notice a growing trend known as (Not Provided) in your Google Analytics; this is a very big change indeed. For the past few months Google has, by default, been encrypting searches undertaken by users (this was optional before) who are logged into their Google account.

How Does This Affect Me?

Well, in simple terms, keywords which bring traffic to your website are now being "hidden" and not being passed in the referring URL. Therefore, webmasters/owners who used to find out which key phrases worked for them will find such user data no longer being made available to them. This is indeed quite upsetting to many who rely on such information to tweak/customise their digital marketing campaigns.

I Run AdWords Campaigns. Will I Lose That Data Also?

No, this only affects organic traffic not Google AdWords; these key phrases will still be present in your report. According to a Google blog:

"If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you."

The phrase "Double Standards" comes to mind.

How Big Of A Problem Is This, Really?

Well it is one that we predict will become quite big indeed. Google previously announced that it should only affect 10% of keyword data. However, we have witnessed some client reports with as much as 40% being affected, which is absolutely ridiculous! A website is built on a certain set of measurements with two of the most common ones being:

Leads/Enquiries Generated

This is measured mainly via the Goal feature. Now, we are unable to cross reference which organic keywords (that fall within the Not Provided criteria) led to a successful lead.

Ecommerce Sales Generated

This is measured mainly via the Ecommerce feature. Again, we are unable to cross reference which organic keywords (that fall within the Not Provided criteria) led to a successful sale.

Look at the example presented below:

The screenshot below shows key phrases that bring in traffic, cross referenced with the ability to assess which key phrases lead to successful lead generations.

Fast forward to the current month and you can immediately see a (Not Provided) in position 5 with a 4% lead generation rate. However, I am unable to work out which key phrases actually contributed towards this.

* Some keyword data hidden for confidentiality purposes.

Other statistics such as key phrases that lead to bounce rates, average time on page etc. are hidden for a portion of your traffic. With this particular statistic rising, you can imagine how much data you may have to start living without.

Why Has Google Done this?

In all honesty, the official version is based on security reasons, although this does not seem to be applicable for PPC. Many people are starting to come up with their own reasons with two of the more popular ones being:

• The possible introduction of a fee based Analytics in future (a premium version launched last year for $150,000 per annum).
• To increase demand for Google PPC AdWords

Surely, There's a Way Around This?

Well, many people around the globe are now launching "Google Hacks" of their own, which are essentially bits of code to extend the Google Analytics function beyond the default thus allowing people to look at data in more meaningful ways. However, as this is so recent, no hack (to my knowledge) provides the data as it used to. They are mostly hacks which provide more meaningful data than just (Not Provided) statements. We are also developing our own solution based on what is already out there. Watch this space!

Sniper SEO vs. Shotgun SEO

I guess with all of the tools SEO's had in their arsenal over the past few years, the ability to move from the old days, or trying to see what works and honing it into a sniper approach of knowing exactly which key phrases were worth pursuing, has changed. If this scenario continues to grow, SEO strategy has to change with it. However, the problem of spreading the key phrase net wider and not knowing fully which one is working is a reality (at least for now) that everyone should look at in greater detail.

The post Google No Longer Providing OR Shotgun SEO appeared first on Chillizone.

But will these laws actually have any real benefit? We’ve always had the option of turning cookies off in our browsers. The difference now is that the option is prominent and the law is behind it. Many blog editors and industry experts believe this to be a lesson in awareness for internet users as people now have to know more about the inner workings of their browsing session in order to make a conscious choice about their privacy.

A key issue in all this is the implementation and administration surrounding the enforcement of this law. Many businesses won’t take the legislation seriously simply because there’s such a low risk of being prosecuted according to public opinion.

A law is only effective if it can be enforced and there are going to be huge problems taking action against organisations that fail to comply. It’s worth considering that this could go the way that the Community Charge (“Poll Tax”) introduced by Margret Thatcher went in 1990. There was an overwhelming level of non-payment despite this being a criminal offence. Police forces even considered refusing to execute warrants for non-payers which meant prosecution became impractical. The community charge was abolished 2 years later.

With this in mind, it could be said that by educating internet users, we could give people the knowledge to either keep cookies turned on or change a simple setting in their browser. With minimal cooperation from the major browsers we could see a short tutorial-type guide that introduces people to cookies and their uses upon installation of the browser or a similar system. Of course this idea wouldn’t be infallible but it’s not like cookies represent the Gestapo of the internet.

Let’s see how this goes and marvel at the wonderful techniques companies use to implement this new law seamlessly into their sites. We’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on developments.

The post New EU Cookie Laws – Protecting People’s Privacy? appeared first on Chillizone.

• Strategy
• Quality

For a long time, mindless over optimisation and intensive link building were prominent in SEO. Now, with the new update, it has forced everyone to rethink. SEO now, in my opinion, has less to do with SEO and more to do with acting as brand ambassadors i.e. ensuring that visitor experience is of the utmost importance. If a website's navigation is well thought out and content is written with user (and not bot) in mind, then Google will reward with rank.

The question is: how does this affect the price of SEO? Well, it has a direct impact in my opinion. For a long time, the majority of SEO was effectively put out as a labour intensive process which anyone with minimal experience could undertake and churn out using automated software.

This is no longer the case, now it requires real creative and strategic input which is achieved through real experienced personnel. Where does this leave the industry that was built on automated processes and cheap labour? Well, either they re-educate themselves or the work is taken back to more qualified agencies. In any case, if more qualified personnel need to spend more time on each project, costs will have to rise accordingly. This reluctant rise in costs will slowly creep in over the next 18 months, as website owners start to realise that the company or individual they have hired are not producing results. The alternative will be to hire a competent agency or individual.

This should also help to somehow provide some sort of balancing out of SEO prices as they are currently all over the place.

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