Dominate Google Search Results Pages for a dollar. Automatically post to popular Video, Blog, Social Networking and Podcasting sites to dramatically increase visitors to your products and services. Begin to Dominate Google starting for only one dollar.

SeoDump. Free Seo and Webmaster Tools on Internet. Free and 100% Accurate Seo Tools to Analyze page or Website optimization with Research & Testing resources. Worlds best Webmaster Tools. Lots' of free helpful Tools for Web Masters to Check and Grow their web sites for free.

77 Free SEO Tools. These are here help improve your seo, web design and link building campaigns.

Microsoft Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit enables Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to discover ways to make their site content better optimized for users and search engines, thus helping to improve the site's relevance in search results. The IIS SEO Toolkit includes the Site Analysis tool, the Robots Exclusion Protocol feature, and the Sitemaps and Site Indexes feature, which let you perform detailed analysis of web site content and manage robots.txt and sitemap files.

Warrior Forum Forum devoted to Internet marketing, search engine placement and optimization, plus affiliate programs advice and support

Free SEO Tools by SEOToolSet Available from a reputable SEO expert, Bruce Clay. Check keyword density, research your competition, and more.

Click Here for the Latest SEO News

SenSEO is a Firefox extension checking the most important on-page-SEO-criteria and calculating a grade of how good your site fulfills these criteria. More Browers Plunin Tools

SEOrush is a one touch resource which provides you a FREE SEO report for your URL or a competitors URL. The report will return On Page SEO and Off Page SEO as well as social presence, indexed pages, validation, meta information, various ranks and standard domain information...

The Reaction Engine. This is an instant, free and no-registration tool to analyse the SEO performance of a URI for a given keyphrase. Reports include a variety of useful information and structured recommendations to improve overall effectiveness. Try a few reports and judge for yourself. The tool aims to encourage the use of standards compliant, user-friendly and accessible code while at the same time helping website-owners to attract more visitors to their websites. Of course, no automated tool can substitute for a human analysis by an experienced search engine optimiser. If you're not able to understand and interpret the data, you're unlikely to get much out of tools like this.

SEO, (Search Engine Optimization), Plugins for Firefox

More WebProNews Videos

Mike McDonald of WebProNews has a tip for today that explains two plug-ins for Firefox.

These plug-ins allow you to have quick and easy access to SEO information about your site, compare your site to other sites, detect where you stand with inbound links, as well as many other helpful factors. The tools are SearchStatus and Aaron Wall's SEO for Firefox.

WebSite Auditor Enterprise is an advanced on-page optimization tool that lets you make effective web pages using the smartest on-page optimization methods. It will be ideal for website owners, webmasters, professional SEOs and copywriters.

Besides giving plenty of analytical information about on-page strategies of your niche competition, WebSite Auditor gives plain-text advice that makes optimizing a page simple even for an SEO beginner.

It creates a customizable A-Z Optimization Report that will be ideal for presenting to SEO clients and has all data and recommendations necessary for successful optimization of any particular website in any targeted search engine.

In a matter of seconds, WebSite auditor will show ideal keyword density and prominence in all page elements: title, h1' h6 headings, meta description, bold texts and so on.

Here is what you can do with WebSite Auditor:

- You will see why website's competitors got their top rankings.
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- Important on-page optimization questions will be answered in the A-Z Optimization Report.

and much more.

WebSite Auditor provides you with different types of reports for providing them to clients and for in-house us. All reports can be saved in HTML or Adobe PDF for printout, emailed or uploaded to a website via FTP.

Eye Tracking Studio Knowing what people see and' more important' what they miss out is the key to an effective marketing campaign which turns people to buyers. Stop guessing and use the unique features of eye tracking to get insight into peoples attention. Imagine looking through your customers eyes to evaluate the impact of your marketing means, find hidden deficiencies and compare it to the campaign of your competitors. Eye Tracking Studio includes powerful visualizations which make communicating the results an easy task.

Eye Tracking Studio is the all-in-one software package for eye tracking studies. Designed to work with Mirametrix Eye Tracker, it makes eye tracking studies incredibly easy.

Get the most out of eye tracking with intuitive test procedures and flexible analysis tools.

- Gain insight into human cognition, consumer behaviour and oculomotor processes.
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- Getting the most out of eye tracking has never been easier.

From fundamental scientific research to commercial studies the Eye Tracking Studio analysis suite offers an unprecedented tool for the whole lifecycle of an eye tracking study. With its new workflow it is easy to manage all kinds of studies in an intuitive and flexible way.

