In the past month or so, did anything odd happen to your Google My Business listings? Did you believe your listings had disappeared only to find that they had been filtered? Did you notice a giant spike in your rankings? What was going on? Although Google didn’t announce any algorithm updates, SEOs in the know detected the change. Since so many people found their listings “playing dead,” the local search community decided to christen the update Possum. The Google Possum Update altered local search results in several ways, giving some businesses a boost while letting others slump down. To learn more about this shake-up, please scroll down.

P.S. Before we get started, do yourself a favor and check out this baby possum playing dead. Did you know that playing dead is an involuntary behavior for possums? They mimic the appearance of a dead animal when threatened or harmed, losing consciousness for between 40 minutes and 4 hours! 
Continue Reading

In October of 2015, we cheerfully announced that Santa might be bringing us a new Penguin algorithm for Christmas. As you all know, the Man with the Bag didn’t pull through. However now, one year later, Google has finally released Penguin 4.0. Recently made a part of Google’s core algorithm, Penguin penalizes websites that use “black hat” SEO techniques to sabotage competitors’ websites or improve their own rankings. To learn more about this newfangled bird, scroll down to discover the ins and outs of Penguin 4.0.
Continue Reading

When is the last time you opened a phone book? Small businesses (and their curious customers) no longer rely on those old-fashioned tomes. Instead, they use the Internet and search engines like Google to quickly and easily communicate with each other. To ensure that you’re getting the most out of your online marketing efforts, check out the 2016 Quantitative Local Search Ranking Factors Study created by Mark Kabana (of Places Scout), Andrew Shotland (of Local SEO Guide), and Dan Lebison (of Local SEO Guide) in collaboration with Megan Smith and Marija Pejcinovska, statisticians from the University of California, Irvine. This rigorous, eye-opening study of Google Local ranking factors may make you see Local SEO in a whole new light.
Continue Reading

We’ve heard it straight from the horse’s mouth: Google will be boosting its mobile-friendly algorithm in May. The search engine began using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal on mobile searches last year, but they’ve decide that it is time to fully embrace the formula by increasing its effects. If all goes well, the update should improve the user experience by bringing forward webpages that are mobile friendly and relevant to the query. Although this is a relatively small change expected to have an insignificant impact on search results, it never hurts to keep on top of Google’s comings and goings. So let’s explore this latest algorithm update . . .
Continue Reading

There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a sluggish webpage to load. Not forgetting where you parked your car, dropping your phone in the toilet, stepping in dog poop . . . Okay, some things are more frustrating than waiting for a webpage to load, but you can’t deny that being patient is difficult when your Internet is as slow as a three-toed sloth. And when webpages take too long to load, their readers become restless and annoyed – some may even abandon ship! Google hopes to speed up our online world with the advent of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). They’re lightweight, pared down, and exceedingly fast.
Continue Reading

I don’t want to knock anyone off their high horse, but let’s be honest: starting a blog is a piece of cake these days. In an hour or less, you can establish your own little “corner of the Internet” and publish your first post. Although I doubt that this breakneck blog will be the best blog in existence, you will succeed nevertheless in pioneering a personal website. The more important question is: do you know how to maintain a successful blog? Quite quickly, you will realize that keeping a blog alive requires a lot more than the ability to write coherent posts and upload pretty pictures. In fact, if you want to know how to maintain a successful blog, you will need to consider many other factors: brainstorming topics, preventing repeat content, creating consistent posts, and perhaps even coordinating posts with other writers.

Continue Reading

If you’re keeping up with the world of SEO, you may know that Google has been warning against using sneaky mobile redirects for some time. Now, they’ve gone from talking the talk to walking the walk—that is, they’re working on a new penalty that will reprimand webmasters who have these redirects in place. So, what is Google’s new penalty? Will it affect you? Or, perhaps we should ask: how can you prevent it from affecting your site?

Continue Reading

If I only had a brain! Like the Scarecrow in the The Wizard of Oz, Google’s bot has finally received a brain! A brain of sorts, anyway. On October 26th, Google announced the newest piece of their influential algorithm: RankBrain. Although the system has been right under our noses for months now, fully live and global, its existence was hidden until last week. Like all signals used by Google’s algorithm, RankBrain will influence how the search engine determines where a webpage should rank on a results page. Utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning, RankBrain appears to give Google yet another leg up on the competition. So, what is Google RankBrain? More importantly, how will it affect the world of SEO?
Continue Reading