As we’ve previously written, Google’s Panda update in February significantly affected how sites get their organic traffic, changing the SERPs for 12% of all U.S. searches. While we know the aim of the algorithm change was to weed out low quality sites, Google has been extremely tight lipped on what exactly qualifies as a high quality website -until now.

Amit Singhal, the Google engineer in charge of their ranking algorithm just published a blog post giving the most elaborate explanation of Panda to date. Without getting into specifics which would allow people to game the system, Amit lays out exactly what questions Google are looking to answer in determining what qualifies as a high quality site. Here are some of the key takeaways for Kontera Publishers:

• You are being judged on the basics; make sure to double check your content for Spelling, Grammar, and Factual Errors. Features like the Instant in Search have proven that Google’s able to successfully predict what you’re looking for before you even finish typing the word. It’s pretty safe to assume they can also tell the difference between “there” and “their”.

• Don’t become a broken record. When Publishers experience a level of success with a certain post, there’s a temptation to follow that up with several similarly titled posts, covering identical topics. That would be a red flag. Google is looking for you to demonstrate a depth of knowledge – once you’ve established your site’s subject, make sure that you’re covering that topic from as many different angles as possible.

• Similarly, it’s important your site doesn’t become too eclectic. This can be an issue if publishers ignore their site’s theme, and instead begin blogging about whatever keyword happens to be hot that day. But it can also be an issue if publishers are genuinely interested in a variety of different topics. There’s nothing wrong with that, however just to be on the safe side, create separate sites for your separate interests.

• Provide articles with original content, reporting, or analysis. While judging value might seem like a subjective thing, in the macro it’s anything but. In-bound links and other writers picking up your story are likely key indicators to Google if your site has quality, unique content. The amount of comments could also be a contributing factor in determining a site’s authority.

• The amount of time people spend on your site, and the amount of return visitors speak pretty definitively to how much a site is valued. We don’t know for sure if Google Analytics is information used towards determining Search rank (there’s a chicken or the egg issue there) but if you do implement Analytics, it should give you great insight into how you’re tracking on site quality.

• Trust factors into Rank. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site, is a critical question Google is looking to answer. For websites that rely on sales transactions, making sure you are PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant, and displaying a badge to that effect should go a long way in establishing that trust.

In all, while Singhal did give some good specifics about how you can make your site Panda compliant and hinted at a great deal more, the chief point of his blog post was quality sites really have nothing to worry about. Search engines will continue to tweak their algorithms, but the core questions they’re trying to answer with those changes remain the same. At the end of the day, the best content is ultimately going to be what gets the best results.

What is it that makes a post stand out in someone’s Facebook news feed?

Two recent studies, by Buddy Media, who surveyed the Facebook posts of their 200 top brand clients over a two week period of time, and by the social media management provider Vitrue, who analyzed 1,500 brand streams over a three month period, sought to answer that question. Here are their collective takeaways on the most effective ways to increase engagement with your content on Facebook:

Short is better, both for URLS and post size – Buddy Media found that posts of 80 characters or less improve engagement rates by 27%. Additionally, posts that use a full URL, as opposed to the type of URL shorter that are popular for Twitter get 3 times as many clicks.

Image posts generate the most engagement – 22% more than video posts and 54% more engagement over text posts.  In all, it’s recommended that you use posts with images or quality video. Posts using just text are ineffective.

It doesn’t work while they’re at work – 60% of the posts tracked by Buddy Media went on Facebook between 10am and 4pm Eastern Time. If you post earlier in the morning like 7am, after people start coming home from work around 5pm, or around 11pm, engagement will increase around 20%.

Day of the week matters – Both studies found that day of the week is important, but which day you should post on varies on what topic you’re posting about. For instance according to the Buddy Media, Sunday is the best day for Automotive and Sports posts. However, according to Vitrue, Consumer Packaged Goods posts performed the best on Thursdays; 51% better than on Sundays. Still, there are some general conclusions that can be drawn. Monday is universally bad day thanks to oversaturation, and Sunday is the most underutilized day relative to when people are active on Facebook. Overall, posting is most effective on Thursday and Friday.

Use “Softer sell” phrases – People on Facebook respond better to softer sell language such as “win” and “winning”, as opposed to  ”contest”, “promotion”, “sweepstake”, or “coupon”.

Ask a question – Facebook posts that end in a question have a 15% higher engagement. Among questions, asking “where”, “when”, “should” and especially “would” is a good idea. People don’t respond well to “why”.

Additionally, back in February, Facebook very quietly changed their default news feed settings, so users are only seeing items posted by friends or business pages that they interact with the most.  That means posting with regularity is just as important as which day of the week your status messages are updated. It’s recommended that you focus on sharing quality content at least a few days a week, making sure the optimal day for your topic is always one of the times you share.

For Kontera Publishers looking to promote their websites, there’s no question that Facebook is an increasingly valuable tool in growing your audience. A recent comScore study found that nearly 1 out of every 8 minutes spent online in America is spent on Facebook, and by focusing on SEO alone, you’d be missing out on one of the most effective ways to connect with potential readers.

Just remember to be very alert in monitoring the success of your tactics; what people respond to on Facebook is a fluid situation, and what works now might not work in 6 months!

