What to Do if Your Search Rankings Were Hurt by Google's Penguin Update

Have ya heard? A new animal may be wreaking havoc on your ability to get found in search. But this time, it doesn't take the form of a black and white bear. No -- this time, it's even more deceptively cute and harmless. This time ... it's a penguin.

Last week on April 24, Google released a new update called Google Penguin to combat spammy web pages' ability to turn up in Google search results. In fact, you may remember a blog post we wrote last month that hinted this update was coming, conveyed as one meant to target and penalize sites that were "over-optimized" for search. While Google has now clarified that the update was engineered to be more about combatting outright spammy tactics rather than vague instances of "over-optimization," this is the update they were referring to back in March. The Penguin Update slams sites that employ such tactics as keyword stuffing, duplicate content, or misleading/hidden/cloaked links, all of which Google clearly warns against in its Webmaster Guidelines regarding quality.

So now that Google has confirmed that the new update is completely live, how can you tell if you've been bitten by an angry Penguin -- and what should you do about it if you have been? Google and Search Engine Land have both shared some great advice, so let's dig into what you can do if you're suffering from Penguin backlash.

(And honestly, is anyone else curious as to why Google is so enamored with naming its algorithm updates after black and white colored animals? What's next -- Google Zebra?)

How to Tell if You've Been Penalized by Google Penguin

Although there's no way to log in to Google Webmaster Central to determine if you've been hit, Search Engine Land suggests a quick little test you can conduct to get a sense of whether your website is suffering in search since the update was deployed. And, in fact, Google agrees this is the way to go:

Take a look at your website analytics, comparing your organic search traffic from Google a few days before and in the days after Google Penguin launched (April 24). Note: Don't be fooled by Google Panda! Google rolled out an update to Panda, called Panda 3.5, on April 19. This update targets low-quality, not spammy, websites. So if you notice that you were starting to get hurt in terms of organic search traffic prior to April 24, you probably have a Panda problem on your hands. In that case, refer to this post to learn what you can do about it. If you've ruled out Panda, you'll notice 1 of 3 scenarios pertaining to the Penguin Update:

Do you notice a drop in traffic in the days after? If so, you likely have a Penguin problem.Do you notice traffic is staying the same? This means you probably weren't impacted by the update at all; you're probably safe!Do you notice a spike in traffic? This could mean you've actually benefited from the update. Perhaps some of your competitors were penalized by Penguin, and you're swiping some of the traffic that otherwise would've been routed to them. Nice!

If the latter two scenarios are what's playing out for you, then keep up the good work. You're probably doing a good job of playing by Google's guidelines and aren't participating in spammy SEO behavior. If the first scenario sounds more like your situation, keep reading ...

How to Treat Your Google Penguin Wounds

If you're getting hit because of a spammy web presence, you're going to need to clean up those instances of spam.

First things first. Have you verified your Google Webmaster Account yet? There's a chance that Google has already sent you messages regarding your spammy behavior, but if you've never verified your account, you may never have known they were sitting there waiting for you! In fact, Google has been ramping up its attempts to notify users through its Webmaster Tools, using it to send over 700,000 messages to webmasters in January and February 2012. That's more than the total number of message it sent in the whole of 2011!

So, after you've checked your messages, your next step should be to fix any spammy behavior Google flagged and notified you about in particular. But don't stop there. Read through those Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines we mentioned earlier and check your site for instances where you may be participating in some spammy behavior. Then, well, fix those instances! Here is what you should be looking out for as you're auditing your site:

Specific Quality Guidelines From Google (Source):Avoid hidden text or hidden links.Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.Don't send automated queries to Google.Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords (AKA keyword stuffing).Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

If any of these spammy behaviors sound applicable to your website, correct them as soon as possible.

Can You Air Your Grievances if You Feel You've Been Wronged by Penguin?

