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Link building should always be top of mind for those who want to grow their Web properties, but to call it a difficult practice is an understatement. It is, in fact, one of the most challenging components of search engine optimization, and one of the trickier areas in all of Web marketing.
Fortunately, a number of helpful strategies have emerged in recent years, and WM has highlighted some of them below. If you have additional suggestions, we welcome you to share them in the comments section.
Content
Quality Counts
The most effective way to acquire quality links is to produce quality content – something that your visitors and other website owners are going to find worth reading and
sharing. The better your content, the more likely it is to be picked up and/or
linked to by publishers in your industry. It’s always good to keep in mind that the most useful, sharable content is that which includes lasting, actionable information such as tutorials, lists, industry reports, glossaries, etc.
Infographics
Most Web users appreciate a well-conceived and attractively designed infographic. They can
provide practical, useful information in an easy-to-digest format, and they are easy to share between links to the infographic and other sites embedding
it into their own content.
Viral Content
Viral content is basically
anything that encourages those who see it to look into its source for more
information. Typically, it can be videos, photos or games that offer an
ambiguous message that creates intrigue and drives users back to its source
website for more.
Linking Made Easy
If you want people to share your content, especially images
or videos, you’d do well to make it easy for them to link to your site. The best way
to do this is to provide HTML-ready snippets that people can easily copy and
then paste right into their own website/blog/social media post.
RSS Feeds
Most content management systems create RSS feeds for your
blog content. If you don’t automatically have that option, it’s a good idea
to create one. This allows interested users to add your content to
their daily feeds, increasing the likelihood that they will not only see it but also share it with others.
White Papers
One great way to establish authority and gain links is to
publish white papers. Not only do white papers help you earn
links from interested parties, but they also help to identify you as a thought-leader in your industry or niche.
Images
It is true that we live in a visual society, which is why
photos are a very valuable type of content to leverage. Photos can be set up to
link back to your website, which is a valuable way to increase website traffic. Images can also be posted and shared on social media sites for even greater visibility.
Videos
Videos are another type of content that can be very
influential when it comes to building links. Content producers should remember
to vary the types of videos so that they don't become too repetitive, such as
a mix of tutorials, product announcements, general information and industry news.
Controversy Loves
Company
Sometimes the best way to get noticed is to make waves, and
online that often comes in the form of bold or occasionally controversial
statements. Content that takes a bold stance on a topic, even one that
is contrarian to the present popular belief, is very likely to encourage others to link back to your site as the source.
Promotions
Press Releases
Submitting company news to the top press release engines
such as PRWeb, PRNewswire and Buisnesswire will immediately increase your
business’ online visibility and encourage journalists and bloggers to
write about your brand and link to your website.
Contests
Engaging your audience with contests is a great way to
promote your brand online. Post information about the competition on your
website and social media channels, as well as within email newsletters, so that
your audience can participate and share the promotions with their friends.
Daily Deals
By participating in a daily deal through a website such as
Living Social, Groupon or WhereYouShop, merchants will not only increase their
conversions but also their online visibility through a link on the daily deal
vendor’s website, as well as within the deal’s social media and email
promotions.
Widgets and Apps
Valuable widgets and apps will build links through
promotions, reviews and social sharing among audience members. Additionally,
when another site downloads and uses your widget or app on their website, they
will link it back to your website.
E-books
Create an informative e-book for your audience to download can result in linkbacks through reviews, promotions and social sharing.
Advertising
Set up a marketing campaign that will put your site in front
of Web surfers all over the Internet. Try display advertising on social sites such as
Facebook or join an affiliate program to increase your brand’s reach.
Wikipedia
If your business doesn’t already have a corporate Wikipedia
page, create one and link back to your website from the page.
Networking
Guest Contributions
This is the most useful form of networking for both parties,
and it can go two ways. You can either enlist other prominent industry experts
to create content that you will post on your site – which gets links from users
as well as the contributor linking to it on their own website and social media
profiles. Or you can contribute something to another blog or website and then
link back to your own site from there.
Listing Site
Directories
One of the easier ways to pursue links
is to submit your site to an online website directory. It can be especially
useful to include your site on an industry-specific directory (if one exists). Unfortunately, while this may be a great way to begin the link-building
process, garnering links from website directories does not do you a lot of
favors when it comes to SEO.
Talk to People
In the digital age, it can be easy to forget that sometimes
the best way to network is to just go out and form relationships with others.
This can be achieved by reaching out on social media to authoritative bloggers in your
industry, or linking to their content on your blog or
website in an effort to get on their radar.
Interviews
A great way to show off your expertise is to give
interviews to relevant Web publishers and get a
link back to your website in return. You can also conduct
interviews with others in your niche, and the more you do, the more in demand you will be.
Forums
Everyone has an opinion, and for some reason they love to
share them on the Internet. This is why message boards and forums have become
such a popular medium for discussing pretty much anything. Including a forum on
your site can help bring in relevant users who love to talk about whatever it
is you do. It can also improve your link building efforts because when an
interesting discussion pops up, users may share it with their
friends/readers/visitors in an effort to engage more relevant voices.
Webinars
Like white papers, webinars are a very effective way to show off your
authority. And webinars also present an outstanding opportunity to network. You can go out and find other industry experts and put together a joint
presentation, and then each party can link to it for their own unique user
base.
Social Media
Social Presence
The Web is full of social media networks, and most come with
a large, very interactive audience. Website owners can leverage these platforms
by choosing a few of the most beneficial sites for their brand to join, such as
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, FourSquare or Tumblr.
Once your brand has its own page on these sites, administrators should grow the
audience and brand’s visibility through posting great content and promotions,
as well as interacting with their fans and followers.
Gamification
Gamification functionality enables website owners to better
engage their audience as well as increase their online visibility through
rewards and badges. Gamified sites can be set up to reward social sharing among
audience members, as well as reward influential consumers with badges that link
back to the gamified website.
Social Login
Not only have studies proven that social login increases
audience engagement levels (and that customers prefer it), but it also makes it easier for site visitors to
share content. A recent Janrain study even revealed that 78 percent of people
using social login posted to their social networks about a product or service
that they liked and thought others should know about.
Share Buttons
This link-building tactic is pretty obvious, especially
since we have already covered the power of social media when it comes to
link building. By providing your audience with social sharing buttons that are
easy to locate on your website or within email newsletters, website owners will
most certainly see an increase in shared content and traffic to their sites.
Email
Email is still king when it comes to marketing, which is why
it is also a valuable link-building tool. Include links to content, promotions
and sales within the email, and it is also important to make it easy for your
audience to share and link back to the content.
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Google has released a long list of changes that the search engine made in April 2012, and many are directly related to how search engine optimization professionals will engage in their profession post Penguin.
Website Magazine has listed some of the most important changes related to Google SEO below by generalized category, but do review the full list which focuses on the search experience for consumers as much as anything of note for SEO professionals. In line with previous search quality change reports, Google has assigned codenames for each change which does make it easy to keep track of the impact of the changes in the future.
For the first time in my recent memory, Google noted that it increased the size of its base index by 15%. The base search index is Google’s main index for serving search results. Google also introduced a new “index tier”. Google keeps its index in tier where “where different documents are indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to be to users.”
And now, on with the Google SEO changes to know!
LOCAL RELATED: Google made some significant modifications related to language relevance and country identification for Web pages. The “Raquel” update takes into account language to help return relevant navigational results, while Sudoku improves the systems currently in place to detect when a website, subdomain or directory is relevant to a set of countries and does so down to the page level. The “ImpOrgMap2” change is likely the most important local related change in this set, which makes it more likely users will find a website from a specific country – e.g. mexico.cnn.com over cnn.com – in the search results pages.
SNIPPET RELATED: Several changes were also made to snippets in April 2012. Google updated its system for generating snippets with the project codename “DSS” to keep it consistent with other infrastructure improvements and is now more likely to show text from the beginning of a page in snippets when the text is particularly relevant - codename Solar.
FRESHNESS RELATED: Perhaps the most noteworthy and actionable of all changes released in this round are related to freshness. Google indicated that its “Citron” update enables the search engine to better identify fresh documents, but its “NoRot” update modified a classifier to ensure content that is identified as low-quality” will be excluded – even though its fresh.
SPELLING RELATED: Google released a set of changes related to spelling corrections. The “Potage” update internationalizes one of Google’s algorithms to prevent bad spell corrections; the “Pita” update extends spelling corrections to more than 60 languages, and the “Spelling” update is a change which makes it more likely that queries get a spell correction even if it’s longer than ten terms.
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Everflux SEO & Post Penguin Predictions
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 10:30 AM
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Google’s latest round of algorithm changes, which affects just 3 percent of queries, is now known as the Penguin update. The latest sweep of the SERPs penalized spinners and spammers, and sends a clear message about what the search engine expects from the SEO community.
So, should your SEO strategy change?
Not Just SEO, Everflux SEO
While Google has been battling the most roguish of SEOs since it came into commercial being (see a brief history of Google updates below), many digital marketers still mistakenly believe that black hat shortcuts are better than having a sustainable white hat strategy.
As someone who likely requires some measurable success with SEO, your best tactic in the now post-penguin era is to invest your energy in Everflux SEO. No, it’s not a software or a service, it’s a mindset – a mindset that demands a greater focus on creating genuine value-added experiences for Google’s users and your prospective visitors. While the search indices are constantly in flux, SEOs need to be “ever” vigilant in adopting the many well-known best practices.
To understand what Google wants, or any search engine for that matter, you must first understand its history with the SEO community and the changes and modifications it has made to provide users the best possible experience over the years and which lead us to today.
A Brief History of Google Updates
The number, scope and depth of algorithm changes made by Google over time is extensive, but even by examining a brief history (we’ve highlighted the “key words”) can we start to see what SEOs should be focusing on. For example, Google has always been concerned with link quality. The Cassandra and Dominic updates put the quality of links at the center of discussion in the search engine optimization community, and that conversation continues today.
When the Florida update rolled out in late 2003, the practice of SEO became much more serious. Shortcut SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, which once provided the most open point of access into the search results, were finally sealed with Florida.
With several loopholes closed, in early 2004 Google introduced an update known far and wide as Brandy, which dramatically improved Google keyword analysis through Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This set the stage for the most significant changes to the Google SERPs in the Jagger and Big Daddy update of 2005. Google cracked down on link manipulation with Jagger and introduced the term canonicalization with Big Daddy, which made site quality issues (and some would argue search usability) the focus.
For many, it was the golden age of search engine optimization and out of the blue – it got much better. The Universal Search update in 2007 created a much more immersive experience for search engine users and provided SEOs with many more tools to practice their craft. News content, images and video started Google down a path of introducing new content formats to the user search experience. Google has continued with these integrations and, in some instances, bought companies outright (ITA Software, Zagat) which provide content that users can’t or don’t provide. For those it could not purchase, Google partnered with. The best example of this is seen in what I refer to as the “Fire Hose Wars”, where the interest in real-time search was at fever pitch. Google starting indexing content from a variety of services, including the fire hose (or full feed) of Twitter.
The real-time search update presented some further speed and indexation problems, which were addressed in the Caffeine update of mid-2010. If 2010 was the year of real time and caffeine, then 2011 was the year of the Panda, a broad update which harshly punished “thin content sites.” Then, in mid-2011, Google and other search engines announced support for Schema.org – again providing something of value for SEOs in terms of a means to provide more information to Google and influence their position on the search results.
As the interest in social media rose, so did Google’s reliance on social signals. And of course what still remains as one of the hottest topics in SEO, Search+ Your World further changed the already highly dynamic, personalized search results by incorporating user profiles and more social data. Social media optimization is now an essential technique for success with SEO.
By understanding the update history and with a firm belief in the importance of Everflux SEO, we can finally make some post-Penguin predictions.
Post Penguin Predictions
Greater Reliance on Knowledge-Base Optimization (KBO): The Web doesn’t exist without information, and more often than not, the more you have, the better the opportunity to receive website traffic (visitors). But you can’t get those website visitors if at some point you don’t first create the content. Knowledge-base optimization puts your whole organization/enterprise to work, developing and sharing information that will by its very nature appeal to those looking for your products or services on the Web.
Deeper Exploration of People-Powered Optimization: The practice of search engine optimization has changed and, for many, it has not been an easy transition. Today’s SEO must be skilled not only at content creation, site architecture or keyword analysis. Today, the best in the SEO business are those that have mastered the art of people-powered optimization. To benefit in this new era, you’ll need to understand the practice of social media optimization and the role that individuals play in the success of not just SEO, but of the entire digital enterprise.
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More Top Search Queries in Google Webmaster Tools
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 8:50 AM
Monday, April 30, 2012
While Google is putting the virtual smack down on some SEOs, the search engine is also playing nice by providing a set of terrific presents to those donning their white hats in the form of additional search query data in Google Webmaster Tools.
Webmasters and SEOs can now access up to 90 days (three months) of historical data on search queries. The top search query data was previously restricted to just 35 days.
There are two other improvement to Google Webmaster Tools that were just announced and are also worthy of note. Google indicated that basic search query data will be accessible as soon as site ownership is verified, and that it will be collecting data for the top 2,000 queries for which verified sites get clicks.
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Google Crushes Spinners and Spammers
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 7:05 AM
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The much anticipated over-optimization penalty has arrived, and the most roguish (or simply the most uninformed) SEO's are in full-on panic mode.
Google announced that it has taken a step to reward high-quality sites, but what it has really done is punish those engaged in techniques and tactics that don't provide a good user experience. Sounds Ok to me.
Google has been very vocal about its anti-webspam efforts the past few months, rolling out some serious Panda changes as well as a page layout algorithm which lowered the ranking of sites that emphasized advertising over content clarity particularly above the web design fold. But this algorithm change is different.
This change takes a direct shot at webspam and will (very likely) decrease rankings for sites that Google believes are knowingly violating its existing quality guidelines. While no mention of specific signals that would warrant a ranking drop were made, Google made it clear in the announcement exactly the type of behaviors that would be deemed black hat and jeopardize a high ranking. At least it’s a start.
Google referenced two web spam tactics in particular, the first being keyword stuffing - which has long been discredited as a reasonable means to optimize a page for higher rankings. The second example is a little more complex and something that Google has long struggled with in my opinion - article spinning.
The example provided by Google (see image below) showed "unusual linking patterns" - call it link spam - within the content. The links within that content were completely unrelated to the content itself – giving Google an indication that something was amiss. The article was spun, or created automatically with the help of software.
Article spinning essentially takes a piece of content and replaces different parts or elements of the article with “spintax” (a play on the word syntax) which is really just a list of text, but most often keyword-laden links used in an attempt to game the search engine. Many of the algorithm changes we’ve covered here at Website Magazine were focused on the use of anchor text and this may be one manifestation of those changes.
Google indicated that this change in particular will go live for all languages at the same time. While the recent Panda change affected about 12 percent of search queries to a “significant degree”, this change affects 3 percent of search queries in English to a degree that a “regular user might notice.” This algorithm change will affect other languages to varying degrees.
Link Spam Example Provided By Google:
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Grammatical Gaffes on the Web are the Worstest
posted by Michael Garrity @ 1:00 PM
Friday, April 20, 2012
They’re maybe one or
too things wrong with this sentence your reading, or may be even five – quite possibly more.
Grammatical gaffes can have a devastating effect on Web workers. Content has long been the King of the Internet, but that has never been so true as it is today. Website visitors ultimately make their decisions based on the quality and relevance of the content they consume, so grammatical errors have a profoundly negative effect on overall user experience – and thus, on conversion rates.
Users are not the only ones put off by careless grammatical errors. Search engines do not look kindly on poorly written and/or edited content. The most severe situations will usually involve error-ridden page titles or headlines, which can actually prevent the offending Web page from appearing in search results on Google, Bing and other engines.
So, let's say that you are neither a Pulitzer Prize-winning author nor a university English professor; how do you know what pitfalls lurk in the shadows? Here are a few common mistakes that all Web workers can and should avoid:
Correct
Usage of Homonyms
Homonyms are words that are
pronounced the same but differ in meaning and also frequently in spelling. Some
classic examples of these include the following:
- Their (to show possession), They’re (a contraction of "they" and "are") and There (which refers to a place or acts as a pronoun)
- Your (to show possession) and You’re (a contraction of "you" and "are")
- Other common misuses of homonyms can include "affect/effect" and "then/than"
These mistakes are easy to make and can be hard to catch, but the negative "effects" they have on big brands and small businesses can be significant.
Hyphens and Apostrophes
Making sure that you use
punctuation properly can make a big difference in terms of your SEO success. But these things are often determined by preferences in style rather than universal grammatical rules.
The common Web terms "Email/e-mail", "Ecommerce/e-commerce", "eBooks/Ebooks", etc., pose challenges for online content providers, and stylistic standards can change overnight. The best advice when it comes to specific Web-related jargon is to remain consistent; if not throughout your entire site, certainly throughout a given article or post – anything less will be seen as unprofessional by the eagle-eyed members of your audience.
Apostrophes are also often overlooked but vitally important elements to creating great Web content. The most typical infractions occur in the different case uses of the words "its" (possessive) and "it's" (it + is), and in the different versions of commonly used acronyms such as "CEO's" (possessive) and CEOs (plural).
Dangling Modifiers and
Subject/Verb Agreement
Dangling modifiers take place when a sentence is structured
in such a way that a modifying word or adjectival clause is associated with a word
or phrase that is not the one it is
supposed to be modifying.
Example: The robber ran from the policeman, still holding the money in his hands.
