HTTPS Is A Ranking Factor

Is your site secure? HTTPS is now a ranking factor. Visit Google Webmaster blog for more information.

Cheers! 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html

SEO: Separate IP Address for Each Country-Specific Site

Should I use a separate IP address for each country-specific site? Today, Matt Cutts answered this question in another webmaster video. He said ideally it would be great to have different IPs on different locations for their respective locations or countries. But it seems that SEOs and Webmasters shouldn't worry about this too much as Google is smart enough to take TLDs (top level domains) as a strong indicator that your site is operating normally.

Click here to see the video in Google Webmaster YouTube Channel.

Google Webmaster's "x-default hreflang" for International Landing Pages

Today, Google Webmaster Blog introduced a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation that webmasters can use to specify homepages supported by Google and Yandex.

We can annotate this in the sitemaps or by using HTML tags like as follows:

It basically tells Google algorithms that the page containing the new "x-default hreflang attribute" is not targeting any specific locale or language thus making it as a default page as the best pick.

So is your website targeting global or multiple countries? Then you might find this very helpful. Try it now! :)