SEO is vital for business growth. Regardless of the size of your firm, you may need to hire a SEO agency to enhance your site's visibility in search engines. But hiring the right SEO company isn't going to be an easy task, as you'll find an overwhelming number of such companies claiming to be the best. Now that Googlebot is continuously getting smarter to differentiate between good SEO and bad SEO, you must make sure you don't make any mistake while hiring a SEO agency. Working with a bad SEO company can send your website straight to hell. It can ruin your business!

Given below are six vital signs that you can use to identify a bad SEO company and save your online business before it's too late.

#1. They Make Unrealistic Promises
How can any company guarantee you a #1 Google ranking without analyzing your site? There are too many companies or agencies that indulge in blatant promotion by announcing they can get your site on top of Google. If a company says something that's unrealistic or too good to be true, it should quickly raise red flags. Be careful if you are promised something unrealistic.

#2. They only Talk about Traffic (and ignore conversions)
A good SEO agency is always concerned about increasing the rate of conversion on your sites. Online businesses achieve success by not attracting plenty of traffic but by getting top quality traffic. If a SEO company only keeps talking about increasing SEO traffic and doesn't focus on conversions, you are definitely in wrong hands. You need to think about it before it hurts your business.

#3. They Don't Understand 'Aggressive' SEO
Recent announcements by Google have made it clear that Google is on its way to punishing overly SEO'ed sites. Many Google engineers are already working on this update, which should be launched in the next few weeks. Apart from staying away from black hat techniques, SEO companies also need to avoid overdoing SEO. A good SEO company will understand how much SEO is too much. If it doesn't, you should never hire such an agency.

#4. They Say SEO is a One-Time Investment
In order to attract clients, many SEO agencies might also tell that you need to invest only once and then your site will be up for ever. You'll be a fool to believe that SEO is a one-time task. Always remember that SEO is an ongoing activity. Doing SEO just for a few weeks or months won't keep your site always at the top in search engines. The show must go on.

#5. They Don't Have a Blog
Any good SEO company knows what value a blog can bring to their business. Having a blog attached to a company website is also indicative of their passion and knowledge. A blog is a powerful tool that firms can use to educate their target audience, expand their presence, connect with readers on a personal level and share latest industry trends and developments. If a SEO company doesn't have a blog, it should be a bad choice.

#6. They Don't Provide Reputable References
A good SEO company will always have a long list of client references. In fact, they provide references of clients from reputable organizations. Whenever a SEO agency shares a list of their references, you need to analyze it carefully. If you have a closer look at those references, you'll be able to gauge the reputation of the SEO company you want to work with.

Are you working with a good SEO agency? Please feel free to share your opinions and experiences.

Over-optimized sites are Google's next target. Recently, Matt Cutts (spam team head at Google) was at the SXSW. During his panel, he announced that several Google engineers are working on a new algorithmic update which aims to target those sites that work really hard at SEO to the extent of creating spammy content only for the sake of achieving higher search engine rankings.

As soon as Matt announced this upcoming Google ranking update, it caused furor in the entire SEO community. Usually, there are no announcements in advance. But this time it's something different.

This is what Matt said:

If you are free to do anything with your website, Google is also free to make its own decisions. Am I right? In any case, this Google algorithmic update (which many are aptly calling the Shark Update) is going to be a really massive one. If aggressive SEO is something yoursquo;re obsessed about, you need to brace yourself. If you run a website or blog that's overly SEO'ed, you need to watch for this upcoming update, to be launched any time in the next few weeks.

SEO is Being 'Revitalized'!
SEO is getting more social. If you remember the last "Search Plus Your World" update, you'll know how Google is planning to reinvent search engine optimization. And this upcoming update is yet another measure in the same direction. All that Google wants is to provide users with a web experience they can truly benefit from. Whether you're a publisher, a webmaster or SEO, you need to keep a close watch on these updates so that you can take appropriate action before itrsquo;s really too late.

If your great content website was unable to rank higher until now, itrsquo;s your time. Top quality content has always been Google's biggest preference. And this upcoming update will definitely do justice to those sites that features superior quality content yet lack in top ranking.

How Much SEO is 'Too Much'?
The upcoming Google update will change the mindset of many SEOs. While it's not bad to incorporate best SEO practices into your content site, it's important to make sure you donrsquo;t overdo it. Googlebot is getting smarter with each passing day. It can quickly detect whether your site has keyword-stuffed meta tags, over-optimized content body or anchor-text manipulated hyperlinks. Any site that produces content only for the sake for ranking higher is doing aggressive SEO. Unless you focus on the user, you won't be able to rank at the top of search engine results pages.

According to Matt (as he mentioned during his panel at SXSW), it's clear that the this update will mainly target sites that have too many keywords on their webpages or indulge in excessive link exchange. If you want to escape this penalty, you need to pay careful attention to keyword density on your pages and your link building strategies.

