On October 16, 2012 Google finally put an end to the annoying "please-remove-my-links-from-your-website" mails and gave hard times to backlink removal services and tools like Removeem (the guys spammed us pretty hard and they do deserve this link, after all, they may now disavow it, if they wish).

Those of you, who already expect yet another Penguin and Panda story, please, switch to National Geographic, this post is going to be animals-free. While the introduction of Google Disavow Links tool spurred lots of discussions, a few months earlier the similar functionality introduced by Bing was merely noticed. Bing Webmaster Tools deserve more attention; they have a good chance to win in our Bing vs. Google Webster Tools challenge. We thought it would be boring to describe the functionality of Bing tools alone; we hope all of you may Ctrl+F the “Help” link, thus we compared Bing tools against their counterparts by Google, and performed a few very simple tests. Read on! Read more »

Apart from some really cool achievements Google has recently managed to ruin reputation of the cutest monochromatic animals and cause an acute attack of paranoia among SEOs. An army of slapped-by-panda-pecked-by-penguin prophets shout about the approaching SEOpocalypses and preach on optimization asceticism. The naïve and trusting webmasters start removing backlinks, content, and keywords from their websites to cause nothing but even a faster decrease in rankings.

There are at least two teams in the field that benefit from the situation: the cunning dudes who mind their business and keep on working (see the case study below) and "the big SEO guys" (read: the evangelists of the fluffy white SEO). The latter are hypnotizing you with "we are building trust and authority using advanced techniques" mantra, which is yet another marketing catch. Sure thing the reputable consultancies might help you rank higher but their services don't always meet your budget.

As far as most of you know, during the past few years Google implemented several quality related updates but none of them was really fatal for traditional SEO. Though the aftermath of Penguin is not totally clear yet, we're absolutely sure, it's not going to be grave. Read more »

Lots of us are visual learners: we grasp information better if it is presented in the form of charts or graphs – and find it difficult to analyze raw digits. There are a few SEO software tools that make the life of visual learners easier.

Analytics Visualizations

Analytics Visualizations is a tool developed by Juice Analytics on the basis of Google Analytics API and JuiceKit. Google Analytics API team approached Juice Analytics with the request to find new fresh ways to represent GA data and in response the Juice Analytics engineers created this outstanding tool.

Juice Analytics includes two visualization modes. These are Keyword Tree and Referrer Flow. Keyword Tree visualizes semantic relations among the keywords that are sending traffic to your website and some metrics (Bounce rate, % new visitors, average time on site, number of visits and new visits). At a glimpse one might evaluate the performance of the keywords and get fresh ideas for new long-tail keyword phrases that might generate additional visitors and customers.

Have a look at a fragment of the keyword map generated for an e-commerce website that sells modern furniture in NY.

Grey lines reflect semantic relationships; the font size indicates the number of visits for the relevant keyword (the bigger the font – the more visits a particular keyword enjoys); the font color describes Bounce Rate (the keywords with higher bounce rate are within the red spectrum). In other words, this keyword map allows users to evaluate three dimensions at a time. Apparently, "modern furniture Florida" or "modern furniture in Brooklyn New York" might be good long tail phrases to optimize for. The great thing about such representation is that one may evaluate several crucial metrics simultaneously. Read more »