Get the most out of eye tracking with intuitive test procedures and flexible analysis tools. Create illustrative visualizations and statistics.

The things you will probably like most about Eye Tracking Studio are:
- getting standardized eye tracking metrics is easy
- integration of multiple data streams like gaze data, mouse movement, clicks and key strokes
- web centered workflow including detection and handling of dynamic web page elements

Free Weekly Search Engine Optimization SEO News

Free weekly search engine optimization news

The tao of SEO: how to find the perfect balance: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to succeed with an activity, you have to find the perfect balance of the factors that are involved in that activity. It's the same with search engine optimization. If you want to get high rankings on Google or Bing, you have to find the right balance between on-site factors and off-site factors.
Different keywords require different SEO tactics: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:36:36 +0100 - Keywords with little competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. If you want to get the best possible results for your website, you must use the right tactics with the right keyword.
How to find good keywords without keyword research tools: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:36:36 +0100 - The keywords that you use for search engine optimization are very important. Choose the right keywords and your website will get many new customers. Choose the wrong keywords and you will lose a lot of time and money. There are several things that you should do before using a keyword suggestion tool.
New year resolutions: link building is just like getting in shape: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:36:36 +0100 - The backlinks that point to your website are still the most important factor that determine the position of your website on Google. Unfortunately, it's not easy to get good backlinks. Link building can be compared to getting in shape after the holidays.
The new year starts with shady ads on Google AdWords: Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:36:36 +0100 - A company has started the new year with shady Google AdWords ads. Fortunately, Google has pulled the ad in the meantime. Is this ad a sign of the shady advertising methods that we have to expect in 2012?
Happy Holidays!: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - In the news: webmasters are faking microformats, there seems to be another Panda update and more.
One year of search engine news: everything you need to know: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - This year, we published many articles that help you to get better results for your website. In this issue, you have a quick overview of the 2011 articles, sorted by category: Google ranking algorithm insights, tips and tricks, link building, Google's +1 button and Google algorithm updates.
The most important Google ranking algorithm changes in 2011: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - 2011 has been a very busy year for Google. Much has changed and if you want to make sure that your website gets enough visitors, you have to keep up with the latest changes. This week's article shows the most important Google changes that you should keep in mind.
New Google patent: does your site have references from trusted agents?: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, a new patent application was published that shows how Google might evaluate references on the Internet. The more Google trusts a source, the higher the influence of the reference. You might want to take another look at your links and Google's +1 button.
Five tips with examples: how to turn more visitors into customers: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting many website visitors is not enough. Your website visitors must become buyers if you want to succeed on the Internet. This week's article shows you 5 easy tips that help you to improve the conversion rate of your web pages (with concrete examples).
Official Google information: 10 recent algorithm changes: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google published a list of 10 recent ranking algorithm changes. Do these changes affect your website rankings? Do you have to adjust your web pages for the new algorithm? This week's article has the answers.
Google to penalize ad heavy websites - is your website at risk?: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web spam team, announced at the PubCon conference that ad heavy websites might be penalized in the near future. What exactly are ad heavy websites and is your own website at risk?
Has your website been penalized by Google? Here's what you can do: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Since Google's latest ranking algorithm, the search engine rankings of many websites are worse than before. If your rankings dropped, your website might have been penalized by Google. This article helps you to recover from such a situation.
Google's leaked quality rater handbook: 7 helpful tips: Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last month, Google's latest quality rater handbook leaked. The handbook contains useful information about how Google rates the quality of a website. Is your website good enough for Google's requirements?
Official Google statements: how to optimize your web pages: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - In an online Q&A session, Google's Matt Cutts answered the questions of webmasters who want to get higher rankings on Google for their websites. This week's article summarizes the most important SEO relevant statements of this session.
How search engines might weight the relevance of anchor texts: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - A recently published patent application of Microsoft gives further insight on how search engines use the anchor text in links to rank web pages. Not all links are created equally even if they use the same anchor text.
How spelling mistakes influence your rankings on Google: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Spelling mistakes can have a negative effect on the positions of your web pages in Google's search results. In addition to this, there are many more quality signals that Google checks on your web pages.
Four steps to reach customers with Google in different countries: Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting listed on Google's local country variations is very important if you're selling your products in more than one country. Google's results differ from country to country and there are four things that you have to do to make sure that Google lists you in the search results for that country.
The impact of spammy backlinks on your Google rankings: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Can low quality links or links from spammy websites have a negative effect on the rankings of your websites on Google? If spammy websites point to your site, should you act?
