Even the most experienced search ninjas cringe when confronted with the latest Google overhaul. Trusty SEO tools aside, the recent Panda and Penguin updates have succeeded in compromising the rankings of legitimate blogs and websites that were stuffing their content with keywords and spammy links. The result? Change.

Having some of the best SEO tools at our disposal, many professionals have learnt that the need to self-evaluate their list of best practices is an essential habit for remaining at the top of their game. In this case, optimisers have been forced to put on their camo-masks and run through the jungle of poisonous back links and webspam to reach the Promised Land: farm-fresh content and a fertilizer-type concoction of social media shares mixed with a portfolio of strong varied links. In other words, perform a site-search audit.

Free SEO Analysis Tools Needed to Perform the Audit:

Bing has always played second fiddle to the monster search engine Google and in a stride to improve their functions, popularity and presence on the web; Bing has announced a re-launch with a strong focus on social media in search. Google Plus is holding its ground, but before that Google had a few false starts with implementing social media. This evaluation may be one of the reasons why Bing is attempting to fill this elusive gap and focus more on social media search.

With all of the changes that Google has been introducing lately it’s a surprise we can all keep up. Another change has been added to their Webmaster Tools with both positive and negative effects. Google has now announced that one is now able to see up to 90 days of past data in Webmaster Tools Search Queries reports instead of the initial 35 days.

This may seem and inherently is a beneficial change and update in the Goggle Webmaster tools and many search engine optimisation specialists will have the opportunity to evaluate more historical data than before. However, other additional changes have been made to the free Webmaster Tools and much of its logistical interface has changed and shifted and there are some pitfalls associated with this change.

Google purchased the hugely popular media hub, Youtube – in 2006 – and went on to refine Youtube advertising so much that the entire vehicle of video advertising by any business cannot take off unless it is strategically optimised with the correct SEO.

Since Google’s helming of Youtube the site has shown that it has a more serious side and business advertising now has more options available to clients, from niche to generic products or services. The most important utility within this entire dynamic is that the videos are now being optimised with the correct use of SEO. There are several Youtube advertising options available for bigger corporations with cash to splash easily spending $300,000 a day on one 24 hour slot on the Youtube Homepage Redzone. For this amount of money, and only for 24 hours, clients can utilise a fair amount of the Youtube homepage as they wish. The costs are pretty heavy, but if your pocket cannot cope with the corporations “small change” expenditure on advertising, Youtube offers other more affordable avenues.

Google has just released major changes to their AdWords platform that is set to heavily influence the way video advertising is purchased in the future. Just as Google has done with targeted online advertising through Google AdWords in the past, so they are set to do with video advertising from here on.

Much like the paid search that Google currently spearheads, the new AdWords for Video imitates that bidding model to allow for more affordable advertising and much more targeted video whether you’re an advertising agency or a small start-up doing in-house marketing. Perhaps the most significant change here is that advertisers will be able to target around ten times more users based on their demographics.

Don’t Stop Reading Here – There’s More!

Certain tools are incredibly important for SEO specialists from any SEO agency to efficiently optimise content and rank with Google. Google AdWords – more specifically the keyword tool – has become one of those prominent tools and enables SEOs to evaluate exactly what people are searching for and with what volumes. AdWords offers other staple tools such as traffic estimators, analytics and website optimisers. In a new Goggle functionality update, knowledgeable AdWords advertisers have created keyword lists that include things like misspellings, plurals, and other variations on a keyword or phrase being searched for.
Google Adwords changes will now do this automatically as it has been doing with organic search results with exact and phrase matching but advertisers will be have the opportunity to decide whether they want this feature. Adwords misspellings are a frequent occurrence and interestingly, at times the misspelled words searched, have higher rankings than the correct ones. This new AdWords misspelling and variants system will take into account five different alternatives in a language. They are:

Google’s Panda has actively hit websites that are saturated with keywords, and charging them an over-optimisation penalty. Depending on the level of saturation and trustworthiness of sites, rankings are hugely affected and DIY website writers’ are flooding emergency rooms with high-blood pressure simply because they are now too afraid to touch their keyboards in case they overstep Google’s over-optimisation line.

Many people are saying that website writers should not stress too much about over-optimisation because they will know when they have gone overboard. Unlike websites that freely and savagely saturate their sites with keywords simply to draw traffic are certain to get targeted by Panda, and rightly so, because they are quite simply diverting attention away from trustworthy sites that have decent content.

The relationship between Google and SEO has always been both a turbulent and beneficial one, playing off one another and having sentiments of a ‘cat and mouse’ championship. There have been increasing updates performed by Google with its latest algorithm change, Goggle Panda 3.3 and now the latest search quality updates have become available. This month’s list of Google changes seems even more complex than usual but as optimisers, we need to maintain a certain level of information-based knowledge to always stay at the cutting edge of SEO services and their offering to clients.

Although Google’s updates and somewhat principle demeanour are in place to maintain a certain level of un-spammy and quality driven content, it does however make our lives as SEOs a tad more difficult. Here are some of the changes that particularly stand out and some that should definitely be taken into consideration.