SEO 301 redirect from http to https

Recently our site was moved from http to https. Moving a big site like ours was not easy. It took us a lot of time to move. We had too many static pages which made our life difficult. When we move our site from http to https it is important that move everything to the secure section.

Areas to consider are CSS, images, JavaScript and any other client side includes should be from secure section. If your URLs are relative you don’t have a problem but if your URLs are absolute then you have a problem in your hand. Make sure you search and replace all URLs that have absolute links. We search for pages with URLs like

http://www.searchenginegenie.com,

http://searchenginegenie.com,

http://facebook.com etc.

These type of URLs are replaced with https instead of http.

But before moving into all these details make sure https works perfectly on your site. Next important thing is to 301 redirect all http pages to https pages.

Because we are on an Apache server we used this code in our .htaccess file.\

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

This code worked great till we went into our wordpress pages.

We have about 8 wordpress blogs.

Insert code here

Then we need to login to our wordpress section and change the htaccess files there. We replaced above code in .htaccess in each wordpress blog root section. Boom it worked. We never had any problems after that.

To make sure browsers don’t throw insecure content error for wordpress blogs. Use “wordpress https” plugin. It is freely available for download.

If anyone need help moving site to a secure server contact us we are more than willing to help you.

Why we monetize our SEO blog

Well Search engine genie has provided free tools, blogs, forums for many years without making a single penny. All our revenue came from our once successful SEO Business. We were proud to be one of the best free SEO resource site. We always want to continue that way. But Google literally killed our Business. We used to get regular Business from existing and past clients but things have changed after Penguin update. Especially the October 2013 Penguin update killed 75% of our SEO business.

We are not worried about it. You cannot depend on Google all the time. It is their search engine we were lucky and happy to do Business using Google. Now things have changed, SEO has changed. It is mostly Do It Yourself SEO now. We also planned to move into other web related areas. We run a decent network of sites all good quality sites. Now we are pushing to monetize all our sites. Search Engine Genie is one of the high traffic sites we own. We don’t want to resort to selling links. It has always been against our policy to buy or sell links. So we thought Adsense will be ideal for us. For a site like ours where we don’t stuff our pages with ads people like to bid more. So we get some decent income from Search Engine Genie and other sites we own. We are pushing more towards a much bigger Adsense revenue Business. Google still pays us but more directly. Before we indirectly made money now we make direct revenue from Google.

We are grateful to Google and will make sure we abide by Google’s webmaster guidelines and Adsense guidelines.

Search Engine Genie site to monetize now

Penguin UPDATE 2014 – Why Google is scared to unleash penguin again

Google to replace Penguin with POLAR BEAR:

There is a reason for Google not updating Penguin algorithm. The last penguin update or the unnatural link penalty update happened in October 2013. It has been over 10 months and we did not have a single update. It seems Google has shot its own foot by penalizing sites based on backlinks. With excessive attack on webmasters and site owners for bad link practices, Google has got itself into a mess. The big mess of negative SEO. If anyone thinks negative SEO doesn’t exist or sky rocketed after the last penguin update they are fools. We as a SEO company face ton of problems with junk links. Few of our client sites consistently receives over 1000 junk links a month. The problem is mainly with sites that do well in search engines. It has become a pain for us to request junk sites to remove links or make a huge list of links to disavow. The problem now if Google even updates it’s penguin algorithm it will hurt those sites badly. Google might think the junk links are built by us or at least the machine might think so.

Though it is positive for Google not updating algorithm the affected sites are dumped in Sandbox for ever. Sites that not affected by October update are doing great. But the ones that were affected seem to be doomed forever. Those sites don’t have an option to submit re-inclusion because the site was affected by algorithm not by manual penalty. Before a site can recover in 2 to 3 months then it became 5 to 6 months. Now it has been over a year and some of the sites that were affected by penguin update October 2013 never recovered. It is important for Google to give sites that got affected a change to fix itself. They should make their algorithm smarter in understanding negative links. IMHO this penguin update works with both machine and human intervention. It seems machine takes decision based on human input for specific sites or specific niches.

Hopefully this time Google comes out with a fantastic algorithm that can identify real spammed links and don’t penalize sites that were affected by competitor link attack. Also it is time for Google to release penalized sites from October 2013. There is 100s of 1000s of sites sitting in sandbox after that update. They show a similar pattern and never come back to rankings.

Google unleashed innocent looking penguins to kill bad seals. Now it seems the good seals are made to look nasty by blood thirsty parasites unleashed by some crazy aliens. Hope Google wakes up and understands penguin are not the right choice. We feel Polar bear can be a better choice because it can eat anything but still being selective. Hopefully the new polar bear update will tackle the blood thirty parasites we are seeing today.

Is this how Google’s panda update works

Google panda update works this way or that is how Google’s patent says.

Negative SEO – does it really work

Negative SEO has been the talk of the town these days in SEO industry. Many SEOs claim it works and we do believe the same way. We have seen our high ranking clients come under negative SEO attack. We did not see major impact our client rankings but we do see problem when a particular keyword is targeted for negative SEO. We have seen some major keywords that face negative SEO attack fall from 1st page to 2nd page. Other keywords remain unchanged.

Google recommends to disavow if we find negative links in our backlinks. But what happens if the links are from a very large network that Google crawls.