You may notice there is a tempting link at the bottom of Google's Webmaster Guidelines through which you can 'submit your site for reconsideration' if you've modified it after determining that it didn't meet these guidelines, but here's the deal. Google has said the Penguin update will ding spammy sites automatically, not manually. In other words, submitting a reconsideration request won't do much because Google won't be making any manual exceptions.

If you feel like your site has been penalized unjustly, you're better off using this form to air your grievances to Google, which was created exclusively for users who feel they've been wronged by the Penguin Update. Just do so in a way that explains why your site shouldn't be considered spammy, not using an attitude that blames Google for being a bad guy.

If you know a site affected by algo update that you don't think should be affected, we made a form to provide feedback: goo.gl/nt3Pz

— Matt Cutts (

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New Gmail Image Feature Makes Email Marketing More Social

and Gmail, Google has now taken yet another step toward integrating email and real-time social networking. And this topic should concern you, my fellow marketer. 

Email to Catch up With Social; Google to Catch up With Facebook 

In early 2012, it was announced that Gmail had 350 million active users. While this is an impressive number, Gmail still has a lot of catching up to do to reach Facebook’s 800 million users. In fact, not only is Gmail behind Facebook on overall user adoption, but it also seems to be behind in terms of engagement. A 2010 Nielsen study shows email as the third online channel on which Americans spend most of their time, ranking behind social networks/blogs and games.

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Analyze Twitter Data for Any Search Term [Free Tool]

Over the past few weeks, I've been working -- mostly in secret -- on a sweet new free tool. Well, I'm finally ready to release it this week. It's called TweetCharts, and it's designed to be a simple way for you to quickly and easily obtain Twitter data on any hashtag, username, word, phrase, or URL. No longer do you have to wait for some social media scientist to run a report for you; now you can do it yourself!

To give you a sampling of the different use-cases and information you can pull out of this flexible tool, I ran a few interesting reports and highlighted what I thought was the most useful information from each. Here are a few things I learned...

Understand What Tweet Sources Are Telling You

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The 9 Must-Have Components of Compelling Email Copy

Email marketing has come a long way in just the past few years, but with all the fancy new functionality brands are utilizing, you know what’s kind of funny? A well-written plain text email can perform just as well, if not better, than a highly designed email with tons of bells and whistles. In fact, no matter how fancy your marketing emails look, if they’re devoid of well-written content, your subscribers will stop opening and start deleting your messages, and your list will quickly dwindle in value.

So how do you write a great marketing email? It all comes down to a few copywriting best practices that you should apply to both the subject line of your message, and the message body itself. Next time you draft a message for a lead nurturing campaign or just a one-time email send, ask yourself whether your copy meets all of these guidelines first.

Writing a Compelling Email Subject Line

Part of writing effective email copy is nailing the subject line. The subject line is like the gatekeeper of your email -- no one gets to read your stellar email copy if they aren't interested enough to open your email in the first place. And that interest is garnered almost wholly on the subject line of the email (with the sender name playing a role, as well). We've written an entire blog post about crafting email subject lines, but here's a distillation of what you need to know to write some excellent copy.

Use Actionable Language

With email subject lines, using actionable language doesn't necessarily mean using verbs -- though it certainly helps. OpenTable, for example, sent me an email just a few days ago that said "Take Mom to Brunch" in the subject line. This is one way to use actionable language effectively in email subject lines; by incorporating a verb -- like "take," "download," "reserve," "ask," "buy," etc. -- the reader knows exactly what they can do in the email.

But there are ways to use actionable language without relying on verbs, giving you more room to play with words when crafting email subject lines. Simply use language that makes it clear to the recipient when they can do with the information in the email should they choose to open it. In other words, keep the value for the user top of mind.

For example, TicketMaster sent me an email last week with the subject line "Don't Miss Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band." They didn't order me to purchase tickets by saying "Purchase Tickets Tomorrow for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band," though such a subject line may have performed just as well. The original subject line worked well because it was clear what I could do with the information in that email -- ensure I'm prepared for the 10:00 AM sale time so I could snag my tickets (which I did, thanks to the email)!