Lust, curiosity, prestige and forbidden fruits: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting your web page on Google's first result page is often a lot of work (although it is easier with the Top 10 Optimizer in IBP). When your website is listed on the first result page, you have to make sure that people click on your listing.
Google +1 as a ranking factor: how it influences your website: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has confirmed that the number of +1 clicks influences the position of a website in the search results. How does this affect your web pages and what do you have to to do make sure that Google lists your website?
With Google's new sitelinks, the meta description tag becomes more important: Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last month, Google announced new and extended sitelinks. The maximum number of sitelinks increased from eight to 12. The new sitelinks format increased the importance of good meta description tags on your web pages.
Flash pages still won't get high rankings on Google: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Some webmasters prefer to have a pure Flash website because they can look very impressive. Although Google can index Flash content to some extend, it is very unlikely that a Flash page will get high rankings on Google. Even the noscript tag won't help you.
Four types of backlinks that your website can get: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Backlinks are still the most important factor when it comes to high rankings on Google. If you want to see your website on Google's first result page, then you must make sure that your site has as many good backlinks as possible. There are 4 different types of text links that can appear on a web page. You can use all of them to create a powerful backlink profile that will strengthen the position of your website on Google.
How to check if spammers abuse your website: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - A new type of spam cloaking is getting more popular: spammers hack into popular websites that have high rankings on Google and then insert keyword rich links and redirects to other websites. What can you do to make sure that your website is not abused by spammers?
Optimize your internal links to get higher search engine rankings: Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Optimizing the content of your web pages is important if you want to get high rankings on Google. Most people know that they have to work on web page titles, web page content and links from other sites. The internal link structure of a website is often overlooked although it has a big impact on the rankings of a website.
Why the iPhone 5 will fail (how to create linkworthy content): Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to get backlinks from other websites, your site must have link-worthy content. Other websites will only link to your site if there's something interesting on your web pages. This week's article helps you to create link-worthy content.
Google says that valid HTML code is a quality signal: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters are not sure about the importance of valid HTML code. Some think that it is very important while other say that it doesn't matter. Last week, Google said that valid HTML code is a quality signal.
The risk of using dubious link-building services: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - You probably know the offers from companies who promise links from PR5-PR9 sites for a few dollars. This sounds like a very good offer and the websites look relatively credible. However, things that look too good to be true usually aren't true.
How Googlers review reconsideration requests: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - In an online forum, a Googler explained how Google reviews reconsideration requests. What can you do if your website has been penalized by Google and what does Google expect from you?
Official Google statement: don't obsess about PageRank: Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters still care about the PageRank that is displayed in Google's toolbar. It's not wise to focus on that metric. Some days ago, Google published another official statement that made it clear that you should focus on other things than PageRank.
Outrun the bear: five steps to beat your competitors: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Your website does not have to be perfect to get high listings on Google. It just has to be better than the websites of your competitors. This week, you'll get concrete advice on how to outperform your competitors.
How many days does it take to get listed on Google's first result page?: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting on Google's first result page is important if you want to get more website visitors. How long does it take to get listed on Google's first result page? There are four factors that influence the process.
Seven things that can help you with your link building campaign: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Many people think that getting links is very difficult or that their website is not attractive enough to get backlinks. There are several things that you can do to get more backlinks to your website.
Everything you need to know about Google's +1 button: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's +1 button is now available for websites. The new button will influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results. What exactly does this button do and how can you use it with your web pages?
Official Google statements: how to optimize your site: Tue, 31 May 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's Matt Cutts gave many SEO related tips in a live chat that was hosted on YouTube. This week's article contains all important statements that were made by Matt Cutts in that chat.
Is your website used by search engine spammers?: Tue, 24 May 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Spammers have found a new way to get high rankings on Google. The new trick involves hacked websites and the canonical tag. Is your website at risk? What can you do to avoid this?
How to get more clicks on your Google listings: Tue, 17 May 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - It's great if your website is listed on Google's first result page for the right keywords. It's not so great if nobody clicks on your listing because there's something wrong with it. There are some easy and some not-so-easy things that you can do to get more clicks on your Google listings.
Official Google advice: how to check if your contents pass Google's new quality requirements: Tue, 10 May 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has published some questions that will make it easier to find out if your content is good enough for Google's latest quality filter. Is your website okay or do you have to improve it?
