HTTPS as a ranking signal - Google

Google focusing on Security. In the future this may be a major ranking factor.  Ranking factor tip from Google?  Great for the SSL vendors; "Cha-Ching"! It was only a matter of time before this was pushed to the public sector for websites.  Google moves all its search to HTTPS and now knows they can not protect everyone's search when they are providing the path to websites that maybe unsecure. Your online identity or search is only as Secure as your, wait for it... Weakest Link.  Good Move.  But is there more to it?  We hope there is, Right.  When are the keywords coming back in Google Analytics?  This maybe the move that gives back the secure path to Google's Search Keyword Data for websites that have Secure Socket Layers. Yeah.  Wishful!  We like correct keyword data!!!! No More "(NOT PROVIDED)"

Is your website safe to be on?

Here is the Google Webmaster Post: August 6, 2014

Webmaster level: all
Security is a top priority for Google. We invest a lot in making sure that our services use industry-leading security, like strong HTTPS encryption by default. That means that people using Search, Gmail and Google Drive, for example, automatically have a secure connection to Google.
Beyond our own stuff, we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, we have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites.
We want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web.
We’ve also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging.
For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.



In the coming weeks, we’ll publish detailed best practices (it's in our help center now) to make TLS adoption easier, and to avoid common mistakes. Here are some basic tips to get started:

• Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
• Use 2048-bit key certificates
• Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
• Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
• Check out our Site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
• Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.

If your website is already serving on HTTPS, you can test its security level and configuration with the Qualys Lab tool. If you are concerned about TLS and your site’s performance, have a look at Is TLS fast yet?. And of course, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to post in our Webmaster Help Forums.
We hope to see more websites using HTTPS in the future. Let’s all make the web more secure!
Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analysts

Google to announce to visitors if your website is going to function properly on their devices.

Starting today Google will now indicate to searchers when their algorithms detect pages that may not work on their devices.

A common annoyance for web users is when websites require browser technologies that are not supported by their device. When users access such pages, they may see nothing but a blank space or miss out a large portion of the page's contents.

For example, Adobe Flash is not supported on iOS devices or on Android versions 4.1 and higher, and a page whose contents are mostly Flash may be noted like this:
http://bit.ly/1sjCP3h

This may be a real issue, for webmaster that are on legacy platforms that take an Act of God to make changes. And may be heading for lower session counts.  This is a major component of proper +SEO.  And can be a devastating event especially for the Automotive Industry and the platforms the Car Dealers are forced to use.  The Manufacturer's "Preferred Providers" dictate the websites, in which, most of the Dealers are operating on and some of them are "Old Technology", or Limited Forward Taught".   A great reason to promote more effective +Automotive +Search Engine Optimization.  Get off the "Preferred Providers" basic templates, and customize your destiny.

Just my rant...

As a Promoter of Proper #AutomotiveSearchEngineOptimization for Car Dealers.
Test your Websites on multiple devices! Start with Google Webmaster Tools,
Fetch as Google, Desktop and Smart Phone.  Find your errors before your potential visitors do.

 
 
 
 

Contact Real Traffic Productions, we are here to help with your Automotive Search Engine Optimization. We will help you setup the tools you will need to control your destiny and measure your performance, that are not provider dependent.

Website Audits

An article about website Audits
Website Audits and Everything you Need to Know

What is a Site Audit?

Site audits are, in the simplest terms, when you pay someone to forensically examine your site with tools and their eyes utilizing their knowledge and expertise to tell you what is good and what is not so good about your site (or as we say – where you have challenges and opportunities).

Types of Site Audits

There are many types of audits and they cannot all be covered here, but the most common types of site audits related to SEO needs are:

• Site Health Audits: Assessing general site health or when there is a site health issue such as a downturn in traffic or positioning of unknown causation.
• Red Flag Audits: Assessing a site for potential penalty issues. This should be part of a site health audit, but can be an audit unto itself.
• Competitive Site Audits: Analyzing your site gaps, in its vertical and among your competitors to see what opportunities there are for site growth. Some will use this as a time to copy what their competitors do, but this can be a risky strategy.
• Conversion Optimization Audits: Analyze conversion issues, which can be onsite or technical.
• Negative SEO or Attacked Site Audits: Analyze downturns in site metrics when we know a site (or thought very likely) has been attacked by negative SEO methods.
• Penalty and Recovery Audits: Analyze downturns in site metrics when a site is known (or thought very likely) to have been algorithmically or manually penalized.
• Security Audits: Security audits for site vulnerability especially important in high-risk verticals and high value sites, but everyone should have one.

(Note: All of these can be part of the same audit, however these are how they are most commonly broken down when we receive client requests.)

Which audits are most needed? Site audits are all determined by a site's needs. However all site audits should start with the Site Health Audit.

You can follow the link to read the entire article.