Subject/verb agreement simply means that the main verb, or action, in a sentence must “agree” in number with the subject, or main noun. In other words, a plural subject (cats) requires a plural verb (ran), while a singular subject (umbrella) requires a singular verb (opens).
Both of these errors can make it hard for readers to decipher the intended meaning of a sentence, thus obscuring your brand’s message.
This Goes Without Saying
You may not have a crack editorial staff at your disposal, but most website owners and content producers do have access to simple spellcheck programs that can save them a lot of headaches and maybe even some business. Avoid using them at your own peril.
Final Word
Did you see what we did here? We purposely planted dozens of grammatical errors in this very post to see who amongst you is really paying attention. Let's have it in the comments section, and we'll be happy to provide a critique.
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Rich Snippet Updates Support HTML Testing
posted by Michael Garrity @ 12:00 PM
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Google
has blogged about two big updates to the types of rich snippets the search engine will be
crawling. The news is especially useful to online merchants, SEO professionals
and, well, pretty much anyone that runs a website.
Rich snippets, of course, are microformats that can be added into a Web page’s code by including special tags to enhance search results with more detailed data.
The first major change has to do specifically with product rich snippets. Up until now, these were only available as a limited set of locales, meaning products could only be previewed by specific users (based on their locations) viewing your site’s results in Google Search. Now, however, product rich snippets will be supported globally, meaning that users can preview site information about products from basically anywhere in the world.
Take a look at global product rich snippets (from Google's blog):
At the request of many webmasters, Google also announced HTML input support for its rich snippets testing tool. This change will allow users to test their HTML source without having to publish it on the Web. An update like this is a pretty huge deal because webmasters can simply test a selection of HTML code to make sure that it will appear as intended for users, even while it’s still a work in progress.
Here's what HTML input for the rich snippets testing tool looks like:
These changes will help webmasters and SEO professionals to streamline the optimization process since they’ll be able to test their rich snippet coding before a page goes live, which alleviates a lot of the headaches that can come with publishing defective code. It also aids online merchants by helping them promote more detailed information about specific products to a more global audience.
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Google Search: More Quality Changes & Codenames!
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 12:05 PM
Saturday, January 7, 2012
December's list of Google search quality highlights is out and there are quite a few that you may want and pay close attention to you. Google has even added some codenames to the individual changes – which certainly makes it easier to track (and recognize).
Website Magazine's February 2012 issue recently covered several of the changes in an article titled Inside the Black Box. One of the most important improvements made last month (which Google reiterated this announcement) are about related queries. Sometimes Google fetches results for queries that are related but have fewer words. Google has changed its algorithms (codename "Lyndsy") to make results more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.
The recently published list is lengthy (30 total items) but really only a handful are going to make any significant impact to search optimization professionals as many are related to auto-suggest, etc. Some of the most noteworthy improvements and modifications include:
- Codename "Simple": An improvement that analyzes various landing page signals within image search. Google also made improvements to image size signal (codename "matter") which will result in users seeing images with larger full-size versions.
- Codename "Concepts": More relevant sitelinks may mean Google will show sitelinks specific to a metropolitan region (which can be controlled with location settings within Webmaster Tools).
- Codename "Greencr": Country-restricted search has arrived. Now, on domains other than .com, users have the option to see results from one particular country.
- Codename "Foby": More accurate byline dates were announced, which improves how Google handles what data to associate with a document. The result shoul dbe more accurate dates annotating search results.
A whole host of other changes were also announced including live results for NFL and college football, better lyric results, improved Hebrew synonyms and more. Perhaps most noteworthy of all the announcements is that the much discussed encrypted search feature is expanding into the UK, Germany and France.
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Poor SEO Health for the Pharmaceutical Industry
posted by Michael Garrity @ 11:55 AM
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
It looks like the pharmaceutical industry could use a new SEO prescription; that is, at least, according to a recent study by Covario, which details exactly how Big Pharma is providing the perfect blueprint for what not-to-do when it comes to SEO.
Covario looked at 16 of the largest pharmaceutical advertisers in the world and compared them using their patented SEO Audit Score to determine just how well their websites were optimized for the highest volume keywords common to both consumers and medical professionals searching for drug-related information on Google, Bing and various other search engines.
"For decades pharmaceutical companies have been effective at using traditional advertising to target their largest brand advocatse — doctors. The results of this study show that pharma advertisers have leveraged this expertise and applied it to SEO as a branding channel directed at medical practitioners," says Russ Mann, Covario CEO. "Having said that, pharmaceutical marketers have yet to translate their decades-old success in direct-to-consumer advertising in traditional channels like television into the Web-based organic search channel."
The study showed pharma giant Pfizer coming in first, largely because it has been able to effectively optimize its website properties around the word "pharmaceutical," a point that Covario found critical for brand recognition among medical professionals.
Trailing behind Pfizer was Johnson & Johnson, and then a three-way tied for fifth place among Eli Lilly, Novartis and Bayer.
Covario states that the big takeaway from this study is the poor returns in organic search results for "more consumer-focused, high-volume keywords like 'medicine,' 'drugs,' and 'healthcare.'" The sites that do show up high in the results for these terms are WebMD, Drugstore.com and a variety of universities, hospitals and medical establishments.
"The good news is that there are a number of clear opportunities for pharmas to distinguish their brands by using SEO as a direct-to-consumer branding mechanism," says Mann. "It's clear that consumers are increasingly going to the Internet for information related to their medication needs."
Other brands included in the study were GlaxoSmithKline, Abbot Laboratories, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Allergan, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Mylan, Gilead and Genzyme.
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Need to Know: 6 Key Google Algo Updates for December 2011
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 1:45 PM
Monday, December 5, 2011
Google published another list of algorithm changes last week, following up on set of improvements it announced last month. Here’s what digital Web workers need to know and can expect on the search results pages in the future:
Original Content Signals: In perhaps the most important of the changes, Google indicated that it has added “new signals” to indicate which page is original and which is not. While Google obviously won’t reveal what those individual signals are, over time you can expect less duplicate content in the search results.
Less “Host Crowding”: A modification (and additional processing) on the top set of results ensures that Google won’t show too many results from one site (host crowding). Expect a more fair and balanced search results page.
Related Query Results: A refinement has been made that will ensure that sites/pages which only “partially” match the original query are seen less often. Why Google was in some instances returning only partial matches to a user query is up for debate.
More Long Tail Indexing: Google has made a change to make more long-tail content available in its index. Expect more of your long-tail content to rank for relevant queries.
Blog Search Results: The Google blog search index is now more comprehensive and will feature fresher results in the natural search results. If you’re not blogging now, you should be.
Parked Domain Classifier: In an update that should have happened many years ago, Google finally released a new algorithm for automatically detecting placeholder sites (parked domains).
Google has also made some layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices, made modifications to better determine image freshness, and is now offering more autocomplete predictions.
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Drive Higher Engagement with These Content Types
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 2:00 PM
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
A Web marketer's job can be made much easier when meaningful and valuable content is available to promote.
There is no shortage of platforms on which to promote content, or channels through which to promote your content, or ways to construct messages about your content.
But where many Web professionals fall short is in the assembling of the content itself. Too often, online workers will recycle dated material, tired messaging and straight-up boring content. On the other hand, when you have content that by its very nature leads to deeper levels of engagement, it will show in the volume of conversions.
So, what types of content drive engagement?
It is likely that they are already at your disposal and, if not, you should start creating it. There's actually quite a bit of content that you as a Web marketer and search engine optimization professional should have in your asset library. Videos, images, interviews, product manuals – just check out WM’s article on knowledge-base optimization. But many content types don’t really lead to high levels of engagement (return visits, more pageviews, additional downloads), so it's important to accurately know the value of your content assets.
Let’s look at a few vital content assets that all marketers should be regularly promoting on social networks and private forums, within email newsletters, on your own website, through display and search-based advertising and, of course, within the Google and Bing natural search results.
Product/Feature Releases: There seems to be a general feeling in our industry that it’s not wise to be overly self-promotional. I agree in some respects but disagree in many others. It’s hard to argue, particularly when it comes to those with an established audience, that there remains a need to notify users of advancements about your business. Case in point – product/feature releases.
Not only are they a powerful way to keep messaging fresh and compelling, it’s also worth mentioning and should be in your lineup of options to promote content when the aim is to drive engagement. People like “new” and recently added features, and products definitely fit the bill. The key to driving engagement with product release-focused content is to carefully select the platforms on which to promote that content. For example, product releases are ideal for social media followers but not great for cold prospects that can be reached elsewhere.
Webinars/White Papers: Marketers jump at the chance to promote a webinar or a white paper. The reason is simple: It’s easy – easier than nearly any other form of content promotion. Production of these content types aside, buyers are naturally drawn to webinars and white papers because they provide information, meaningful/valuable insights that can be immediately used.
That’s one of the things that the three content types featured here all provide – valuable information. Webinars and white papers are perfect for nearly any channel (social media and search) but can be most effectively used in advertising, when the challenge is to educate, entertain and inform in a matter of seconds. When you show up with something as valuable as free information, the likelihood you will generate more clicks than the competition is all but guaranteed.
Feature Articles: The term "content marketing" is poorly defined. With so many opportunities to promote content and so many formats, it’s not uncommon that marketers opt for the fastest solution, and that is rarely the feature article. If you’re staffing a team of writers, or are skilled at producing/publishing content, then it would be a shame not to leverage feature-ready, long-form articles (starting at 800-1,000 words).
Search engines give preferential treatment to long-form content over short-form – at least in my experience – so dedicating yourself to regularly producing information in this manner will serve you well. Long-form, insight-rich content increases the time on site (and even page views) and drives sharing and additional on-site activity, particularly when linking to your own content. With the exception of advertising, features articles can be used within any promotional channel – particularly in search and social media.
Content is king and the level of quality does matter a lot, but marketers can give themselves a leg up by focusing on the types of content that have proved they can deepen engagement and increase conversions.
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Six Simple SEO Techniques to Improve your Search Engine Ranking
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Six Simple SEO Techniques to Improve your Search Engine Ranking
1. Title Tags
The title tag is contained within the ‘HEAD’ tags of your HTML, before the ‘BODY’ tags. This states the title of the page, and must contain the major keywords of the page. The contents of your title tag do not appear in the text of the page: its purpose is to inform the search engine spiders what the topic of your page is, and what words are important (i.e. your main page keyword). For example, the TITLE tag of a page based on this article would be “SEO Techniques – Improve your Search Engine Ranking”.
2. Description Tags
The description Meta tag is used by Google, and other search engines, in the search engine listings. I have tested this with them all and Google uses it as is, while Yahoo uses part of it. You should provide a description of what the web page is about, and a simple check of the descriptions in other sites using your keyword on Google will show you how many words you can use to have the whole description included. About 20 words are fine.
3. Keyword Tags
Search engines rarely use the keyword Meta tag: Google ignores it completely. However, it doesn’t hurt, and can help in a small way. Include your brand name and your own name. That way some engines might show your pages if somebody is looking for your name. The other Meta tags have no SEO value, and do not help to improve your search engine ranking whatsoever.
4. Heading Tags
Heading tags (H1, H2, . . .) are used by Google to determine the importance of the text contained in your headings. Use H1 tags for the main title of your page (you also use it in the TITLE tag, but that isn’t seen by readers, only by the spiders). Put subtitles in H2 tags. You can change the font size of the text within these tags.
5. Text Formatting
Text in bold, italics and underscored are seen by the search engines as having greater weight, and so will be used in determining the relevance of your site. Always bolden your titles, and it also helps to underline it if it doesn’t make it look out of place.
6. Writing Style and Content
Do not write for algorithms (spiders): write for your readers. Always write for humans and you won’t go wrong. If your page content reads well, and has good vocabulary relating to the topic, then it will have a better chance of a higher listing than if you stuffed it full of keywords. I rarely use more than 1.5% – the keyword densities of the terms ‘SEO’, SEO techniques’ and ’search engine ranking’ (the main keywords) of this article are 1.5, 0.87 and 0.87 respectively. Too many keywords is bad SEO, and could result in a poor listing for your page – if it is listed at all.
So there you are: six simple SEO techniques to improve your search engine ranking. It is surprising how many experienced webmasters fail to apply all of these: there is no excuse, and they are failing to get the nuts and bolts properly fitted and tightened on their web pages.
Apply these to every page and not only will you improve your SEO, but also your chances of a good search engine ranking. It is amazing how many web pages lack these basic SEO techniques.
SEO: How To Research For Free
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.
You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
SEO Secrets: Fighting Against the Domain Age Tide
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, August 18, 2011
SEO Secrets: Fighting Against the Domain Age Tide
So you’ve bought your Dreamweaver, an eternity later worked out how it works, started to build your site which is targeting your chosen niche or promoting your affiliate product and after what seems like forever you have added quality content. You’ve bust a gut to get this far, but this is where the real work begins. You need to get your site seen by as many people as possible. You need to drive as much traffic as you can whether it be through a pay-per-click campaign or via organic traffic.
Let’s say you decide to target organic traffic. You need to get a high ranking in the search engines. During your website construction you have already been using a keyword research tool and a SEO Tool and spending the midnight hours mulling over the chosen keyword phrases your research has indicated you should be targeting on your pages and using in your URL. Your whole site from headings to meta-tags, to meta-descriptions and anchor text are all optimized taking account of semantically related words, keyword density and the long tail.
Next you begin your back link campaign spending hours trying to get quality back links to your site. Social bookmarking takes over your life for days on end, you post on relevant blogs and all relevant forums, you set up your own blog, submit articles to article directories and then submit your entire site to SEO friendly website directories.
Yet more analysis follows, as you now study your competitors’ websites. You investigate what keywords they are targeting and study the links that they have developed and you develop strategies to be better than they are. Slowly but surely your site climbs the rankings. You constantly update your site adding quality content and before you know it your site is fast approaching the first page. A steady trickle of traffic flows on a daily basis. At this rate you should soon be top of the rankings and then… the sky’s the limit!
Unfortunately it doesn’t usually quite work like this. Yes it is true that if you have picked some long tail keywords to target you may be able to get somewhere near the top of the rankings or indeed even to the number one spot. In most instances however the traffic won’t be great and you would need to get each page of your website targeting a different long tail phrase and getting to the top of the rankings for that phrase each time for the total traffic to be lucrative. It’s certainly possible but does require a lot more graft.
For very popular keyword phrases it proves incredibly difficult to dislodge the top sites from their positions, even though in theory you may know that you have better back links and better content. Without the top positions the mass traffic will never be yours. It is just so frustrating as you probably know. I certainly do. So you go away and you research again and you analyze again and you spend days poring over the detail and you
work and you work and you know what, it makes not one jot of difference. You just cannot crack the top spots. Why not? How many times have I asked this of myself?
Now perhaps your tactics aren’t quite right. Perhaps the phrases you are targeting are the wrong ones or perhaps you’re back links are not quality back links. Do you have the quality of content on your site that you think you do? Yes, yes, yes, I hear you say. So what is going on? Well it could be something as simple as the age of your domain.
Google places a lot of trust in back links, especially quality back links to your site, but it also places significant trust in sites which have been around for a significant period of time. This is especially true if they are frequently updated. In many cases the top ranked sites are trusted sites as far as Google is concerned because they have an authority status due to their back links, but also due to the length of time they have been operating. If your site is an equal to a competitor’s site in terms of content and back links, but it is a far newer domain, there will be little chance of you dislodging your competitor from the top slot. The site that has been there for five years serving the web community carries a lot of trust with Google.
To dislodge these sites requires tremendous effort to create quality back links and sometimes you may never achieve it. It can be done however, you just need to be aware of what is going on and keep persevering. Some internet marketers have resorted to buying old domains in an attempt to overcome this challenge in building the website around the domain. I’m not entirely sure how Google reacts to this, especially if you are adding new content on a continual basis. Does the domain itself carry an inherent trust because of its age or is it the content that carried the trust from the old website?
Either way it’s worth exploring as one of the tactics along with keyword analysis and building back links that you could adopt in an attempt to get higher rankings and hence higher rates of traffic.
How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?
How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)
Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.
Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.
Yes, you should do some level of SEO.
…but how much is too much?
Too much? Good question.
You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.
* Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO
Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:
(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.
(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.
(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.
(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.
(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.
(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.
* Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?
It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:
(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;
(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;
(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;
(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)
(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).
* Don’t Forget Links
Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:
(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.
(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.
(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.
(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.
(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.
* Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.
And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.
* No Matter What You Do…
You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.
The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.
Optimize Your Images On Search Engines
Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.
For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.
But one relatively easy way to drive relevant traffic to your website without too much effort is to optimize your images for search engines. Think of it as a tiny webpage within the website structure. It is recommended for you to include an anchor text, descriptive tagging, and URL structure to maximize results.
* Search for the Right Image
Successful bloggers, writers, and website owners know the value of using the right image for their text content. It adds another dimension to articles and enables readers to appreciate their webpage even more. However, many fail to use images for search engine optimization purposes. It is in fact a good way to drive backlinks and visitors. There’s no need to upload your own pictures. A lot of stock photos are available from free from sites like Flickr and iStockPhoto among others. It is also a good idea to use Google Search to find good photos. Make sure that you are not violating any copyright if you do this (look for Creative Commons licensing).
* Make Proper Use of Keywords
Keywords are an integral part of any search engine optimization effort. It is used to optimize all kinds of digital assets from videos to podcasts. You will really benefit if you use keywords wisely for your images. Rename the image because having “012345RR.jpg” as the file name isn’t going to help. It is a very simple step and can go a long way in helping your website rank better.
