- Penguin 2.0. This is the biggie—a major Penguin overhaul is on the horizon, with it being more comprehensive in the way it targets web spam and black hat techniques. It’s set to have more of an impact and will go much deeper than the original 1.0.

- Focus on advertorials. Google will start to pay more attention to advertorials that violate their quality guidelines and will be much stronger on enforcement, making sure such ads don’t float page range and are clearly disclosed.

- Ways to deny the value to link spammers to make such techniques less effective.

- Sophisticated link analysis. Google is working on an entirely new system that offers more sophisticated, comprehensive link analysis, and currently new data is being analysed to see if such a system will be effective.

- Hacked sites. They’re working on a next generation detection method to ensure hacked sites are easier to spot, and are looking for ways to communicate more clearly with webmasters to help them clean up their sites.

- Authority detection. Google’s looking for ways to better detect if someone’s an authority in a particular genre, and in doing so will help ensure they rank higher for that category.

- Panda update. This won’t be quite as obvious as the Penguin update, but Panda is being refined to identify additional quality factors that should help webmasters in the grey area get back on track.

- Host clustering tweaks. Type in a search and you’ll often be presented with several results from one domain, so Google is looking at ways to refine it so once you’ve seen a cluster you won’t be repeatedly presented with the same site.

- Better communication with webmasters. Google wants to find ways to offer more information to webmasters, providing concrete details and example URLs so they’re better able to diagnose their site.

These are just a few changes we can expect during summer 2013, and with a lot of them coming as a result of feedback from users it just shows the level that Google is committed to improving the search experience. High-quality content is still the order of the day and if you’re playing by the rules you shouldn’t have an issue, and progress has already been seen with spammers being far less likely to appear in search results. It’s hoped that these changes will offer even more to help businesses and webmasters reap the rewards of search, and all we can do is wait to see what comes next—it’s set to be an interesting few months!

The reason it matters so much? Quicker page loads = a better user experience, and that’s exactly what the search engine giant wants to offer. As Google says, “Faster sites create happy users … Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed—that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.” It makes sense too. The attention span of the average web user is becoming increasingly short and they won’t hang around if your site doesn’t load fast enough, and that means you could not only suffer from a lower PR but you’re losing out on sales too.

Studies have even been conducted to back it up. A mere 1 second delay has been found to decrease conversions by 7%, whilst 75% of users have said they wouldn’t return to a site if it took more than 4 seconds to load with nearly half of them expecting pages to load in 2 seconds or less. Doesn’t it make sense to shake things up a bit? Things like optimising your code and files, reducing image sizes (particularly in the mobile sphere) and even upgrading your servers are relatively simple tactics yet can have a huge impact on your page load speeds, so it’s worth giving it a go.

Of course, this is only a small part of Google’s search algorithm factors, but given it’s something entirely in your control you might as well see what you can do. Even a slight increase in page speed could have an impact with faster-loading pages being ranked higher than those that take forever and a day to get going, so if you improve your site speed you could easily start climbing up those rankings. Page load speed really does matter, so make sure to spend time on this area or get in touch with the experts (ahem) to help.

Keep it short and sweet. 155 characters or less seems to be the sweet spot as it means you won’t have your description cut off mid-sentence, and offering the reader a complete and usable statement will always be more effective.
Make your value proposition clear. A key question a reader will ask is “what’s in it for me?”—that means you need to give them a reason to click, so make sure to offer something of value and articulate it clearly in your description.
Be unique. Need we say more?
Incorporate a call to action. Similar to the value proposition but worth mentioning nonetheless—your description is essentially an advert, so make sure you’re advertising something! Including a short CTA or special offer at the end of the description could easily result in more click-throughs.
Name drop. If you’ve worked with high-profile clients a quick name drop or two could prove credibility and encourage readers to click, and as long as you don’t go too OTT and keep your characters in check it could be a great option.
Be welcoming. This goes hand-in-hand with the advice to write for the reader—don’t bombard them with a string of keywords but instead make the description welcoming and inviting, written with their needs in mind.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. Chances are you won’t get it right first time so you’ll want to test, monitor and adapt your strategy regularly to see what works, much like with every other area of SEO.

These few simple tips should help you on your way to creating META descriptions that really work, so try a few out (or get in touch with the experts to help. Ahem) and you could soon be soaring up the SERPs.

