Google refreshed its page layout algorithm in early February with a change that has been dubbed the “top heavy update.” The adjustment seems primarily to affect websites that have heavy advertisement population above the scroll. The objective is to filter sites that do not offer strong, original content up front and those with excessively busy layouts that distract users' attention from page content.
As with many of its updates, Google has been hinting at the change for...
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Google's Matt Cutts indicated last fall that Google would be reducing the rate at which authorship appears in search results in an effort to combat spam. In his keynote address at Pubcon Las Vegas, Cutts said that eliminating roughly 15 percent of the lower-quality authors could significantly increase the number of high-quality authors who are able to appear in results.
Until December's update, Google displayed all authorship information in results whenever it was available. If you linked your site to...
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Images are an often untapped source of website traffic. Google indexes images, which in turn provide links back to your site. Posts that contain an image garner considerably more attention on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and are more likely to be shared than their plain-text counterparts. Pinterest now offers rich article pins, which allow publishers to share information about an article, along with a picture and link, on their boards. And infographics can provide high-quality links...
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