* Use Descriptive Text
It is important to use descriptive tags, file names, and alt text for your images. This is because search engines cannot read images and would use its surrounding text as reference. Make use of this feature by adding keywords on the descriptive text, anchor text, and any other tags (related to the image). Bear in mind that anchor text is one of the most important elements to optimize your image effectively so take advantage of it.
As you can see, image SEO is a straight-forward process that provides tenfold benefit from your efforts. Follow the guidelines outlined above and you’ll see your more traffic coming in from image search soon.
Your Website’s Financial Success Will Rely On Search Engine Optimization!
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Your Website’s Financial Success Will Rely On Search Engine Optimization!
One of the difficulties that internet business proprietors encounter is obtaining enough traffic and revenues for their products and services. The financial success of a site is driven by the amount of targeted traffic that it gets, and the chief source of traffic nowadays is top search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo!. Search engine optimization can either offer you an increased rating if done properly or make your online business fail if done erroneously.
It is estimated that around 85%-90% of web surfers go to websites via search engines. Moreover, most folks would click on the websites which are included in the very first page of search engines’ listings. If you wish to get even more targeted traffic, sales and recognition, your target should be to secure an improved page rating for your site and get it to be included as among the leading results for numerous web queries. Having a website without audience is pointless, so it’s vital that you compel individuals to go to your website and see what you are selling them. A lot of search engine optimization methods will help you realize this goal.
There are a few basic search engine optimization aspects that you ought to keep in mind when you try to make search engines notice your site. Several website owners feel that the only thing they have to undertake is send their URL to many search engines, then sit back and expect their traffic to improve. While search engine submission could help you get an improved ranking and also put you on page 1 of search engines’ results, it must be supported by other SEO tactics.
The search engine optimization process is as follows: after submitting your web address to search engines or allowing them to come across it by themselves, search engines would dispatch crawlers that will index and examine your website. All your web pages are going to be ranked through complex algorithms and a sophisticated combination of factors. These bots’ purpose is to find the most appropriate pages that they can offer their searchers for specific subjects, so they must ensure that every single link they include in search engines’ listings actually possesses the needed information or details that accurately fit the users’ keywords. Search engines will then rate your website based on how valuable they determine it to be.
The highest target for your web-based business and website is to have it on page 1, not page 10 or 20. Thus, generating applicable keyword phrases, accurate labels and also related content is truly important for your success! Your keywords must be painstakingly planned and also researched. It’s incredibly crucial to find out what words or phrases visitors often enter to look for certain products and services. In many instances, it’s best to stick to the basics instead of attempting to be too creative with your keyword phrases. To illustrate, if you sell pet products, refrain from using words like canine because this is not the first word that folks use when looking for a dog collar.
Another good SEO technique would be to utilize a web address that reflects your products and services rather than using a business name, except if your brand is already established. Using the previous example, the phrase ‘dog collars’ ought to be a part of your web address if that is the product that you’re marketing. Aside from that, you should have corresponding or related words in your webpage titles as well as throughout your site. Developing titles and copy that do not correspond with each other will confuse your customers and you wouldn’t secure the positioning that you want.
In addition, your page titles should be thoughtfully made in order to mirror the material that appears on your site, and your material has to be unique, helpful as well as enjoyable. Your website cannot look like a twin of other websites; you want to make your own web presence and be
known as an expert in your selected niche.
It is tough to trick contemporary search engines, so don’t even bother having a go at it! Keyword stuffing, which calls for placing popular search phrases on websites that are totally unconnected to those keyword phrases, is a technique employed by Internet business owners who desire great outcomes without undertaking search engine optimization correctly. This specific strategy will lower your page rank or even get you banned from search engines’ listings permanently! Search engine optimization ought to be done correctly for it to make your internet business and website successful.
Honing The Art Form of SEO
In the world of SEO there seems to be an article on everything from “how to get more backlinks” to “getting that #1 ranking on Google.” The more you read up on SEO tactics, the more you realize many people seem to give the same advice: write great content, submit it to social bookmarking sites, and be consistent.
Although all of these are great points, the one thing missing from many of these articles is that it isn’t that simple. You can write a great article, get it up and have it go viral-but you need to focus on the ART form that is SEO as well. Google is always changing the game for SEO experts, and you have to know how to go with the flow.
The fact is no one knows for sure what Google is looking for. We can guess, run case studies and be pretty sure on many things, but giving the same advice over and over again isn’t going to get any of us anywhere. So what else can we do?
* Build Relationships
We hear this a lot in the social media world. But the more relationships you build with site owners, bloggers and reporters the more likely you can get your articles out to the right audience. Creating a funny infograph or article is great, and you could get a lot of link juice from it, but what about the next week, month, or year? The more relationships you build the more likely you can get your great content out to the right
audience.
* Reach Out To Other Writers
Obviously your company needs to come up with great content-for both your site as well as others. But another way to get back links is to have other people write about your business. One of the reasons you create content is so people will link back to it-so start reaching out to writers and give them information they will want to write about.
Press releases are one great way to do that, but remember reporters get tons of press releases and phone calls from PR pros every day. This is where you need to get creative and figure out a reason why someone would want to write about your company.
* Fresh Ideas
Having a great plan is, well, great, but just as Google is consistently changing, so should your plan. What works great one day could work against you on another day. This is why you need to consistently think of new ideas to get backlinks, viral content etc. This is much easier said than done however. If it was easy we would all have great PageRank, and not need to read up on SEO every day.
Mind mapping tools and weekly meeting to brainstorm are a great idea. One idea could morph into many and the next thing you know, you could have the next few months of content ideas in just a few meetings.
* Trial and Error
SEO is also a game of trial and error. You won’t know what works until you try it. Don’t be afraid to take chances and see if your theory is right. Good or bad, it is a learning experience. The tools are out there, and writing great content and submitting to social bookmarking sties can work-but there are other ways to get exposure. It just takes some creativity and hard work.
Just like with other art forms, sometimes you have to create a mess before you can start creating masterpieces. This isn’t to say you need to bomb your SEO efforts completely and lose revenue, it just means you can stumble a little on new efforts while you’re hitting home runs with your “tried and true” efforts.
Search Engine Optimization: Help Your Business Grow
When someone has a question, many times these days the first thing they turn to for an answer is the Internet. Just about anything and everything can be found online. From the most basic answer to the simplest question to in depth research about complex topics — it’s all available on the Internet.
As a business owner, the Internet can be a valuable tool for you to utilize in your marketing efforts. You need to make sure that when people type in a search phrase related to your business that your website comes up on the results pages. The process of search engine optimization (SEO) enhances your website to make it more appealing to the search engine spiders that crawl your site and when done properly, improves your website as a whole.
* SEO as a Business Strategy
The top three search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo so these are the sites that you should target in your SEO efforts. Since Google is undoubtedly the leader in the search engine industry, they set the standards and they are the site to target with your SEO efforts.
If your business is not optimized for the search engines and your competition’s website is then they will rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERP) and thus people will more likely click through to their site and do business with them. The higher you rank on Google and the other search engines, the more traffic your site will receive and if you have a good website, the more conversions you will make and your profits will increase.
* Editing Your Website For SEO Purposes
In order to properly optimize your website for the search engines, you will need to perform some basic tasks.
First, you need to make sure you pick around 10-15 keywords that you should use as the meta tags for your website and focus on 3-5 as your main keywords. Meta tags consist of the title of the page, the description of the page and the keywords of the page.
Search engines use the meta description tag as the description of your website in the SERPs. The keywords are used as search terms or phrases so that when someone searches for those terms, your website appears as a result.
You want your site to be as friendly to the search engines as possible in order to rank higher for your targeted keywords. You want to repeat your keywords but not too much. You need to keep the keyword density to no more than 1 keyword per 100 words of text.
Being at the top of the results pages for targeted keywords is an extremely important part of business in today’s world. Making your website both user-friendly and search engine friendly by performing website editing tasks like regular content updates and the use of meta tags.
SEO Company Stole my traffic!
Believe it or not, the article is true. This is what happened to a friend of mine. I am not at liberty to name the SEO Company, especially since the investigation is still ongoing, but this is what happened.
A couple months ago, my friend hired an expensive SEO company (charged $2500) to reoptimize his website to get maximum exposure for the search engines.
After he paid the fee, he soon learned that they contracted out the job overseas to a bunch of random people who asked for his website hosting username and ftp password and told him that it should be ready in a few days.
They made some changes to his website. He visually saw many of them but not all of them. They said wait 3 months before making any other changes and let our SEO work do the job.
He waited, and his traffic started dropping. He contacted them, and they told him that it was completely normal while his website was being reindexed by Google, and to be patient.
His orders began to suffer, his visits were decreasing, he barely lasted the 3 months. When he tried to contact them again, they had disappeared.
He hired someone else to go in and take a look at his website to figure out what had gone wrong.. This is what they had done..
In his product catalog, some of the product names had a special hidden javascript next to them. When someone would go to the main website and click everything, the website would perform normally…
However, if they came through a google referer in the http request, the javascript would activate and send his visitor to a competitor / spammy website who was selling the same products.
The only way he could have seen this, is if he visited his website like a normal visitor would who showed up from Google. Instead, he manually typed in his website address and therefore the javascript wouldn’t activate.
So here is a guy, who pays $2500 to an SEO company to help increase his traffic, and instead, all they ended up doing was stealing his money, and his traffic.
This is something that everyone needs to be careful about. Don’t Ever trust an SEO company unless you have investigated Them first. Don’t just hand over your FTP username and password to someone, and say “go ahead, and do what needs to be done”
…in this case what needed to be done was to hijack his website, steal a nice sum of cash, and run off in the middle of the night. His payment was cashed overseas, and the free mail accounts they had were no longer operational.
A real nice scam. Plus you have to wonder how much they made off his free traffic they stole over that 3 month period. How much other website hosting traffic did they steal from other websites caught in their SEO scam?
We’re all so desperate to get to the top rankings of the search engines, sometimes, we lose our business sense, and just hand money over to the first person who promises what we want to hear.
When is an SEO agency NOT an SEO agency?
Let’s face it, almost all SEO agencies, like most online service providers, will outsource some aspects of their work. This is nothing new. In fact, even before the advent of the internet, businesses would traditionally outsource certain tasks – Hence the plethora of ‘temping’ agencies.
Commonly outsourced tasks were things like telesales, recruitment, even accounting and auditing to some extent. But with the massive growth of online business, outsourcing has grown, and indeed actually changed in its very nature.
In the online business world, the term outsourcing has almost become synonymous with paying for workers that actually live in other countries, whereas previously the outsource workers would be the same country as the employer, if not the same city!
What about the question we started with? When is an SEO agency NOT an SEO agency?
The answer to this is not simple, and the question is really only meant to provoke thought. My own personal feeling is that an SEO agency is not really an SEO agency when it outsources all the work except the customer facing aspect.
What I mean by this is that some SEO ‘agencies’ merely employ UK based office staff to do the selling and silver tongue sales pitches, then farm out the actual work to cheap overseas labour. The better agencies may have their own database of workers they use on a regular basis, and trust – whereas others may simply use freelancer type websites to ‘pick up’ staff.
Whilst this may not at first seem like much of an issue, it is not exactly honest!. The kind of setup mentioned above, to my mind, is NOT an SEO agency, more of a sales agency that then passes the work on to others.
I guess you could argue that they are more than a sales agency; after all, perhaps they plan a campaign prior to the work being handed out to freelancers, and pop a quick report together once it’s been done… Alright, let’s call them an admin agency 
Is it wrong for SEO agencies to outsource at all?
Again, this is down to a matter of opinion. I think its fine for any company, whatever its industry, to outsource some of its workload. At kingpin-seo we sometimes outsource bits and pieces – who doesn’t! But perhaps the problem arises when the bulk of the workload is outsourced, without the knowledge of the SEO agencies clients.
The client is in the belief that their work is being carried out by UK workers, whereas unbeknownst to them, someone half way round the world is carrying out the actual work, and for a tiny fraction of the amount the client is paying the agency.
What is it good to outsource, and what shouldn’t be outsourced
Again, this is my own opinion – but it is founded on background knowledge of what our own clients are happy with.
We feel it is okay to outsource small amounts of manual, repetitive work, things like gathering initial, basic info on competitors (although we prefer to carry out in depth reports in house!) , and some elements of promotion (such as submitting articles, that are of course, written in house)
A basic rule of thumb is that if the client would not be comfortable with something being outsourced, then it shouldn’t be outsourced! – Simply!
Another little rule of thumb is that if something requires or involves decision making that could have some bearing or impact upon the SEO campaign on the whole, it shouldn’t be outsourced.
How do I find a decent SEO Agency, that isn’t simply an ‘Outsource/Admin Agency?
Simple! – Just ask!. Seriously, call or email the agency, and ask them straight if they outsource, and to what extent they outsource.
If they say they don’t outsource anything at all, either they are lying, or they don’t fully understand the question!
If they say they do outsource, but are fully transparent about what processes and work practices they outsource – that’s a good start. We can define in a single sentence our stance on outsourcing, and we suggest you ask any potential SEO agency to do the same…
“We never outsource any decision making, creative production or administrative workload, everything is planned in house, and the vast majority of our work is carried out in house… any outsourcing we do is isolated to repetitive techniques such as submitting a previously written high quality piece of content to directories & websites”
If an agency is not willing to disclose to what extent they outsource, then I would just walk away. At the end of the day, it is YOUR money being used for this service, and just like a service offered offline, you are entitled to know where it is going!
Resource Section – About Kingpin-seo
Kingpin-seo is a client focused, ethical SEO agency that benefits from Google news approval. Kingpin provides cutting edge ethical link building services and transparent SEO techniques for its SEO clients.
Organic SEO or PPC advertising?
Sadly enough, there are still many online business entrepreneurs who take it for granted that they can still use the old marketing techniques in order to overtake their competitors. Little do they realize that those old basic techniques such as including a simple “click here” link, simply doesn’t cut it anymore. If for example you own an online business which is currently in dire need of some changes, then you may need to consider taking advantage of online marketing techniques which include the likes of search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already heard about these techniques from some of the world’s best internet marketers, but the truth is, you might be reluctant to begin integrating them into your existing business. However, there’s nothing to be gained by simply keeping these strategies on hold, so here are a few tips on how to go about using search engine optimisation (SEO) and PPC advertising.
Search Engine Optimisation
Organic search engine optimisation is essentially an online marketing strategy which is dependent on having momentum and some long term commitment. By utilising SEO, you’ll be taking a step in the right direction in terms of accumulating information regarding link building campaigns, relationship building with other webmasters, and even some respectable and desirable publications. Of course, in order to be in full control, you need to set certain milestones so that you’ll be able to monitor your progress as you proceed.
For example, you need to ask yourself what it is exactly that you wish to accomplish. You also need to pay attention to your current image and to the level of optimisation regarding your website.
An experienced SEO specialist will be able to help you determine which the best keywords to use are, and of course they’ll be able to help you integrate those keywords into your meta tags so that you’re able to restructure your marketing strategies in order to overcome any negative fallout resulting from your previous attempts. Over and above SEO, you could of course also take advantage of other techniques, such as paid one way links and link exchanges for example, providing you do so with other reputable websites. But don’t forget – once you start organic SEO, you need to continue with it in order to maintain the momentum or else your diligently attained rankings will go down.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
PPC advertising places much emphasis on keyword usage and the placement of adverts which are relevant to a specific website. In fact, it’s often said that this form of advertising has revolutionised the world of online advertising, in that it can provide small businesses with the same amount of leverage as what the big businesses have. Providing it’s done correctly, PPC advertising can certainly help you stand out from the crowd. If you’re currently considering a PPC campaign then you should also pay attention to the following three questions:
What do I have to offer?
Why will customers want to click on my advert?
How can I hook them with just ten words?
At this point, the most important thing for you to do is to integrate an ideal title and ten words which tell potential customers what your business is all about. The most difficult aspect of PPC advertising is that you will be in close proximity to your competitors, both in search engine results and in sponsored positions. Remember, if someone types in a search relevant to the type of website you own, your advert will appear at the top of the page or on the right hand side, and it’s vital that your advertisement must be powerful enough in order to trigger an immediate response.
Essentially, in order to get the best results you should ideally consider using SEO and PPC advertising simultaneously, rather than just opting for one of them.
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, October 4, 2010
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
Every new technology adopted widely by society brings about a number of new opportunities. The movable type printing press created affordable print information, the telephone and radio created the concept of instantaneous communication over great distances. Today, the Internet has unified both of these concepts into the information explosion that is the digital age.
Consider this article alone – a mere forty years ago printing even fifty copies of each page would cost either a chunk of change or at least a suspicious look from the boss as you hovered over the office copier. Now the information can be sent to thousands of people within the time it takes to brew a good cup of tea.
Of course with every technology comes a system to make the best marketing use of that advancement. The radio gave rise to the modern commercial advertisement, which was refined by the television and still persists on the Web. The telephone gave us telemarketers and the first concept of communication networking. For making the most of the Internet, the strategy of the day is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What is SEO, again?
In short, SEO is the presentation of a webpage in such a way that it consistently ranks highly in particular search engine results. While fads and sensations can quickly boom online from “word of mouth,” they don’t produce the same reliable success as a balanced, systematic approach.