The florist came under fire for what Google called “unnatural link building”. They were found to have a large number of paid-for links on newspaper sites which passed the PageRank system and led straight to their own website, something that Google wants to crack down on because of the manipulative nature of paying for links and bypassing PageRank rules. The reaction was swift but fierce—once the tactic was identified, Google promptly removed Interflora from its rankings for queries for its own brand as well as related search terms.

This means that Interflora is, effectively, blacklisted and no longer appears in Google for the majority of its search terms. Although it’s thought to be only a temporary punishment it could still take months to recover from such a penalty, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for the brand—Mother’s Day is less than a week away, so not only is this a marketing disaster but it could potentially affect the brand’s profit margin too.

This just goes to show that even the biggest names aren’t immune from Google’s wrath. Staying in the search giant’s good books (in other words, complying with their “Webmaster Guidelines”) is something that companies of all kinds need to do, so don’t follow in the footsteps of Interflora and do everything you can to stay white hat to avoid suffering the consequences.

Nowadays people are using their tablet in much the same way they’d use a desktop, but the mobile nature of them means they’re able to research and make purchases on the go as well. This means search marketers need to align their campaigns to suit both angles to ensure they show the right ads at the right time, and gone are the days of separating the two technologies—in the past it was possible to have a separate tablet and desktop campaign and still deliver the necessary results, but these days it’s all about combining things. You shouldn’t individually target them but should instead take a truly multi-device approach, optimising campaigns with both the desktop and tablet user in mind, ensuring you’re able to provide a wholly relevant and fully optimised experience no matter what device is chosen.

This can be achieved by, for example, limiting the amount of Flash used (an important consideration from a web design point of view as well as providing search benefit) and implementing finger-friendly links, with any paid ad campaign needing to be precisely targeted and carefully aligned as well. The search landscape is becoming harder than ever for marketers to navigate and the challenges in this multi-device world are set to continue, but with the fine line between tablet and desktop only ever becoming blurrier it’s important to tackle this area to design campaigns that are targeted, tailored and as effective as possible.

Write in-depth posts. Detail is what matters—people want to learn something, and if they’ve learnt something they’ll be more likely to share it.

Cover hot topics. Creating content that’s old hat won’t set the internet alight, so try to focus on topics that are currently making headlines and you could soon make some headway. Of course, the downside to that is you’ll be facing a lot of competition, but if you add your own spin on things and make it truly exceptional (and follow these rules of course) you could soon stand out.
Generate an emotional response. If you’re not connecting with your audience you won’t be going viral anytime soon, so make sure to create content that generates emotion in some way. You need to show you care about your topic, and research has shown that high-energy emotions like anger, awe and anxiety have the best response rates in terms of sharing.

Be practical, surprising and interesting. Need we say more?

Known authors make a difference. We’d all like to think that good content speaks for itself, but actually the credibility, reputation and perceived authority of the author will go a long way to making it really speak to an audience. That means it might be worth aligning yourself with an industry authority who could take charge of any vital piece of content.

Make ‘em laugh. Content that’s gone truly viral is almost always funny. Use humour well and you can enjoy universal appeal, and whilst it may not work with all topics or all kinds of content it’s worth considering if you want to reap the rewards.

So, have you worked these factors into your content creation strategy? If not then now’s the time to do so, and if you do it well you could be one step closer to creating viral content and seeing your SEO results go stratospheric…

These days things like social signals and relevancy carry far more weight than link building tactics of days gone by, with anchor text-based links quickly becoming old hat. Google is becoming increasingly focused on relevancy and providing a great user experience with semantics being a core concept, and that means you need to think about creating a relevance profile rather than a link building one. You need to start by understanding what’s relevant to you and your business and can go on from that to incorporate those “relevant” features into your wider campaign, and there are plenty of semantic tools that can help (Google Semantic Operator, for example, or bottlenose.com). You’ll then be free to create content accordingly, perhaps utilising keywords and phrases that you wouldn’t normally consider but ones that are relevant to your company as a whole, letting you branch out and attract an even bigger audience in the process.

You’ll be able to engage with people on a whole new level and won’t be so consumed with thoughts of a link profile—it’s all about creating content and attracting an audience without necessarily generating backlinks, and whilst this seems like a ridiculous notion it actually makes a lot of sense. These days marketing and SEO as a whole are more about connections, particularly with the rise of social media and the importance of engagement, and if you get people talking about you it’ll have a much bigger search impact than a few ill-gotten backlinks ever could. It’s all about building your profile, your associations, your authority and your community as a whole, so don’t be solely focused on links from now on—link building without links is the future of search.

