Google's Medic Update 2018 - The Core Search Update

The big Google algorithm update, nicknamed the Medic Update, here is everything we know about it, including official information from Google and non-official insights from across the industry.

Google's Medic update and how to deal with it

The Google search algorithm update from August 1 is now fully rolled out, and here is what we know about the update, who we think was impacted and some of the analysis of what, if any, actions you may want to consider taking if you were negatively impacted.

In summary, Google is calling this a broad, global, core update, but based on much of the analysis done thus far, there seems to be a focus on health and medical sites and YMYL Your Money Your Life sites. But many sites besides those were impacted by the update. Google is telling us that there is nothing you can do to fix your site, so you should just focus on making a great experience, offer better content and a more useful website. This update has taken on the name the Medic Update because of its focus on the medical and health space. This specific focus is something Google will not confirm.

Why is it called the Medic update?

It’s called the Medic update because Barry Schwartz, one of the most prolific writers in the search industry, called it that. It doesn’t mean this update only affected medical sites.

Google has said that this update was a "broad core algorithm update" and that it does these updates "several times per year."

Google references its advice from the previous core updates, saying there’s "no ‘fix’ for pages that may perform less well, other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages." Google also said, "As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded."

Who was impacted by this update

As we explained above, Google said this is a “global” update, which implies every niche and every type of site could have been impacted. But based on the data that I’ve been seeing from surveys, multiple data companies and SEO consultants, there seems to be a focus on medical and health niches, as well as “Your Money Your Life” types of sites, with creeping into the entertainment and gaming niches as well. I’ve shown Google this data and a Google spokesperson responded by referencing the statements made above.

Source: Google Blog

What is SEO Linking?

Link building, simply put, is the process of getting other websites to link back to your website. All marketers and business owners should be interested in building links to drive referral traffic and increase their site's authority.

Basics of Quality Link Building for SEO

Why build links? Google's algorithms are complex and always evolving, but backlinks remain an important factor in how every search engine determines which sites rank for which keywords. Building links is one of the many tactics used in search engine optimization (SEO) because links are a signal to Google that your site is a quality resource worthy of citation. Therefore, sites with more backlinks tend to earn higher rankings.

There's a right way and a wrong way, however, to build links to your site. If you care about the long-term viability of your site and business, you should only engage in natural linkbuilding, meaning, the process of earning links rather than buying them or otherwise achieving them through manipulative tactics (sometimes known as black-hat SEO, a practice that can get your site essentially banned from the search results).

That said, natural, organic link building is a difficult, time-consuming process. Not all links are created equal: A link from an authoritative website like the Wall Street Journal will have a greater impact on your rankings on the SERP than a link from a small or newly built website, but high-quality links are harder to come by.

This guide will teach you how to build quality links that improve your organic rankings without violating Google guidelines.

Remember, link building is imperative in achieving high organic search rankings.

Why Link Building Is Important for SEO

Link building is important because it is a major factor in how Google ranks web pages. Google notes that:

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."

Imagine that we own a site promoting wind turbine equipment that we sell. We're competing with another wind turbine equipment manufacturer. One of the ranking factors Google will look at in determining how to rank our respective pages is link popularity.

While the above example provides a general visual understanding of why link building is important, it's very basic. It omits key factors such as:

• The trust and authority of the linking pages.
• The SEO and content optimization of the respective sites.
• The anchor text of the incoming links.

For a more in-depth explanation of how PageRank is calculated, read through these resources:

• The original Google PageRank paper
• An in-depth discussion of the formula behind PageRank
• The Wikipedia page on the subject

The most important concept to understand is that, as Google says, you're more likely to have your content rank higher for keywords you're targeting if you can get external websites to link to your pages.

Goodbye, AdWords. Hello Google Ads

Google has made the executive decision to consolidate its overwhelming abundance of ad products under three brand new umbrellas: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ads Manager. Behold, logos!

“AdWords” is no more.

In a surprise rebranding of its 18-year-old PPC advertising platform, Google has renamed AdWords to the broader Google Ads, simplified its advertising products and introduced several new features.

Huge news? You bet. Cause for concern? Not at all!