Very few businesses, after all, want one rush of attention that leads to a website crash, followed by an equally quick slide into the various forgotten graveyards of the web. Therefore, SEO uses a combination of elements to make the site increasingly relevant to the various searches that Internet users perform, to bring it up again and again among the best results.
Key SEO Strategies
1. Set goals.
Identify what you want your SEO campaign to accomplish. While any SEO-conscious writing and page design can contribute to a site’s search engine rankings, an unfocused effort will simply waste time and money. After all, a business promoting athletic clothing and footwear may not benefit too much from showing up in searches for evening wear. Is your goal simply to increase your site’s visitor traffic? Do you want to generate more sales of a product? Is it part of an effort to promote your digital brand? Each of these goals benefits from different aspects of SEO technique.
2. Link up.
Link building is one of the cornerstones of any SEO effort. Many search engines are spider-based, meaning they use automated processes to collect and categorize information on various websites. When a large number of websites provide links back to your business, or when a particularly high-traffic site does so, the spiders take notice of it and increase the relevance of that link in searches related to those sites.
3. Get the keys.
Keyword writing is consistently stressed as a requirement when websites look for content writers. Keywords are just that, words and phrases chosen for their popularity and relevance to key searches.
There are dozens of theories about keyword writing. In the earlier days of SEO writing, it wasn’t uncommon to see pages that were nothing but long strings of repeated variations on a few keywords. This has evolved into more organic writing that fits in keywords with the article as a whole.
Whichever strategy is chosen, care must be taken to avoid the temptation to abuse keyword searches. Yes, a proper keyword density will bring up your search rankings over time. However, Google can and does ban pages from its index when they determine it to be a keyword-abusing effort. So consider your keyword choices carefully, and seamlessly integrate them into your entire strategy.
4. Be on the right page.
One aspect occasionally neglected in SEO is the architecture and design of the webpage itself. Search engines and their ranking systems (be they spider or human based) are growing more sophisticated all the time, and look at many different factors in their decisions. A site that buries its keyword-rich articles on interior pages behind dozens of subsidiary links will not perform as well as one with strategic keyword-oriented material right on the front page. Have an SEO-conscious designer look over your page, as well as your articles.
Remember that every business is a multi-faceted whole. Many failures occur when people attempt to compartmentalize too much. You can’t consider SEO as some sort of ‘event’ that you do every so often, just as a business can’t put off routine maintenance of their equipment and expect it to function properly. Integrate your efforts into the entire process, and give them the same focus as any other effort in the business, and they will return their investment much more reliably, quickly, and ideally.
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performace
A PDF file can be in the form of an eBook, technical document or a brochure. Most of the search engines can read the content and index the PDF files. Currently, there are a number of well optimized PDF files which rank well and are a source of traffic for their website. Listed below are some tips for optimizing PDFs:
1. Use a Text Based PDF Creator:
There are a lot free tools available online with Adobe Acrobat being the best text based PDF creator. If a PDF document is created in an image based program, the search engines will completely ignore it. If the PDF is created using a text based creator like Adobe acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.
2. Update the Document Title:
The title of the PDF file is as important as the title tag of a web page. The PDF title property tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the search engine result pages. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.
3. Complete the document properties:
A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.
4. Link to the PDF File from the Homepage:
The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF file if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the PDF file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.
5. Optimize the content in the PDF File:
The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in optimization of PDF files. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing their font size and utilizing the bold and italics features of the PDF files. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.
6. Place Links in the PDF File:
When a visitor opens a PDF file ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF file can be considered as a backlink by the search engine.
A PDF file is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.
SEO Article Writing: Using Keywords in Article Headlines
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, September 27, 2010
SEO Article Writing: Using Keywords in Article Headlines
So, you have your list of keywords and you’re wondering how to incorporate them into your article titles. You’re wondering if it’s possible to do SEO article writing that also makes sense to humans.
If you go overboard with your key phrases, then your article has a good chance of being declined by publishers right off the bat.
How can you effectively use keywords in your article titles?
Is it possible to please search engines, publishers, and human readers?
Yes! This article spotlights a few techniques you can implement to effectively and correctly use your keywords in your article titles.
First, let’s lay the ground rule:
*Your title must serve your reader, first and foremost. The purpose of your title is to tell the reader what your article is about. A title is a great place to use your keywords, but the title must still make sense, be grammatically correct with proper spelling, and accurately portray the subject matter of the article.
Now, on to the tips:
- Your title must reflect what your article is about. Most of the time this decline reason comes up when a person writes an article and then tries to include their keywords in the title as an afterthought, when the article is not really about the keywords. For example: If your article title is “10 Heart Healthy Soups”, then your article must talk about 10 heart healthy soups. Whatever is promised in the title must be delivered in the article.
- Resist the urge to use a minimalist keyword-only title. If you’re extremely focused on your keywords and the impact they can have on your search engine ranking, you might wonder, “Why not just make a title that is totally keyword focused?”
For example: Hiking Boots
What is wrong with that?
Well first of all, this title is not very specific, nor does it draw a reader in. If you’re using a two word key phrase, most likely your phrase is extremely general and not specific enough to make a good title.
Your title should specifically indicate what your article is about, and if your article is about a specific aspect of “hiking boots”, then the title should reflect that. For example: “Hiking Boots: Top 5 Best Performers”
If you’re using long tail keyword phrases (3-5 words long), then the title almost writes itself sometimes. For example “How To Eat Healthy” may be your long tail key phrase, which also works well as a title.
But many long tail key phrases need extra words added to them in order to make sense. For example, the phrase “Used Car Values” is pretty general, and the article is likely about a more specific topic, such as “Used Car Values: How To Negotiate The Best Price For A Used Car”
3 – This almost goes without saying, but unfortunately I see this sometimes: Your title should not be a list of keywords.
What would you think if you saw a “title” that looked like this:
Used Car Pricing, Used Car Values, Used Car Deals
This type of title does not make sense, is not helpful to the reader, and was obviously an attempt to get as many keywords in the title as possible. Most publishers would immediately decline an article with a title like that.
The main idea is to write for your human readers first by creating a helpful and specific title that reflects what your article is about. You may use your keywords in the title if they sound natural and make sense.
Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics.
In this modern age, it is increasingly important to make sure your websites are optimized for the major search engines through the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. The current top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Let’s face it though; Google is the major player and they set the standards when it comes to the Internet search industry.
There are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them. You just need to make sure you are conducting these practices properly. Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.
There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you are trying to rank for. The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends. Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.
Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches. These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing. However, there are numerous people whose jobs consist of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.
In order to increase your web page’s rank in the search engine results, take the following advice into consideration:
Keywords:
- Remember that content will always be king. Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors – search engines love this.
- Fill your content with your target keywords but don’t overdo it by stuffing keywords into your pages. You need to keep your keyword density to no more than one anchor text keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content. If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher’s search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results pages.
- Be specific with your keywords. If you are selling “Men’s Nike Air Jordans” target that phrase not “Michael Jordan shoes.”
- When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. What would you search (WWYS)?
Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords):
- The title tag is the description of the current page you are on that appears on the top bar of your web browser. For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.
- The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research. Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using then rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.
- The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic. Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords. This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.
- For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.
Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:
- It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines. Simply visit the websites of the major search engines and fill out the corresponding submission forms.
- You should also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory. It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.
- Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission. It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website and get indexed.
Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:
- The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating. However, this does not mean you should practice “link farming” or paying for links. This is considered a negative practice and can actually have a negative impact on your results rating and can even get you banned from the search engines.
- The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.
- Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic. Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page. Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage, so both sides win! You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.
- Link building is a time-consuming process that can take long periods of time to see real results, so again – be patient!
By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!
SEO: How To Research For Free
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.
You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
Google Instant Means The End Of SEO
Initially, Google’s new Instant Search system could mean a major change in how web surfers look for information online. Instead of typing a search query into Google and then hitting return, and waiting for a list of results, Googlers now see a dynamic list of results as they type. Google considers this a positive step forward in the development of searching. Google claims this new style of response will save between two and five seconds per search query. That potentially means 11 hours are saved every second. but does anyone other than Google really care?
The internet marketing community, however, will never be very enthusiastic about Google Instant. SEO consultants, who try to get sites listed at the top of Google’s organic search rankings, and SEMs, who battle for their clients’ sites to be placed near the top of Google’s Adwords Sponsored Listings, have been blogging and tweeting as if Armageddon is here.
The SEO community is paranoid at the very best of times, and perhaps with good cause as: a small change in the Google algorithm can determine the future of many websites. In this instance, however, the reaction is not necessary, essentially the results are the same, the sole change is you can see potential results of each word as you type it in, so if you are typing in ‘Italian restaurant’ you will observe everything Italian prior to getting to the restaurant results and then you will have to include your location unless you are very flexible about your travel arrangements, so in fact long tail key phrases are far from dead.
And this time round the latest Google scare is ‘much a do about nothing’ or will it be? There isn’t any denying that Google’s original innovation in search transformed how the Internet worked and made the business of finding stuff considerably quicker and easier. It also created an enormous market – one Google still dominates – that allowed companies to market us things depending on whatever we had entered in that box and all was well, for a while.
But something happened. Social networking, social media, whatever you want to refer to it as… suddenly, content was coming right at us, without us even looking for it. We couldn’t escape it. Several hyperactive egotists in each community began curating content and spewing it out to their friends. People were sharing photos, stories and links so we found that we were spending less and less time foraging around for things and increasingly more time sitting back and allowing it to wash over us.
Fast forward to 2010, and we’re being assaulted by more stuff than we could possibly consume. Facebook, Twitter, and email are shoveling pictures and video down our throats more and more quickly. Feedback loops enabled by sharing and retweeting functions imply that each of us has now changed into an over-sharer as well as an over-consumer. If you are not confused and over loaded with information, you soon will be.
Eleven Step Guide to Understanding SEO – Part 2
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Eleven Step Guide to Understanding SEO – Part 2
One piece of ‘new media jargon’ that has got the vast
majority of business leaders confused is SEO (search engine
optimization). Too many people have been charged too much
for either inappropriate or ineffective SEO services, often
because the supplier does not really understand it either.
This two part article is for people who are not experienced
or very knowledgeable when it comes to SEO – defining what
it is and what it can do.
The introduction and first five steps to SEO heaven
discussed how to get a website ready for an SEO campaign.
In part two (steps 6 to 11), we’ll explore the continuous
and competitive process of earning a high search engine
ranking for a SEO prepared website.
Step 6 to SEO Heaven – Web Analytics
As with any marketing, but particularly for online
marketing, where the tools and results are so effective, it
is essential to measure and track results. Market behaviour
is very predictable. Accordingly, the effectiveness of each
part of your campaign can be compared and optimized. The
options for web analytics vary from free services to very
expensive and customizable packages.
Whichever you choose, don’t put it off. Measure your results
from day one and use them to improve your site and your
marketing campaigns. That old statement ‘I know half my
advertising does not work, if I only knew which half was not
working I’d stop spending it’ is not true on the internet.
You can and must know.
Step 7 to SEO Heaven – Content Building
Part of being ‘the best and most relevant’ result is having
the freshest content, and the search engines look for that
by regular visits to your site and reviewing your site’s
progress. They use a formula, not usually a human being,
unless they detect potential fraud.
Actually, good SEO means a website is never done, and the
fact that it has to change and grow over time gives your
customers a better experience. Search engines reward a
‘natural process’ that adjusts to changes in the market
and your normal business growth.
Providing good quality content that is related to what you
do, but not necessarily aimed at selling something directly,
is a powerful, perhaps the the best, opportunity to increase
the traffic to your website and the exposure of your
business. Most people do not link to pages that only serve
the purpose of making a sale.
This leads to the next step in this 11 step process of
successful search engine optimization for your website.
Step 8 to SEO Heaven – Link Building
The internet works through links, it would not be a “net”
without links. A collection of independent pages that are
not connected to each other cannot be found and, for the
most part, that defeats their purpose. People seeing and
clicking on links to your site make effective inbound links
that search engines like to reward with a higher ranking for
your website. They are also vital for SEO.
Inbound links play an important role in virtually every
search engine when it comes to ranking pages in their search
results. In the normal course of business links are added,
and sometimes removed, all the time. This never ending
organic process is monitored and measured by the search
engines as an indicator of importance and relevance – so it
is advisable to be pro-active in acquiring good inbound
links. There are plenty of sites out there that should link
to you, but don’t know you and your content. Help them to
find your content and encourage linking to it.
Step 9 to SEO Heaven – Engagement, Trust and
Community Building
Like it or not social media is a reality whole sections of
society participate in for hours daily and is a fundamental
indicator of relevance and popularity. Don’t allow your
website to exist in an isolated bubble. Talk to people and
allow them to respond and to interact with you.
People will talk about you with or without your permission.
Much better to seize the initiative and become part of the
discussion. Use it to build trust and deeper relationships
with your customers or potential customers. Use it like
research. Listen to what they say and learn about their
wants and their needs. Listen and take note of comments,
especially criticisms, and use them to improve. You can save
the money you might have spent on focus groups and get
feedback free of charge on the internet.
In relation to SEO, social media provides a huge opportunity
to expand your link building. For your business it increases
your brand exposure for a fraction of the cost of traditional,
more intrusive advertising campaigns that are usually less
effective.
Step 10 to SEO Heaven – Ranking and Traffic Analysis
When you begin, or if you have already started, check where
you are today to be able to track and compare with data in
the future. Look for trends and evaluate the progress
towards your goals. You know those goals which we set in the
first paragraph before we began the campaign. The ones you
should specify before you engage in any type of marketing
campaign. Those goals were measurable I hope? If you view
improving your SEO ranking as a measure of your business
success rather than an essential step to achieving business
success, you will maintain a high SEO ranking for the long
term. Why, because the high traffic that comes with it will
drive your business.
Does the change in ranking yield the traffic you expected?
Does this traffic actually convert? Which leads us neatly
to step 11 of SEO heaven.
Step 11 to SEO Heaven – Conversion Analysis
All of this effort matters not one jot unless you make your
profit number (or the equivalent in not for profit
organizations). It all comes down to one critical factor -
what is your bottom line? Did you make profit or did you
lose money. Web Analytics is part of the process of making
this determination. Focus on the things that work and help
your bottom line and stop doing the things that don’t.
Work on the details to increase visitor conversion to sales.
This requires testing. Don’t try anything upfront without
testing it first. The things that work for others might not
work for you and the same is true the other way around.
Many with experience in the SEO game will tell you that
there is another, more important step that would make this
article 12 steps to SEO heaven. That step is to be sure
only to work with people who can really explain SEO in plain
English. To be blunt, small, independent and one-man-band
web designers rarely get SEO fully and their usually well
meaning efforts end up costing you more than they deliver.
They do get part of the story, but they fail you by wasting
both your money and your time.
Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven – Part 1
Are you fed up with feeling baffled by search engine
optimization (SEO) because of jargon and poor practitioners? Do
you feel you have been charged too much for less than you were
promised? This two part article sets out to explain the process
and put you back in control.
If you have focused objectives and a clear online strategy then
SEO will almost always be a good cost effective addition to the
marketing tool set. The first thing to understand is that search
engine businesses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, have customers
to satisfy too. Their customers are searching and they expect to
see the ‘best and most relevant’ search results. I expect like
me, you get frustrated if your searches bring irrelevant results
first. No surprise then, that the methods used by the search
engine operators are designed to deliver customer satisfaction.
They work hard to eliminate bogus SEO services that aim to
cheat.
It is possible for you to make your website ‘the best and most
relevant’ for certain searches and to convince the search
engine operator you are just that too. That is SEO. Each of my
11 steps to SEO heaven is necessary. I assume that you will be
committed to a long term marketing strategy, and to measuring
results with a view to adjusting your activity. The steps
include those of preparation as well of those of continuous
repeated activities. The early preparatory steps are perhaps the
most important as errors here will frustrate the effectiveness
of the later ones.
Armed with our clear objectives and online strategy:
Step 1 to SEO Heaven – Keyword Research
A vital first step that should not be undertaken lightly. While
experienced pay-per-click advertisers will know that you can
easily test and change hundreds of keywords in paid search
campaigns, they should understand this not possible for organic
search optimization. It is normally advisable to concentrate on
one to five key phrases for the whole site around a core theme.
Then, for individual pages only one to three phrases. For large
sites with hundreds of pages it is hard to optimize every single
page. The effort and cost of SEO to the full extent produces
diminishing returns.
Step 2 to SEO Heaven – Competitive Intelligence
SEO is competitive. There is only one front page and only one
top slot so it is important to know your competition and perform
better. What are they doing? Where do they rank and for which
keywords? Who is linking to their website and why? The less
competitive your industry is online the easier it is for you to
outperform your competition. This is an important determining
factor in the cost and resources necessary to achieve your
desired SEO outcome.
Step 3 to SEO Heaven – Web Design and Development
Like trying to cable an old building for modern communications
or boosting performance of an obsolete machine, fixing a bad
website design is much tougher than building properly from
scratch. When you create a new website, make sure to consider
search engine friendly design and architecture before and during
the actual development of the website. Almost all template-based
websites are tough to re-engineer for SEO. A good design from
the start will save you a lot of time and money. In most cases
it will put you ahead of a considerable number of your
competitors. In most cases a high performing design for SEO is
also a user friendly design, but occasionally compromise is
necesary.
Step 4 to SEO Heaven – Get Your First Inbound Links
There is no need to pay to submit your website to any search
engine. Just as soon as you create inbound links from other
websites to yours the search engines will find your website.
