If you have a business, your number one priority beyond monetary gain is probably going to be growth. There are so many practices that can help you gain recognition in your community, and the rise of the internet has created a whole other realm to conquer when it comes to business strategy. While there was a time that having a great service or product was all you needed to be successful, now a days you have to be intentional with your online presence. One of the most crucial ways you can keep your business at the top of the competitive food chain is by constantly fine tuning your SEO (search engine optimization). If you have a business but are not familiar with optimizing google friendly content for your website, we would love to help get you started with this abridged guide to your SEO. 

What is SEO?

When you type something into the search bar of any search engine like google, in a matter of seconds there are pages and pages of resources for you to click through. The order in which that content is displayed has to do with the relevance and how the content for each of those websites or links is rated. This is SEO. Your goal, as a business, is to be sure that your page pops up on the first search results page and as close to the top as possible. The statistics for where your weblink falls on the google search page and how many clicks it will get are staggering! According to DataBox, there are well over 6 billion daily google searches, and 67% of all clicks following that google search goes to the top 5 search results. Meaning, mastering SEO will mean more traffic for your website as people search for content related to your goods or services, and more online traffic means more business for you!

High Quality Content

When it comes to the content that is shared on your website, it should meet a couple of parameters in order to boost your SEO. Whether this is in the form of regular blog posts, web page content, social media posts, or any other form of writing done for your business site, the information needs to be engaging and relevant. “High quality” does not just apply to writing error free content (which should go without stating), but your posts should be both useful and entertaining and the type of content that others want to read and hopefully share!

Choosing Keywords

When you are writing content for your website, one of the most important aspects you need to lead with is the keywords you use. Planning this prior to writing the content is recommended. Consider what keywords are most associated with the topic and utilize those as much as possible. Knowing the right keywords will likely require you to know the market well and what others in the industry are posting. Your keywords should be chosen based on what people are actively searching for, so catering your posts to the latest trends is highly recommended. If you aren’t sure how to get started on strategic keyword usage, don’t fret! There are dozens of online databases that you can use, like Word Tracker, to help. Not only does this assist you in carefully choosing keywords, but this is also market research that is invaluable to you as a business owner. By choosing your posts based on need and then stacking those relevant posts with the right keywords, you are likely to boost your SEO rating so that more people visit you website, read your content, and subscribe to your services!

Capitalize on Images

We live in a visually driven society, and your online presence is no different! If you are already using images in your content, great! Keep it up! If you aren’t, you should start immediately. If you fall into the camp of people who have been using images regularly in the content that you are posting, be sure to follow some of these basic guidelines in optimizing them, because, yes, refining what you are doing to make it better is what business is all about!

Size and placement – The file size for the photos you use is very important for your SEO ranking mostly because this affects load time. If your photo size is too big and it slows down your page being loaded, this will greatly affect the traffic on your page. 

Title and caption – Giving the photos used for your content a little caption along with a solid title really helps to optimize the image, and in turn, the entire post. Be very intentional with this caption by utilizing the keywords related to it while still remaining very brief in the overall description. 

File name – Be sure that the image is saved with a strategic file name utilizing those relevant keywords. So, instead of a series of numbers and letters that many JPEG files comes standard as, name the photo something related to the content. Your intentionality for the sake of your SEO will do wonders even in these small details!

Make Your Content Shareable 

Now that you have created a well thought out, strategic, and visibly pleasing content, you will want to make it easy for viewers to share it with their followers. One of the most beautiful (and sometimes painful) aspects of social media is how easy and fast information can be spread. With just the push of a button, your content can be shared and made available to a whole new pool of potential clients/followers/subscribers for them to click on, and clicks in the digital world are like gold. There are several resources, like Simple Sharing Buttons, where you can make custom “share” buttons to post to the many popular social media sites. 

When it comes to your business, your online representation and SEO matters a great deal in terms of success. We, at tekRescue, pride ourselves on taking your online presence to the next level while putting the highest priority on network safety. If you are looking to take your business to the next level, consider letting us take care of your cyber presence so that you can focus on the big picture, creative aspects of business that you love!

This is the last in a three-part series we’ve been writing on Google’s upcoming Mobile-First Index. If you haven’t read the previous two parts, we recommend starting at the beginning before reading this entry.

Previously, we covered what changes Google is making to its indexing system and why these changes make sense. It’s an important change that will affect the rankings of nearly every site on the web. As such, the final part in this series will be going over what you can do to your website to make sure your rankings change as little as possible. Is your site ready for the Mobile-First Index?

