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 our friends at Fresh Roasted Hoasting. Thank you for checking us out on iTunes and Stitcher...thank you for the Pinterest interest. And as always thank you Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA for making your wonderful coffee and chicory blend so that I may remain caffeinated! As promised, I've got a bit of a history lesson for you this week and you may find yourself wanting to listen to this podcast a second time...or even a third. And I don't mean that in egomaniacal fashion...it's just that once you start to connect the dots, you recognize the method to the madness and have your "A-HA" moment (take on me snippet) OhhhhKAY, knock it off, knock it off! LOL Incidentally, MOZ has a great chronological chart of Google's updates, which is really fascinating and I found very useful for this podcast. Anyway, we're going to start by debunking the popular myth of "Page Rank." This is one of those little details you can use to find out if the SEO you're working with knows what they're doing or if the SEO who is soliciting your business knows what they're doing. Popular belief is that "Page Rank" is the RANK of your PAGE. That in and of itself is ambiguous, but most people just take it at face value and don't dig for more information on how their page gets ranked to begin with. It's a moot point, though, because Page Rank is an algorithm named after one of Google's founders...Larry PAGE! Page rank is determined by the number and quality of links coming in to your website. Google rarely updates Page rank because links are no longer the prime determining factor in your ranking in the SERPs. So remember...the name Page rank refers to Google co-founder Larry Page and NOT your web PAGE. Now this all really began in December of 2000 when Google launched their Google Toolbar, complete with Page Rank, and people started to become engaged. The first named update was in February 2003 and it was called Google Boston. It was supposed to be a combination of major index refreshes and algorithm changes on a monthly basis, but they became much more frequent. This was kind of the beginning of Google recognizing that there was a lot of funny business going on with search rank manipulation and that they were going to have to dig deeper. Soooo.... In April and May of 2003 we had the Cassandra and Dominic updates. Cassandra was the beginning of Google's ongoing war with link spammers as it rooted out link-quality issues, like massive linking from co-owned domains...link wheels, if you will, and hidden links and hidden text. Hidden text...the original keyword spam where black text keyword spam would be hidden in black areas on your website and you couldn't see it unless you highlighted it. Oh, it came in white on white and a full array of colors, too. Meanwhile, Dominic was an update of how Google reported backlinks. Basically, Google had caught on to spammers and how they were blatantly gaming the search algorithm. In July of 2003 Google ended the idea of monthly updates with the Fritz update. This was basically the beginning of Google doing incremental updates instead of trying to keep up with it on a monthly basis. The importance of this is that Google discovered that their task was going to be more daunting than they expected and realized it would be impossible to keep up on a monthly basis as originally planned. Everything REALLY changed in November of 2003 with the Google Florida update. This is where Google said "OK, children...enough is enough! This is the update that arguably put the SEO industry and even updates themselves on the map. This was the true beginning of the end of websites benefitting from spammy tactics like keyword stuffing and it was the first update that really got business owners angry because a LOT of websites lost ranking and, therefore, revenue. In January of 2004, the Google Austin update basically came in and took care of what the Florida update might have missed, mostly on-page deception like invisible text and META-tag stuffing. See? If you're STILL stuffing your metatag keywords, you're over a DECADE outdated. Come onnnnnnn...?!?! February of 2004 brought the Google Brandy update...I'm guessing that they called it Brandy because they could use a brandy after dealing with this mess. lol Google Brandy paid increased attention to relevance of anchor text in linking and introduced Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)...LSI marked the first major jump in Google's ability to understand synonyms and was the beginning of search algorithms striving to become more intuitive...which made keyword analysis a whole lot more interesting...to the point where I eventually decided to make a career out of it. 2005 was a big year... Google introduced "no-follow" links...which basically protects you from any bad juju from a site you're linking to. Basically, if a website you're linking to seems to be good but you can't totally vouch for it, use no-follow on the link. This was also the year that Google targeted duplicate content with the Bourbon update (brandy just wasn't enough at this point) and allowed XML sitemaps, which then gave SEOs more direct-but-minor influence over indexing. 