Personalize When Possible

Emails that are highly segmented benefit from better performance in a number of areas. Take a look at the data below from eMarketer, which shows the effect of list segmentation and targeting on email marketing performance metrics.

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Why Marketers Must Optimize Emails for HTML AND Plain Text [Infographic]

When you send an email, a lot goes on behind the scenes. And as mere marketing mortals, most of us probably don't understand the process fully, especially when we rely on software to take care of all that technical mumbo-jumbo for us. Just take a look at the following infographic from litmus, which documents an email's journey from the click of the "send" button all the way to the subscriber's inbox. It turns out, getting an email to display properly in a recipient's email client isn't so cut and dry. There are quite a few factors that can affect an email's ability to show up the way you, the marketer, originally intended!

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13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence

This week, a new free social media tool called Klouchebag hit the web. If you haven't played around with it already, it's a tool that tells you how ... uh ... annoying you are on Twitter. Yeah, we'll just go with "annoying" for the sake of this blog post. But it got me thinking: social media can be chock full of valuable content, but it's often buried among the mundane and useless social media updates, or hidden behind poorly constructed social media profiles. And this makes a marketer's job mighty hard.

So this post is going to outline all of the worst offenders we've seen in social media. If none of these apply to you, congratulations! Use these as entertainment over your lunch break. Otherwise, consider these cautionary tales to help protect your own social media strategy.

13 Ways to Make People Hate Your Social Media Presence1) Launching a Private Social Media Account

Social media is about talking with and meeting new people. It's right there in the name -- social media. So why on earth would you set up a social media account and then set it to, gulp, private? That's exactly what CVS did when they launched its CVS_Cares Twitter account. If you had tried to follow them around launch time, this is what you would have seen:

 

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Twitter Update Makes it Easier for Users to Discover Your Marketing Content

The savviest of inbound marketers know that content creation is at the heart of a successful inbound marketing strategy. But if marketers are consistently pumping out tons and tons of content, what you end up with is a cluttered web that will only get more cluttered, right?

These days, content discovery is a big problem, both as a user and as a marketer. Your audience is constantly struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff, and as a marketer, you're always looking for ways to make sure your content gets in front of the eyes of that audience.

The good news is, search engines and social networks have been trying to make content discovery and delivery a little bit easier lately. For example, we've witnessed LinkedIn's launch of more robust content targeting tools; Google's pushes to reward high quality content and penalize low-quality, spammy content in search; and various other efforts by Google and social networks to provide more relevant, personalized content to its users.

Well, here's one more for ya! Yesterday, Twitter announced an update to its Discover tab, which aims to provide users with content that is even more personalized and relevant to them.

 

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How to Leverage Thank-You Page Real Estate for Better Marketing

We've touted landing pages as one of the most crucial parts of your marketing (next to content creation, of course) for some time. But there's something that comes after the landing page that doesn't get a lot of attention in the marketing blogosphere ... that moment after a lead converts, and you say "thank you."

You do say thank you, right? Usually it comes in the form of a thank-you page that appears after a lead fills out your form, a thank-you email that goes into their inbox, or both. And there are plenty of opportunities to keep your prospect engaged with your website, content, and brand even after the conversion event. This post will break out those ways so both you and your prospect can keep reaping the benefits of your relationship!

8 Ways Your Thank-You Page and Emails Can Keep Prospects Engaged1) Include Social Media Follow Modules

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25 Little Details That Will Make a BIG Difference at Your Next Event

Throwing a killer marketing event takes tremendous planning and resources; you have to think about attracting PR coverage, turning conversations into sales, and even how you'll integrate inbound marketing throughout the thing. But you're a pro -- wouldn't forget big components like that when planning your event.

The smaller details, however, are likely to escape. And the thing is, it's the little details that make attendees walk away and say, "WHOA, that was an awesome event!" And you do want attendees saying that, right? Here are 25 ways to make jaws drop at your next marketing event. And if you're attending any marketing events in 2012, keep your eyes peeled for unforgettable details like these!