Best Practice: Invest in a Responsive Website

Ask any web developer, and they’ll likely tell you that the best approach to any website is responsive web design. This is an approach to web development where the same content is served across all devices, with the layout of that content rearranging as needed to suit different screen sizes. This is in contrast to sites that serve different content altogether depending on the device that’s accessing the site. Responsive websites are by no means a new thing, but their advantages are even more clear with the Mobile-First index in mind.

The strongest of these advantages is that responsive web design is the best way to ensure that all visitors experience your site the same way, no matter what device they’re on. Desktop and mobile browsing will always have their fundamental differences, but responsive web design ensures that the quality of the browsing experience will remain largely the same. And because the content is the same on mobile as on desktop, responsive sites will see no change to their rankings once the Mobile-First index rolls out.

Second Best: Make Your Mobile & Desktop Content the Same

If your website isn’t responsive and making such a change is impractical for your business, then the next best thing is to make sure all versions of your site have identical content. Chances are, your mobile site might currently have certain sections missing, altered, or rearranged to help streamline the phone browsing experience. While these aren’t necessarily bad practices from a usability perspective, that difference in content means your site’s rankings will most likely change once Google begins to look at your mobile site instead of your desktop one.

To make sure your rankings change as little as possible, go through your mobile site and make sure its contents match that of your desktop site. This includes headlines, text, images, and all of the meta information this content might have.

Minimum: Make Sure Your Primary Content is on Mobile

If your company is pressed for time and can’t go through every piece of content to make sure the desktop and mobile versions match, you should at the very least shift your content and SEO focus to mobile. This is what Google will use to rank your site, so treat it with the appropriate thought, care, and considerations. If you only have the resources to focus on one screen size, make it mobile.

Recommended: Hire Professionals

Websites are an increasingly complex medium, and the sheer amount of devices available to access them today only compounds this complexity. Making sure every single one of your visitors sees the site you intend for them to see is by no means an easy task. As these technologies become more sophisticated, it’s becoming increasingly important that sites are built and maintained by qualified professionals with specialized knowledge in their fields.

Rather than preparing for Mobile-First on your own, our recommendation is to hire web professionals to help your site make this transition. Business owners have enough to worry about without having to make sure their site fits in with whatever whim Google has next. Save yourself the time and stress, and prepare your site for the Mobile-First Index the right way.

In our last blog post, we took a look at the Mobile-First Index, the looming shift in Google’s focus from indexing desktop content to that of mobile instead. If you haven’t read it yet, you should start there; it gives an introduction to what mobile-first means and how Google is planning to apply this philosophy to its search engine rankings.

In the second part of this series, we’ll focus on why Google is pushing for mobile-first design, as well as when you should expect the change in their ranking system to occur.

Why Google is Making the Change

So what’s the point of all this emphasis on mobile devices? Why would Google use its huge influence over web developers to push the focus from desktop to mobile? Simply put, more people are accessing the web through their phones than ever before. This has been a trend ever since the inception of the first iPhone, so it shouldn’t be surprising that mobile use has finally surpassed desktop use as a means of accessing the internet.

In a study released by Stone Temple Consulting in 2017, researchers examined 77 billion different website visits. What they found was that nearly 56% of all traffic came from mobile devices, leaving well behind the 44% of traffic from desktop users. This suggests that for any given site, more visitors are accessing the content on their phones than on a desktop computer. And it doesn’t look like this trend will slow anytime soon.

In this light, it actually isn’t too surprising that Google would make such a bold move. If mobile users make up the largest percentage of website visitors, it makes sense to focus on this demographic when designing websites. We all know how frustrating it is to be browsing the web on a phone and encounter a site that doesn’t take mobile users into consideration. Google has been penalizing these sites for years, and now the transition to thinking of the mobile web experience as the default seems like the next logical step in this progression.

When The Change Will Happen

Now for the answer to the question you’ve no doubt had since beginning this series. When should you expect the Mobile-First index to take effect? The answer isn’t as simple as we’d hope. On this matter, Google executives have stated that they’re making the change once they feel the new indexing system produces “quality neutral” results. This means that they’re not flipping the switch until the Mobile-First index creates search results that are as good as or better than the current system.