That’s because we’ve broken down all the changes coming to Google advertising to give you the essential information you need.

So, what is changing?

According to Google, Google Ads users will start seeing the new brand name and logo reflected on the platform, website, billing and help center.

Instead of logging into AdWords from adwords.google.com, you will log into Google Ads from ads.google.com.

Changes to the Google Ads branding will not impact your campaign performance, navigation, or reporting.

The new Google Ads experience is going to be heavily focused on the ease of multi-channel advertising, connecting everything from search to display to video for a more seamless experience.

These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels.

So, basically, Google Ads is a platform where businesses will find all they loved about AdWords and even more tools to make the process of reaching customers easier.

Bing Announces Bing AMP Viewer & JSON-LD Support in Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft unveiled two new features within Bing during principal program manager Fabrice Canel’s appearance at SMX Advanced this morning. First, he announced support within Bing Webmaster Tools to debug and view your JSON-LD markup. Second, he announced support for a Bing AMP viewer.

Bing AMP Viewer

Bing AMP viewer will be rolled out this summer and will make AMP-enabled web pages work directly from Bing’s mobile search results. This will work similarly to the way Google returns AMP pages within its mobile search results.

Bing Webmaster Tools Supports JSON-LD

Bing began supporting JSON-LD markup in March, but now, Bing Webmaster Tools will also support debugging such JSON-LD in the tool.

Why is SEO good for a website?

What is a SEO Friendly Website and Why do you Need One

Many times you hear the term “SEO friendly” or “SEO friendly website” but what does this really mean and why do you need one? How can a SEO friendly website help your business grow?

These are the questions I will try to answer in this post always having in mind that beginners to SEO may be reading it so I will try to avoid technical terms or advanced SEO practices and theories.

What do we mean by a Search Engine Friendly Website?

A SEO friendly website has those configurations and features so it’s easy for search engines to crawl (read) and understand what the particular website is all about. The most important characteristics of a SEO friendly website are:

1. Unique titles and Descriptions for all pages:
   Learn the Secrets of SEO, Keyword Research & Link Building and Apply them to your Website.
   Each page of the website (including the home page) has a unique title and description. The titles are between 60-65 characters and the descriptions are aprx 150 characters. Titles and descriptions describe accurately what the page is about without being keyword stuffed. Example of a good title and description.
   
2. Well formatted URLs – URLs:
   Permanent links (that’s the url of a webpage) are descriptive, all lower case and separated by dashes. Example of a well formatted URL.
   
3. Fast loading web pages:
   Neither people nor search engines want websites that are slow to load. On the contrary fast loading websites are SEO friendly (meaning they have an advantage in ranking algorithms over websites that are slower) and generate more user interactions (sales, newsletter signups, contact forms submissions etc).
   
4. It has unique content:
   Content on the website is not found anywhere else on the web, all pages have unique and useful content. This means a website cannot be SEO friendly if it has content copied from other web sites.
   
5. Includes images that are optimized for search engines:
   Search engines prefer text that’s the truth, but you also need to have images to your pages because people like it, it makes your content more interesting, easier to read, shareable etc. When you do so, make sure that the images are optimized for size (tools like "smushit" can help you reduce image file size without losing quality) and also that you set a meaningful image filename and ALT text.
   
6. Pages have a meaningful structure:
   A web page usually has the following elements:
   
   • Header
   • Breadcrumbs Menu
   • Page Title (that’s the H1 tag – there is only one per page)
   • Well formatted text – text is separated into a number of short paragraphs with subheadings
   • Author information
   • Footer

There are of course many other characteristics that make a website SEO Friendly, you can read them in our previous post, the ultimate SEO checklist but the above 6 elements are currently among the most important.

Why do you need a SEO friendly website?

Something that most CEOs, small business owners or new webmasters don’t easily understand is why you need a SEO friendly website and why make the effort to make your website friendlier to search engines.

Well, the reasons are a lot but those you need to know are:

Want to improve your SEO but do not know where to start? Stop Guessing! Read my proven SEO and link building advice and boost your traffic and rankings. Download this how to guide.

