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As Google had promised two months ago, to publish changes to its algorithm on a monthly basis, Google has published the latest set of changes to the Google algorithm. Here are the details taken straight from the Google’s blog:

• Changes to the freshness algorithm to return the freshest and the most relevant results.
• Autocomplete is now faster.
• Spelling corrections in Autocomplete.
• Improved accuracy in spelling correction in search results. Eg. Someone searching for weird and you spell it as wierd, Google will show you results for the correct spelling, (weird) – of course they’ll let you know.
• Better results with correct spellings for rare queries.
• Timely results for recurring events.
• Panda Update for high quality sites – yes 3.2 is released.
• Auto detecting the language of the original query and displaying more accurate results
• Saudi Arabia users can now use an English Interface!
• Image search now has better scrolling with the new changes in the Google algorithm.
• Image search on the whole is improved – says Google
• Related searched at the bottom of the screen are now made more relevant and useful.
• News results are more timely and improved by the new changes in the Google algorithm.
• Google Instant can now automatically turn itself off if the speed of the computer is slow. (this was possible only with a slow internet connection previously).

So, lot many changes from Google in the Google Algorithm for providing users with quality search results. Let us as SEO experts make ourselves aware of these and use them in our SEO efforts.

You create an ad that is persuasive, attention grabbing and most importantly compelling, but it is no good if it leaves the customer wondering “what next?” Your ad should be such that it leads the customer to exactly where you want them to click. This is where your call to action steps in. Create a powerful call to action, which your customers can easily locate, click and land on your landing page!

Yes, it’s true – success of your ad campaign depends on the effectiveness of your call to action button. Great – now that we have established the importance of an effective call to action, let us also take a look at a few tips to create a call to action:

• Maintain clarity in the design
• Placement of the call to action button is important. Place it such that visitors can easily locate it.
• Lots of scrolling to locate a call to action is a bad idea.
• Persuasive, attractive and attention grabbing design will surely help
• Maintain just one call to action, or customer will get confused. Do not give choices and options.
• Give clear instructions. “Request Quote”, “Call Now” etc.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was recently announced to stop copyright infringement over the internet. The Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) also includes prevention of theft of intellectual property.

These were targeted towards certain websites that provide illegal downloads (like thepiratebay). The supporters of the act feel that piracy deprives the content creators of income.

There has been a lot of criticism against this act. The bill critics on the other hand are of the opinion that the bill is not in line with the architecture of the internet. The bill also says that, if there is any site that allows users to post content, and is designed in such a way that users can violate copyright, is a felon. So, the site does not even have to be an illegal one, if it provides enough space to enable copyright infringement, it will be labelled as an infringing site that promotes theft of U.S. intellectual property.

Well, this is definitely not how the internet works! Websites like Wikipedia, YouTube have a lot of content and have openly protested this act by going dark this week. The protest against SOPA and PIPA has definitely intensified.

We all are aware that Google’s crawler is called as Googlebot. This Googlebot is responsible for bringing back information from the world wide web, and submitting it to Google. Google’s algorithm then indexes and ranks the web pages brought back by the crawler. In recent years, mobile devices have become smarter and the recent rise in the smartphone and tablet use gave rise to the need of designing websites specially to suit their specifications. This was a good move for website marketers. One more important change in this direction is the introduction of Googlebot Mobile. A great way to enhance user experience with mobile searches.

Well, now that Google has taken a step forward and introduced Googlebot Mobile for smartphone users, let us as SEO experts ensure that our mobile specific web pages are appropriately optimized. Ensure you follow these tips for your mobile website:

• Your mobile site must be verified in Google Webmaster Tools
• Ensure that you have a sitemap for your mobile website (include the <mobile:mobile/> tag) – rest is same as the desktop website sitemap.
• It’s a good idea to link your mobile website to your desktop website – and the other way round.
• Other general SEO practices should be followed for mobiles sits too – link building being an important one.

We all agree that web design is the first interaction that you will have with your customers – or prospective customers – visitors to be very specific. So, it’s time to make first impressions very very impressive. Well, there are two aspects of a website. One, you must let visitors know what your products / services are, and two, you need to ensure that you provide the customers with what they are looking for.

When a visitor looks at your home page, they need to feel sure that they will find what they were looking for. Generally visitors are looking for some information, some solution to their problem or some specific product / service. So, ensure that your web design includes appropriate images, easy navigation and exact information. Well, keep scrolling to the minimum. Create a web design that “leads” the customer to what they are looking for – never let them guess where to click next!

Google had announced a few months back that the searches would be made more secure, meaning users signed in users would be able to search without Google sending referrer data about what was being searched. This was in the best interests of users. Here’s Google announcing a new feature for search results on these lines. Google search results get more personal with the new “Search Plus Your World”.

Now, searchers shall have integrated search results – Personal, Public and social. Currently only Google+ data shall be available for inclusion of personal search information. Facebook and Twitter information has not been included for this purpose – just Google Plus. This is because, Facebook and Twitter currently do not allow deep crawling to locate information.