This too makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Larger sites with the most credible content are often the ones that tend to be slowest to catch up to major changes in web standards. Smaller, more agile sites on the other hand can easily adapt to changes like the Mobile-First Index, giving them an advantage over their larger, more established counterparts. It’s easy to see how, at least at first, the Mobile-First index could create a search result filled with nothing but small, less established sites with dubious credibility. Best design practices don’t always signify the best web content.

A Tentative Timeline

While they may not have given us an exact timeline for this change, Google has indicated that it’ll likely take place sometime in 2018. This may be a far cry from the original 2017 dates they had hinted at early on, but it’s an indication that we should be ready for Mobile-First sooner rather than later. This is especially true considering the discussion that they may roll out the new index in batches rather than all at once.

Is your website ready for the Mobile-First Index? What should you be doing, or have already done, to prepare? We’ll be discussing all of this in part 3.

If you’re a business owner with a website, chances are you’ve already made some changes to your site for the purpose of ranking better on Google searches. And if you’ve been doing this a while, you no doubt know how adaptable you have to be to stay on top of all the latest changes the folks at Google make to their ranking system. The latest of these changes you may have heard of is the “Mobile-First Index”, a dramatic shift in search ranking priorities that Google has been warning for some time now.

What exactly is this looming paradigm shift, and why is Google planning to roll out such a huge change? Should you worry about it? Read on to learn all you need to know to stay on top of the next big change in the search engine giant’s ranking system.

What Mobile-First Means

Before we discuss Google’s ranking system, we’ll first go over what exactly we mean when we call a website “mobile-first.” Simply put, a mobile-first site emphasizes the user experience for small-screened, touch-controlled devices rather than large-screened desktop computers. Traditionally, websites were a medium developed for and viewed on large desktop screens. Even now, the desktop experience is often the optimal way a site should be viewed, with the mobile version often ending up an afterthought—a watered-down compromise for small screens.

In the case of a mobile-first site, on the other hand, mobile devices aren’t an afterthought at all. All of the designer’s thought, resources, and time go into the mobile experience, which they then adapt and altered appropriately for desktop use after the fact. This results in a site designed specifically for small screens and touch control, and you can easily tell the difference when it comes to the site’s usability on smart phones.

How the Mobile-First Index Works

Google has never been one to ignore these trends of moving towards mobile rather than desktop. It’s well known by now that for quite some time, Google has been penalizing the rankings of sites that aren’t “mobile friendly,” or aren’t easily usable on phones and other touch-based small devices. So what will be changing when Google rolls out its new Mobile-First Index?

The change lies in the content the search engine looks at when determining its rankings. Previously, Google has used content pulled from the desktop experience to rank a site, and generally ignoring the mobile experience as long as it didn’t have any glaring usability issues. Once the switch to mobile-first takes place, however, Google will completely flip the script. The search engine will ONLY take into account content displayed on mobile devices, completely ignoring the desktop experience.

What this Means for Web Developers

This might sound simple on paper, but the consequences of this decision are huge. Sites that feature their main content for desktops and treat the mobile experience as an afterthought will find it much more difficult to remain competitive in the rankings, and sites that place priority on mobile content will reap the rewards of higher rankings. In effect, Google will be putting its foot down and essentially forcing designers to prioritize mobile users.

Why is the search engine giant making such a huge push to emphasize the mobile experience? When should we expect the Mobile-First Index to roll out? We’ll be revisiting this topic to answer these questions in our next blog post, so be sure to check back later this month. In the meantime, you can brush up on your knowledge of the mobile web in some of our related articles, listed below.

RankBrain is a Google component that is designed to predict the behavior of users through an AI software that learns from historical data of users. RankBrain helps Google make sense of the millions of daily intricate queries that are submitted by users all over the world. Since artificial intelligence is the backbone of the Google Search engine, some details of a website can impact the ranking of the website. To help you optimize your website for RankBrain, considering using the tips discussed below.

Use Meta Description and Meaningful Titles

The first thing users see in Google search results is a page title. The title has to be clear, impressive, and it has to describe to the user the objective of the website page content. For best optimization, ensure that the title does not have too many keywords. The page title should help in ranking the main keyword, and it should also be attractive enough to make users click on it. Your website also gains rank from higher CTR (Click Through Rate – to learn more, visit our previous blog), and it stands out in search results. A great meta description will improve the CTR and user engagement.

Use Simple, Natural Language

The primary role of RankBrain is to process the search query of Google and match it to highly relevant pages. You have to write the content of your web page in an understandable language that is conversational enough for people. The best optimizeable content for RankBrain is the one that is perfectly natural, and therefore more useful to potential readers.

