Google AdWords “Close Variant Keyword Matching” Puts up Challenge for SEO

SEO Service Providers are now faced with a new challenge with Google AdWords announcing its Close Variant Keyword Matching. What it means from the functional point of view is that the ability to target exact keywords won’t be there in AdWords PPC campaigns. Google’s intention is to include even those cases where the user has misspelled the keyword or used a different way of expressing. But this also means SEO's can no longer get as much information about keywords as they used to from AdWords.

PPC's, due to their nature of being direct queries, have traditionally been used by SEO Companies for analyzing the primary keywords to be targeted. Now, we may never know how many of the clicks came from exact keywords and how many from close variants. One of the ways SEO Companies in India is tackling this problem is using Google suggestions in deciding which keywords to target. Also, this change by Google, although it has raised challenges for SEO's, may actually be a blessing in disguise for the SEO Services in India. One of the vital differences, which the Indian markets has, is the presence of wide ranges of target audiences. In addition to this, English is not the first language for most of them. Both these factors lead to situations where a keyword is used in a variety of ways by the user to search for the same product or service. Including close matches may actually help as we shall now cover a wider range of audiences.

MAD Advertising, one of the providers of Best SEO Services in India, is also focusing on the long tail keywords more than the traditional ones. When the fishing grounds have increased, it is always a good idea to prepare the net for a wide variety of fish.

What Does the Panda 4.0 update mean for SEO?

SEO's spent a restless last week of the month of May, 2014. Even as Google was preparing to launch Panda 4.0, a few of the prominent sites had already begun witnessing huge decline in visibility and traffic. Although this may have been due to the release of spam algorithm version 2.0, the launch of Panda 4.0 continued the loss of visibility for prominent sites.

As Google’s Matt Cuts had previously mentioned about the upcoming changes, this update maybe specific to certain keywords. Google had received complaints regarding a few keywords that particularly attracted spam. Thus, this update was in the pipeline for some time now. Though the exact manner in which the updates resulted in the lowering of visibility is still unclear, Google had declared that about 7.5% of English queries will be impacted by this update. Going by the percentage, Panda 4.0 will have the highest impact among all the Panda updates. Thus, it is time, once again, for SEO Agencies and SEO Professionals to put themselves on hot seats.

Let us start with what we know. It is seen that the Press Release sites have taken the first hits in the largest volumes. Not many are complaining about this as such sites have become infamous for becoming hubs for spam links. What it means, for the SEO's, is they have to now take extra care while posting content to the Press Release sites. It can no longer be “post it anywhere you can”. SEO Professionals will now have to put Press Release sites through careful scrutiny before hitting the post button.

The SEO Agencies should also be ready for more changes as and when more effects emerge. What they should also remember, is that a quality website with quality content is the only characteristic that will remain untouched by these changes. For all the other factors, the game of cat and mouse will continue.

SEO Needs to Take Into Consideration the Customized Search Results

One of biggest ways that Search Engine Results have changed is the Customized Search Results. This specially comes into play when the user is logged-in to a particular profile. For example, if a user is logged into his Gmail account, then the search results will depend a lot on the previous searches made with that login. The same applies with Yahoo and other major accounts. The variation is so intense that SEO Personnel need to consider this in their optimization strategies in order to ensure that visibility is not lost.

Most of the online users prefer to remain logged in while spending their time online. This is especially true of the interactive users, as a logged-in account is necessary to interact on most of the platforms. Since such active users form the prized audiences for SEO, what they see in their search results cannot be overlooked. One of the most fruitful techniques that SEO professionals employ to tackle Customized Search Results is by maintaining an active Google+ profile. This is because, it has been found that searches, made while logged-in to Google, throw result pages that are dominated by posts from Google+. In fact, the first page includes posts from users that you follow on Google+, if they contain content that matches the query. Thus, more the followers your brand’s Google+ profile page has, better is its chance of appearing in Personalized Search Results.

Since Google rules the roost among the search engines, ensuring an active Google+ page takes care of a large share of online target audiences. However, any SEO worth his salt knows the perils of putting all the eggs in the same basket. Similar steps should be taken to feature in the other prominent Search Engines as well.