It’s been a very changeable period with the Google Panda update and the launching of Google+ with all the extra personalization  probably being the biggest changes.

Strangely though, there isn’t really that much I would change in my top 10 SEO Tips, I would probably emphasise the importance of having good unique content more and possible hint at using microdata formatting, apart from that though, what were good SEO Tips back in 2010 are probably equaly as good now.

Be interesting to hear what the top 2012 SEO Tips should be, if anyone would like to comment please feel free.

The French scrum half is almost putting the ball straight to the number 8′s feet.

You will undoubtedly have noticed that when doing a search in Google that some results have little gold stars next to their listings.

These stars look really cool and I would assume help click through rates.

Did you know though that these stars can be completely meaningless and can be created in minutes?

Podline shows you just how much Google have messed up by allowing these stars to be displayed in their results.

There are numerous ways to get these stars showing with your listing, these instructions show you the semi-legitimate way of obtaining them.

1.  Create a Google Places listing (if you haven’t already)
2.  Ask someone who you know will give you a 5 star rating to write a review
3.  Wait until that review shows with your Google Places listing (shouldn’t take any longer than 48 hours)
4.  Go to schema.org and copy the code for aggregaterating
5.  Add aggregaterating microdata code to your homepage saying you have a 5 star grade based on 1 review
6.  Wit until your page is indexed by Google again (throw a couple of links at it and write a blog post to boost this)
7.  Check the SERPs and within a couple of days (depending how often your site is crawled) you will have 5 nice gold star reviews next to your listing in Googles results.

It really is that simple to manipulate and shows what a mockery the Google Review system with Gold Stars is.

Once more webmasters know how to do this will we see every listing in the Google top 10 with 5 stars next to them?

Come on Google stop showing these stars now it gives too much advantage to anyone who knows how to game the system.

Research and testing carried out by V1 SEO

As anyone who watches it will know the televised rounds start with 24 hopefuls which and whittled down to the final 12 who are awarded Masterchef aprons.

What I would like to know is are the Masterchef Aprons exclusive to those who have been awarded them?

I hope just anybody can’t buy Masterchef aprons anywhere.

To me the Masterchef aprons are classed along Blue Peter badges and jim’ll fix it badges

The basics of page construction for SEO remain, but engagement and user interaction appear to becoming more and more important.

With this in mind we have added a section on the SEO Tips pagee providing Google+ Optimisation Tips and Profiles Optimisation