Add Rich Snippet and Schema Markup

Search Engine Optimization is usually keen on small things. To stand out in SERP results, you’ll need an impressive meta description, simple, clear web content, and a rich snippet. This will help your site to appear at the top part of the results page. When schema markup is added to your website, SERP page displays will be improved by adding rich snippets that will be present below the page title, the way meta descriptions appear. When rich snippet is used, the data that is published and the star rating can be added. Your audience will know what your page is about using the schema markup used by the search engine.

Avoid Using Too Many Keywords

Keywords are important for ranking websites, but that doesn’t mean that you need very many keywords. Avoid stuffing your website with too many keywords. Keyword stuffing can damage your SEO instead of helping to improve it. To optimize your website, you need to write fresh content that is crisp and easy to read, not stuffed with keywords.

Allow Only Quality Back-Links

Quality back-links will help improve your ranking. Add back-links that are from trusted or relevant websites. The links need to be related to the product and useful to the audience. You can use different techniques like social bookmarking, link exchange, and press release to get quality back-links. Avoid using manipulative SEO practice of getting back-links, as this can damage your site’s ranking.

In Addition…

To optimize for RankBrain, you need to be creative. The number of mobile users is increasing. Voice search is growing and meeting the needs of the audience has become a priority in SEO content. Your meta description, page title, and page content need to be meaningful and meet the needs of the audience. You need to understand the needs of your customers by understanding their perspective. Simple language, fresh content, and long tail keywords will help your site rank improve. It may take some time, but it is possible to optimize for RankBrain.

Anyone involved with website design or digital marketing wants to improve their website’s SEO to increase customer traffic. In late 2015, Google announced that their AI called RankBrain would henceforth be the third most important factor in their website rankings. In order to best ensure that you optimize your website’s position in search results, it is important to have a thorough understanding of this key element of the rankings. This article will explain what RankBrain is and how it works to evaluate websites.

What is RankBrain?

RankBrain is a machine learning system that sorts and ranks websites to help Google show users the most relevant results related to their queries. It does this by examining how users interact with webpages that show up as results of their Google search, and incorporating its evaluation of these interactions into the site’s rank within the list of results provided in future searches. Each time a user visits a website, RankBrain gets more information that it uses to evaluate the site’s quality and relevance. Websites that score well according to the RankBrain algorithm will rank higher in search results than websites that obtain lower scores.

How Does RankBrain Work?

RankBrain takes note of how users interact with search results, considering both individual behavior and the behavior of all users in the aggregate. These considerations are made using dwell time and click through rate.

RankBrain and Dwell Time

Regarding individual results, the algorithm records whether they spend a long time on a site or navigate away from it quickly. The amount of time that users spend on a website before returning to the search engine results page is called dwell time, and is one of two main elements of RankBrain website rankings.

Dwell time measures the time spent on the page, which has recently been recorded to be slightly over three minutes for pages in the top ten Google search results. That is quite a long time since on average users spend only around 30 seconds on most web pages. Dwell time is considered an important statistic when ranking websites because the assumption is that if users spend a long time on a page, that page must have information they find useful. Since Google wants to provide highly relevant search results, it makes sense to prioritize pages with information that users find applicable. You can increase the dwell time for your website by improving its content and design.

RankBrain and Click Through Rate

When evaluating the behavior of all Google users, RankBrain looks at the percentage of users that click on your website in the list of search results. This is known as the click through rate and it is the second key factor in RankBrain website rankings.

Click Through Rate or CTR is the number of people who click on the link to a particular website. RankBrain’s algorithm assumes that if many people click on a site, it is highly relevant, but if only few do, the site is not as relevant or does not contain high quality content. Google wants its searches to generate results people will want to look at. Giving your website a catchy and descriptive title can increase CTR.

For more information about RankBrain and how to improve your website’s search engine ranking, contact tekRESCUE, located in San Marcos, TX.

Searching on Google may not be rocket science, but following certain protocols can enhance your Google search experience. The following are some of the most common tips used to yield better results on your next Google search.

Quotation Marks

Perhaps one of the best known and widely used techniques to find something on Google would be the use of quotation marks. Quotation marks are used to find something specific, not all of the related things. For example, if you were looking for cars you would type “cars”. The generated results would be only about cars, not engines, tires, and so on.

