Panda Winners, Anchor Text Links, Search Awards, PageRank, Speedlink 42:2014

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great and productive week! Recently, a new Panda Update has been rolled out by Google. Panda Updates focus on content quality. It is suppose to remove thin, irrelevant, and spamy content from Google’s index. Nothing new there. The main and interesting thing about the current Panda generation is the fact that apparently smaller and medium high-quality websites are supposed to benefit from the update. Question is, did you see any benefit to your site?

Panda Update 4.1: Winners / Losers – Google U.S

SearchMetrics.com recently published a list of some of the big winners and losers of the update.

Did you see that? PirateBay is one of the biggest winners, and PearlTrees one of the biggest losers, wow! What say you?

All signs point to links with exact match anchor text retaining the huge value we’ve seen throughout the years, but many of the techniques for acquiring those links are spammy. There are a few, though, that not even Google would frown upon, and in today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows you what they are.

How to Acquire Anchor Text-Rich Links Without Resorting to Spam or Manipulation

U.S. Search Award Winners Announced

The 2nd annual U.S. Search Awards were handed out last night during Pubcon Las Vegas. The awards were presented to agencies and individuals for outstanding achievements in the US search and digital marketing industries. Elite SEM won for Best Agency, and Duane Forrester, who runs Bing’s Webmaster Program, was this year’s Search Personality of the Year Award. Below is the partial list of winners. See the complete list here.

• Best Agency: Elite SEM
• U.S. Search Personality of the Year: Duane Forrester – Bing
• Best PPC Management Software: Marin Software – Online Advertising Management Platform
• Best SEO Software: Searchmetrics Suite – The Global Search Experience Optimization Platform
• Best Use of Search – Retail: The Absolut Company – AbsolutDrinks.com SEO
• Best Use of Search – Finance: Inbound Marketing Campaign for Acquisition & Funding Services (AFS) – Mannix Marketing
• Best Use of Search – Travel/Leisure: Havas Media – Leveraging Technology to Beat Inflation
• Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign: Kenshoo, Facebook & Experian – Finding the Sweet Spot for Search and Social Investment

And finally, Google’s John Mueller said Google probably won’t update Toolbar PageRank in the future. He said this at the 20:30 mark in the video.

And as usual, in no particular order:

Content Creation & Marketing/SEO and Search

• The Content Marketer’s Toolkit: 35 Tools You Can’t Blog Without
• Content Marketing: Pinterest for Business
• How to get rid of bad content
• Panda 4.1: The Devil Is in the Aggregate

Social/Small Business Bites

• What To Do When The PPC Competition Plays Dirty
• What Content Goes Hot on Google+?
• How to Repurpose Blog Content for Social Media
• Security on My Mind: How To Successfully Evaluate and Protect Your Online Technology Assets

More from around the web …

• SearchCap: Google Reports “Right To Be Forgotten” Totals, Should You Copy SEO Tactics? & More
• Marketing Day: What I Wish My CMO Knew About Brand Identity, HubSpot’s IPO & More
• Weekly Marketing Skinny – October 11, 2014

That’s it! Enjoy and have a great weekend!