If you have the capability to understand the difference between 'good SEO' and 'excessive SEO', you shouldn't worry about this update. However, those who work really hard at SEO need to change their strategy (and mindset) right away. Over-optimization for short-term gains won't help you anymore!

Are you worried? Please feel free to share your opinions about this upcoming Google search update and overly SEO'ed sites.

Who does't want to know how to grow their blog? And a very straightforward solution to growing your blog is to connect with your target audience. When you're able to reach out to your target audience (a specific group of people you actually want to address), you will attract only quality traffic to your blog, which in turn will bring more conversions. Though superior quality content is always the key to converting a higher number of users, it's also important to make sure your content is found by the right kind of people.

Given below are three simple tips for reaching out to your target audience.

#1. Find Out Where Your Audience is Hanging Out
When it comes to promoting your blog on social media, you should always remember to pick the right online platforms. Different social media websites feature different type of mix of audiences. For example, Pinterest features a higher percentage (as much as 80%) of females. More than 50% of Facebook users are aged between 18 and 24 while 57% of all the users are female. These statistics vary from one social networking website to another.

Depending on the niche your blog caters to, you need to find out where the audience you are looking for actually hangs out. Unless you're able to identify the right channels, you wonrsquo;t be able to attract quality traffic.

#2. Be On Time
Time zones really matter, particularly when you are targeting people or users from a different geographical location. At the same, different users from a same country log into their accounts at different hours of the day. According to a study done by Momentus Media, off peak hours and weekends are the most suitable time to share updates with your Facebook fans.

No matter which social media platform you use for content promotion, you should always schedule your updates effectively. It's only by posting at the right time that you can increase the level of engagement and interaction.

For example, 9:00 am PST (Pacific Standard Time) is the best single time of the day to post an update to Twitter. It's the time when people on the West Coast of America arrive at office. For people on the East Coast of America, this is around lunch time (12:00 pm EST). In London, 9:00 am PST is the end of a business day (5:00 pm GMT). Likewise, you need to schedule your posts for other social media platforms or networks. Timing has always a major role to play when it comes to connecting with a specific group of people.

#3. Experiment with the New
New social media platforms will continue to come up. If you're a fashion blogger, you can use Pinterest to engage your audience usually. Whenever something new comes up, you should be ready to experiment with that new social platform so that you don't miss out on potential opportunities of connecting with your target audience.

Are you able to get your blogrsquo;s content in front of the target audience? Please feel free to share your own tips and strategies.

Today I am going to give the best way to overcome Google penalty. First of all I would suggest you all to read my previous blog "How I overcome the Google penalty for a website within 5 days?". In today's post I am going to give you more ways to overcome a Google penalty.

I have got a penalty lately for one of the websites I work. I did a serious diagonsis and found that the possible reason for the penalty is duplicate content (Different URL/Webpage indexed with same content). The search for domain name without TLD (Top Level Domain) showed my penalised website homepage around the fifties. I have been doing PPC for the domain for long and I have used URL tagging. The URL tagging feature uses GCLID (Google Click Identifier) is a globally unique tracking parameter used by Google to pass click information from Google Adwords to Google analytics. As per the Google webmaster guidelines each webmaster should block Google's AdSense ads and DoubleClick links using robots.txt file.

Step 1: I checked my Google webmaster account and found that my GCLID links are indexed.

Step 2: I checked my robots.txt and found that the Google's AdSense ads and DoubleClick links aren't blocked.

Step 3: I downloaded the robots.txt and added "Disallow" syntax for Google's AdSense ads and DoubleClick links and uploaded the new robots.txt

Step 4: I filed a Google reconsideration request.

My homepage was back in the first page of the search within 24 hours. Hope the posted helps someone in overcoming Google penalty.

Search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising usually exist in two separate spheres, but it looks like the two worlds could be even more related that we had previously thought. A recent forum thread in Webmaster World asks an intriguing question: do AdWords prices go up each time Google pushes out an update to its search engine algorithm?

This almost makes sense, especially if your web properties were recently punished by Panda or some other Google algorithm update. Google could then artificially inflate the AdWords CPC pricing, since it knows that these publishers will be interested in regaining their traffic. Even if the inflation is real, thanks to an increased "flooding" of advertisers to AdWords, it means that the prices go up.

One forum user, "netmeg," brings up this exact point: "Changes in the algo could increase the number of advertisers because not everyone can afford to wait around to see if their SEO tinkering will bring the traffic back. In the short term, they may turn to AdWords."

Another theory is that Panda punishes the "lower end" publishers and pushes them off the AdSense map, thus reducing the overall inventory from which AdWords can pull. If the number of advertisers stay the same, then the bid prices naturally go up. Or it could all be in our heads.

An informal poll has been set up on Search Engine Roundtable, and it looks like 37.5% agree that AdWords prices go up after a Google algorithm update, whereas 22.5% say no. The rest don't know. What do you think?