The Asterisk

Ever been in a situation in which you were looking for a phrase, say, a famous quote or lyric, but you could only remember a part of it? Well, this next tip will help out with that. We’re talking about the asterisk. An asterisk used in a Google search functions as a placeholder for an unknown word or an unknown phrase. An example would be the famous saying “an apple a day” but you can’t remember the rest. In this case, you would search for the rest of the expression by entering “an apple a day *”. Asterisks can also be used to find different versions of an expression. Such as “a penny saved”. With this you would type “* a penny saved”. In both cases, using quotation marks will also help narrow your search.

Cut it Out

The next tip on the list is the hyphen. The hyphen is used to narrow the results of a search by purposefully excluding some results. This is useful for words that may have several meanings associated with them. In other words, ambiguous words such as ‘choppers’. A ‘chopper’ could reference a helicopter, a type of motorcycle, or even a type of tool. In this instance, to cut out the results that you don’t want, you would use the hyphen. If you want to look up ‘helicopters’ your search would look like this: Choppers -motorcycles. This will be enough to leave out anything else associated with the word “choppers”.

Make it Specific

The next two tips can be very useful for students and researchers alike. When you only want articles or content from a specific source you can use the colon. An example would be if you were searching for articles about Abraham Lincoln only on civilwar.org. The search will look like this: Abraham Lincoln site:civilwar.org. This will only yield results found on this particular website. This is an excellent way to find any links concerning a specific search term on a particular website.

Do the Math

Did you know that Google can be used as a math tutor? Sure it can tell you what 8 + 5 – 3 is, but it can also help you with more advanced formulas, such as finding the area of a cylinder. When the search is entered, a calculator will pop up and all you have to do is plug in the numbers. It will also tell you the formula it is using.

Time for a Little Talk

For those of you who perform a lot of searches, and are tired of typing, there is a voice option. That little symbol that looks like a microphone on the Google search bar itself will help you out. All you need to do is click on it, and as long as your microphone is plugged in you can enter terms and search just by speaking your requested search.

For more information about how to fine-tune your search engine results, contact tekRESCUE located in San Marcos, TX.

The first thing to do when editing your Google Business page is to log in to your account. If you do not have access to the account, you can create a listing or claim an old one using the advice in this Google Article. You will want to edit photos, address, phone number, social media, and even things like menu or show times.

Basics

Photo:

Selecting the cover photo can be important, as many times when people search you directly or search through general categories like “restaurants near me”, it is the first thing they see. So you will want to select a photo that quickly displays what you offer at your place of business. A bar should display their selection of liquor or draft beer, a billiards hall should show their pool tables, a pizza joint should select an appetizing food picture.

Address/Phone Number:

Selecting the address is as easy as asking Google to mail a confirmation code to the address selected, and having a robo-call dial your business number.

Social Media:

Put the major social media platforms you use that have the most relation to your business. If you are a restaurant or local business, just use Facebook, and maybe Twitter and Instagram. But if you are for example a recording studio you may want to use your SoundCloud. What you select will depend on your business.

Basics of “Schema”

How to Get Advanced Info on Google Results Page

Have you ever noticed how some businesses have the ability to see their menu on the Google Results page when you search “restaurant name + menu”? For example, Italian Garden Menu gives the categories (soup, salads, appetizers etc.) broken down and the options within each category in a tabbed menu screen without having to click on the website. Or some movie theaters you can search “movie theatre + movie times” and get all of the movies playing soon in a menu on the results page.

Using schema is a great way to quickly show information without the person having to click on your website. Some users will stick to the results page to quickly browse results. Using schema caters to the quick browse crowd. “Schema” isn’t just for restaurants or movie theaters, but can also be used for bowling alleys, lodging and hotels for availability, pricing and conference centers, parks, stores for products, pricing etc., service providers like contractors to say what they offer and the list goes on.

Implementing schema is difficult and requires coding knowledge, but isn’t overly difficult. Though tekRESCUE provides schema for its websites, these articles are for showing you the basics of doing it yourself. The resource page for schema is “schema.org/docs/documents.html”. Where your websites displays its menu if it’s a restaurant, is where you would want to place your markup, though it all changes depending on want to accomplish. But to begin browse the documentation page, and then use the search button to find what your establishment is. So search, for example, “hotels”, “food establishment” etc. The getting started page is located here, “schema.org/docs/gs.html”.

