Good links, bad links, Google hashtags, and new Generic Top Level Domains

A big day today in interesting articles around the world of internet marketing and web design. I’ve whittled it down to 3 great posts about how Google looks at links to your website, what Google Plus hashtags are and how to use them, and finally an overview on the new top level domains that have come out recently.

If you’re new to these daily posts, basically I find my top 2 or 3 posts of the day that I see on social media, top blogs, and I hear about in podcasts and share them with you guys. I have no affiliation with these websites or articles, I just think they’re interesting.

A Startling Case Study of Manual Penalties and Negative SEO – by MOZ

This is a real-life case study from Yonatan Dotan that is featured on MOZ. Yonatan is head of SEO at an online marketing company, and one day a successful (in terms of ranking well in Google) client suddenly lost 94% of its organic search traffic overnight.

The story goes on to describe how one day they got an email saying this clients website had been given a site-wide manual penalty for unnatural inbound links. You can get a lot more details on this and on how they managed to get this decision overturned by Google. It’s an interesting and potentially very useful article, so make sure you check it out if you’re interested in this kind of thing.

Direct link to this article: http://moz.com/blog/a-startling-case-study-of-manual-penalties-and-negative-seo

What Are Google Plus Hashtags? – by Internet Marketing Ningas

We have all heard of Google Plus, but it is likely that a lot of us don’t fully understanding how it works. A recent article by Ann Smarty on Internet Marketing Ningas tells us more about hashtags (i.e. #) and how to use them on Google Plus.

Twitter has made the hashtag famous, and it is a vital tool in getting tweets noticed and even trending. But are hashtags the same in Google Plus?

The short answer is YES, and in fact they could well be more important than in Twitter because not only are they used in Google Plus itself but also in the main Google search.

Read more about this in the full article.

Direct link to this article: http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/google-plus-hashtags/

An SEO’s Guide to Acquiring New gTLDs – by MOZ

This is another article featured on MOZ, but this time it is written by Bill Hartzer. Top level domains, or TLD’s are the name given to the end section of a website domain, i.e. the .com, or .net etc. Recently however many new Generic TLD’s (gTLD’s) have been introduced into the system, and more will follow. For example you can now buy a website with the ending of .directory or .photography.

But what does this mean, what is the point of these new gTLD’s, how will Google rank a website with a new gTLD, and are there any trademark issues associated with them.

The article on MOZ lets you know all you need to know on this subject.

Direct link to the full article: http://moz.com/ugc/an-seos-guide-to-acquiring-new-gtlds