Matt Cutts: New Payday Loan Algorithm Update Coming, More News From SMX Advanced 2014 Keynote

Day one of our SMX Advanced conference is wrapping up, but before we call it a day … it’s time for an SMX Advanced tradition:
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam fighting team, in a keynote conversation with our Founding
Editor, Danny Sullivan.
With all of the recent news about Google penalties (eBay, Metafilter, etc.), along with updates to Google’s Panda algorithm and expectations of a Penguin algorithm update, they’ll have plenty to talk about.
The room is already packed (as always) and the keynote conversation is due to get started at about 5:00 pm PT. So we’ll get started then, and when we do, there’s no need to reload this page — just sit back and enjoy as the updates roll in below.
See you in a few moments for our SMX live blog!

10 Questions To Ask When Creating A Link Building Campaign

One of the most common questions I hear related to link building is, “Where do I start?”
Whether in a blog post or a conference presentation, link building experts often focus on specific tactics when giving advice. The message can sometimes come across as, “Here are some things — go do them, and you’ll be set.”
But that’s not the case.
It’s important to realize that while these individual tactics are great, they are really part of a much bigger picture: a link building campaign. That’s where we must start.
When setting up a link building campaign, here are a few questions to ask

1. What Are My Goals?

It’s one of the most basic, yet frequently overlooked, questions when it comes to link building: Do you know what your goals are?
I often see businesses putting content out there with the idea that it will simply generate links. However, links alone don’t necessarily mean success. Some questions to consider:

Google: Keywords In Domain Aren't Needed For Ranking Well

Google's John Mueller posted a response in a Google Webmaster Help thread responding to someone asking if they need their keyword in their domain name.
In short, John said no, you can rank fine without having a keyword in your domain name. Heck, my company, RustyBrick, doesn't have our money keyword in our domain name. Not that I rank that well for our money keywords. :)
That being said, John Mueller said it isn't needed.

You don't need your keywords in your domain name. Websites without them in there rank just fine. 

Webmaster: I've Tested Negative SEO Through Links & It Works

Last week we reported that most webmasters are claiming negative SEO is easier now than ever. If you look at the conversation there, you will see it is somewhat of a hot topic.
That being said, since then, one webmaster decided not to just say it works but also said how he implemented the technique. Sadly, it was not too difficult, according to this webmaster.
The steps?
 The first month, contract a couple $5 guest blog posts [make sure the posts are in broken English of course], then go back to what you were doing.
Second month, try a few more [4-8] $5 [broken English] guest blog posts and add some forum link drops to the mix. Go back to what you normally do -- Nothing will happen.

Google To Warn Searchers When A Mobile URL Redirects To The Homepage

Don’t annoy mobile searchers. That’s the message behind a new warning that Google is showing in mobile search results on smartphones.
On the Webmaster Central blog, Google alerted webmasters late yesterday that it will let smartphone searchers know if it thinks a website has a “faulty redirect” in place that sends the searcher to your home page, not the page they clicked on.

We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you still wish to proceed to the page, you can click “Try anyway.”

June 2014 Google Webmaster Report

May was an incredibly busy month for Google SEO related topics, specifically seeing Panda 4.0 roll out, the Google Spam algo being updated, press release sites taking a dive and several unconfirmed updates that Google wouldn't talk about.
We also saw eBay get slapped, a popular site named MetaFilter talk about their Google penalty and a Nest competitor call out Google.
So it was a busy month!

Press Release Sites See Huge Drop In Google Ranking After Panda 4.0

Couple Of days Ago I reported at Search Engine Land that Panda 4.0 may have hurt press release sites and showed SearchMetrics data for PRWeb, PR Newswire, BusinessWire and PRLog all losing between 60% to 85% of their SEO visibility.
This drop seems to have come right after the Google Panda 4.0 update. The controversy around press release sites were mostly about links flowing from those releases, not necessarily the issue with the duplicative nature of that content. But let's be honest, many many press releases issued are content thin and spammy on the content end, not just on the link end. So maybe, just maybe, Panda 4.0 adjusted for it and the big sites felt it?
Sean from SEER also documented the drop via SEM Rush data and screen shots of before and after rankings for some press releases.

Google’s Matt Cutts On Assessing Quality Of A Page Without Links

In the latest video by Google’s Matt Cutts, he talks about how Google may determine the quality of a page of content without there being many links.
By Matt’s expression, he seemed to give off the feeling that without links, it is really hard for Google to determine the quality of the page. He said, you have to go to pre-Google days, how search engines worked before links, and look at the words on the page.
Matt explained you need to judge the content based on the words on the page and the more often the words are on the page, in a diminishing scales type of way, the more likely the page is about that word.
Google also uses a factor to see if the domain itself has value, but that brings in links.
Without links, Google simply needs to look at the quality of the content on the page, which may or may not be enough depending on the competitive nature of the keyword phrase.