In part one we went over choosing the best major social media platform for your purposes, and the types of content that are optimal for each network. In this article we will be going over the more niche platforms that are often overlooked. As previously mentioned, social media is not one size fits all. If you run a podcast, the set of sites that will benefit you the most will be a completely different set of sites than if you wanted to do outreach for your church, and both of those are completely different for someone running an e-commerce website. Below we will breakdown each niche by the networks that fit in that definition. Part Three will conclude with us showing you how to use your social media influence to increase your Google search ranking.

Video-content platforms:

Vimeo:

We went over YouTube last time, but Vimeo serves a slightly different audience. Vimeo is great for artists and creatives. Vimeo Plus allows you to upload very long videos at a much higher quality than YouTube. Though it is not as popular, it does serve as a great place for artisan content, and is very popular in the indie film scene.

Twitch:

Twitch services an entirely different customer base. The platform Twitch.TV began as a live-streaming website for gamers. While it is used mainly for video game streamers, it can be used as a tool to stream things live (though Periscope is the all-purpose version of Twitch.TV). The community is very tight knit, and anyone looking to create video-game related content would be well served by Twitch.

Audio streaming platforms:

SoundCloud:

SoundCloud is great for hosting pretty much any audio file. This service is a common go-to for comedians, podcasters, and aspiring musicians. It is not however possible to sell content on SoundCloud. It does contain a great artist page and enables easy contact with your fans.

Bandcamp:

Bandcamp is great for content creators that want to sell their work. Though it does not have as much of a community base, it enables easy monetization of your work.

Employment networks:

LinkedIn:

Billed as the social network for professionals, users can edit their profile to make their own online resumes, search for employers/employees, and network with clients and vendors needed. Some people get caught up in the social aspect of LinkedIn, which is not necessary. While it is a social network, your business mainly will benefit by using it for things like finding employees or getting bids from contractors and vendors.

General social networks:

Snapchat:

Snapchat is an instant photo sharing site. It started as a way for friends to send each other “snapshots” that were pictures that only displayed for 10 seconds, and would alert the user if the other phone tried to take a picture of the application.

Pinterest:

Pinterest is great for reaching almost any crowd. It is especially useful for anyone who can easily convey their ideas and services with pictures.

Google+:

Reaches a similar crowd to Facebook, and more tech-savvy user base.

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage gem, and an online office suite, and the epicenter where other Google services converge. It is loved for its simplicity and ease of use. However, it also contains tremendous power. With the right combination of tools and settings, it can become a lean, mean, productivity monster; one which saves you time and satisfies your specific needs.

1. Google Drive Offline

Google Drive allows you to view and edit your documents without internet access. It requires Google’s Chrome browser. But after installing the official Drive app, you access the drive online and click the “More” option in the left-hand menu, and select “Offline.” Clicking the button enables offline access from your computer.

2. A GOOGLE Drive on your HARD Drive

In order to access, on your local machine, any files stored in a Google Drive account and easily drag and drop these files between the Drive and your computer, you can enable Drive-to-PC syncing. To achieve this, you obtain the Google Drive sync download, and after installing it, it will allow you to select a local folder which will serve as a two-way sync location between the Drive and the computer.

3. Use Gmail to send large files from Google Drive

You can send files as large as 15GB with the help of Gmail, by inserting the file from your Google Drive. Simply click the Google Drive icon at the bottom of the email window and browse for the file. Gmail also allows you to convert a file into a Google Doc, Sheet, Slide, or Microsoft Office files. This allows you to work easily and efficiently, while offering the same convenience to external parties.

4. Insert Images

During the edition of a Google Docs document, you can drag an image from your computer into the document. You can then move or resize it as your needs require.

5. History Revision

To look back at a detailed list of edits made to any Google Docs document and, if you so wish, revert back to an older version of the file, you can open Docs’ Revision History feature. It can be accessed by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Shift-G.

6. Order & Organization

Google Drive allows you to create folders and nested folders; but it also allows you to color-code them for better organization. Right-click on a folder in the Drive and click on the “Change color” option.

7. Shortcuts To Get There Faster

You can navigate faster through your Google Drive by using a series of shortcuts that can be viewed by pressing “Shift” and “?” simultaneously. Some of the essential shortcuts include: share selected item: . (dot); hide or show the activity pane: i; hide or show the details pane: d; create new Doc: Shift + t; create new Presentation: Shift + p; create new Spreadsheet: Shift + s; and create new Folder: Shift + f.