1. It will get you more organic traffic (that is traffic from search engines)
   As expected, a SEO friendly website will get you more traffic from search engines as it is likely to run higher in the SERPS (search engine results pages). If you take into account that the majority of people who use the search box tend to select one of the first 5 results, you can understand the importance of SEO.
   
2. It will make your website user friendly
   SEO is not only for search engines but good SEO is for users as well. Applying the principles of SEO to your website, will make it easier to use and this will enhance the user experience.
   
3. It gives you brand credibility
   Users are more likely to trust websites (businesses) that are found in the first pages of Google, Bing or Yahoo. This is good for both brand awareness and brand credibility.
   
4. It is cost effective
   A SEO website will drive targeted traffic 24×7 without needed to spend money on PPC or other forms of online advertising. While there is a cost to reach that point, the long term benefits are bigger.
   
5. It helps you understand what your most important customers want
   SEO drives quality traffic and by analyzing the behavior of those users (how they enter your website, what they click, how they leave, what they like etc) is a great way to understand what your customers want and adjust your website or products to match their needs.
   
6. SEO is even more important on mobile
   A website that is mobile friendly and has good rankings on mobile search can get more customers and traffic that websites that are not mobile SEO friendly. More and more users are using their mobiles to search for information or products while on the go it is important to be on top of the search results otherwise you are losing customers to competition, especially those searching for local products or services.
   

Conclusion

A SEO friendly website has certain features and characteristics that helps search engines understand what the website is all about and this increases the chances of achieving better rankings in the SERPS.
The most important advantage of having a SEO friendly website is that you will get more targeted organic traffic from search engines.
Source: Quora

Rolling Out Mobile-First Indexing

Mobile-First Index Roll-out — March 26, 2018

Google announced that the mobile-first index was finally "rolling out." Since the index has been in testing for many months, and Google has suggested they are migrating sites gradually, it's unclear how much impact this specific roll-out had on the overall index. Webmaster should begin to see notifications within Google Search Console.

Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog

All You Need To Know About Cryptocurrency

What is Cryptocurrency?

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to secure its transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets. Cryptocurrencies are a type of digital currencies, alternative currencies and virtual currencies. Cryptocurrencies use decentralized control as opposed to centralized electronic money and central banking systems. The decentralized control of each cryptocurrency works through a blockchain, which is a public transaction database, functioning as a distributed ledger.

Cryptocurrency

Overview: About Cryptocurrency

Decentralized cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is defined when the system is created and which is publicly known. In centralized banking and economic systems such as the Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency by printing units of fiat money or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers. In case of decentralized cryptocurrency, companies or governments cannot produce new units, and have not so far provided backing for other firms, banks or corporate entities which hold asset value measured in it. The underlying technical system upon which decentralized cryptocurrencies are based was created by the group or individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto. 

As of September 2017, over a thousand cryptocurrency specifications exist; most are similar to and derive from the first fully implemented decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Within cryptocurrency systems the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners: members of the general public using their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme. Miners have a financial incentive to maintain the security of a cryptocurrency ledger.

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease production of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation, mimicking precious metals. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement. This difficulty is derived from leveraging cryptographic technologies.

Most Known Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin

What Is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a completely decentralized digital cryptocurrency. Unlike US dollars that you can hold in your hand (or in your bank account), there is no central authority or centralized payment system controlling Bitcoin. Instead, Bitcoin operates in a peer-to-peer network that allows anyone in the world to send and receive Bitcoin without any middleman (like a bank, central bank or payment processor).

Although there are thousands of cryptocurrencies ranked on CMC today, Bitcoin was the very first cryptocurrency ever created. On Oct. 31, 2008 a person (or group of people) under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” published the now-world famous Bitcoin white paper.

The first line reads: “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

The Bitcoin network then launched on Jan. 3, 2009, marking the start of the cryptocurrency revolution.

How Does Bitcoin Work?

Bitcoin is a purely decentralized digital currency, which makes it unlike any other asset that came before it.

Before the digital age, everyone transacted in physical forms of currencies, from livestock and salt, to silver and gold, and finally to banknotes. Only in recent times was money “digitized” — allowing bank accounts to exist online, as well as creating the many online payment processing platforms, such as PayPal and Square, that you often use today without thinking about it.