Article by:Kristine Schachinger

The Next Google Places for Business or Google + for Business

Google is ready to roll out the newer Google Places for Business Platform, to legacy listings owners, that have been through Google's up's and down's and down's with the old platform. The duplicates are no longer just a duplicate issue, Dup's will now cause your listing to go off line. Remedy, remove duplicate listing, even though, you claimed them because they showed in results and the were from a syndicated feed. Or you claimed the duplicate in attempt to get access to reviews back, or just control the listing you have no idea where it came from. Some may not get this email from Google, most likely you are new to Google Places/+ and did not fight the battle of listing ownership, good for you. For those that do get this email, your next to upgrade, take action.

If you recently received an email from Google that begins:

“We’d like to inform you that Google Places no longer accommodates more than one authorized owner per business location. Your account contains one or more listings that have been identified as duplicates of other listings and as a result, some of the information you provide will not be shown to Google users anymore…”

Email from Google about duplicate listing in your account...

More Tips on Local Optimization and Automotive SEO at Real Traffic

How to remove Penalty from Google for bad link strategy!

Remove your bad links by reverse action. Using webmaster Tools, disavow bad links targeted at the time frame that the links were initialed.  Hopefully you will not have to mark them all.

Watch the video, "How can a site recover from a period of spamming links?" by Matt Cutts

Beware, Negative reviews can Haunt You, Read the fine print!

Title: Beware, Negative reviews can Haunt You, Read the fine print!

Can defending against a negative review Backfire?    

How are you handling your Reputation?

A negative review turns bad for the customer.  Hopefully your business has a safer way for reputation protection that does not force you into hiding.  Or beat up your customers.

Company fines couple $3.5k for posting negative review

By Jasmine Bailey

Courtesy of Newsy.com

A bizarre story out of Texas, where a couple was charged $3,500 and had their credit scores ruined by an online retail company, all because of a bad review.

"Way back in 2008, Jen Palmer's husband ordered her a number of trinkets from the website KlearGear.com. … For 30 days KlearGear.com never sent the products, so the transaction was automatically cancelled by PayPal."  (Via KUTV)

She tried calling the company but never got through, so she took to the website Ripoff Report to vent her frustrations, saying the company had "incompetent customer service" and "there is absolutely no way to get in touch with a physical human being."

Three years later, her husband received an email from KlearGear claiming he owed the company thousands of dollars as a result of the complaint on Ripoff Report. Apparently KlearGear's terms of service contained a clause restricting customers' ability to post negative reviews.

It's now been taken down, but it read, "In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees." ​The company then threatened the couple with the $3,500 fee if they didn't retract their review.

So the Palmers contacted Ripoff Report to have the complaint removed but were told the site wouldn't take it down unless, get this, the couple paid a separate $2,000 fine. (Via Business Insider)

The Palmers passed on that. And now, thanks to the outstanding debt to KlearGear, the couple says their credit scores are so bad they can't get a loan for a new car or to fix their home's furnace. Oh, and they can't afford an attorney to clean up the mess. (Via Daily Mail)

At the time of the incident back in 2010, KlearGear had an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau. Although it now has a “B,” Ripoff Report still has KlearGear complaints posted. No word on if there are any cases similar to the one involving the Palmers.

The couple is now working with a separate credit company to try to have the fine expunged. 

Source: AJC.com

Original Source: KUTV

Nicci Stevens sends in this report from Salt Lake City's KUTV, which details the actions taken by one company against a dissatisfied purchaser who left a negative review at Ripoff Report.

Additional Source: TechDirt

Online Retailer Says If You Give It A Negative Review It Can Fine You $3,500

from the yeah,-that-sort-of-thing-would-NEVER-backfire dept

Lots of quasi-legal action has been taken over negative reviews left by customers at sites like Ripoff Report and Yelp. Usually, it takes the form of post-review threats about defamation and libel. Every so often, though, a company will make proactive moves (usually bad ones) to head off negative reviews.

Kleargear's, "Terms of Sale and Use".

Non-Disparagement Clause

In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.

Should you violate this clause, as determined by KlearGear.com in its sole discretion, you will be provided a seventy-two (72) hour opportunity to retract the content in question. If the content remains, in whole or in part, you will immediately be billed $3,500.00 USD for legal fees and court costs until such complete costs are determined in litigation. Should these charges remain unpaid for 30 calendar days from the billing date, your unpaid invoice will be forwarded to our third party collection firm and will be reported to consumer credit reporting agencies until paid.

Gone into Social Hiding!

KlearGear has protected its Tweets and canceled its Facebook page.

In addition, even though KlearGear has a "TRUSTe Certified Privacy" emblem on its home page, TRUSTe tweeted this morning that "@KlearGear is NOT @TRUSTe certified."

Social Hiding Source: boing boing

Real Traffic Productions recommends proper SEO to help bury negative reviews on third party reviews sites or reverse Automotive SEO.  Then listen to your customers with our Reputation Management Services.  offering alerts for review, social mentions, image mentions and more with executive reporting.

                                                        

What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?

Matt Cutts - Watch Video
We are looking at Panda and seeing if we can find some additional signals, and we thinkwe've got some to help refine things for sites that are kind of in the border zone, the gray area a little bit, And so if we can soften the affect a little bit, for those sites, that we believe have got some additional signals of quality, that will help sites that were previously affected - to some degree.