There are plenty of scam products and services. Avoid them. They
are a waste of your money. No one can guarantee you a number 1
ranking. It must be earned and maintained by being the best and
most relevant.
There are some web directories that are recognized by search
engines and gaining a trade listing there will be a helpful
kick-start to your SEO campaign. Then ask your customers and
suppliers to place a link to your website from theirs. Most will
be pleased for the favor to be returned.
Step 5 to SEO Heaven – Sitemaps
The larger search engines allow webmasters to submit a sitemap
to them via a webmaster console. The search engines also provide
reports and other useful information, such as technical problems
with your websites you might not be aware of via their console.
Even if you decide against the submission of a site map to the
search engines, it is advisable to create an account and
register your website with them, just for the reports and
statistics they provide free of charge and which are invaluable
for your internet marketing efforts.
After completion of the first 5 steps, schedule them for
occasional review. The remaining tasks require regular and
repetitive effort. In Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven (steps 6 to
eleven) we look at taking a website that is a SEO ready site
with a ready to run campaign and look at the steps and work
needed to claim a high search engine ranking.
SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound Links
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, August 27, 2010
SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound Links
Don’t overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think
about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound
link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site.
The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine
optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality
backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.
Why are these links to your site important? They can can…
– bring potential customers to your site when they click
on the link
– increase the number of visitors to your web site
– dramatically improve your search engine rankings
Even though there are software packages on the market that
help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at
all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside
from creating useful content that will encourage inbound
links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact
to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my
marketing as I can.
Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have
to your site:
1. Directory Links
Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized
by category. Links back to your site from directories like
Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is
edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take
awhile for your site to be listed. Getting listed in Yahoo’s
Directory costs $299/year.
2. Press Releases
If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized
for keywords that someone would use to find a business like
yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once
written, you can have your press release distributed through
a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high
traffic news sites back to your site.
3. Article Directories
Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article
directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get
valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting
an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can
drive traffic back to your site!
4. Social Bookmarking
Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites
store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users
to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks
of web resources as well as share them with others. If you
bookmark your own content on these sites (like Digg.com,
Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service.
By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark
to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.
5. Blog Comments
To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use
blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure
these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues.
Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to
link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the
conversation that’s happening within the comments.
6. Social Media
Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social
networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd
or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many
inbound links in a very short period of time.
7. Blog/Podcast Syndication
Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication
services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases,
each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also
get a link.
8. Video Syndication
YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number
of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites
often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s
description or on your profile page, or both.
9. .EDU and .GOV Links
Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government
and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of
weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these
sites.
10. Internal Links
Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and
a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by
linking one article to other related articles, or link to
categories or archives of information.
Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component
of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the
strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings
increase.
18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, August 19, 2010
18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Proper Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, has
quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website
owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a
successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference
between whether or not you’ve incorporated proper keywords and
phrases into your webpages.
Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task,
especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The
following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep
in mind when developing and marketing your website.
1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search
engine optimization needs in mind. Search engines look for text,
not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs
will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.
2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text
describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the
text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your
website. Unless you’re incredibly popular, no one is going to be
looking for you by searching for your name. They’ll most likely
search for a product or service and the keywords you use will
lead them to your site.
3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website
address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to
use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www
version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use
your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or
http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on
the web. Never use both!
4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many
drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If
you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of
text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify.
Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site
information.
5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use
(ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the
web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search
results or ranking.
6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home
page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home
page links should go directly to your domain
(http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not
include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not
needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).
7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you’ll
want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not
sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search
engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with
a poor reputation may damage your own.
8. You’ll hear the same phrase over and over again: “Content is
king”. It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and
quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to
include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the
content!
9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single
word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a
physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the
text as well. For example, you might use “our Philadelphia
location” instead of “our location”. Including your city name
will increase the chances of your site being seen in location
searches.
10. If the information on your company website doesn’t change
regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider
starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for
fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link
back to your website within each and every post.
11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram
a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it
messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine
whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content
with ridiculously high keyword density.
12. Building links to your website is essential to its success.
As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your
king’s fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with
other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don’t
hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard
links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks,
you’re better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten
relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.
13. Links within your own website should be built with keyword
phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as,
“click here”.
14. Don’t place a list of links on your website. Always place a
link within at least two to three lines of related content. The
better your description, the more likely it is someone will click
on the link.
15. Don’t limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should
also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain
name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within
the description.
16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as
possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine
friendly and will hurt your SEO results.
17. Before your website can be found by the search engine
spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have
regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your
form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a
link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed
quickly.
18. No matter what you hear, don’t be overly concerned with the
Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly
developed and contains good content can outrank a website with
higher PageRank.
Reverse SEO: Restoring Online Reputations
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Reverse SEO: Restoring Online Reputations
Reverse SEO fits seamlessly within the context of your online
reputation management (ORM) program. It is the quickest, most
effective solution for dealing with bad press that has
surfaced on the search engines about you or your company. By
pushing negative listings from the front page of Google,
Yahoo, and Bing, reverse SEO shields you from the damaging
commentary of others.
Negative publicity online has become one of the most
frustrating challenges for companies. It is typically
anonymous. Names are often unattached to forum threads, blog
posts, and even entire websites. Therefore, it is difficult to
track and address the source of the complaint. Moreover, the
growing popularity of social networking platforms has made
it easier than ever for anyone with a mild grievance to give
weight to their grudge. If you or your company have been the
target of bad press online, it may be time to launch a
reverse SEO campaign.
In this article, we’ll clarify how negative publicity gains
traction within the search engines, and how it can lead to a
public relations nightmare. We’ll also provide a working
blueprint for executing a reverse SEO campaign and
controlling the damage.
Controlling Bad Publicity With Reverse Search Engine
Optimization
To appreciate why reverse SEO is effective, you should
understand how negative press takes root within the top
search listings in the first place. Google, Yahoo, and Bing
rank pages based on a large number of criteria. If a website
and its individual pages satisfy the most important of those
criteria, those pages will rank well.
A lot of the bad press that targets companies (possibly even
your own) is placed on websites that meet key ranking
parameters in the search algorithms. That means the negative
publicity can climb into the top positions and gain exposure.
When people search for you or your company, they’ll see the
bad press. That damages your reputation.
Reverse search engine optimization is an ORM strategy that
pushes negative publicity from the top search positions. By
moving the bad press off the first page of listings, reverse
SEO limits its exposure and stifles its impact.
Ingredients For An Effective Reverse SEO Campaign
Like search engine marketing, reverse SEO uses a methodical,
multi-pronged approach to protect your online reputation. The
first step is to identify the sites and pages that contain
negative publicity about your company and that are ranking for
important keywords. Those keywords might include your name,
that of your company, or key employees.
The second step of reverse SEO is to analyze those sites and
pages for their respective ranking authority. That will help
you determine the effort and tools you’ll need to use in
order to move them from the first page of listings within
Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A negative PR blitz that is
spreading across social networking sites is more difficult
to remove than a single blog post that is on a non-authoritative
domain.
The third step is to gather the necessary tools and execute
your reverse SEO campaign. Such tools might include
optimized press releases, a new network of competing sites
and blogs, social media profiles, and a social bookmarking
program. Reverse SEO may also include heavy content
syndication to build high-quality links. A search engine
marketing specialist will have these tools at their
disposal.
Reverse SEO Begins Before Negative Press Emerges
The best time to launch a reverse SEO campaign is before bad
publicity appears in the search engines. This is due to the
way that the pages link. A page will rank well within the
search engines if there are enough thematic links pointing
toward it. However, once it ranks, it will gain exposure.
That exacerbates the problem.
Negative press can spread rapidly as people attach the press
to their own blogs, sites, forums, and social media accounts.
That creates a growing portfolio of links pointing toward the
damaging press, cementing its position in the top listings.
It becomes more difficult to address. By launching a reverse
SEO campaign upfront, you can prevent the negative publicity
from gaining exposure in the first place.
Protect Your Online Reputation With Reverse SEO
Reverse SEO should play a key role in your online reputation
management program. It is far too easy for unsatisfied
customers, resentful employees, lazy journalists, and
malicious competitors to tarnish your name. And when it
happens, it is usually done under the cover of anonymity.
Anonymity makes the complaint or grievance impossible to
address in private.
Launch your reverse SEO campaign now – before trouble
strikes and the damage begins to gain momentum in the search
engines. In a year’s time, you’ll be glad you did.
DIY SEO with a Foolproof Twist
As the founder of an independent SEO firm I am asked almost
daily “What is the easiest way to optimize a web site?” It
is harder to answer than you might think. It depends on who
is asking and what their knowledge or experience level is.
But last week I read an article written by the person who
taught me search engine optimization ten years ago, and I
now have an answer… Learn the secret recipe, then use it.
There is no magic bullet that works on every web page like
so many SEO ‘miracle’ books and programs would have us
believe. Each page has its own unique ‘secret recipe’ that
has to be discovered and then applied because every single
page it is trying to outrank, is unique. If this seems
confusing, just remember my new favorite quote that I
borrowed from that author’s website: “Think about it.
Anyone could bake Mrs. Fields famous cookies – possibly
better than Mrs. Fields herself – with the secret recipe.
And that’s all SEO is; knowing the secret recipe for any
given web page.”
And it really is that simple. We will look at how to
discover the secret recipe in a moment, but first there is
one crucial thing to understand about search engine
optimization before you go any further:
SEO means making a web page as highly visible as
possible to search engines… for a given keyword.
Just about everyone knows the first part; but too many
people forget the second.
Remember that your soon to be visitor types in very
specific keywords (search terms) on search engines like
Google, because they are looking for something very
specific.
If you know your most important keyword that is great! If
not, do not waste your money on expensive keyword software
that SEO professionals use. Use a free keyword tool like
Google’s, found at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Just enter in the keywords that you think people are
searching for to find your product or service and then
check the search numbers for those and related keyword
suggestions.
So what about the secret recipe? Once you know your main
keyword or keywords you need to see how well your site is
optimized for that term already. This is called getting
your SEO Quality Score.
What you do is make a list of the most important
optimization aspects of a webpage, for the search engine of
your choice (because Google looks for different things than
Yahoo or Bing.)
Here are ten critical factors for Google, but there are
nearly 140 to be aware of…
* Keyword use in document title
* Keyword use in body text
* Link texts of inbound links
* Global link popularity of web site
* Keyword density
* Keyword position and proximity
* Number of words
* Readability level of web page
* Keyword use in H1 headline texts
* HTML validation of web page to W3C standards
Once you have all of this information for your webpage, you
need to get it for the pages currently occupying the top
ten positions for that keyword and then see how your page
compares.
You can buy software that does a lot of this for you but it
generally costs $500 to $2,500 for the ones that really
work and even then you might need to buy an hour of an SEO
consultant’s time to help you really understand it.
Doing it yourself is very educational. You will be an SEO
pro after a couple of these. So if you have the time, I
would not hesitate.
In my case I did not have the time – or let’s be honest,
the patience – to invest what would be 20 plus hours doing
this manually and not really understanding what I was
looking for. At the time I was a lawn sprinkler installer
looking to optimize my company webpage and knew nothing
about SEO, except that it was too expensive for me to hire
someone else to do it. So I went the cheap and easy route
paying a company called DotCom Pirates (at
http://www.dotcompirates.com) $50 for something they
called their SEO To Go package that reviewed my site for
all 140 SEO factors and provided plain English instructions
to fix every aspect of it. I did most of them and hit
number two on Google.
Here’s my dirty little secret… Realizing this was much
easier than breaking my back in irrigation, I picked up a
couple local shops as SEO customers, ordered reports for
those sites, followed the directions and my SEO business
was born. I no longer need their help, but it made for some
easy success when I needed it most.
Knowing the secret recipe is the foolproof answer to DIY
SEO. Once you have the secret recipe it’s easier than you
ever thought possible and you’ll be laughing all the way to
the bank with the money you saved.
SEO Tips to Double Rankings, Traffic and Conversion
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
SEO Tips to Double Rankings, Traffic and Conversion
The only thing better than one search result in the top 3
positions in Google is two search results from a double ranking.
This SEO tip works by pushing a competitor off the first page,
broadening your websites keyword funnel and thereby doubling
traffic and conversions.
Two Results are Better than One
I read somewhere that 87% of search engine traffic for a given
keyword is allocated from occupying the Number 1 position in the
search engine results page. If you understand SEO, then this
post will share a quick method to double your SERP positions and
to improve the likelihood of keyword conversions – once you have
reached the Mecca for a specific search term.
SEO is predicated on one simple premise, rankings; in order for
SEO to be effective, it must produce ranking on the first page
in search engines.
Not only is this the crowning achievement of search engine
optimization, but once you achieve a top 10 position, then you
can pull other keywords into the spotlight as a result of
strategic linking. We often refer to this as the buddy system
for lateral linking.
Search engine algorithms pay particular attention to individual
pages capable of offsetting all of the other inconsistencies of
a competitor’s web pages and deem one page worthy above all
others for any given search term.
Obviously the metrics are unique for each market, keyword or
niche, but the reality is the same, once a top 3 or more
importantly Number 1 or Number 1, 2 and 3 positions are present
in Google. I have mentioned before, the fastest way to get a top
10 position in Google is to get a link from a website already
ranking in the top 10 for that keyword.
It does not matter if that link is provided from your own
website or another website, rankings are by the page and there
is a daisy-chain effect of linking pages together that fuses the
pages through a dynamic give and take relationship (based on
citation). This citation can provide the algorithmic equivalents
of trust needed for the newly linked page to jump in line past
others duking it out for that keyword.
Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword or key phrase
and the thresholds inherent to the barrier to entry; the time
required to initiate a campaign, create all of the necessary
content, inbound links and citation from other web 2.0
properties, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites divided by
the amount of time you invest managing or outsourcing the
various components involved determine your profitability and
return on investment.
With this in mind, from a tactical perspective, it’s better to
leverage the SERP positioning you already have than to look
outside of your own website for off page ranking factors. If
you understand the power of a Number 1 position, then you can
replicate this next simple SEO tip.
Identify all current Number 1 positions in Google for keywords.
Validate they still exist.
Use Keyword Research to find “related keywords” based on the
Number 1 ranking Link from the page that ranks to a new page
(using similar anchor text or overlapping keywords to promote
the new page).
Let the new page get indexed, then check the SERPs.
Identify: My favorite tool for this is SEMRush, but if you
don’t want to use this, there are other programs out there, or
even Google webmaster tools can show you your website’s top
ranking SERP positions when you log in.
Either way, this is your base, so, identify the keywords which
could represent hub status for your SEO campaign and pass along
the power of ranking to other pages in your website.
Validate: Check to see if you still hold the Number 1 position,
even a top 3 will do, but this tactic works better if you are at
the helm of a particular search phrase.
Keyword Research: You should be able to gauge whether or not the
keyword is profitable for you based on the frequency of hits and
the type of traffic you garner as a result. You can always look
through Google Analytics or whichever analytics package you have
to assess the keywords that represent the highest percentage of
traffic to your website.
Once you know what those keywords are, then use keyword research
to find stemmed semantic variations that also fall under the
same category or keyword cluster. Those related keywords will
become the new focal point for step 4 – linking.
Linking: The closer the shingles (groups of keywords) the more
effective this technique is. You can call this padding the
search results (if you use similar exact match titles, tags or
content), or you can pass this ranking factor along to help
synonymous terms.
Simply go back and edit the page ranking in the Number 1
position and add a link to the new target page (with the
keyword you intend the target page to rank for as the anchor
text). Then, the authority from the page in the Number 1
position will group the new page under its umbrella and pull
that page into the spotlight.
When the new page gets crawled and the old page reveals the
connectivity between the two, typically a double SERP position
occurs or a double position accompanied by jump links,
breadcrumbs or the [+] with additional search results for that
keyword appear in Google to showcase the degree of relevance
your website has for the said term.
You can then build additional deep links from other sites or
addition internal links to the newly dubbed page. As a result,
you should see buoyancy for other pages for multiple keyword
variations related to the parent keyword cluster.
With this simple tip you can double your conversions by
increasing your website’s semantic array of keywords. Obviously
you will know which keywords and traffic is most lucrative for
your business model, but this technique is priceless for
creating controlled keyword stemming if you understand the
implications underlying its premise.
The Tricky Issue of Duplicate Content and Google
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, April 2, 2010
Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close watch on how Google is ranking pages on the web… one very serious concern is the whole issue of duplicate content. More importantly, how does having duplicate content on your site and on other people’s sites, affect your keyword rankings in Google and the other search engines?
Now, recently it seems that Google is much more open about just how it ranks content. I say “seems” because with Google there are years and years of mistrust when it comes to how they treat content and webmasters. Google’s whole “do as I say” attitude leaves a bitter taste in most webmasters’ mouths. So much so, that many have had more than enough of Google’s attitude and ignore what Google and their pundits say altogether.
This is probably very emotionally fulfilling, but is it the right route or attitude to take? Probably not!
Mainly because, regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there’s no denying they are King of online search and you must play by their rules or leave a lot of serious online revenue on the table. Now, for my major keyword content/pages even a loss of just a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in daily commissions, so anything affecting my rankings obviously gets my immediate attention.
So the whole tricky issue of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I have made an ongoing mental note to myself to find out everything I can about it. I am mainly worried about my content being ranked lower because the search engines think it is duplicate content and penalizes it.
My situation is compounded by the fact that I am heavily into article marketing – the same articles are featured on hundreds, some times thousands of sites across the web. Naturally, I am worried these articles will dilute or lower my rankings rather than accomplish their intended purpose of getting higher rankings.