A Good move overall, in Google’s words, “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships”. To state clearly, it includes three new features:

• Personal Results: to search for information that was shared in your personal profile – posts, photos etc. Includes the ones’ you shared within your network and the one’s shared with you by people in your network.
• Profiles in Search: Autocomplete and search results – to be able to find people and profiles that you might want to follow.
• People and Pages: to help you find Google plus pages of your interested and easily follow them.

Great many personalization changes coming up from Google. These are available for signed in users. Also, currently for Google.com and English Language.

Social Media

Social Media has been a huge hype in the recent years. In 2012, what different would it be? Marketers will need it more and more for sure. Looking back at the past few years, we have seen Facebook grow and today it has more than 800 million users monthly. Well, Twitter an already popular social network, is gaining popularity in the mobile world too. It is integrated in iPhone and many Androids. Facebook has become an interface that integrates features for personal use and business use including marketing requirements too. It’s got chat, messages (like email), wall posts, ads and fan pages for promotions – everything that you can think about in a social media. Similarly with Google+ entering the social media market, users have a whole list of services to take advantage of and use social media more effectively.

Mobile usage is on the rise. Well, to be very specific, smartphones and tablets are getting viral. And social media expansion definitely includes the integration in smartphones. Users will definitely benefit by this mobilized access to social media. So, in 2012, social media is not going anywhere. It’s in fact going to be more accessible, more available and more mobile!

Content is king – that has been repeated time and again by all advisors of online marketing. Well, it’s true. But if not accompanied by adequate online marketing, it’s of very little value. So, if you do have some awesome content on your website / blog, it will bring good returns only if it is promoted in the right light. You cannot write an article or blog and leave it to hope and luck that someone may discover it, read it and like it. You need to proactively spread the word.

There are many ways to promote your content in online marketing. With the ever increasing scope of customer interaction online, today we have a wide range of methods we can use to market our content. Social media is a good place to make your content visible to the masses. Spread the word to related websites/bloggers by actively letting them know about your content. Well, your existing customers are the best channel you could use. They are the ones’ who will be able to better spread awareness of you products supported with excellent content.

With an aim of promoting Chrome, Google had hired two top agencies. However, the promotion campaign used violated it’s own quality guidelines. Paid bloggers were asked to post “reviews” for the web browser.

As per Google, the only promotion activity to be used was online ads. And any other paid methods are not in the best interests of users. Google also said that they are looking at what can be done to ensure that this does not repeat.

Well there’s no escaping a penalty when guidelines are violated. Google has penalized Chrome too. And www.google.com/chrome gets a lower page rank in search engine results. This is for at least 60 days. And Chrome will have to submit a reconsideration request like any other company.

Google has truly proven that it follows ethics and abides by it’s own guidelines – there are no exception – even for it’s own products and absolutely no reasons one can give for violating guidelines.

After the ripples that Panda and Caffeine created, Google decided to post the changes to the algorithm on a monthly basis, beginning November.

Google makes more than 500 changes to its algorithm. Here are the latest changes from December. (Taken from Google’s official blog)

• Improvement in landing page signals for image search to make sure that the images are relevant and results are of the highest quality pages.
• Improvement in the algorithm that picks site links so that most relevant site links are displayed in search results.
• Soft 404 Detection: The return error when a page does not exist is generally 404, some web servers return other status codes. These are called soft 404 errors. Google’s algorithm changes now have improvements in such soft 404 error detection.
• Domains other than .com, like .in, .uk, .au have the option to see results only from their country. Google’s algorithm changes can now better detect the country from where a document is.
• You will now see rich snippets for your websites.
• Autocomplete feature can better handle spelling errors.
• Image search has better spam detection.
• Google Instant enhancements for Japanese queries.
•  Google’s algorithm changes now include better detection of the date for a document and it annotates it for you.
• Live results for NFL and college football: providing latest scores is now an easy task for Google.
• Improved dataset for related queries.
• Related query improvements.
• You will now see better results for lyrics queries.
• The +1 button will only be seen when your hover over the result or if the result has been already +1’d.
• Better spell correction in Vietnamese.
• Google can now show you better results for upcoming events at venues.
• Improvements to image size signal.
• Improved Hebrew synonyms.
• Safer searching.
• Google can now provide encrypted search on new regional domains.
• Mobile browsing is now faster and better.
• More comprehensive indexing: Long tail documents are now made available in Google’s index so they they can be returned as search results for relevant queries.
• Google’s algorithm changes incorporates detection of parked domains which are generally sites that are of low value to user because they are full of ads and are just holding al domain space.
• Autocomplete predictions are now more precise.
• Blog search results are now accurate with fresher results.
• Better prediction for Original Content.
• Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League.
• Freshness criteria added to image search results.
• Layout on tablets to increase usability.
• Top result selection code rewrite.