However, all of these “digital transactions” require a centralized system to operate. Your bank, or financial services like PayPal, needs to ensure that all of their users’ accounts are constantly updated and tallied correctly. These systems represent the centralized form of digital money.

Bitcoin revolutionized digital money by decentralizing this accounting process. Instead of a central figure that is responsible for making sure that their users’ transactions were always adding up, Bitcoin works by sharing the account balances and transactions of every user across the globe in a pseudonymous form. In simplest terms, this means that anyone can download and run the free and open-source software required to participate in the Bitcoin protocol.

As a Bitcoin user, all you need to know to send Bitcoin to someone else is their Bitcoin address (a series of letters and numbers, not their name or any personal information!). By sending your Bitcoin to an address, what you are doing is broadcasting your transaction (Hi, I’m Alice sending 1 BTC to Bob!) across the Bitcoin network using blockchain technology (more about that below). Since the Bitcoin network has the most up-to-date ledger tracking Alice’s wallet balance, the system checks her wallet balance (i.e., Alice has 2 BTC in her wallet, so a transaction of 1 BTC to Bob is valid), and then completes the transaction.

In summary, Bitcoin works by ensuring that this shared ledger always tallies up, and that new Bitcoin transactions (Bob sends 2 BTC back to Alice. Go Alice!) are validated, recorded and then added to the ledger in order. That is the heart of blockchain technology, where new “blocks of information” are added to the chain of blocks that already exist.

How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?

“Mining” refers to the act of adding new blocks to the blockchain. In simple terms, Bitcoin miners dedicate significant amounts of computing power to solve a cryptographic problem, which is basically a very complex puzzle. The successful miner that solves the puzzle before all the other miners gets rewarded with a “block reward,” which is an allocation of a predetermined number of Bitcoin. In some cases, the block rewards are awarded to mining pools, when miners group together to share resources.

Once the puzzle is solved, the block is “confirmed,” and it is added to the blockchain. This new information is sent to all nodes, aka participants in the Bitcoin protocol, and the shared ledger is updated once again.

As Bitcoin's price rises, the block reward becomes increasingly more attractive. This incentivizes more miners to join in the competition to mine for blocks. In return, the more miners there are in the system, the more secure the network is. In addition, the increased competition also means miners are continually investing in newer hardware to ensure their computing power remains relevant for the fight for block rewards.

What Is a Bitcoin Halving?

To ensure that the value of Bitcoin is not compromised by an infinite supply, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in a “halving event” that happens every 210,000 blocks. When Bitcoin’s network first began, Bitcoin’s block reward was 50 BTC per block mined. This was halved in 2012, at block #210,000, where the block reward became 25 BTC. The second halving was in 2016, at block #420,000, and the block reward became 12.5 BTC.

This process will continue every 210,000 blocks, until the total supply of BTC (21 million BTC) has been reached. It is estimated that the final block reward will be paid in 2140! For more information on the Bitcoin halving, check out our Bitcoin Halving page and blog post!
How Can I Store my Bitcoin?

There are many different ways of storing your Bitcoin – here’s just a few:
Keep it on a Bitcoin exchange

There are many Bitcoin different exchanges all over the world. All of these exchanges allow you to sell Bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies (altcoins) or government currencies (USD, EUR, GBP etc.) At the same time, these Bitcoin exchanges allow you to store your BTC with them, which means that the burden of keeping it safe is on them. Do note that incidents have occurred when exchanges have been hacked or lost their customers’ BTC, so do your own research when you’re looking for an exchange that’s safe to hold your cryptoassets. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab.
Keep it in a Bitcoin wallet

Instead of keeping it on a Bitcoin exchange, you could keep your Bitcoin in a Bitcoin wallet instead. Wallets come in two forms — hot and cold. Hot wallets are software that stays connected to the internet, aka storing your Bitcoin online. It is more convenient to transact via a hot wallet, but they logically are more susceptible to being attacked, as they stay connected to the internet.