I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don’t use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I am nearly 99% positive Google has a “keyword use” quota – repeat the same keyword phrase too often and your highly linked content will be lowered around 50 or 60 places, basically taking it out of the search results. Been there, done that!
I even like submitting unique articles to certain popular sites so only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole duplicate content issue. This also makes for a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, your site will take some time to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can place your content and links on high PR7 or PR8 authority sites immediately. This will bring in quality traffic and help your own site get established.
Another way I combat this issue is by using a 301 re-direct so that traffic and pagerank flows to the URL I want ranked. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want ranked or featured: with or without the www.
The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice – you want to pass along this ranking juice to the appropriate page or content. This can raise your rankings, especially in Google.
Thankfully, there is the relatively new “canonical tag” you can use to tell the search engines this is the page/content you want featured or ranked. Just add this meta link tag to your content which you want ranked or featured, as in the example given below:
Anyway, this whole duplicate issue has many faces and sides, so I like going directly to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn’t always give you the full monty, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and are telling webmasters a lot more information on how they (Google) rank their index.
So if you’re concerned or interested in finding out more about duplicate content and what Google says about it try these helpful links. First one is a very informative video on the subject entitled “Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues” which is presented by Greg Grothaus who works for Google.
Another great link is this page from Google Webmasters Support Answers by Matt Cutts. It has a lot of helpful information, including a video on the Canonical Link Element.
In yet another post, Matt Cutts discusses the related issue of content scraping and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and unmentionables may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me, countless times, including when my content has been reduced to scrambled nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this matter as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content may just help your rankings in Google.
“There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host,” says Cutts. “I tend to be the sort of person who doesn’t really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it’s going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he’s linking to you, so worst case, it won’t hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit.”
As a full time online marketer I am not so easily convinced, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one’s rankings in Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. Whether in fact this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it is just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it, will still present serious concerns for online marketers and webmasters in the future.
This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, “Yikes, that’s kind of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!” But then I remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I was going to write about. A second look at the questions made me think that you guys would probably be interested in the answers to many of them, so it worked out perfectly.
Most of these questions have been answered in greater detail in various articles that I’ve written, so if you’d like more info on any of them, I’ve linked to the relevant ones for your convenience.
Thanks to Umair R., who submitted these questions.
1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so, what are the steps?
If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for relevant phrases, but no magic formula.
See “The Art of SEO” article for more on this.
2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and positioning?
• PR
Yes, real PageRank (PR), the kind that only Google knows about plays a very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are relevant to it. But toolbar PageRank is another matter entirely. What you see there doesn’t correlate very well to where your page will show up in the search results.
See: “Getting Into Google” (Scroll down to the “Google Still Loves Its PageRank” part.)
• The number of incoming links
Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.
See the High Rankings Link Building Forum.
• Keyword density
Not in that there’s some special percentage that you need to aim for. Certainly it’s helpful to have the keyword phrases that you’d like to show up being used within the content of your page. But that’s just common sense, if you ask me. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?
See the various threads on keyword density on the High Rankings Forum.
• Page response time
This is important only because if it takes too long to load, it might not be properly (or completely) indexed.
• Bounce rate
It’s doubtful that this matters, because there’s no way for Google to know the bounce rate of every site. And it wouldn’t be fair for them to only count the bounce rates of those sites that have Google Analytics installed, so my guess is that this is not a factor.
See various High Rankings forum threads.
• Time on site
Like the above answer, they don’t know this number unless the site has Google Analytics installed. That said, they may sometimes incorporate the old trick of seeing if a searcher clicks to another site in the search results after clicking one result, and how long it took them to click another. In other words, if they find that lots of people who clicked to one site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) always end up back at Google to try another site, then perhaps that first site wasn’t a great answer to the search query after all.
• Domain page / Page age
From what I can tell, this can often be a factor. But it doesn’t seem to be as prominent a factor as it was a few years ago.
3. Is there any special technique for content writing?
There’s no special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very quickly if you do. In addition, the tried and true SEO copyediting techniques in my “Nitty-gritty of Writing for Search Engines” may come in handy if you’re not sure how to integrate your keyword phrases into your professionally written content.
4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?
There’s not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.
5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful can it be for PageRank and positions?
It’s typically not harmful at all because it’s usually done before a browser (or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.
See “Diagnosing the SEO Health of Your Website”.
6. If a webpage is ranking top for a specific keyword, if we make textual changes in that webpage, is there any chance that we lose the rankings?
Any changes you make to a page’s content can affect how relevant the search engines believe it to be for any particular search query. That doesn’t mean it definitely will change the search results, but it could. The only way to know is to try it and see. Usually, if you’re rewriting your page to be more useful to your site visitors and you don’t remove all the instances of the keyword phrase, you should be fine. Because nothing is permanent with SEO, if you don’t like what you see you can tweak it until you do.
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
While ostensibly aimed at helping Google target potential weaknesses in its own product pages, and of no direct use to SEOs, there is nonetheless more than a little gold to be found here, if one just examines the document in a little more depth. So while the post at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog is already beginning to bristle with comments lamenting the fact that this isn’t a clear treasure map to the search-ranking mother lode, it’s worth sifting through the Report Card to see what informational nuggets are hidden inside.
Subject I: Search Result Presentation
It’s easy to see why some readers simply dismissed this document out of hand, as the first section starts off being little more than a rehash of the standard “Use Page Titles, Use Meta Descriptions” advice found in any SEO-101 manual. Only by persevering to the part talking about Google Sitelink Triggering, does one begin to suspect that there may be a little more to the report card than meets the eye. Here the authors throw out a couple of crumbs about categorizing website and link-structure, and consolidating a site’s URLs to maximize its informational focus with the aim of increasing the chances of Google generating Sitelinks.
Even so, it’s nothing most professionals haven’t heard before, and I suspect that by this time a lot of readers had given up, thinking that nothing interesting was in store.
Subject II: URLs and Redirects
This is where we see a little glitter among the rubble, as the section starts off with the statement that: “Google products’ URLs take many different forms. Most larger products use a subdomain, while smaller ones usually use a directory form…”
In itself this is not an exceptional statement, and the chapter continues to give handy, but hardly unique, information about canonicalization, URL structure, and redirects until Page 10, where we find the following declaration:
“Subdomains require an extra DNS lookup, slightly affecting latency, which is very important at Google.”
Page load-speeds are an important factor to Google. There’s been talk and speculation about this ever since Matt Cutts dropped the first hints last year, and these days most SEOs are busily proclaiming that slow websites are now a handicap.
Haven’t they always been?
Be that as it may, this fact is not common knowledge with the average webmaster, as demonstrated by a question I’m regularly confronted with over at the Google Webmaster Help Forum:
“Which is a better way to categorize my site, subdomains or folders?”
The standard answer to this question used to be “Whichever you prefer” before load-times became an issue. Now, however, we find a clear indicator that a folder-based approach is much-preferable unless a category actually contains enough information to merit its own site, which is effectively what a subdomain turns it into.
Subject III: On-Page Optimizations
While at first glance this chapter is more standard SEO-101 fodder, it’s where we find a sizable nugget, as the report talks about semantic markup, and how Google uses it to gauge a page’s content.
“Nothing new here; we all use H1 tags.” you might say, but you’d only be partially right, because this issue not only runs much deeper than H1 headings, it runs beyond Heading tags altogether, as I’ll explain shortly. For the moment, however, let’s stay with them.
In the past few years, a great many Optimizers have reached the conclusion that only H1, and, to a degree, H2 are of any promotional value, and that lesser headings (H3 – H6) carry practically no weight at all. But let’s take a look at the following statement, taken from Page 38 of the Report:
“Most product main pages have an opportuníty to use one
tag, like the example above, but they’re currently only using other heading tags (
in this case) or larger font styling. While styling your text so it appears larger might achieve the same visual presentation, it does not provide the same semantic meaning to the search engine that an
tag does.”
tag does.”
For starters it’s obvious that the lesser headings are alive and well, and being used by Google. We’re also told that Google does not, or cannot, judge the visual-context meaning of CSS styled text. The conclusion is to use more heading tags instead of CSS styles wherever your content calls for it. However, there’s more to it still. Let’s take another look at part of that statement:
“…but they’re currently only using other heading tags…”
It would appear that Google still places greater value on other semantic markup tags (em, strong, blockquote, etc.) than many professionals give them acknowledgment, for these days. Otherwise why would the author specifically note the fact that Google only uses headings and font styles?
I personally know quite a few professionals who have long-since abandoned most semantic markup tags in favour of CSS style, since the prevailing attitude of designers and SEOs has been that making text bold or italic no longer carries much promotional weight, following widespread abuses in the mid-2000s and Google’s consequent algorithm updates.
And although the above statement may be a tentative one, it might just point the way back to a more HTML-based approach to web design. Indeed, if it can be taken at face-value, it’s entirely possible that those SEOs and designers advocating CSS-based, table-less design as the way forward are barking up the wrong tree. Whatever the case may be, there is undoubtedly more to the SEO Report Card than first meets the eye, and at the very least, there is a little gold to be extracted from the mass of standard information. Only by reading the full document will you be able to make an assessment yourself.
What should also be remembered is that the SEO Report Card is not aimed at high-flying SEOs or E-lebrity industry pundits, but at the intermediate webmaster for whom even the report’s basic information is of immense value, if read alongside Google’s SEO Starter Guide
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 26, 2010
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
Any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this ‘expert’ advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing. Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.
1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.
The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.
2. How Important is SEO?
Let’s just put it this way. What’s better, a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?
With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.
3. What are Text Links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to improve your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.
An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy and provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.
4. What are Link Farms and Link Exchanges?
Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to improve your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.
5. What is Duplicate Content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.
6. How do I Find the Right Keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.
The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.
7. How do I Optimize My Web Pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.
Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.
Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.
If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this:
Keeping your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to improve the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.
Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines, however, it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this:
8. Do I Need to Submít My Site to The Search Engines?
The simple answer is – no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed in a dírectory, like the DMOZ Open Directory Project, then you will need to submit to those.
9. What are Spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bots. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.
10. How does Content Help My SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and boost traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:
• Blogs
• Forums and chat rooms
• Articles
• Reviews
• Case studies
• Reports
• How to guides
• Tutorials
• e-books and much more.
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
Search for a list of SEO factors and you’ll find that most feature at least 50.
That’s 50+ elements of your website that influence your ability to rank in search engines. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
Some SEO Consultants will tell you that ranking in search engines is about applying a precise formula to these 50+ elements – about using “special proprietary techniques” fine-tuned to search algorithms to boost your website above the competition.
Not exactly.
There are actually more like 200+ signals that search engines use when ranking websites.
Imagine trying to reverse-engineer something like that? Sounds impossible, right?
That’s because it is.
The good news: it doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to be a computer engineer to rank well in search engines. Relieving, isn’t it?
The truth is that everything boils down to three factors:
1. Search-Friendly Pages
2. Relevant Content
3. A Trusted Website
All of those other factors and elements of SEO? They all fit into one of these three basic categories.
You don’t need to be a search scientist to understand the basics of what’s going on with these three factors and improve them for your website.
1) Search-Friendly Pages
Essentially, this first factor has to do with the technical aspects of how your website and pages work.
Search engines use crawlers (or “bots”) to browse the web by following links. As they browse, these crawlers scan the content they see and store it in databases. These databases form the search engine’s web index – and when a user comes along and enters a search phrase the index is scanned for pages that match.
The basic idea: you want to make sure your pages, and the content that fills them, are visible to search engine crawlers.
There are a few things you should know about crawlers:
• They don’t support JavaScript – so that rollover menu, those drop-down links, etc, might not be visible to search engine crawlers.
• They don’t support Flash (mostly) – while there have been a few developments in this regard recently, Flash websites still aren’t too search engine friendly .
• They can’t “see” – sometimes designers use images instead of HTML text (usually because they want to use a certain font that isn’t web-safe), and search engine crawlers can’t read or index this text. Crawlers can only read code – and if your content isn’t found there it’s essentially invisible to search engines.
• They skimp on resources – it takes a lot of energy and time (and money) to crawl the web (there are a lot of pages out there) so crawlers are usually programmed to be conservative with how far they’ll dive into a page. If your web pages take a long time to load or feature a tremendous amount of content crawlers might leave without scanning/indexing everything.
There are some other things crawlers can’t/won’t do. To get a sense of what they can see on your website try SEO-Browser.com . This tool allows you to enter the address of a web page and see it as search crawlers see it.
The bottom line: you might have the best content in the world, but if crawlers can’t see it you won’t rank for relevant keywords.
2) Relevant Content
This factor is all about the words on your pages.
As we discussed above, the visible content on your pages is stored and searched every time someone uses a search engine. If the keyword or phrase entered doesn’t occur on your page you probably won’t show up.
There are a few key places where you’ll want to use the right language on your pages:
• Title tags
• Headlines
• Body copy
• Anchor text (links pointing to internal pages)
As you browse the web you’ll probably notice that lots of webmasters have gotten a bit, shall we say, “overzealous” with optimizing their content. Title tags stuffed to the brim with dozens of keyword variations is common. Sometimes even the body copy itself is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to boost rankings.
You might be tempted to do this yourself to try and enhance your chances of ranking for a given keyword.
Don’t do it. Please.
Why not? Try reading a page that’s been stuffed with keywords this way. It’s an awful experience, right? Certainly enough to stop your reading flow and send you to another website, isn’t it?
Don’t sacrifice your user’s reading experience in the aim of ranking for a given keyword. It’s not worth it. All of the traffic in the world won’t mean a thing if the users who land at your pages are turned off and leave. Your competitors are just a few painless clicks away.
To learn about what keywords people use when they search for your products/services/info try Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool – enter either your website address or a keyword and this tool will return a líst of related keywords including numbers on how many people search for them.
The bottom line: it’s rare to rank for a keyword that doesn’t occur on your pages so use the language your users do when they search. Don’t overdo it and stuff keywords, though, because you’ll annoy your visitors (and search engines don’t like it either – they might flag you as SPAM).
3) A Trusted Website
When you’ve got 1) search-friendly pages and 2) relevant content it’s still not time to sit back and let the search traffic pour in.
The truth is that most of your competitors will have looked into these factors already – they’re kind of the “low hanging fruit” of SEO, because they’re not usually terribly difficult to work out.
Trust is what sets you apart. It is by far the most important of the three factors.
Before Google came onto the scene using PageRank (a measurement of link popularity) to rank websites, search engines generally based their rankings on the first two factors we’ve discussed.
What was the problem with that approach?
Webmasters are greedy. We can’t help ourselves. We love traffic.
Keyword stuffing was rampant, and rarely did webmasters stick to the honest truth about what their website was relevant to. The result: search results littered with SPAM and just about anything with very little relevance.
The reason links were a better signal to Google was simple – it’s harder to game. While you can control the content/keywords on your website, it’s a lot harder to control it on someone else’s. It’s pretty tough to get someone to link to you against their will.
The model simply worked – Google’s results were better. The other search engines quickly caught on and looked to signals of trust for sorting through the SPAM.
Some signals that search engines use to determine whether they can trust your website:
• Inbound links – quality is more important than quantity here – that’s why those “500 directory links for $49.95″ deals are worthless. The easiest links to get are the least valuable/powerful. A single link from Google.com, for example, would outweigh tens of thousands of weaker links – that’s how much quality matters.
• Website age – if your website is new there’s not much you can do about it without a Delorian and a working flux capacitor (“Marty, the website is in place – now we gotta go back to the future!”). A website that’s been around for a while is simply more trusted by search engines.
• Who you link to – it’s not just about inbound links. Search engines also look at what websites you link to from your pages. If you’re linking out to SPAMMY websites, they might consider you part of that “bad neighborhood” and penalize your website. Be careful who you vouch for.
There are other signals involved, but if you’ve got these three trust factors working in your favor you’re very likely to dominate the competition.
The bottom line: search engines don’t like getting burned by ranking SPAMMY websites. They want to know they can trust your website. Once you’ve got your on-page factors right (#1 and #2 above), you’ll need to build trust signals before your website will rank competitively.
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, February 22, 2010
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
SEO doesn’t have to be complex and by following these simple on-page optimization techniques you can give your SEO campaign the perfect start.
SEO is often seen as being a difficult and in-depth process, but the reality is that by following some reasonably common sense guidelines it is possible to get good rankings. That’s not to say that optimization is a simple or quick process; there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. Your SEO efforts should be a concerted and long term endeavour, in order for you to enjoy the best possible results, and should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. By following the on-page SEO strategies below you can set a strong foundation for all your SEO work.
Keyword Research
Before you begin penning content and writing title and meta tags you first need to research the keywords you will use on each of your pages. Using the wrong keywords can negatively impact your entire campaign, causing you to lose untold hours and days of work and eventually forcing you to concede that you made the wrong decision and start all over again.
The most appropriate and most beneficial keywords are popular enough that they will enjoy regular searches but without being prohibitively competitive or overly generic. A number of keyword research tools exist and your competitors’ websites are a good place to start your early research. Ensure keywords are targeted specifically to the type of content you will provide as well as the service or product you will be selling. More targeted keywords will result in more targeted visitors and targeted visitors mean greater conversion rates and an improved return on your efforts.