But, producing great video content is just the beginning. In the wake of so much competition it’s vital to stand out from the crowd, and that’s why you need to focus on optimising your videos to ensure they make the necessary impact. At the heart it’s all about appealing to your target audience, increasing your exposure and attracting visitors that will be interested in what you’ve got to say, and there are plenty of ways you can do that:

Make sure you’re offering something of value. Quality matters with all forms of content and video is no exception, so don’t waste your time unless you’re offering information that’s usable or relevant in some way. How-to guides and videos expressing opinions are ideal, and make sure to keep them memorable, fun, short (less than 5 minutes long if you want a high level of engagement) and leaving the viewer wanting more.

Create a great title. You want the title to attract the attention of viewers so it really needs to be catchy, and you could start by thinking about it on a personal level—if you were to browse through magazines, what headline would make you want to pick it up? You’ll want to incorporate keywords as well, but always put interest first.

Optimise its tags and description. Do a bit of keyword research to decide what terms your potential audience will be searching for and incorporate these into your video tags and description (just make sure your description is still informative and gives a decent overview of the video itself).

Provide a transcript. Videos are all well and good but in order to be indexed and ranked effectively you’ll want to provide some on-page copy too, so give search engines something to look at by providing a transcript of your video.

Embed. You want to provide a code that will allow other users to post the video on their own site, increasing the likelihood of getting shares and backlinks. Speaking of links, you might want to include a couple of links to relevant on-site content when posting your video to sites like YouTube or Vimeo.

Get sharing! Make sure you spread your video as far and wide as possible—use social media, your blog, email contacts and anything else that could be worthwhile, because if it’s worth sharing you can bet other people will do the same.

So what are you waiting for? Unless you optimise your videos effectively you won’t get the attention you need to make it all worthwhile, so focus on targeted video SEO tactics and you could soon make the impact you want.

First up, their connections. A well-connected PR professional can work wonders for your visibility—if they’ve got connections within the industry it can increase your chances of getting noticed, getting your content out there and even getting links on other websites, all adding up to boost your profile and your SERP ranking.

Then there’s their content experience. Given that content should comprise a key part of any SEO campaign it makes sense to have people on your side that know what makes good content, and luckily those in the PR department will have the skills necessary to deliver—they know what the public wants and how to give it to them, ensuring you’re getting crisp, value-driven content that can attract the necessary audience and make those must-have conversions.

They’re expert communicators and that means they’ll be able to get your message out there in a clear, concise and effective manner, and they’re pros at building relationships too. This can help ensure that a one-time visitor becomes a loyal customer which can make all the difference to your long-term goals, and if you can prove your worth you’ll be able to boost your reputation and profile in the process.

This all adds up to maximising your chances of making it in search, so make sure to remember the importance of PR in any SEO campaign and you could soon notice the difference to your traffic, profile and conversions for maximum results.

Optimise your company name. The field for the company name itself has no character limit but the username is limited to 15 characters, so unless your name fits perfectly you’ll have to be a bit savvy in your choice to maximise its search value—make sure to go for something memorable, easy to spell and keyword-conscious.
Optimise your “about” section. Your about section gives you 200 characters to deliver a full overview of your company and what you’re all about, and again, make sure to remember the importance of keywords whilst keeping it descriptive, specific and to the point.
Differentiate your board names. You want to do away with the default names suggested by Pinterest and instead make them highly specific and targeted to your potential audience, keeping keywords in mind to maximise your chances of appearing in search results, so keep your names (and the boards themselves) as unique as possible to cut through the clutter and stand out.
Include links to your site. Even though re-pins have recently been changed to nofollow links, you could still benefit from backlinks—not only is it solidifying your authority and association with the brand but it can offer a direct pathway for consumers to buy your products whilst driving traffic and awareness, and if you make sure to use the full link (using link shorteners could mark the pin as spam) you could reap the rewards.
Know what your customer is looking for. Your boards and areas of description should all be targeted to your audience so make sure to use terms that you know they’ll understand, have boards that they’ll be interested in and don’t just use it as a personal advertising opportunity but instead make it a comfortable lifestyle space that really offers value.
Use pin descriptions wisely. Whilst the description can be up to 500 characters long, studies have shown that descriptions between 200 and 300 characters often work best so make sure to keep them tailored and specific. Make them relatable and high-value too (perhaps offering usage or care instructions, etc.) and of course, use keywords to full effect.

So there you have it—a few key ways you can make the most of Pinterest to maximise its SEO potential, so get on board and you could soon be a part of the Pinterest revolution for fantastic results.