25 Little Ways to Make a Huge Impact At Your Next Event

1) Get a map from your venue that identifies all of the outlets and charging stations. Attendees will need to charge their laptops and mobile devices periodically, so if the venue doesn't provide enough outlets naturally, set up designated charging areas for this purpose. If you're selling sponsorships, this is great real estate to sell!

2) Recruit your friendliest, most knowledgeable employees to remain scattered evenly throughout the venue so someone is always available to answer attendee questions -- and make sure they stand out! At HubSpot events, for example, our employees can often be found wearing bright orange track suits. Believe me, people will have lots of questions. Making it easy to find and identify event point persons will thrill attendees and nip frustration in the bud.

3) Put together a welcome packet that includes a map, nearby places to eat, local activities, taxi or car service contact information, and emergency phone numbers. Many attendees may be coming from out of town, and they'll appreciate receiving help navigating a new city.

4) Alternately, ask your hotel to give attendees a welcome packet that you've put together upon check in. You can often negotiate add-on services like this before you sign your contract. Attendees will really feel the 5-star treatment with a welcoming gesture like this!

5) Make sure your venue has cell reception. Seems obvious, doesn't it? Too bad I've attended more than one event this year that left me incommunicado because of spotty cell reception. Your attendees will be tweeting, checking their email, and texting during your event; bad cell reception would be a huge detriment to a positive experience.

6) You know those bags you get at every conference you attend? They usually have a bunch of sheets of paper and brochures that get thrown out, a branded pen, and maybe a mug. Try including something that's actually useful to attendees! Think about mobile chargers, notepads to accompany those pens, or something else that can be used on-site during their time at your event.

7) Designate an area where people can relax, check their email, and make phone calls. Do not let any sponsors in this area. It should be a safe space where people can escape the conference. Doing this will prevent attendees from leaving the event when they need a break ... and then never coming back!

8) Make sure you have a trustworthy wireless connection, and know exactly who to contact if it stops working. It should be free, easy to access, and every conference attendee should be able to find the username and password. And if any attendee asks for the username and password, every person in an orange track suit (or however you choose to make your point persons stand out) should know the answer as well as their social security number.

9) Speaking of which, debrief everyone from your company that's attending about the details of your event. When they are asked a question by attendees, they should know the answer quickly instead of having to run around the venue searching for the conference coordinator. The most important answers to memorize are the locations of rooms, what sessions are going on and when, who is speaking, where restrooms are located, and what the wireless information is. It is also helpful to have a snapshot of the day's agenda on hand and venue maps in case anyone has lost their copy.

10) Have directional signs to the food area, restrooms, breakout session rooms, general session rooms, and the sponsor area. Make sure these signs are placed in a visible area and easily read from far away.

11) If you're hosting an annual event, have the date of next year's event ready to give to people. Then set up an area where attendees can sign up for next year's conference at a discounted rate.

12) Give different name tags to different people; you should differentiate between partners, sponsors, VIP, and customers. It will make the attendees feel special to be part of a group, recognized for their relationship with your company, and easier to network with others who are part of their group (or better, another group)!

13) Give attendees the chance to have a little fun and take home a personal, memorable keepsake from the event. At one of your evening gatherings, for example, you could set up a photo booth where people can take pictures to remember how much fun they had!

14) Lighting has a huge effect on how your audience feels. It should vary from session to session so you can alter the mood of the room. During the breakout sessions, for example, you want a normal light so people are not distracted and can comfortably take notes. For the parties, you want dim lighting (you know, for the romance). And at a general session, you need to pump up the volume -- use flashing lights in the beginning that get people excited for the conference to begin!

15) Marketers love feedback! Ask attendees what they want to see at your next event, especially those that are already signing up to attend next year's event. Make sure they see that their input from previous years has been taken into account, too.

16) When collecting speaker/session feedback, do so right after the session. If you want until the end of the day or the end of the event, specific details will have escaped attendees' minds, so the feedback will be far less helpful. But right after a session wraps up, peoples' minds are fresh!