Cold wallets are wallets that are not “online.” They are less prone to attack, as hackers cannot access this type of cold storage via the internet, but they are also a lot less convenient for the user as they may be cost-prohibitive and require more technical understanding to operate. Examples of cold wallets are hardware wallets and paper wallets.

XRP

What Is XRP?

To begin with, it’s important to understand the difference between XRP, Ripple and RippleNet. XRP is the currency that runs on a digital payment platform called RippleNet, which is on top of a distributed ledger database called XRP Ledger. While RippleNet is run by a company called Ripple, the XRP Ledger is open-source and is not based on blockchain, but rather the previously mentioned distributed ledger database.

The RippleNet payment platform is a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system that aims to enable instant monetary transactions globally. While XRP is the cryptocurrency native to the XRP Ledger, you can actually use any currency to transact on the platform.

While the idea behind the Ripple payment platform was first voiced in 2004 by Ryan Fugger, it wasn’t until Jed McCaleb and Chris Larson took over the project in 2012 that Ripple began to be built (at the time, it was also called OpenCoin).

How Does XRP Work?

XRP was created by Ripple to be a speedy, less costly and more scalable alternative to both other digital assets and existing monetary payment platforms like SWIFT.

RippleNet’s ledger is maintained by the global XRP Community, with Ripple the company as an active member. The XRP Ledger processes transactions roughly every 3-5 seconds, or whenever independent validator nodes come to a consensus on both the order and validity of XRP transactions — as opposed to proof-of-work mining like Bitcoin (BTC). Anyone can be a Ripple validator, and the list is currently made up of Ripple along with universities, financial institutions and others.

How Do You Buy XRP?

You can buy XRP on any exchange that offers the digital currency. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab. Remember to do your own research before choosing an exchange!

How Do You Store XRP?

You can either store your XRP on an exchange, where the exchange is responsible for the safety of your asset, or store your XRP in a cold or hot wallet.

Ethereum

What Is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) on its blockchain. Ether (ETH) is the native digital currency of the Ethereum platform.

Ethereum is supported in part by the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit that is part of the larger Ethereum ecosystem including enterprise Ethereum consortiums like the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance.

How Does Ethereum Work?

Vitalik Buterin first conceptualized Ethereum in 2013 with the idea of developing an open-source blockchain platform different from Bitcoin (BTC), thus pioneering smart contracts. On the Ethereum blockchain, a smart contract behaves like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. Blockchain allows smart contracts’ code to be run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.

The Ethereum network went live on July 30, 2015, with 73 million Ether pre-mined.

How Do You Mine Ethereum?

Ethereum mining is currently based on a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol (like Bitcoin), with future plans to switch to proof-of-stake. Ethereum mining works when miners use their computational power to solve a mathematical problem (finding the hash of a block’s unique header metadata). The first miner to successfully solve the problem (find the hash) then broadcasts that the block has been mined to the entire Ethereum network for other nodes to validate and add the block to the blockchain.

The Ethereum blockchain was supposed to migrate from a PoW system to the less energy-investive proof-of-stake system (PoS) system in January 2020, but the deadline was not met. A switch to PoS and the release of Ethereum 2.0 is still expected for later in 2020.

Ethereum mining is based on the Ethash algorithm, and ETH miners originally received a block reward of 5 ETH per block when the network first went live. In the end of 2017, the Byzantine hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain lowered the block rewards from 5 ETH to 3 ETH. In early 2019, the reward was again lowered to 2 ETH in what is known as “the thirdening.”

The Ethash proof-of-work protocol makes it not profitable to use ASICs to mine (unlike Bitcoin). Each Ethereum block aims to take an average of 12 seconds to be mined, and the level of difficulty of mining is proportional to the total amount of computer power (or network’s hashrate) being used to mine Ethereum.

Ethereum transactions are called “gas” and they are responsible for powering operations on the entire network, meaning you have to spend your “gas” (Ether) in order to make changes to the blockchain. Ethereum also has a Turing complete internal code.

What Is Ethereum Used For?

The Ethereum platform is used by developers to build new kinds of DApps, which can have a variety of uses ranging from the creation of new digital assets and uncensorable web apps to building decentralized autonomous organizations and more. Anyone around the world is able to freely connect to the Ethereum network.

Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain, is also used as digital money and can be sent to anyone in the world instantly. Ether can be used as a form of payment or a store of value.

How Do You Buy Ethereum?

If you are not mining the Ethereum blockchain (which can be prohibitively expensive unless you are a professional miner), you can buy Ethereum on a cryptocurrency exchange. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab. Make sure to do your own research before choosing an exchange. You can also store your Ether on an exchange or a hot or cold wallet.

Bitcoin Cash

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that aims to become sound global money with fast payments, micro fees, privacy, and high transaction capacity (big blocks). In the same way that physical money, such as a dollar bill, is handed directly to the person being paid, Bitcoin Cash payments are sent directly from one person to another.

As a permissionless, decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash requires no trusted third parties and no central bank. Unlike traditional fiat money, Bitcoin Cash does not depend on monetary middlemen such as banks and payment processors. Transactions cannot be censored by governments or other centralized corporations. Similarly, funds cannot be seized or frozen — because financial third parties have no control over the Bitcoin Cash network.

What is Bitcoin Cash used for?

Bitcoin Cash combines gold-like scarcity with the spendable nature of cash. With a limited total supply of 21 million coins, Bitcoin Cash is provably scarce and, like physical cash, can be easily spent. Transactions are fast with transaction fees typically less than a tenth of a cent. Anybody can accept Bitcoin Cash payments with a smartphone or computer.

Bitcoin Cash has various use cases. In addition to peer-to-peer payments between individuals, Bitcoin Cash can be used to pay participating merchants for goods and services in-store and online. Very low fees enable new micro-transaction economies, such as tipping content creators and rewarding app users a few cents. Bitcoin Cash also reduces the fees and settlement times for remittances and cross-border trade. Other use cases include tokens, simplified smart contracts, and private payments with tools such as CashShuffle and CashFusion.

Is Bitcoin Cash different from Bitcoin?

In 2017, the Bitcoin project and its community split in two over concerns about Bitcoin’s scalability. The result was a hark fork which created Bitcoin Cash, a new cryptocurrency considered by supporters to be the legitimate continuation of the Bitcoin project as peer-to-peer electronic cash. All Bitcoin holders at the time of the fork (block 478,558) automatically became owners of Bitcoin Cash.

Unlike Bitcoin BTC, Bitcoin Cash aims to scale so it can meet the demands of a global payment system. At the time of the split, the Bitcoin Cash block size was increased from 1MB to 8MB. An increased block size means Bitcoin Cash can now handle significantly more transactions per second (TPS) while keeping fees extremely low, solving the issues of payment delays and high fees experienced by some users on the Bitcoin BTC network.

Development to further optimize the Bitcoin Cash network continues on the Bitcoin Cash roadmap, led by the Bitcoin ABC full node team. Planned upgrades take place every six months to put into effect the latest network developments.

How do you mine Bitcoin Cash?

Mining is the process in which new Bitcoin Cash transactions are confirmed and new blocks are added to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Miners use computing power and electricity to solve complex puzzles. By doing so, they gain the ability to produce new blocks of transactions. If one of their blocks is accepted by the network, the miner, or mining pool, earns a block reward in the form of newly-issued Bitcoin Cash.

Mining is highly competitive. As the price of Bitcoin Cash in the marketplace rises, more miners are incentivized to bring more hash rate into the ever-increasing miner competition to produce blocks and have them accepted by the Bitcoin Cash network. More miners make the network more secure by increasing and distributing the hash rate. This prevents a single miner from having control over the network.

Anyone can mine Bitcoin Cash. Mining requires specialized hardware called mining equipment, which can either be bought or rented. Miners also need to run a full node software (with the majority of miners currently running Bitcoin ABC) to build blocks and connect to the rest of the Bitcoin Cash network. Mining can be done independently but miners often pool their hash rate together and share proportionally in the earned block rewards.

How do you buy Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash is available at a variety of crypto exchanges, depending on your region. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab. Be sure to do your own research before picking an exchange for purchasing Bitcoin Cash.