For example the guys at negativeseoguy.com are selling 2,000,000 million links for $450. If it is possible to get that many spam links we have to work a life time to remove or disavow all those links.

Please Google wake up and tweak your algorithm to avoid negative SEO attack because it WORKS.

Facebook’s fatal attack on Orkut

Facebook’s fatal attack on Orkut

MATT CUTTS ON LONG VACATION

Matt cutts going on vacation is good news for SEO companies 

HummingBird Algorithm

On September 27, 2013 Google launched a new “Hummingbird” algorithm at its 15th anniversary event. The name Hummingbird was used as searches are turned to be “precise and fast.” with this latest update.

Hummingbird 

Hummingbird is an entirely new updated search algorithm incorporating new technology combined with older features of the existing algorithms. It approaches search engine queries in an intelligent way that instead of looking at the individual words that match with the keywords of finding page, the algorithm aims to understand what the users intention was – figuring out the reason what exactly the user looking for to search.

This release is basically a platform that enables Google to better handle “conversational” search queries.

Working strategies of Hummingbird

The major change what made Hummingbird to be so special than past versions of the Google algorithms is that its conversational search.

For example, if you search for ‘shipping companies near me’, then Hummingbird knows that ‘near me’ might mean where you are when you’re searching, it understands the user searches for the shipping services in his nearby locality. This clearly indicates many people are searching for results without using the appropriate keywords.

Hummingbird breaks this dismay by introducing Conversational Search concept-  allowing user to ask Google a question, as you would a friend, and it answers you using contextual and background knowledge (just like a real person would). Hence the importance to keyword slackens behind.

Few new post-Hummingbird SEO best practices

•  Long-tail phrases have to be given more importance than keywords in order to prepare for more semantic search.
•  Website content has to be clear and concise that answers all the questions what user may have.
• Need to answer the “5 Ws” (Who, What, Where, When, and Why) and also “How” when it comes to product or service the company present.

SEO and page Rank strategies

The implementation of this new algorithm has raised number of queries in the users’ side whether this new methodology will forfeit SEO and page ranking strategies. But Google strictly answers with its strong words as”NO” .Google says there is nothing new or different SEO guidelines has been introduced. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important. The keywords within a query still play a major role. Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.

Benefits VS opportunities -Hummingbird

The release of Hummingbird creates the perfect scenario for smaller websites to gain more exposure. As long tailed keywords are to possess more priority, content stands top that holds the ability to answer search engine queries. The algorithm broadens the horizons by expanding number of entrance pages that answer the questions being posed by the target audience. Answering more questions is now considered as the vital part of the new Hummingbird algorithm.

The new algorithm was designed in the sense to address all users search conveniently. Many users are not aware of using keywords that direct to appropriate page they try out with the normal conversation as they talk with their friends. This issue was greatly analyzed and brought out with the solution which is “Humming bird”.

Future with Hummingbird algorithm

The Hummingbird algorithm is meant to turn the SEO into the marketing strategy. It will take little time to get familiar with the new methodology but it’s an evolution of Google in elevating preference for quality content that address user’s actual needs in their own natural language. Google is increasingly concerned to find content that is relevant and trusted, in essence content with authority. The algorithm has grabbed more attention with common users. In future, it is no doubt that Hummingbird will extend its wing in elevating the search experience to new level.

How can we create unique meta details for each product pages?

Today’s question is ,”we have an e-commerce site Around a thousand products in pages on that site so how can we create unique minute details for those pages”

 Matt cut answers,

The question should not be i have been pages how can i make the unique the question is how many pages can make the quality that provide user. if you can’t managed to have thousand pages and have something unique something different than just an affiliate theater whatever on each page of that site then why should your thousand pages which are again baby Jessica reward content of an affiliate feed rent compared to someone else’s thousand pages of that same affiliate.

Anderson what you’re asking i think i would ask yourself what makes your site unify what is the value add where what what’s the compelling proposition that makes people want to go visit your e-commerce site .if you can have unique content if you can come up with some unique Angola reason even if it’s again it’s something that makes it fun something that makes it better easier for people that makes them like your site then that that’s a really tough proposition and and so i wouldn’t say yourself a bowl of having a thousand pages and then how can i have a little bit of value each one it sometimes is better to think about okay how much value can add and that determines the number of pages on my site rather than the other way around so it des Moines sound a little bit harsh but on the other hand if everybody on the entire internet all wanted to have  thousand page site and weren’t able to come up with unique content or some other way or differentiating factor for their website you’re only left with a a lot of pages which are not that different she did not that high quality and and dot that unique and that’s not good for the web it’s not good for the ecosystem the web it’s not good for uses the way we’re just trying to find good stuff and don’t necessarily want to find  a copy of the same content they want to find you know something with unique value add so that might sound a little bit harsh but you know give it some thought because we do see a lot of people who are like okay i can make this mini sites now how do i make them useful and sometimes by the time you reach that point where you have in number of sites and you try to make them useful you’ve already made some summit in my opinion errors and how you’re trying to think about how to create your site just some food for thought whatever you’d.

Panda Update #25: seems to have released to shake up SEO

Google seems to have released one more update called Panda #25 on March 15, 2013. Adding one more to its panda update algorithm it seems to be Google’s last Manual Panda refresh. The last Panda Update that Google officially confirmed was Panda Update #24 released on 22 January, 2013.