17) Make sure your event flows. Yes, "flow" is another fluffy marketing term like "engagement" is in social media marketing. But what it really means is that you don't host back-to-back sessions that occur on opposite sides of your venue. And you don't have a buffet line with one entry, and one exit point. Keep a condensed space so attendees don't have to run around from place to place, and consider how foot traffic will naturally move in between sessions and during events.

18) Leverage mobile. You could create an app for attendees to download that includes the event schedule, a person's individual agenda, a notes section, etc. Or you could simply ensure your event website is mobile optimized so it's easy for attendees to access everything they need right from their smartphones.

19) Provide real-time updates on session changes and schedule updates. Let people sign up to be on a wait-list for sessions they couldn't get into, and if people cancel, alert them of the opening. You can use email for this, or let attendees opt in for SMS alerts.

20) Registration is a thorn in everyone's side -- attendees and conference organizers. So make it quick and easy at your event by assembling plenty of staff to help, and having all of your materials ready to go so people can move through the registration line swiftly. For an extra special touch, include a QR code in your registration confirmation email, and let people pull up their confirmation on their mobile devices, just like checking in at the airport. It's paperless, quick, and makes you look totally futuristic.

21) Make sure everyone can visually see the speaker. That might mean setting up huge screens throughout the seating area (which may increase your budget) but it's necessary for keeping attendees engaged in the session. There is something about being able to hear and see a speaker that makes a presentation much better.

22) Don't set up your rooms using long rows. Instead, opt for rounds or short rows so people can easily get up and get out if necessary without being disruptive -- to both the speaker and their fellow attendees.

23) Surprise attendees with special additions to their day! If your event is taking place in the summer, bring in ice cream or sorbet for them to enjoy. If it's winter, surprise everyone with hot chocolate and marshmallows.

24) If some of your speakers are authors, offer to host a book signing. Not only do attendees get to walk away with a signed book, but they get to meet the speaker in person to ask question about the content from the presentations. 

25) Don't just use social media, but integrate it completely into the event. Set up an event hashtag and remind attendees of it frequently to encourage conversations on Twitter. Then reference those conversations during the event so more can join in on the fun -- you can even hold contests based on social media interaction. Finally, make sure you set up screens throughout the event space that show real-time event social media updates.

What little things do you think make a big difference at events?

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

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The Ultimate Glossary of Performance Metrics Every Marketer Should Know

Good marketers live by their data. Why? Metrics help us set goals and track progress, and numbers confirm we did a good job. Marketers should have control of their own data, as well as determine what metrics they might need to track before starting any new campaign. By digging into results, we can understand what worked well, what didn't work well, and then learn from it.

Now be strong, you data-driven marketer, you! Jump into this, the most comprehensive metrics and analytics glossary we've ever written. After reading this article, you will have earned your own data geek super hero cape.

Content

1) Blog Traffic - We all want to know how many people are visiting our blog day-to-day or month-to-month. This metric is the total number of people who are viewing your blog content. Is that number changing over time? What is the month-to-month growth rate? That's a great measurement to gauge content success!

2) Blog Subscribers - The number of people who are subscribing to your blog (via RSS or email) is an indicator of the value of your content. If they appreciate what you're writing, they will subscribe to get more. Watch how this number grows over time.

 

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Why Landing Pages Are an Indispensable Part of Marketing

Any savvy inbound marketer "gets" that once you've done all that hard work to get visitors to your website, the next big step is to convert them into leads for your business. But what's the best way to get them to convert? Landing pages, that's what!

Unfortunately, there seems to be a major disconnect between the importance of landing pages and their use by marketers. According to MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook (2nd edition), 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the business' homepage, not a special landing page. Furthermore, of the B2B companies that are using landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages.

Landing pages are the heart and soul of an inbound marketer's lead generation efforts, so why are they still so underutilized? MarketingSherpa cites that the number one reason businesses don't use landing pages is because their marketing department doesn't know how to set them up or they are too overloaded.