2005 was the year that Google Maps merged with Google Local, beginning the evolution to what is today known as Google My Business. And finally, this was the year of the Google Jagger update, September through November, which targeted paid links, link farms and low-quality links in general. As your gears turn with this information, I want you to think about the fact that some of you may paying for or otherwise engaging in these tactics right now...there are people still selling these schemes if you don't know better and are willing to pay. I want you to know better...knowledge is power. When we come back...we'll continue...with the evolution of the Modern SEO Age. ================================================== We are BACK on the MIND your Business podcast...talking about the evolution of Google's Algorithm updates. Now, I want to emphasize that the focus here is on the updates that most affected SEO and the very evolution of SEO, so we're moving on to 2009 which saw the Google Vince update and and a preview of the Google Caffeine update. Google Vince was a bit controversial because it seemed to favor big-brands and many businesses felt Google was being unfair. What happened, though, was that Google was factoring trust into the search algorithm and big-brands were benefitting basically because they had online presence for a longer period of time because...let's face it...in the early days of websites the big brands were just about the only ones who could AFFORD a web presence. Google Caffeine, meanwhile, was all about speed! Faster crawling of an expanded index. Bigger, better, faster, more. Search engine results became even more instantaneous. 2009 ended with the introduction of Real Time Search... NOW, some SERPs included Google News, Twitter feeds and other newly indexed content on a real-time feed. This of course evolved into including other social media. Google Caffeine was previewed in 2009 and formally rolled out in June of 2010. Also in 2010... Google Places was introduced , which continued the evolution begun in 2005 with the merging of Google Maps and Google Local listings. This allowed better integration with local search results and added some monetization like local advertising options. The May Day update happened in late April and early May of 2010 and was really the precursor to what we now know as the Google Panda Update. May Day targeted the misuse or overuse of long tail keywords and sites with large scale thin content....like those sites set up obviously just for pay-per-click traffic. Google Instant was also introduced in September of 2010...this is what causes search results to appear as you're typing in a query. 2010 ended with both Google and Bing confirming that they were already using social signals in their ranking factors. It wasn't a surprise as it was really inevitable, and this was a new step in the Google Algorithm evolution as at this point Twitter and Facebook were the two major confirmed social platforms. Interestingly enough, it also ended with a Negative Reviews algorithm change because a New York based company that sold eyeglasses and contacts - called DecorMyEyes.com - found a loophole where negative reviews would increase their online visibility...and it ultimately DID while increasing their traffic and sales as well because those negative reviews were not recognized as "negative" by GoogleBot and made the business appear popular. These people were not only abusive to customers, but they openly BRAGGED about it and how they used it as a strategy. It's mind-blowing and I included a link to the New York Times expose' article on the podcast page. Seriously...you WON'T believe it, but it's true. 2011 started out with Overstock.com and JCPenney being hit by Google penalty for shady SEO practices in January and February respectively. This was a definite lead-in to the first Google Panda update that subsequently happened in late February. 2011 was basically the year of Panda, as after the first update there were Panda updates in April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and sometimes Y. These updates further refined the Panda algorithm and got more granular with how it identified "thin content." Panda has been updated periodically - both major and minor updates - since 2011. The biggest updates have had roughly 6 months between them and what you need to know is that Panda is Google's ongoing effort to penalize sites with thin content (i.e. worthless articles that offer no real advice or information), content farms - which are basically those crappy sites that try to appear as legitimate news sites and have no focus with their poorly written articles - and, of course those sites with high ad-to-content ratios...the obvious ad-sense sites. 2011 was a big year in that Google introduced the "+1" button to compete with other social media buttons like the Facebook "Like" button, and 4 months later introduced Google+. Rounding out the evolutionary events of 2011, this was also the year Google officially embraced Schema.org data and started rewarding websites for fresh content. This is why you always hear yapping about being consistent with your blog posts...freshness COUNTS...NOT just at Subway....GoogleBot wants to READ fresh, too! And hopefully, by now, you ARE incorporating RDFa or some other implementation of Schema.org data over your whole website. 