It's December. The time of year when every SEO gets all misty eyed and reflective about what the last 12 months have brought and taught our industry. But while end-of-year round ups can get a little tedious and mundane we still feel they provide a huge amount of value, which is why the Zazzle team has thought hard about how we might make them a little more interesting again.
This recent piece on the top SEO blogs of 2011 is a good example of this and is a great partner piece to what we have created below - a month-by-month blow of many of the year's biggest stories, told by the best writers in inbound marketing and SEO.
Below you can see each 'event' cataloged as we capture the original news story and the fallout opinion. No story is complete however, without actionable takeaways, and so we have also hunted down some of the best advice based blogs telling you how you can best steer your own site to glory.
So without further ado, here goes...
[list_marked]
After much speculation Google finally caves in and admits it really is taking social sharing seriously and that, while a small factor, social signals do affect site authority and rank...
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It wasn't such a great year for J C Penney as the retail giant was accused of acquiring numbers of paid links. The result? A penalty & much discussion about the age-old subject...
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Google decided enough was enough and unleashed a powerful new algo filter we now know as 'Panda'. Its job was to add a qualitative filter to the search engine's content analysis tools...
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It all got a little embarrassing for Microsoft after Google apparently discovered evidence that their rival had been 'copying results'. Reminded us of the school field at lunchtime...
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Bing got with the program again and decided 2011 was the right time to accept social was here to stay and that it could actually improve search results...
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We had the Facebook Like and the Tweet button but that wasn't enough for Google. Instead it invented the +1 and it opened the way for its forthcoming social platform...
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Google unveiled a new look Analytics with a host of exciting new features for site owners and SEO to play with. It looked great, until they started encrypting keyword referral data....
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Ever wondered what 1st position might be worth to you? Then CTR studies are key in measuring it and this latest one really exposed the difference between Google and the rest...
Measuring the true ROI of social activity is the new holy grail for inbound marketing software companies. The BIG debate really began...
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If ever there was any doubt over what a good quality site really looked like in the eyes of the 'all seeing eye' then that soon disappeared with the publication of this guide by Google...
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Facebook meet your new enemy. Well, that's not strictly true and we doubt Team Zuck are too afraid just yet, but Google Plus is the Big G's first serious foray into social platforms...
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Oh PageRank how we did love thee...until Google decided it was a little old hat and decided that usage data and social sharing was really the key to measuring authority...
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Its the sleeping giant that few have yet to grasp but Author Markup is stage one in the quest to measure content authority not at site level but at author level...
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The shared protocol was jointly announced by the major search players with a promise that it would play a bigger and bigger part in how search results are displayed...
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We have all been hearing for a while why page speed is important and Google decided to help us optimise with the launch of a free measuring tool...
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By July it was clear that the Panda algo filter improvements were going to be an iterative process...and the July update was 2.3...
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A complex deal involving Microsoft Skype & Facebook finally saw the light of day as Zuck's vision for video-based chat became reality...
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After being tested in several areas around the globe Google decided they had ironed out the bugs and launched the big bear across the globe...
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Perhaps as part of its attempts to give 'brands' more visibility Google decided to pump up old sitelinks with 'roids & even add in sitelink previews...
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It was one of the most anticipated dev conferences of the year and this year's F8 did not disappoint with LOTS of new features revealed...
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2011 was not the Year of the Rabbit but rather the year of the black and white bear as yet another major 'tweak' was announced...
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Understanding and controlling the technical nuances around content duplication became a lot easier with some help from Google...
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With Google Plus and +1 firmly embedded Google finally announced that it was using the little button as an authority/quality signal...
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Google announced plans to become even more entrenched in the rapidly growing ecommerce space with the launch of Trusted Stores...
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Businesses relying on Adwords sat up and paid notice as Google's money machine was tweaked to pay more attention to site and page rep...
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It was the subject that got more people talking than anything else outside Panda. How will the web world survive without good keyword data?
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Just when we thought Google's engineers had gone on holiday they announced another algo change whopper...the Freshness update...
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After serving the SEO world for more than six years Yahoo's excellent site explorer was laid to rest as part of the ill fated Search Alliance...
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Brands had been itching to claim their bit of the hottest new social platform and November was the month we got that chance. Was it worth the wait?
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While we still considered Google's crawlers to be nothing more than single-celled amoeba a little known research study was about to change our view forever...
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While the inbound marketing community kicked up a fuss about the keyword referral shutdown Google replied with some 'positive' PR of its own...algo change tit bits...
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While many early social sharing sites were losing their appeal Stumbleupon announced it had just said 'Hi' to its 20 millionth member and became attractive again...
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Global businesses and sites be afraid...Google could well be viewing your translated pages as duplicates! And here's why that could be the case...
Here's too an equally brilliant 2012!
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We hope you enjoyed reading this blog, it was written by Simon Penson, Founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media.
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