It is true that when I first read about Google’s warnings for its forthcoming over-optimization penalty I checked the calendar to make certain it wasn’t April 1. Reassured that the idea of an over-optimization penalty was not some sort of bad April Fool’s gag, it became obvious that at least to Google “over optimization” is indeed the new search engine spam.

What can you do to avoid triggering one of Google’s algorithmic penalties or results-dampening filters? Act smarter than a fifth grader, and create great content that your visitors will randomly comment upon and share with various friends. And read Your Website Might Be Over Optimized If … over at Search Engine Watch.

Vanessa Fox, the perennial voice of reason about search engine optimization, talks about Google’s Upcoming Algorithm Change: “Overly-Optimized Sites” and Matt Cutts. As usual, it’s not so much what Google’s chief spam cop says or where is says it, it’s what he does not say.

If you have followed a slow and steady course of making data driven decisions about improving content on your website or for the most part, have embraced only Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices over the years, then you probably have nothing to worry about when it comes to maintaining your search results. If you have taken more drastic or risky measures, then you probably do need to make some changes about how you promote your web content. The difference between over optimized and under represented in Google isn’t about how relevant you think your content is. It’s about how interesting people think your content is.

In its simplest form, search engine optimization (SEO) used to be about three things – making your content crawlable, linkable, and usable. Gaining greater visibility on search engine results pages was relatively easy. Depending on your business model, it was also much easier said than done.

Nimble smaller businesses routinely outmaneuvered larger enterprises when it came to securing specific query-relevant rankings in the search engines, especially in Google. Ultimately, relevancy had to be redefined by shifting algorithmic weightings toward trust and authority, and away from feigned popularity and repurposed content.

Now, SEO needs to be as conversational as it is contextually relevant, in order to be well represented in Google’s most recent algorithmic shifts. True to form, enterprise level SEO initiatives will have to play a game of catch-up this year in order to reap new opportunities from social search results.

[Read] How Google Search Plus Your World is Changing SEO by PJ Fusco

[Q] How can retailers best deal not only with the early 2010 Panda update (and how are they dealing with this so far?), but also the more recent “fresh” update?

[A] Obviously continent differentiation is essential for affiliates – there needs to be a unique measure of a value-add for users. It’s not enough to simply take a feed from a retailer and roll in into your navigation and front-end services. Some affiliates are rethinking how they use reviews, social media and other UGC, others are localizing to go with the lay of the land, so to speak.

I don’t think the freshness factors of Google’s more recent algo update really affects this facet of the ever evolving Panda algorithms. Where the algo update might help out online retailers is for annual events if white sales, black Friday sales and such are treated as regularly recurring events, like conferences and TV series, presidential elections and such are said to be treated with the algo update. Time will tell if this does help ensure only this year’s or the freshest content is indeed available to searchers. What’s really interesting about this is that I’ve always recommending doing some link harvesting for annual events. In order words, when possible, take last year’s event and 301 it to this years. If you have to recap some of the details from last year, send the content to a new URL and don’t promote it. This algo change could render this not process of link harvesting unnecessary, but you still could use the canonical tag to have the same affect in Google at least if the algo update does not perform as anticipated or expected.

Retailers need to avoid falling into a useless content trap to avoid having their results dampened by Panda updates. And let’s be clear about this, Panda is an not an penalty maker, although it may feel like it if your site has been affected by it. Content created by internal site search refinements and programmatic creation of internal site search results pages have created Panda problems for a few online retailers. Canonical tags for preferred content and meta robots exclusions for low quality content can help to get a retailer out of Panda snares, but it takes time to alleviate the issues and regain the domain trust and site authority from  Google.

There are two primary ways people can interact with Google+ Brand Pages:

1. The +1 button: The +1 button is analogous to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and allows Google+ users to indicate that they support or recommend a particular brand’s Google+ page.
2. Circles: Give fans the ability to take a more Twitter-like approach by following a favorite brand in Google+ space.

Which method of interaction will prove to be most pertinent or most popular?

Both have content sharing capabilities that mimic Facebook and Twitter so in my opinion, it doesn’t really matter, these are the two pertinent Google+ metrics of the moment. What is of interest is Google’s glaring lack of originality and innovation in the social sphere.

As suspected when Google decommissioned [+] from its repertoire of search query operators, Google Direct Connect functionality makes it easy to discover Google+ pages for brands. To discover some brand pages for yourself simply go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Cabelas). Then you can ‘Like’ them or ‘Plus’ them or ‘Circle’ them or ignore them as you please.