But let's put a stop to this, shall we, marketers? Landing pages are much too critical to the success of your lead generation efforts to sweep under the rug, and here's why.

What is a Landing Page?

First, let's start with a simple definition:

A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor's information through a lead-capture form (AKA a conversion form).

A good landing page will target a particular audience, such as traffic from an email campaign promoting a particular ebook, or visitors who click on a pay-per-click ad promoting your webinar. You can build landing pages that allow visitors to download your content offers (ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, etc.), or redeem other marketing offers such as free trials, demos, or coupons for your product. Creating landing pages allows you to target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads, while also capturing information about who they are and what they've converted on.

How Landing Pages Work

For a more complete understanding of how landing pages make visitor-to-lead conversions (and reconversions) possible, let's talk through a hypothetical scenario that will help demonstrate the simple pathway of a visitor into a lead through a landing page.

Let's say you own a professional painting business, and your services include a variety of professional indoor and outdoor paint jobs. You're a savvy inbound marketer, so you maintain a business blog that features articles about painting tips and tricks. You also have several more premium marketing offers like free educational ebooks on painting and free, no-obligation painting consultations.

Now let's say a mother was looking for a professional painter to paint her new baby-to-be's nursery but was first doing some research into color schemes. She comes across your blog post entitled "10 Popular Nursery Room Color Schemes for 2012" as a result of a Google search, and she clicks through to read it. When she reaches the bottom of the article, she notices a call-to-action (CTA), which is essentially an ad, for one of your offers -- a free painting consultation to help her decide which color scheme would work best with the size and type of nursery she's working with. "That would be valuable," she thinks, clicking on the CTA and visiting the landing page where she can sign up for her free consultation.

The landing page provides some additional information and details about what she will get out of the free consultation, convincing her it's worth providing her contact information on the landing page's conversion form in order to take advantage of the offer. She submits her information, and voila! -- she's now a viable lead for your painting business with whom you can easily follow up! What's more, she wants you to follow up with her. How fantastic does that sound?

And this isn't the only pathway through which a visitor can travel to convert into a lead. In addition to search, visitors can find your site and its landing pages through a number of marketing channels including email, social media, PPC, direct traffic, or referral traffic. Furthermore, they can find your landing pages through calls-to-action you place throughout your website, or directly as a result of you sharing the link to those landing pages in these other marketing channels.

They key, as a marketer, is to create these landing pages in the first place, and make it easy for potential customers to find them in your various marketing efforts.

6 Reasons You Need Landing Pages

Still not convinced that landing pages can make your marketing and lead generation efforts more effective? Here are 6 more compelling reasons:

1) Easily Generate Leads! If you could do one thing right now to drastically improve your lead generation efforts, it would be to use landing pages on your website. As we mentioned earlier, too many companies send their email, social media, and search traffic to their homepages. This is the equivalent of throwing leads away. You could capture these leads at a much higher rate simply by sending them to targeted landing pages. Landing pages provide a very easy way to generate leads for your sales team that you can then easily segment, nurture, or distribute to your sales team.

2) Give Your Offers a Place to Live: Marketing offers and landing pages go hand in hand. Just think back to our painting business example. Without being gated behind landing pages, your offers will do nothing to support your lead generation efforts. The idea is to require your website visitors to 'pay' you in contact information for something valuable like an offer, and your landing page is the collections tool.

3) Collect Demographic Information About Your Prospects: Every time a lead completes a conversion form on a landing page, your marketing and sales team is collecting valuable information about your leads. Your marketing team can then use this information to understand what types of visitors or marketing personas are converting, and your sales team already has a baseline of information about a lead before they reach out.

4) Understand Which Prospects Are More Engaged: Landing pages not only enable you to generate new leads; they also allow you to track reconversions of existing leads, which you can then use to identify which prospects are more engaged with your business. This also enables you to collect better intelligence on your leads' behaviors and activities on your website, which your sales team can use in the sales process.

 

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