Tether

About Tether

Tether (USDT) is a cryptocurrency with a value meant to mirror the value of the U.S. dollar. The idea was to create a stable cryptocurrency that can be used like digital dollars. Coins that serve this purpose of being a stable dollar substitute are called “stable coins.” According to their site, Tether converts cash into digital currency, to anchor or “tether” the value of the coin to the price of national currencies like the US dollar, the Euro, and the Yen. Tether (USDT) is issued on the Omni, TRON, and ETH blockchains. For details on the issuance across the different chains, please refer to: https://wallet.tether.to/transparency

Source: WikiPedia

What Is Google Fred?

Google Fred is an algorithm update that targets black-hat tactics tied to aggressive monetization. This includes an overload on ads, low-value content, and little added user benefits. This does not mean all sites hit by the Google Fred update are dummy sites created for ad revenue, but (as Barry Schwartz noted in his observations of Google Fred) the majority of websites affected were content sites that have a large amount of ads and seem to have been created for the purpose of generating revenue over solving a user’s problem.

Which Websites were Affected by FRED?

The majority of the websites affected had one (or more) of the following:

• An extremely large presence of ads
• Content (usually in blog form) on all sorts of topics created for ranking purposes
• Content has ads or affiliate links spread throughout, and the quality of content is far below industry-specific sites
• Deceptive ads (looks like a download or play button to trick someone into clicking)
• Thin content
• UX barriers
• Mobile problems
• Aggressive affiliate setups
• Aggressive monetization

How to Tell Your Site Affected By the Google Fred Algorithm Update?

If you saw a large drop in rankings and organic traffic around the middle of March and are guilty of one of the above, your site was probably impacted.

Google Fred Recovery

The Google Fred algorithm is focused on limited black-hat SEO tactics for aggressive monetization, so the biggest fix is to scale down your ads and increase the quality of your content.

For a full Google Fred recovery, we recommend:

• Scaling back the amount of ads on your site
• Review the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) and follow them as closely as you possibly can
• Review the placement of ads on your site. Do they contribute to poor user experience?
• Review the user experience of your site, and make a schedule to do this periodically. Keep upping the ante of your content
• Review the content to be sure it serves a purpose, and that purpose is outlined in the form of metadata and tags

The number one thing you can do is to manually browse through your site. Is it user-friendly? Are you greeted by ads everywhere you go? Is your content scraped or extremely thin? Think about your users. If it’s not something you would enjoy seeing on other websites, you need to take it off of yours.

What are the Best Google Fred Update SEO Tactics?

If you’re looking for Fred update SEO tactics, we recommend you memorize the Google Quality Rating Guidelines and be sure every piece of content on your site is compliant with the best practices. These are the factors Google considers extremely important when it comes to quality:

• Clear indication of who the website belongs to
• Clear indication of what the page is about
• A well-maintained and updated page, which means it’s error-free, loads quickly, and has few technical errors
• Excellent website reputation (quality of backlinks, industry awards, positive user reviews, and expert testimonials all contribute to excellent reputation)
• Content that demands at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill

Source: Bluecorona

Major Google SEO Updates & Algorithm Changes from 2009 to 2017

Google has a long history of famous algorithm updates, search index changes and refreshes.

2017 Updates

• Snippet Length Increase — November 30, 2017
• Featured Snippet Drop — October 27, 2017
• Chrome HTTPS Warnings — October 17, 2017
• Google Tops 50% HTTPS — April 16, 2017
• "Fred" (Unconfirmed) — March 8, 2017
• Intrusive Interstitial Penalty — January 10, 2017

2016 Updates

• Penguin 4.0, Phase 2 — October 6, 2016
• Penguin 4.0, Phase 1 — September 27, 2016
• Penguin 4.0 Announcement — September 23, 2016
• Image/Universal Drop — September 13, 2016
• "Possum" — September 1, 2016
• Mobile-friendly 2 — May 12, 2016
• AdWords Shake-up — February 23, 2016

2015 Updates

• RankBrain* — October 26, 2015
• Panda 4.2 (#28) — July 17, 2015
• The Quality Update — May 3, 2015
• Mobile Update AKA "Mobilegeddon" — April 22, 2015