Google just unveiled +1, a new feature similar to the Facebook ‘Like’ that will allow you to recommend stories and websites directly from their search engine. A small +1 icon will appear in the upper right hand corner next to a search result, and if you click it, when a friend makes a similar search, they’ll be able to see how many of their friends endorsed the same link.  In this context, “friends” means your Gmail, Buzz, and Reader contacts.

So what does this mean for Kontera Publishers? For the time being, not much – the feature is still only available to a very limited amount of users. Additionally, while Google is planning to expand +1 so you can use it directly on a website, at present you’d have to scroll back and endorse the article on your search results page, not something many are likely to do.

Still, going forward +1 has a variety of different implications:

• It could affect Search ranking – While Google has made it clear that’s not currently the case, they’ve strongly implied that +1 endorsements may be considered in ranking future search results. That would effectively make the application an addition SEO Tool.
• Rank order becomes slightly less important – That said, +1 will make getting that top search page result on Google slightly less critical. While being listed on page one of Google results could still make or break a website, apart from that individual order will no longer be the deciding factor in what people click on. For instance, if five friends hit +1 on the third highest search result, even though it’s not the highest result, it now becomes the most likely one to be clicked on.
• More Gmail contacts means more exposure – When you post your article, as always, the people who bookmark your website or subscribe to your RSS feed see it. However, now, if they +1 your article the hundreds or thousands of their friends will now have your article appearing in their search results and that cycle will continue. This possible search engine snowball effect signifies the importance of expanding the size of your Gmail contacts and social network.

If you’d like to opt into +1 at this still experimental stage, you can check it out by going to (http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html). It is fairly simple: sign into your Google Account, join the experiment, then just Google search and start +1ing.

Even when +1 is enabled for websites, it’s unlikely that it will have the same transformative impact that the Facebook has had with ‘Likes’ because Google has no central place like the Facebook news feed  to view friend’s recommendations. Still, viewed as a complimentary feature rather than a game change, +1 has at least the potential to be another valuable tool in your efforts to promote your website.

Recently, Google announced a serious overhaul to their algorithm primarily meant to banish low-quality sites like content farms from the top of their search engine results.

While overall that’s a good thing (Kontera has even more stringent rules about original content), there has been some collateral damage. Legitimate sites have unfairly been grouped with these content-factories and plagiarists because Google often has no way to identify an article’s original source. Since the changes in Google’s algorithm went into effect late last month, reputable sites that do their own reporting like Cult of Mac, or the prestigious British Medical Journal saw their traffic shrink 30%-50%, just because so many websites reposted their stories without permission.

Google is constantly tinkering with their algorithm and many of the quality sites affected have already begun reappearing at the top of their search results pages, however organic traffic is too important to leave anything to chance.  Now more than ever, it’s important that you protect yourself from content theft.

Here’s how you can do it:  

• Disable Right Clicking – Usually to copy from a given webpage, theft is just a right click away. By disabling that ability, you can prevent the most common method used for stealing, without affecting readers or search engines’ ability to see your content.
  For WordPress users, the WP-CopyProtect plugin will disable highlighting or copying text. On the Joomla platform, the JoomSimple Content Protection plugin fills a similar function disabling right click, text selection, and copy/paste.

• Disabling Through Java Script – For websites using other platforms you can use the combination of a No Copy and Paste script and a No Right Click Code in your HTML. Just pay extra close attention to the directions on how to extract the No Copy script, as ironically it’s implemented on the site.

• Alter Your RSS Feed – Another common way people steal is by cherry picking stories out of their RSS reader. By changing the settings of your RSS feed to partial text, they’ll  only get a sample of your work, and have to visit your now ‘right click’ protected website for the rest.

Methods on how to limit your RSS feed may vary, but for Blogger go to Dashboard > Settings > Site Feed and save ‘short’ as your RSS preference.

In instances where original content has already been copied from your site, there are still a few ways to get the unauthorized version removed without having to use a lawyer:

• Try contacting the person who posted your content and request they to take it down.

• Report your stolen article to the thief’s hosting site. Most web hosts will suspend the user’s account if they don’t remove the disputed content within 48 hours.

• File a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Notice with Google. Since the entire point of article theft is to generate ad revenue, nothing is a more effective deterrent than getting the offending party banned from Google.

Remember, plagiarists are lazy, so even if there’s no way to 100% prevent article theft; they’re unlikely to go the extra mile. Following these simple steps should sufficiently protect your work, and allow you to focus on what’s really important – writing more quality, original content!

The second round of the Kontera Show & Tell-Showoff-Showdown Facebook contest has come to a close and we couldn’t be more pleased with all the great analytics tips. You guys shared some great advice – and congratulations to our Analytics experts who won this round:

1. First Prize of $75 Amazon Gift Card goes to Fateh Ali
2. Second Prizes of $50 Amazon Gift Cards go to Jack John & Suranjith De Silva
3. Third Prizes of $25 Amazon Gift Cards go to Ajay Singh & Arafat Tehsin

Now on to the new Show&Tell-Showoff-Showdown Facebook contest!

Here are this week’s questions:

Q#1: What are your go-to sites for internet news, trends and tips?

Q#2: other than your own site, what’s your favorite place to hang out online?

Share your answer! Don’t miss out on the $75 first prize!

As always, the rules remain the same: Leave your answers in the form of a comment on our Facebook page, and the comments that receive the most “Likes” win from our pool of over $200 in prize money.

Enter Kontera Facebook Contest Now – >>!