Niche And Semantically Related Keywords
A good strategy is to incorporate a reasonable list of competitive keywords with less competitive ones. The more niche keywords will serve you well during the early days of your website and over time you should be able to start competing for the more challenging of the keywords you use. Also incorporate semantically or topically related keywords into your keyword list because the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on those pages that use related keywords as well as primary keywords.
Accessibility And Standards
Site accessibility is an integral part of good website design, but it should also be considered an important factor in any SEO strategy. Using standards based code for your website will help to ensure that anybody that wishes to access and view your website will be able to do so. It will also mean that the spiders used by search engines will be able to access and index your pages effectively ensuring that you get the full credít for your site.
Navigation And Intra-Linking
Your navigation menu and internal links should be prominently placed, easy to see, and easy to follow for the spiders. It is good practice to include a text link from the home page to a compliant sitemap on your site, alleviating any potential problems that might arise from broken links or the use of graphical or flash based navigation menus. You can also consider adding links into the main body of your content, although too many will make the page difficult to read and therefore diminish the overall effectiveness so don’t get too carried away.
Title And Meta Tags
While search engines do not specifically use the meta tags to help assess the value of a page like they once did, meta tags are still critical to good SEO performance. The title and description tags that you add at the top of a page are used in various ways including in the compiling and display of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is the first thing a potential site visitor will see from your site so this mini listing needs to be as effective as any paid advert or PPC ad. Poorly written titles and descriptions can put many readers off viewing your pages so a little time and effort here can have a very positive effect.
Using your keywords in the title and the description is good practice because these will be highlighted in the search results if they were used in the search query itself. This will make your result more prominent and instantly identify your page as being relevant to the user. Don’t needlessly use keywords, however, and don’t throw extra keywords into the description at the cost of a well written, short ad.
Other Formatting Tags
On-page content should always be written with the visitor in mind, although obviously it can still be optimized for search engines. As such, proper page structure is important to your reader as well as to the engines. H1 and H2 tags are an effective way of breaking up page content, and give readers the chance to skim through a page and determine its relevance.
A page should only contain a single H1 tag at the top of the content but can include multiple H2 and H3 tags. Alt tags on images should also be included and these as well as the actual file path to the image itself can include important keywords (but do make sure that they actually make sense and are more than just a keyword thrown in for the sake of SEO).
Page Content Optimization
Finally, we get to the heart of the page – the content itself. Use the keywords you researched for a page, including semantically related keywords. Write as naturally and appealingly as possible while keeping those keywords in mind and don’t get carried away stuffing or cramming them into the body of the text. Not only is this unappealing to readers but is seriously frowned upon by the search engines.
The reader really is the most important aspect of your content. If the majority of your visitors are coming from the search engines, remember that they arrived using specific keywords. This means that they are searching for equally specific information relating to those keywords – make sure you deliver on the promise that you made in your title and description tags.
How to Recognize a Bad SEO Company
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about getting potential customers to visit your website. It is also about building a quality website full of great content. It uses keywords appropriately and gets links “naturally” because people love what you have on your site. SEO companies can provide very useful services including keyword research, site review, providing technical advice on your website development and also management of online business marketing campaigns. They can also help with content development, article marketing and article distribution. Although it’s not brain surgery, it is hard to do and usually requires a lot of thought and real work.
Some unethical SEO firms attempt to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. These practices could get your website ranked lower or even banned. When looking at SEO – either to optimize yourself or if you are looking to hire a company, here are some things to take into account.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Get Thousands Of Links To Your Site
It is not the number of sites that make the difference – it’s the quality of the sites. When firms promise huge numbers of links, or say that you will become part of their “network of sites”, it usually means a link farm is involved. A link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Search engines don’t like this and it can lead to penalties. Instead, practice reciprocal linking with legitimate and related websites for better search engine ranking.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Guarantee A High Ranking On Google
No one can guarantee a high ranking on Google. Some SEO companies provide a guarantee on their services. This is fine. What’s not fine is guaranteeing high ranking in an incredibly short period of time. When these unrealistic results fail to happen, the company will balk at giving a refund, suggest other services instead and start to become unreachable or disappear.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Send “Spammy” Emails
These emails are unsolicited and usually begin with “We’ve noticed that you are not lísted in some search engines…” You should be searching for a high-ranking SEO company; they will not be searching for you. Spam means scam. You don’t buy your medications from spammers so why buy SEO services from them?
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Are Secretive Or Don’t Clearly Explain What They Are Going To Do
Most reputable SEO firms are upfront with their clients and like to share their knowledge. They are confident that even if their clients understand their process, they won’t leave them. If the SEO firm claims it’s too complicated for you to understand, or if they say they have trade secrets and proprietary technology, it’s a sign that they may not be ethical in dealing with your website.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Submít Your Site To Thousands Of Top Search Engines And Directories
Besides the small fact that there aren’t that many search engines, consider that the guidelines of the search engines themselves tell you that it doesn’t do any good anymore. Search Engines are good at what they do – searching for sites – and you don’t need to pay someone to submít your site to a search engine. If they make this claim, they will probably use Free For All (FFA) junk sites that might damage your site’s standings.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Can Optimize And Promote Your Site For A Low, Low Monthly Fee
Not all monthly SEO or SEM (Search Engine Management) service contracts or monthly fees are a scam. There are real reasons to pay a monthly fee to an SEO expert. These would include conditions when you would require SEO management: when you or someone else is constantly generating new content or new features for your site; implementing link-building campaigns; implementing PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns; or starting a brandcasting campaign. Press release distribution, email campaigns and article marketing campaigns could also require a legitimate monthly fee.
Not-so-legitimate fees could include monthly re-submittíng of your site to search engines, “tweaking” your code to keep up with changes and regularly submitting your site to hundreds of useless free-for-all directories. The worthwhile companies that charge a monthly fee will usually be able to tell you exactly how much it is per month to generate blog entries or generate and distribute articles or press releases. And it won’t be for the low, low price of $79.95.
Choose Your SEO Company And Services Carefully
Do your research and don’t make the decision lightly. If you were hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen you would want to see other kitchen projects they’ve done and speak with the owners about the company’s business practices. You should do the same thing when hiring an SEO company. Get referrals and really speak with them.
There are many online tips about choosing and hiring SEO firms that you can check out as well. Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy and you should take the time to do your research before buying or you’ll probably be buying again.
Top 10 Don’ts for SEO Copywriting
Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I decided to come up with my own list of don’ts.
There is no shortage of don’ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.
1. Don’t shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible. It’s not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher’s query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience.
2. Don’t lose site of balance. If SEO copywriting isn’t about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn’t come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first. However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won’t see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you’ll start to lose your target audience. Balance. Always balance.
3. Don’t let someone else choose the keywords. If keyword research isn’t a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don’t just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy.
4. Don’t sacrifice flow for numbers. This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don’t work in a normal sentence. An example? “Candies samples free.” Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, “If you’re looking for candies samples free, you’ve come to the right place!” Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well.
5. Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page. If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don’t try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won’t be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It’s a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.
6. Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you’ve got a bunch of typos in the content. It’s just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, “We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town.” I don’t care for that approach. It’s just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not.
7. Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time. This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don’t pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: “Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be.” See? “Real estate” is at the end of the first sentence and “Hawaii” is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there’s no problem.
8. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation. There are many ways in which this “don’t” applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn’t be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don’t understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you’re likely to have lackluster results.
9. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.
10. Don’t forget the chain of protocol. There’s a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic.
Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn’t likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.
When you avoid making common mistakes, you’ll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 19, 2010
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
Just as there are different ways of writing for novels, for advertising and for films, there is a way to write for the Internet. To find content on the web we use search engines. To make sure the search engines find our content we optimize it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting is writing content that the reader wants to read and will be easily found and rank well with search engines.
The object of writing for the Internet is to get the reader to use your content to click through to your website. If they don’t get to your website, they can’t look at your products or services and you will have lost a potential customer. Here are a few mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.
Mistake #1 – Have a Boring Or Vague Title
This is a very important mistake not to make. If they don’t even look at your article, all your time and effort are wasted. If you provide an attention grabbing title, one that makes them curious enough to open your article, you’re halfway there.
Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking: Use titles that describe the content of your article but are short and concise; Use keywords in your title that people might be searching for; People can’t resist articles with lists or tips such as, “Top 10 Copywriting Mistakes” or “Top Tips on Getting Your Articles Read”; and “How to” articles are popular as well.
The bottom line here is to put some thought into your title. Think about how to get a reader’s attention.
Mistake #2 – Create Bland Content
From beginning to end – try to keep it interesting. Make reading your article a pleasurable experience for your reader. Here are a few suggestions.
Make it fun, relevant and grammatically correct. Nothing pulls the reader out of a story more than bad grammar and misspelled words.
Use short sentences and try to limit paragraphs to two or three lines. Concentrate on writing rich and appropriate copy rather than just practical words.
Have a sense of humor. This gives your articles personality. Don’t give a sales pitch – use a call to action. The purpose of your article is to get your reader to get to your website. Your writing could include a reason for them to find more information, either from another article that you’ve written or from your website.
“Content is king”. If you keep this in mind, you’ll be ahead of the game. Search engines love well-written and useful content. So do readers.
Mistake #3 – Make Your Article As Hard To Read As Possible
Every post should be easy to scan. That means your reader should be able to easily scan your article and find headings that will tell them what the section is about. You can use numbered lists and bullets to organize your ideas so they are quickly read. If you italicize, bold or underline a word, the search engine assumes that it’s a keyword. You can use this to your advantage. However, if you use these tags a lot or if you use them on non-keywords, you’ll confuse the search engines and lose any advantage you would have gained.
The other thing that makes a page easy to scan is short paragraphs. When you look at your copy on the page, you should see a lot of white space. Looking at a page that’s completely filled with words is intimidating to a reader. You want to make it as friendly and welcoming and as easy to read as possible.
Mistake #4 – Misuse Keywords
Keywords are at the core of writing for the web. You should research and know your keywords. Here are a few suggestions about keywords:
• Target a set of keywords in every post but don’t use them more than three or four times on a page. If you use the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article isn’t very useful.
• Use a wide variety of words that pertain to your topic.
• Use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords.
• Don’t stick to a standard keyword density for every article or post. You want your words to flow naturally, and overuse of keywords makes your copy sound forced.
• Review your keywords every so often. Sometimes your business changes and you want your articles to change also.
If you provide your reader with content that lets them learn or experience something, you’ll have a happy reader. If you provide the search engines with good keywords and a variety of them, you’ll have a happy search engine.
Mistake #5 – Try To Trick the Search Engines
Practicing questionable tactics like cloaking and using hidden text is a bad idea. The last thing you want is to get your site banned. These kinds of tricks will do it. So can using hidden links, link farms, linking to bad sites, distributing viruses and sending spam. Don’t try to trick the search engines and don’t work with any companies that use these techniques.
Overcoming these common mistakes can give you head start when creating effective content on the Internet. SEO copywriting requires effort. Putting content on your site and distributing it on the web takes time. If you work at it over time and create lots of valuable content, effectively “brandcasting” your site, you’ll be rewarded with more traffíc.
Search Engine Optimization SEO is No Place for Amateurs
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, February 18, 2010
SEO is No Place for Amateurs
How come everybody nowadays is an SEO Expert?
Let’s face it; not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves.
Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no background at all, and it is these people and their companies which are highly unlikely to ever produce satisfactory results for their clients.
Perhaps one should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results just as you need to target the correct audience. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.
Why You Should Avoid the Amateurs
Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while any Tom, Dick, and Harry can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.
The bottom line is; a SEO campaign is in fact a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition.
As such, why bother targeting particular key words, irrespective of how popular they are, if there’s virtually no chance they are going to help in terms of ranking? In fact, you could end up waiting for several months before the major search engines start recognizing your website.
On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. Likewise, a true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.
Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But if your goal is to give a website a boost in search engine ranking, then this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submittíng articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.
Furthermore, because a professional SEO specialist appreciates the importance of being able to get a good return on investment, they will also make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign. Bear in mind, that these tools are essential in order to fine tune any good SEO campaign.
Steer Clear of Internet Marketing Fraudsters
Unfortunately, but also to be expected, the internet is full of undesirable people who focus entirely on targeting honorable businesses by means of providing them with false promises regarding guaranteed results. These people will more often than not guarantee that they will get your website to the top of the search rankings by using specific keywords. However, in most cases, they simply use keywords which are so rarely used, they show at the top of search rankings simply because they have no competition – no one uses them.
Obviously, if no one is ever typing that keyword into the search box, then why waste money on it? One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not an internet marketing expert is in fact legitimate, is that the legitimate ones don’t ever provide any guarantees with regards to getting you in the top spot on search results. This is because they know that no one can guarantee such results due to a number of reasons, such as algorithms which change continuously.
How to Avoid the Wrong Internet Marketing Service
First and foremost, you need to ask the right questions:
1. You need to determine how long the company has been involved with Internet marketing.
2. You should ask to see testimonials from past clients.
3. You should search online for their services. In fact, you should attempt to find their website by using keywords and keyword phrases which are relevant to the services they provide. Obviously, if you fail to find them on the first page of Google search results, then your alarm bells should start ringing. For example, if you were considering using the services of Sunshine Coast Internet Marketing Company, you could do a search for Sunshine Coast Internet marketing, internet marketing Sunshine Coast, etc.
The most important thing of all is that you acknowledge the fact that going with the wrong internet marketing company can end up costing you a considerable amount of money for nothing. On the other hand, if you choose to use the services of a reputable company, you can almost be certain that your website will end up ranking much higher than it did before.
Putting SEO Under the Microscope
There is not a day that goes by that people recommending search engine optimization (SEO) don’t come up with yet another interesting idea or opinion on a topic in their field. They are all so focused on structures and procedures that they often forget that not every one agrees with their viewpoints and practices – that is, if their technical mumbo-jumbo can be understood.
The following are 5 SEO topics that are frequently discussed and disagreed upon:
1 – The Importance of Content Structure & Keywords
While keywords may add great value from a technical, algorithmic ranking perspective, their presence may not always entice the audience to explore the site they are visiting. The content may seem boring and unappealing, rather than grabbing and fascinating. In that case, the psychological triggers that will tell the reader to continue browsing will be missing, as will the desire to share the information with their friends and family.
SEO experts won’t ever agree on which is more important when it comes to keywords and compelling content. In the end, it will be up to the website owner or manager to decide what is more important to him: search engine rankings or sales.
2 – Pro or Con Reciprocal Link Exchange
A ‘reciprocal link exchange’ is an effective and efficient way of driving traffic to a website and improving the search engine placement of participating websites. At least, that is what some experts believe, while others are fearful and refuse to swap any kind of link that may refer to their business.
Artificially manipulating links may not be the best SEO idea on the market, but there is definitely nothing wrong with link trading programs that exchange links of companies endorsing a relationship, or business related directories.
If you do decide to participate in a link exchange, check the links regularly and report the dead ones to the webmaster so they can either be fixed or removed.
3 – Should the H1 Headline and Title Tag Match – or Not?
Many SEO consultants are skeptical when they notice sites whose H1 header is different from the title tag. One may wonder what the reasoning may be, because this action may confuse and upset the audience. Users click on a certain headline because they are interested in its content, yet when the search result is complete, and the header and title tag do not match, they may find themselves confronted with a completely different message, which may be something they are not interested in. That is very disappointing for the user, even if it may result in a higher ranking.
4 – The Relevance of a Website’s Age
Although many web designers believe that the age and history of a website are pertinent, it is not quite clear if search engines actually do use an ‘age’ or an ‘age of links’ metric to inflate incumbent rankings. Search engines check keywords, pay-per-click, link building and other SEO features and don’t necessarily verify when a website was built. All they care about is how user friendly and SEO strong the site is, which means that a younger, highly efficient site should absolutely be able to compete with more mature competitors.
5 – Reporting a Competitor’s Spam Activities
Spam is a reality and spammers should be reported. At least, that is what a number of SEO specialists would argue. Others may disagree and point out that those who are extremely vocal about competitors’ manipulative tactics to enhance search engine ranking are usually the ones abusing it the most. All they are trying to do is shift the focus away from them.
Anyone reporting spam should not publicly announce their actions because, even if spammers are breaking guidelines, the SEO community is vehement about socially shunning those violating the “code of silence”. As unethical as this blackmail may seem, it should not stop you from warning the search engines about illegal activities and, at the same time, reap some of the benefits associated with this. In the end, you will have to market and protect your site and business.
Here are several arguments in favor of spam reporting:
• Taking out spammers will improve the value of the Internet and help search engines provide more accurate search results.
• Your ranking may improve by eliminating a competitor.
• Removing manipulators will leave more room for your site to achieve better rankings, to boost visibility and to boost your sales.
• You can learn from researching spam activities and tactics. You will learn what is inappropriate, what the engines do/don’t tolerate and what penalties can be expected for which unlawful actions.
• As long as you are clean yourself, reporting spammers can gain you trust with the search engines.
These are a few reasons against it:
• If you are engaged in certain types of spam, or unknowingly benefit from it, you can accidentally hurt your website’s ranking.
• It is unethical to blow the whistle on and hurt other SEO specialists. People have been arguing about ethics for centuries and in the end it will be up to each individual to decide what is more important to them and to their website.
Video SEO – A Neglected Path To Higher Search Rankings
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Video SEO – A Neglected Path To Higher Search Rankings
Video SEO is an underutilized search engine marketing
strategy. Even as videos continue to gain significant
traction in the search engines’ natural listings, most
companies either ignore them, or remain completely unaware
of their potency. That oversight represents a valuable edge
your company can use to leapfrog your competitors in the
organic rankings.