8. Share The Love

Google Drive allows you to share your content and invite others to work on a document along with you. This will permit them to make edits and comments, as well as permit you to email a document or file directly from Docs in whatever format you would like. Both of these options can be accessed with a right-click on any file in Google Drive or in the File menu, while the document is being edited.

9. Make Documents Searchable

A very useful feature of Google Drive is its capability to scan certain file types, such as images or PDFs, for text. The feature is called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and makes the files searchable as well.

10. Easier Saving

An easier way to save Web-based content to your Google Drive account, is by way of a free Chrome extension called Save to Google Drive. It adds right-click “Save to Drive” commands to the browser in order to allow you to download a diversity of documents and file types, straight into Google Drive.

So effective is it at organizing and optimizing one’s school or work life, that soon, upon searching for the meaning of efficiency in a dictionary, the resulting meaning will be: “Google Drive”.

Have you recently been struck by a manual penalty or a Google animal? If so, you’re not alone. Every few months, google releases an algorithm update and thus can cause certain websites to be hit with a penalty. When a person is said to experience either type of penalty by Google, they will notice a significant drop in rankings and/or traffic incoming to their website. No matter what the penalty arises from, webmasters have the ability to fix the issues at hand and resolve their websites of any google penalties. Thankfully, we’ve compiled a detailed guide to help you diagnose and fix the issues at hand.

Understanding Google Penalties

As briefly touched on above, google typically has 2 different types of categories when it comes to penalties. Both of them are something to be aware of and understand in their entireties.

Manual Penalty

If you check your Google Search Console (also known as Google Webmaster) and find a notification that your website has been struck with a manual penalty, it simply means that a member of the Google Spam team manually reviewed your website or links pointing to it and found your website is not “up to par” with their requirements. Typically, when a website owner experiences a manual penalty, they’ll receive a personalized message explaining why the manual action was taken against your site.

Manual penalties are the easiest to combat. Due to the fact that a Google employee sent you a personal message explaining the issue, you can then take the necessary steps to fixing the problem at hand.

Google Penguin Penalty

Throughout the year, google will make algorithm changes which is done in an attempt to make the Google search engine more accurate, helpful, and enjoyable. However, as Google makes changes to their algorithm, it can cause websites to be hit with penalties.

Typically, when a user is hit with a Penguin penalty, the website typically contains one or more issues such as:

• Over-Optimized Anchor Text
• Too Many Spammy Links Pointing To Their Website
• Thin Content On The Site
• Duplicate Content Found On The Website

When receiving a Google Penguin penalty, the webmaster will be notified within Google Search Console. If a user suspects that they’ve been hit with a penalty, they should check their Google Search Console to see if their website has been penalized and the reasons behind Google’s actions.

How to Remove the Penalty from Your Site

In order to effectively remove your google penalty, it’s highly recommended that you follow the below-mentioned steps.

Confirm that you’ve been hit with a Penalty

Firstly, double check that you’ve actually been hit with a penalty. If you’re using a service or software to manage your rankings, double check that your rankings haven’t plummeted. Next, log into Google Search Console and check to see if you have any messages from Google. If you find that your site has been penalized, Google will explain to you why the penalty was given in the first place.

Fix the problems mentioned within Google Search Console

Each penalty situation is unique & must be handled independently of other cases. Take a close look at why google deemed your website wasn’t at good health, and do the necessary changes. For example, if you found that your website was hit due to duplicate content, you should change the content on your site and stop using other people’s content. If you found that your website was hit with a penalty due to spammy links, it’s highly encouraged that you take a close look at the links pointing to your website & remove the low-quality ones.

Submit your website for reconsideration

Once you’ve made the necessary changes, submit your website for a reconsideration request. Within a few short weeks, a Google employee will manually check to confirm that you’ve made the necessary changes.

Website design is a vital part of any company’s business plan. The appearance of a website can relay information and emotions to the viewers. Unique designs, dazzling images, and professional displays can make or break a viewer’s first impressions; however, the fancy design of a website would mean nothing if viewers could not find the website in the first place.

Most people turn to Google.com when they are searching the internet for a service, product, or information. This is where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into play. On a regular basis, Googlebots explore the internet, searching for terminology inputted by their users. This could be topics in recent news articles, the names of famous individuals, or even phrases relating to services or products. SEO is about using well organized phrases that would be searched for by potential viewers. This is why it is vital for businesses to use proper terminology on their websites.

