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There is good news for legitimate business owners and entrepreneurs in regards to Google and SEO. (Search Engine Optimization)  Matt Cutts talks about how Google is going after black-hat and link spammers this summer in a recent video on Youtube.  He announced nine things that Google will do within the next months.  There is an underlying message:  Spammers beware!

How do these changes affect the position of your web pages in Google?s search results and what can you do to protect your rankings?

You are a business owner and don't have the time or resources to leverage the systems by using black hat or gray hat tactics.  In fact, you probably gave up some time ago on using the Internet in your marketing plan because it is obvious that the spammers, predators and tech geek hyped up Internet marketers have filled the virtual space to make it untrustworthy.  You may be wise to avoid the Internet when it is neither fair nor trustworthy.

Based on this new tone from Google and Matt Cutts, you may be soon getting a better opportunity to be found online.  Your expertise, products, services and website may have better opportunites to stand out without needing tricks.

Here are a few points about what to be concerned about with your online marketing:

More Penguin updates coming soon

The next generation of the Penguin algorithm is going to launched by Google within the next few weeks.  The Penguin 2.0 update will go deeper than the first Penguin version and will affect a many more website.

This upcoming Penguin update targets websites that use spam tools to create backlinks. If you?re using automatic tools which create backlinks to your website, good luck.  You are now a target.  If the tools you use contain words such as ?nuke?, ?dominator? or ?brute force? I have to believe that your website will be impacted by the upcoming Penguin update.

Advertorials are not liked by Google

Some websites use advertorials to get more backlinks. Matt Cutts said that non-nofollow links from these advertorials violate Google?s webmaster guidelines. If you purchase advertorials to get backlinks, this might have a negative influence on your Google search engine rankings.

What is an advertorial? 

Link networks can become risky

Matt Cutts said that Google is going to go ?more upstream? to make sure that some kind of links become less attractive. This probably affects link networks. Google has penalized several link networks in the past.

What is "upstream"?

Seems a bit technical.  Upstream goes in the direction of where the transmittion/information originated. 

Google will analyze backlinks better

Matt Cutts also said Google is in the early stages of a much more sophisticated link analysis software that will understand backlinks much better.  Watch how this might influence forum profile links as they could become even lower while the value of editorial links might increase.

Better handling of hacked sites

Google is working on a better system to detect hacked sites. Watch later this year as the new system should become available. What may be most important is that Google also wants to improve webmaster communication about hacked sites.  After helping many small business owners with hacked sites, this will certainly be appreciated.

Authority websites will get a ranking boost

Google plans to give websites that are an authority in their category a ranking boost. For example, if your website is an authority in the medical or possibly IT consulting, Google plans to show your website above websites that are not as authoritative as your site.  The "real authority" of your site is not known.  You may look at PageRank as your authority but it is not truly more than a public emblem.

Less domain clusters will appear on first page

Matt Cutts said that the number of same domain clusters on Google?s first result page should lessen this year. Google wants to make the results on page one more diverse. The second result page might contain more domain clusters.  This has been a puzzle and many people are trying to play games with the pages to get clusters to rank.  Interestingly, if people basically have only one or two choices, they are not happy.

At the end of the video, you will hear Matt Cutts explain that Google wants to reduce the number of webmasters who use black-hat spam techniques. Smaller businesses that use white-hat SEO methods should rank better.  The small business owner or entrepreneur offering products and services which can change lives should not have to play games and try to "trick" software. 

The future is changing.  This is good news.

Now that you are a believer that the Internet marketing world is evolving and Google is out thwart spammers, you will want to watch this next video by the genius at SEOMoz:

The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning - Whiteboard Friday

Rand discusses the egress of old link building practices and the ingress of new (old) link earning strategies that will help your website stay relevant in the search engine results and drive your traffic with a better user experience.

Does this matter?

People still search.  You future customers are searching.  They are also sharing.  When they find you (who is awesome) and you over-deliver which leads to customer love, they will want to share.  The search engines still matter but it is less and less about technical and more about people.

If you begin a conversation with someone ready to sell you SEO services, you should now have a better reference point for what to avoid and how to earn attention.

In a nutshell, that is what inbound marketing is all about, earning their attention.