Take the Notice of Privacy Practices from the EMPLOYMENT page link and create a separate page for it.  Then have it link as a drop down choice under About IMGPC, Our Services, Our Providers and Contact Us.   Take it off the Employment page.



Welcome to this week's MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design and the good people at Fresh Roasted Hoasting.  Thank you for checking us out on iTunes and Stitcher and as always for the love on Pinterest.  Thank you Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA...I'm lovin' the coffee and chicory blend AGAIN this week.   mmm  mmm...good stuff.

It's what most of you fear when you hear about Google implementing a new algorithm update...what's gonna happen?  What does this mean for my business and my ranking in the search engines?

Will I be penalized?

We're talking about Google penalty today and I'm going to give YOU some tips on how you can recover...from identifying the problem or problems to fixing them.

Now first, a refresher on Google penalty...there are two kinds of penalty.  Manual spam and algorithmic penalty.   Manual spam means something on your site caused Google to throw a yellow flag and someone from Google actually visited your site, viewed the instant replay, and decided there are things you have to change that are spammy.  Google notifies you of this penalty and what you need to do about it.

Algorithmic penalty is another ballgame altogether.  Basically, Google changes their algorithm in some way and that change negatively affects you in an almost catastrophic way.  You get NO notification from Google and you will literally see your traffic tank virtually overnight in Google analytics.  It's a lot like that classic video footage from Super Bowl 6 where the Miami Quarterback Bob Greise is scrambling and keeps running around in the backfield to get away from the Dallas Cowboys pass rushers and just keeps losing more and more yards...I think it was Bob Lilly who tackled him for a 35 yard loss.  Miami didn't score a touchdown....you get the idea.

So...what can you do to recover from Google penalty?  I'm going to give you some tips and tools here...some of these came from a nice post by Chris Marentis on Search Engine Land...and these are tools you can use NOW!  You don't have to wait for a penalty...in fact, preventive maintenance is ALWAYS good!

Let's start with a FREE website assessment tool called Screaming Frog.  You can find it by Googling "Screaming Frog Web Crawler."  It's a really nice - and FREE - SEO Spider tool that you can download and install on your PC or MAC and it will analyze your images, your links, CSS, scripts and even your apps to check for SEO-related issues.  It's a good idea to use something like this at least once a quarter to monitor any potential issues on your website...If you're keeping your blog fresh and putting new content on your site - like you SHOULD be you may want to make it more of a monthly routine.   Always good to err on the side of caution with SEO.               Now, do bear in mind that the assessment report may or may not make sense to you.  If it does NOT make sense to you, don't engage in any guesswork...consult a professional whether in-house or....lol.....OUThouse.

Next, since MOBILE_GEDDON is only 5 days away, you want to make sure you're using Google's Mobile-Friendly test tool at least once a quarter as well.   By the way...that was absolute sarcasm when I said MOBILE-GEDDON...lol...I just hate those sensationalist terms, but it seems to be the only thing that gets some people's attention, y'know?  Anyway, you can find it simply by Googling the phrase "Google Mobile Test."      It's really, really easy to use and you really, really want to make use of it...as I said at least once a quarter because as the algorithm evolves, your website will eventually not respond quite as well as it should and you will need your code updated on your website to make sure it remains as MObile-friendly as possible.

And on that note...we're going to take a short break and when we come back you will see that Schoolhouse Rock WAS right...three IS a magic number....cuz I've got three more tools you can use to help get yourself out of penalty.


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And we are BACK on the MIND your Business Podcast...   we talked in the first segment about the Screaming Frog web crawler and Google's Mobile friendly Test Tool.    Bear in mind that these tools will show you what the problems are, but there's NO quick and easy way to actually DO the work to get yourself out of penalty.  It's all about assessing your site to see what the problems are in the most efficient way possible and then fixing the problems.   Sometimes this involves removing bad links making changes to your content if you have too much duplicate content and other work that truly is time consuming but has to be done.

THAT is why I recommend doing preventive maintenance and using these tools periodically throughout the year.

Next up is a pretty obvious one, but it's one that many of you STILL don't have.   Good ol' Google Webmaster Tools.  It's probably the most important information resource for any site because this is how you find out how Google REALLY sees your site.   As mentioned in the first segment, Google will notify you of manual spam penalties and they do it through Webmaster Tools.  That alone is reason enough to have it, because if you do get hit with a manual penalty you'll be notified of the penalty and what to do so you can get right on it and get right back in Google's good graces.   Of course, it's also a GREAT way to track your progress in rankings and check your backlinks.  If you have to disavow any spammy backlinks, you can get the report you need to do the job right out of Webmaster Tools.

Now...we're gonna talk about one of my favorites...CopyScape.   This is a great tool for checking for duplicate content, blatant plagiarism and even - hard as it is to believe - out and out copies of your webpages online.   It happens,folks.  It stinks and it's wrong...but it happens.  You can do FREE duplicate content checks at copyscape.com.  They also have paid versions that offer more features including automatic daily scanning of the web and emailing you when duplicate content is found.   Now, duplicate content is not AS big of a deal as it has been in years past because Google recognizes that there is some factual information that can't be explained any other way.   Y'know, 2 + 2 will ALWAYS equal 4 no matter if I write it on my website or you write it on yours.   I know that's an oversimplistic example, but you get the idea...it would be silly to get penalized for something like that...or for having - say - a basic chili recipe on your site.  Yeah, yours may be slightly different but I guarantee that if you compare your basic chili recipe to mine there's gonna be around 60 to 70 percent duplicate content because of both the ingredients and how it's prepared.

I just love chili.

And finally another really, really simple tool to use that you can access through Webmaster Tools.  And I'm telling you, if you don't have a webmaster tools account set up...it's free so there's no excuse.  If you're listening to this anywhere near a computer, PAUSE this podcast right now and set up your Webmaster Tools account.   Don't worry...I'll be here when you're done setting it up, trust me.  lol    Three things that are certain in this life...death, taxes and I'm always talkin.   But I digress...      There's a feature in your Webmaster Tools account called "Fetch As Google."     This is a wonderful and fast tool that will detect basic errors on your site like robots.txt errors, it shows response time and it lets you see how Google actually renders your site.  This is kind of getting to see through GoogleBot's eyes and again it's very easy to use.

I hope you've found this week's podcast to be helpful and please remember that these tools are to help you assess your site if you're penalized so you have a roadmap of what to do to recover...but they're ALSO, more importantly, ways you can do preventive maintenance so you can best avoid penalty.  Again, if anything doesn't make sense...err on the side of caution and show it to a pro.






Thank you again for tuning in this week to the MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting.  Thank you Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA for keeping me caffeinated with that awesome coffee and chicory blend.  Thank you for listening on iTunes and Stitcher and for spreading the love on Pinterest.  Make sure you send us your questions through Facebook, comment on our podcast page, email us at info@minddnd.com or just click that candy-licious ask a question button on the right side of our podcast page.  See you here next week!