Cache

This is where Google cache comes into play. ‘Cache’ is a term that, to put it simply, defines a snapshot of a web page. Computers and servers of all kinds store cache on their systems so that information can be pulled up quickly rather than having to be searched for all over again. After scanning a website, Googlebots store them as cache. This allows websites to be pulled up immediately in search results. How relevant the bot determined a page to be affects how high it appears on the list.

Something vital for businesses to know is that Googlebots only scan for pure text. Unique designs and fancy layouts go unseen by Googlebots. Rather, this technology only views the text laid out on the page: readable text, not coding. For this reason, it is important that businesses ensure that their websites are rich with content that Google considers significant: an illustration, for example, would be unseen, whereas a detailed paragraph would be scanned for valuable keywords.

Every business can easily check their Google cache at any time. A simple search of the business name will likely result in their website showing up fist. Beneath the title is the website’s URL, or address, is green. Next to this is a little green arrow, which will redirect to the most recent snapshot that was taken by the Googlebot. Something important to focus on is the option to view a “text-only version” of the website. This shows exactly what the Googlebot sees when searching the website.

Using Google cache is vital for every online business because it affects how relevant a website appears to Google. Having eye-catching illustrations and a stunning website design is important for keeping viewers on the page as long as possible; however, having well put together information and useful keywords is imperative to aid in the ability for users to find the website.

In order to ensure that a website remains relevant, simply do a Google search on a regular basis to check the cache date. Checking when the website was last cached can show whether or not Google considered it relevant during the most recent scan. The more recent the cache date, the better.

For years Google has been working to provide better search results for their users. Better search results means a better overall experience, which can directly translate into bigger profits for Google (people keep coming back to a search engine that provides helpful results, which means Google can sell more ad space at a higher price around these results). We’ve seen algorithms such as Panda and Hummingbird rolled out, tweaked, and refreshed over the past several years–and these algorithms have been more and more integrated into the overall ranking algorithm that Google utilizes to rank pages based on search keywords and phrases.

Why RankBrain Exists

The search giant reported earlier this year that it handles over 100 billion searches per month… That’s a ton of volume! However, Google’s algorithm can stumble a bit when people type in a completely unique phrase or question that Google has never received before. According to a recent report, around 15% of the 3.5 billion daily searches that Google receives every day have never been seen before (that’s 525 million searches per day!), so Google needs to figure out how to best serve up results for these new searches.

How RankBrain Works

That’s where RankBrain comes in. Google has been working on developing and integrating artificial intelligence into its algorithms, and RankBrain is a step in the right direction. The way people search online has evolved over time, and more and more searches are taking the form of questions (i.e. “What are the best places to eat around here?” instead of “best restaurants San Marcos, TX”), so Google has been working on a way to parse these queries to understand search intent and serve up helpful results. When analyzing these search queries, if the algorithm sees a word it doesn’t recognize, it attempts to take an ‘educated guess’ at what the word might mean, based on other words and phrases that may have a similar meaning.

It then serves up the results that it believes to be most relevant, and the monitors how the person browses and responds to the results offered. If the user doesn’t appear to find the information they’re looking for (a simplistic example: they click the first few links, leave the websites quickly–indicating the website likely didn’t have the information the user was looking for–and search again using a different phrase to find the information they want), the algorithm makes adjustments accordingly.

What RankBrain Means for SEO

We find this fascinating at tekRESCUE, and we’ve been waiting for Google to take a true stab at semantic search, because we know it’s been coming for a long time. We’re excited to see these AI changes roll out for more applications such as backlink analysis and better spam detection. This will make “cheating the system” much more difficult for spammers and black hat search engine optimization techniques. Every day we come across competitors of our clients who have spammy backlink profiles, yet they are still ranking well. Google has attempted to thwart this kind of manipulation for years, with varying degrees of success. We don’t use spammy SEO tactics for our Austin and San Marcos, TX SEO clients’ websites, so we are confident that these changes (as they slowly roll out) should only bolster client rankings as high-ranking competitors using spammy tactics are weeded out.

Honestly, there’s much more that this will revolutionize than just search engine results. Seeing this type of artificial intelligence rolled out into a multi-billion dollar company’s core framework shows that we’re taking steps in the right direction to utlize sophisticated AI solutions to make the world a better place for us all.

Featured image: “Your Brain on Rainbows” by garlandcanon, used under CC BY-SA

Here’s a great article about using a shared Google Calendar in your office. Google Calendar is what we use for all of our scheduling at tekRESCUE.

Randy