The strategy blends traditional search optimization tactics
with a relatively new platform. With the rise of YouTube,
Revver, Blip, and similar video sites, consumption patterns
have driven the search engines to provide these sites with
greater ranking authority. As long as your primary
objective is clearly established, a video SEO campaign can
have a dramatic effect on your exposure in Google, Yahoo,
and Bing.
In this article, we’ll explain why you should integrate
video SEO into your current search marketing strategy. We
will also provide a few ingredients that will help you
avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Last, you will
learn what to look out for when choosing a video SEO
company that can drive traffic and conversions.
How Video SEO Improves Your Search Exposure
Before Google released their Universal Search platform in
May 2007, their natural listings were dominated by
text-based pages. Videos were rare in the top spots.
Universal Search changed the way Google displayed their
primary index. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now include entries
from their respective video search platforms. What’s more,
popular video-sharing sites have been given higher ranking
authority and increased link weight (we’ll describe this
latter point in a moment).
Video SEO gives you greater exposure in the search engines
through two levers. First, it caters to the algorithm used
for Universal Search. By allowing syndication of your
videos to authoritative video-sharing sites, you will enjoy
more exposure through their increased ranking authority. In
effect, those sites will rank higher, drawing more people
to your videos.
Second, videos that are placed on your site (as opposed to
syndicating them) attract links – both directly and
indirectly. As your videos gain popularity, direct links
will naturally build, pointing to the pages on your site
that host the videos. Indirect links will point from other
sites whose owners have embedded your videos. As a result,
your inbound link profile will continue to grow and
strengthen, lifting your site higher within the search
engines’ organic listings.
3 SEO Video Tips To Capture Higher Search Positions
Your video SEO campaign can only be effective if you
recognize the limitations of the search engines. First,
their algorithms cannot read lips. In order to rank for
your target keywords, they must be available to the search
engines’ spiders in text form. If you’re placing videos on
your site, optimize your titles and surrounding text, and
include an edited transcript of the video. If you’re
syndicating them, optimize your external titles and tags.
Second, focus on inbound links. An effective video SEO
campaign relies on contextually related links pointing from
a wide breadth of sites. Videos that spark a groundswell of
attention – whether through entertainment, information, or
controversy – can achieve this easily.
Third, integrate a social media sharing component. You want
viewers to share your videos with their friends on
Facebook. You want them to “Tweet” about your videos on
Twitter. You want them to bookmark your videos on
StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. These social media sites
can form the backbone of your video SEO campaign, driving
waves of inbound links to your site.
Key Factors In Choosing A Video SEO Company
Traditional search optimization is a mature strategy. SEO
specialists have honed their craft for more than a decade.
By contrast, video SEO is still an evolving science. Even
though it leverages the core tenets of a traditional SEO
campaign, the rise of social media and video-sharing sites
have infused video SEO with enormous complexity. Hiring a
video SEO company removes the need to keep up with the
roiling landscape. The key is using the right criteria to
identify a proficient firm.
A professional video SEO company should have an established
track record that shows a keen grasp of the search engines’
organic algorithms. That track record should also
demonstrate an ability to evolve as the algorithms change.
Many search optimization experts were completely unprepared
for the debut of Universal Search. By extension, so too,
were their clients.
Leveraging Video SEO For More Traffic And Higher Conversions
A carefully executed video SEO campaign can sharply
increase your exposure within the search engine’s natural
listings. When implemented as a component of a
multi-pronged search engine marketing campaign, it can
drive more targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic
translates into higher conversions. If you are not yet
utilizing video SEO for your site, your current organic
rankings may be more vulnerable than you realize.
The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization SEO
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Fundamentals of SEO
Why SEO?
Search engines provide the majority of traffic to websites
across the Internet, regardless of website focus. Therefore, if
your site cannot be properly located and indexed by the leading
search engines, you are missing out on the best opportunity to
drive targeted visitors and potential revenue.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is the process by which pages
are improved to increase their organic search engine rankings.
This is done by assessing what the individual search engines are
looking for and providing that. The outcome of an SEO Campaign
is to create high organic rankings for the keywords/phrases for
which the client is indeed an authority. This will ultimately
create an increase in targeted traffic. A good SEO campaign
includes the following three aspects:
1. Keyword Analysis
2. Onsite Optimization
3. Offsite Optimization
Keyword analysis is the process by which you analyze and
select keywords based on traffic, competition, and relevance. If
you are not selecting the proper keywords, then the rest of the
optimization is really a lost cause. The text and theme of the
site needs to revolve around these keywords and very much define
how the site appears to both users and search engines.
Onsite optimization deals with changes made to the site
itself. This involves making changes to the text content,
architecture of the site, HTML code, and page layout.
CSS design http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/
css-sculptor/?WAAID=898″) is often recommended when working
to optimize a website as it helps keep important content at the
top of your pages and allows for your pages to be easily and
efficiently crawled by the search engines. This is the most
commonly understood aspect of SEO, but only accounts for about
40% of a site’s rankings. This is where your keywords are placed
throughout the code to show the search engines what your site is
about.
Offsite optimization deals with changes made outside the
scope of the site. This mainly involves increasing the quantity
and quality of inbound links to the site. Approximately 60% of
Google’s current ranking algorithm is based on inbound linking.
Your goal is to maximize the site’s exposure on the Web and get
as many sites as possible to link back to your site.
What is a Good Keyword and What is Not?
This is the ultimate question we have to ask ourselves when
judging keywords. There are many variables you have to take into
account when selecting exactly what keywords your site will be
optimized for. Use the following criteria to determine the
viability of a keyword:
* The estimated amount of searches for the keyword in a 24
hour period
* The number of sites competing for the keyword
* The quality of the sites competing for the keyword
* The ability of the site to support the keyword
* Relevance between keywords
* The target audience of the site
Keep in mind that your number one goal is to accurately depict
what the site is about through the keywords (and the eventual
text content). If your site is not properly described by the
keywords, then either the site is targeted wrong or you’ve
selected the wrong keywords.
Search engines like sites that are targeted to a specific topic.
If a site is spread too thin as far as topic goes, then it will
be much harder to appear as an authority for any one topic.
Search engines do favor large sites, but generally it is better
to have a smaller targeted site than a larger broad site that is
about many topics.
It’s not uncommon to discover site theme issues when doing
keyword selection. Oftentimes, it leads to a reassessment of the
site as a whole (which is a positive). In this way, general
marketing, user experience, and SEO overlap. If you do not feel
your site is targeted towards the correct keywords and themes,
it is important that you re-target the site and its content prior
to optimization. You should understand your audience, the
purpose of your site, and its themes before even starting an SEO
initiative.
It is also common for sites to get caught up in industry jargon.
You have to look at your keywords as your target audience would.
If you’re targeting the general consumer and you use lots of
industry jargon, then you cannot expect much of a return on
investment.
Another thing to watch out for is overly generic keywords. If
you are attempting to optimize your site for keywords that can
mean many other things, you are bringing in a whole lot of new
competition. So, we have a small list now of what to avoid.
* Keywords that are not relevant to each other
* Keywords that do not fit the theme of the site
* Industry jargon, if it is not applicable to the audience
* Keywords that are too generic/overly competitive
META Headers
Optimizing the META header is the first and easiest step in
onsite optimization. There are four main areas that you should
be concerned with:
1. Title
2. Description
3. Keywords
4. Robots
Depending on the keyword selection, the Title should be made up
of the first two keywords. This provides high density and
prominence for both keywords instead of using it all on one. Of
course, the Title should make sense and be descriptive of the
page. The Description borrows the same idea, but expands on it a
little. It is ideal to include both the primary and secondary
keyword in a short sentence describing the page. The Keywords
field is simply a list of the keywords separated by commas with
no spaces in between. The Robots tag tell the search engine
spiders what to do with the page.
Links
“Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by
page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than
the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for
example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily
and help to make other pages ‘important.’” -Quote from Google’s
website.
Link popularity is one of the most important factors search
engines use in determining where you will rank in the search
engine results (SERPs) for your keywords and phrases, as it
helps them to determine how important or popular your site is
and what its reputation is. Link building, as part of the
offsite optimization process, is the process of finding
related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you.
Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others
will link to without being asked. But to get these links, people
have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has
become pretty sophisticated over the last couple of years. Today
you need a mixture of links from many sources including
articles, press releases, social media, blogs, directories and
others.
10 Things You Need to Know about SEO
I have compiled a list of 10 vital things – from choosing an
expert to instructing your web developer – that every marketer
needs to consider when undertaking search engine optimisation as
part of their marketing mix.
1. Strategy First
Please, don’t ask for a full SEO proposal from an agency until
you have set your strategy. Too often, agencies will respond
with a full proposal, including lots of articles to be created,
sites to be built and links to be implemented without a clear
strategy.
Some sites are more straight forward but others are complex and
would benefit from asking a couple of agencies to get involved
at the research stage – ask them about the strengths and
weaknesses of your site, what they think of your competitors,
and what strategic approach they would take with your site.
To get the best advice from this process, expect to pay the
agencies involved. A small percentage of your online budget
spent on good strategy will save you money in the long term.
Even better, pay two agencies for a strategy recommendation and
then choose the best one for your business!
2. Choosing a Consultant
You need to work with someone who can communicate about SEO in
plain English, someone who can take complicated ideas and
techniques and turn them into something you can understand,
then make a decision on – especially as there are often many
possible solutions to choose from.
Someone with experience in your vertical – such as travel,
finance, retail – as well as several other verticals is
important. An SEO consultant with experience across multiple
types of business, as well as experience that is directly
relevant to you will have better problem solving skills and more
exposure to technologies. Experience in your sector will mean
the consultant will be very helpful in defining your strategy,
understanding terminology, and knowing what your competitors are
doing.
3. Expectations
What are realistic expectations from your investment in SEO?
Too often, we see marketers defining their keyword set or crazy
goals for their site without any basis in how SEO really works.
If you are a law firm, for example, and you want to rank highly
for terms such as “lawyer”, or “barrister”, then you have to
take into account that these are extremely popular and
competitive terms. It might not be achievable, and even if it
is, it’s probably a very hard road to get there.
Be open to advice when setting the goals for your website (which
should be a part of the keyword research period of your SEO
project). If you have a PPC campaign running first, you can use
the keyword data from that campaign to gain an understanding of
what is important for your website.
4. Using the Right Language
Optimising begins with keyword research that helps you
understand the language your customers are using to find your
products and services.
Be realistic. It may sound obvious but, if the words your
customers are using to search are not on your website pages,
then you won’t be found in the search engines for those words.
Similarly, brand words and buzz words are all very nice in
marketing, but if people aren’t using those words to search,
then again you won’t be found.
Be ready to change the language of your site. Be open to the
idea of conforming your website to the language people use.
Optimisation is about including those words in the right areas
of your pages (such as navigation, links, headings, meta tags
and content) so the search engine sees all the right signals to
understand what your site’s pages should be ranked for.
5. Measurement
Rankings are not the only measure of success! For many years,
SEO firms have measured everything on rankings. However, we
recommend using analytics similar to a PPC (paid) search
campaign for a more comprehensive measure of success.
Here is a simple description of how to do that: Take what you
are spending on SEO and put it against traffic and conversions
to work out cost per unique browser, cost per click and cost per
conversion. It’s best to analyse these over a period of six
and/or twelve months to allow for any changes in SEO to come into
effect. This is because the major difference between SEO and PPC
is the implementation time – for SEO, the results will take
months, rather than days.
6. Moving Variables
There are so many moving variables in SEO that it would be
impossible to find one person who knows everything! But a good
SEO consultant is worth their weight in gold. Their value is not
necessarily in the implementation, but in tapping into their
experience to find the right implementation. One tiny piece of
advice from them which may take 10 minutes to explain could be
worth more than a copywriter producing numerous articles for
your site each month.
7. One Agency or Two?
Some agencies have two separate teams working on SEO and PPC.
Some marketers choose two completely different agencies to
handle their SEO and PPC campaigns.
However, the two are very closely related and the results from
one can be useful to the other. For instance, the keyword data
from your PPC campaign can help with your SEO keyword research.
On the flip side, optimising pages for SEO will usually provide
your PPC campaigns with a better quality score. When PPC and SEO
listings are seen together on a search engine, they usually
increase the click-through and conversion rates for both
campaigns.
They go hand in hand, and each can have a positive effect on the
other if done well. And with one agency on both campaigns, they
will have a greater depth of experience with your business,
which can only help you to succeed.
8. Web Developers are not SEO Experts
Finally, a word on expertise. Most web developers say they are
experts in SEO (http://www.dgmmarketing.com.au/
search-engine-optimisation.htm). There is no doubting that many
of them do a reasonable job, but they are not truly specialists
in the area of SEO.
In the same way, I wouldn’t recommend that an SEO specialist
designs your website. They are specialist skills, which both
contribute to the success of your business online.
9. Use of Java Script
Those pesky robots that the major search engines rely on to rank
web pages have until recently imposed some limitations for web
development. While useful code such as Java Script can make your
website really functional – a simple example is a loan
calculator, and many websites’ navigation and links – and thus
attractive to users, the robots often couldn’t follow the code
properly, and thus skipped over it. The major problem was that
commonly, web developers didn’t know that Java Script wasn’t
being read or followed by the robots.
That has changed recently, with Google updating its technology
so that the robots can read and follow Java Script. When the
robots can follow a website’s navigation and links properly, the
SEO rankings are greatly influenced.
10. Flash
Potentially any Flash file can now be indexed, according to
Google, but it still depends on how that Flash site is
constructed. Generally older Flash sites are not seen in the
most effective way by the search engines, though it depends on
the practices of the Flash developer. Many older Flash sites
have overcome this problem by building an underlying version of
the site in html – though this method too has its drawbacks.
Flash sites need to be built like html sites, with multiple
files that optimise each keyword. If you are building a new
Flash site, be sure to consult with an SEO expert before the
developer starts on the build.
10 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes
posted by Web_University @ 12:00 AM
Wednesday, November 30, -0001
10 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes
With so much misinformation out there, along with a lack of knowledge about how SEO works, you could end up getting your website banned from the search engines. Learn how to avoid common mistakes with these 10 simple do’s and don’ts.
10. Don’t Use Flash for SEO. Flash websites are very eye-catching but search engines cannot read or index this type of content. If it is impossible to avoid a Flash-centric website and you need search engines to index it, you will have to offer an html version too. Search engines don’t like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can’t read Flash content and therefore can’t index it.
9. Don’t Use too Much JavaScript. Searchbots are not designed to read and understand JavaScript code. If a website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are that searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with the text. This is true in the case of JavaScript menus. Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. Alternatively, create an external JavaScript file if it is unavoidable.
8. Do Implement a Robots.txt File. The primary purpose for using a robots.txt file is to gain complete control over the data indexed by the searchbots. Implement a Robots.txt file only when you want to prevent unwanted web pages from being indexed. A robots.txt file is always placed in the root folder of the website where the searchbots can access it easily.
7. Do Target the Correct Keywords. Targeting the wrong keywords is a common mistake many optimizers make and even worse – veteran SEO professionals do it. Marketers select keywords that they think are explanatory of their website but the average searcher does not think in those same keyword terms. Picking the right keywords can increase or decrease traffic to your SEO campaign. A first-class keyword suggestion aid, for example the Google search-based keyword tool will help you find keywords that are appropriate for your site.
6. Do Include Long Tail Keywords. With a million websites competing for short tail keywords, it can take more than 6 months to rank in the top 20 for a competitive keyword. In this case, long tail keywords come in handy. Long tail keywords are more specific and can contain the name of a specific product, brand or city. Ranking for long tail keywords is comparatively easier and the rate of conversion is better than that of short tail keywords. Do include keywords in the title tags.
5. Do Maintain a Uniform URL Structure. If your website is dynamic, then you need to modify the URL structure of the web pages. This maintains uniformity and helps searchbots to understand which page it is indexing. It is very easy to maintain the URL structure in dynamic websites. Blogging platforms like WordPress provide an option for permalinks. Customized dynamic websites can use URL rewrite in the .htaccess file for the same.
4. Don’t Link to Low Quality Websites. Link building is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to a website as an indication of their popularity and give them priority rankings. Many beginners fail to realize that it is links from authoritative and quality websites that are important and they mistakenly link to low quality websites for higher rankings. This tactic can cause the credibility of the website to go down with search engines and in some cases, the website may get banned.
3. Do Perform Competitive Intelligence. Before starting your search engine optimization program, visit the competing websites in the top results. Research these types of questions:
A. How many websites are competing for the same keyword? B. How old are the websites in top search engine results pages? C. How many back links do the top ranking websites list? D. What type of social media is used by the competing sites?
2. Do Take Advantage of Google Analytics. 2009 was the year when web analytics gained momentum. Google Analytics came up with advanced metrics and intelligence report features which revolutionized free analytics tools. Companies realized the benefits of using web analytics tools to extract their relevant data. Implement Google Analytics to analyze data and build a 2010 plan to increase traffic and rates of conversion.
1. Do Create Fresh Content. Search engines are famous for penalizing a website for publishing duplicate content. With plagiarism on the rise and availability of content checking tools such as Copyscape, marketers have become more cautious. Yahoo is considered to be among the harshest of all the search engines with regard to this penalty. Add fresh content to your website to help build visitor interest and credibility with the search engines.
These 10 simple do’s and don’ts can help you to avoid making potentially dangerous seo mistakes and ensure your site is indexed and boost rankings.
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