2012 was the year we all were supposed to disappear, but obviously that didn't happen or we wouldn't be spending quality time together right now. What DID happen was that a lot of online business revenue DID disappear thanks to the Google Penguin update. While in reality it affected only 3 - 5% of queries, those that were affected were hit hard and many of those businesses still haven't fully recovered...that is, if they're lucky enough to still even be around. A LOT of businesses went belly up simply because they hired SEOs that were taking part in link wheels and other linking schemes including buying links, which is a NO-NO! Keyword stuffing was also a Penguin parameter, although links were the major factor and still are. Like Panda, Penguin is updated periodically each year with further refinements. The most recent Penguin updates have been relatively minor, but in 2012 the focus was on refining Google's ability to better detect link schemes. In 2012, Google introduced "Knowledge Graph," which is what you see in the SERPs...say, when you Google Siouxsie and the Banshees. On the right side of the search results, you see a picture or pictures, links to where you can listen to their music, a few snippets of information about them, etc. Do it and you'll see what I mean. The DCMA "Pirate" penalty was released to penalize websites with repeat copyright violations...and exact-match-domain-names were devalued in the EMD update......not to be confused with EMF (unbelieveable snippet) 2012 ended with an expansion of Knowledge Graph to non-English queries and a refresh of Panda to further target thin content. Interesting to note that, related to Panda's thin-content targeting...Google had a Page Layout algorithm update that targeted pages with too many ads above the fold....if you don't know what "Above the Fold" means, it just means what you see on the screen before you have to start scrolling down. 2013 saw further refinement of the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, Google keeping everyone on their toes. The first big new update in 2013 is known as the Payday Loan update. It basically targetted search query niches that are notoriously spammy...in this case payday loans and porn were specifically mentioned. Imagine if we could get rid of all those aggravating used car commercials on TV...or car commercials in general. That's kinda the idea...in an analog sort of way. 2013 saw the Hummingbird update, which was - in actuality - a really big update, but you didn't hear as much about it because it didn't target spammers. Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land had the best description of it...he said it was like dropping a new engine in an old car whose body was still in good shape. Basically there were outdated aspects of the old algorithm that needed overhauling. 2013 ended with the first indication of Google Authorship changing, when it disappeared altogether from 15% of queries for about a month. Which brings us to 2014... In June of 2014 this Authorship change happened full-force with Authorship photos being removed altogether from the SERPs. Now it's important to note that Author RANK is still viable in linking your online content to your Google+ profile...you just won't have a picture there anymore in the SERPs. 2014 saw the introduction of an update that SEOs named Pigeon. Google basically wanted to deliver better local search results and Pigeon dramatically changed some of the local results, including modifying how they interpret your business' physical location. 2014 was also the year that site security became more important with the HTTPS/SSL update. This came as no surprise when Google formally announced they would be giving preference to secure sites, and that going to HTTPS would give a mild rankings boost. Google did indicate that if this proved to be positive, the rankings boost could increase. Panda and Penguin both were updated last year with the Penguin Everflux update moving Penguin to a continuous update rather than periodic major updates...so Google is on the constant lookout for linkspam. Beware! Pirate 2.0 update was also released last year in October and was part of Google's continuing war against software and digital media piracy....remember the Pirate Bay fiasco? Yep...bittorrent sites were hit hard. So now that this year's first big update has happened...the mobile update we've been talking so much about...what does all of this mean at the end of the day? It means that the SEO industry was born out of the search engines not being able to merely trust the words on every website. As spammers have found new ways to game the search algorithms, Google has had to find new ways to catch the spammers and be proactive in outsmarting them. It's a cat and mouse game. But it's like I've said for years...don't game the search engines, have purity of purpose in your placement of keywords in titles and descriptions and elsewhere, present content on your website that is honestly helpful to your visitors, and build your links through sharing valid and helpful content...do that and you will be okay. And all of these other things like RDFa and social signals will have more valuable impact on your search rankings. Thank you so much for tuning in this week to the MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting. Please take this information to heart...listen to it again if you need to. I hope you found this helpful and empowering for you to ask better questions and get more out of your SEO. 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 the interest on Pinterest. Send us your questions through Facebook, comment on our podcast page, email us at info@minddnd.com or just click that bo-DAY-shus ask a question button on the right side of our podcast page. See you here next week!