2014 Updates

• Pigeon Expands (UK, CA, AU) — December 22, 2014
• Penguin Everflux — December 10, 2014
• Pirate 2.0 — October 21, 2014
• Penguin 3.0 — October 17, 2014
• "In The News" Box — October 1, 2014
• Panda 4.1 (#27) — September 23, 2014
• Authorship Removed — August 28, 2014
• HTTPS/SSL Update — August 6, 2014
• Pigeon — July 24, 2014
• Authorship Photo Drop — June 28, 2014
• Payday Loan 3.0 — June 12, 2014
• Panda 4.0 (#26) — May 19, 2014
• Payday Loan 2.0 — May 16, 2014
• Page Layout #3 — February 6, 2014

2013 Updates

• Authorship Shake-up  —  December 19, 2013
• Penguin 2.1 (#5)  —  October 4, 2013
• Hummingbird  —  August 20, 2013
• In-depth Articles  —  August 6, 2013
• Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  July 19, 2013
• Panda Recovery  —  July 18, 2013
• "Payday Loan" Update  —  June 11, 2013
• Panda Dance  —  June 11, 2013
• Penguin 2.0 (#4)  —  May 22, 2013
• Domain Crowding  —  May 21, 2013
• "Phantom"  —  May 9, 2013
• Panda #25  —  March 14, 2013
• Panda #24  —  January 22, 2013

2012 Updates

• Panda #23  —  December 21, 2012
• Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  December 4, 2012
• Panda #22  —  November 21, 2012
• Panda #21  —  November 5, 2012
• Page Layout #2  —  October 9, 2012
• Penguin #3  —  October 5, 2012
• Panda #20  —  September 27, 2012
• Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update  —  September 27, 2012
• Panda 3.9.2 (#19)  —  September 18, 2012
• Panda 3.9.1 (#18)  —  August 20, 2012
• 7-Result SERPs  —  August 14, 2012
• DMCA Penalty ("Pirate")  —  August 10, 2012
• Panda 3.9 (#17)  —  July 24, 2012
• Link Warnings  —  July 19, 2012
• Panda 3.8 (#16)  —  June 25, 2012
• Panda 3.7 (#15)  —  June 8, 2012
• Penguin 1.1 (#2)  —  May 25, 2012
• Knowledge Graph  —  May 16, 2012
• Panda 3.6 (#14)  —  April 27, 2012
• Penguin  —  April 24, 2012
• Panda 3.5 (#13)  —  April 19, 2012
• Panda 3.4 (#12)  —  March 23, 2012
• Search Quality Video  —  March 12, 2012
• Panda 3.3 (#11)  —  February 27, 2012
• Venice  —  February 27, 2012
• Ads Above The Fold  —  January 19, 2012
• Panda 3.2 (#10)  —  January 18, 2012

2011 Updates

• Panda 3.1 (#9)  —  November 18, 2011
• Query Encryption  —  October 18, 2011
• Panda "Flux" (#8)  —  October 5, 2011
• Panda 2.5 (#7)  —  September 28, 2011
• Pagination Elements  —  September 15, 2011
• Expanded Sitelinks  —  August 16, 2011
• Panda 2.4 (#6)  —  August 12, 2011
• Panda 2.3 (#5)  —  July 23, 2011
• Google+  —  June 28, 2011
• Panda 2.2 (#4)  —  June 21, 2011
• Schema.org  —  June 2, 2011
• Panda 2.1 (#3)  —  May 9, 2011
• Panda 2.0 (#2)  —  April 11, 2011
• The +1 Button  —  March 30, 2011
• Panda/Farmer  —  February 23, 2011
• Attribution Update  —  January 28, 2011

2010 Updates

• Negative Reviews  —  December 1, 2010
• Social Signals  —  December 1, 2010
• Instant Previews  —  November 1, 2010
• Google Instant  —  September 1, 2010
• Brand Update  —  August 1, 2010
• Caffeine (Rollout)  —  June 1, 2010
• Google Places  —  April 1, 2010

2009 Updates

• Real-time Search  —  December 1, 2009
• Caffeine (Preview)  —  August 1, 2009
• Vince  —  February 1, 2009
• Rel-canonical Tag  —  February 1, 2009