Four ways to get natural backlinks: Tue, 03 May 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has become pretty good in detecting low quality web pages and links. If you use a link service that promises a lot of high PR links for little money or if you participate in a fully automated linking system, chances are that Google will penalize your website because you are trying to trick them. What can you do to get "natural" backlinks?
The top result on Google gets over 36% of all clicks: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - A new study of Optify shows how important it is to get a high position in Google's search results. The top results get an average click-through rate of 36.4%. The number of searches and the cost per click for a keyword also influence the clicks. What does this mean to your search engine optimization activities?
How to get 50% more customers with a simple change: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Would you say 'no thanks' if someone offered you an easy way to get 50% more visitors to your website? Probably not. However, that's exactly what most webmasters are doing. There's a simple thing that you can do to drive many more visitors to your site.
How to get listed as quickly as possible in Google's search results: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - We're living in a world of instant gratification: the Internet and the TV report news as it happens, you can call anyone, anywhere at any time, fast-food is delivered and consumed immediately, etc. Does this also work with search engines? How can you get listed as quickly as possible in Google's search results?
Why SEO is like wealth building: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Search engine optimization is very similar to wealth building. If you do the wrong things and listen to the wrong people, you might lose everything and you might be left with nothing. This week's article goes into the details.
How Google segments the contents of a web page: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google was granted a patent that describes how Google might segment the content of a web page. Depending on the location of the content, a web page will get higher or lower rankings.
How to get links from authority sites (+ plan B to get more links): Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Links from high authority websites have the biggest impact on the position of your web pages in Google search results. If high authority websites link to your site with your keywords in the anchor text, the chances that your site will be listed in the top 10 results for that keyword increase dramatically.
How to secure your rankings after Google's latest update: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's Panda update caused a ranking drop for many websites. Google has a very long official discussion thread about this topic. The discussion reveals things that you can do to make sure that your website gets its rankings back.
Official Google statements about the latest algorithm update: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts commented on Google's latest ranking algorithm update. Their comments reveal why Google released the update which was named "Panda".
Google has released a major ranking algorithm update: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has released one of the biggest ranking algorithms updates of the last months. The change noticeably impacts 11.8% of all queries on Google. How does this affect the rankings of your website on Google?
Watch out: Google continues to penalize spammers: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, J. C. Penney was penalized by Google because they used paid links to advertise their website. This week, Forbes.com has been penalized because they sell links. Is your website in danger? Which search engine optimization methods are safe to use?
Paid links: do you still have to worry about them?: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Once again, paid links are a hot topic in the search engine optimization community. The website of J. C. Penney had number 1 rankings for many competitive keywords. It turned out that the J. C. Penney website obtained these rankings through buying links on over 2000 pages. Now that Google found the links, J. C. Penney faces a major problem.
5 reasons why your SEO campaign doesn't work (yet): Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters face the problem that their SEO campaigns don't deliver the expected results. Why are your campaigns underperforming? What can you do to make sure that search engine optimization works for you?
Official: Google launches a new anti-spam algorithm against content farms: Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Earlier this month, Google announced that they would release several new anti-spam algorithms this year. The first algorithm update has just been released and it deals with content farms. How does this affect your website and what do you have to change on your web pages?
How Google is going to fight spam sites in 2011: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Google is going to fight spam sites stronger than before in 2011. What are Google's anti-spam plans for 2011 and what do you have to do to make sure that Google doesn't classify your website as spam by mistake?
Reciprocal links: don't be fooled by false information: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Reciprocal links were the first social element on the World Wide Web. They existed a long time before the term "social media" even existed. In the last few years, there was a lot of FUD about the efficacy of reciprocal links. Do they still work? Is there any reliable data?
How your web page changes influence your search engine rankings: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - It's a no-brainer that changes on your web pages influence the position of your website on search engines. However, it's not so clear how search engines react to the changes on your site and what exactly causes the changes in the search results. A new search engine patent might have some answers.
5 ways to improve your Google rankings with your existing backlinks: Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting links to your website is one of the most important and one of the most difficult tasks that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google. This week, we're taking a look at 5 things that you can do to improve your Google rankings with your existing backlinks.
Solve the Christmas puzzle online (+ news about multi-language sites & pages for mobile on Google): Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - We wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a great year 2011! May you enjoy peace, love, and happiness among friends and family. Instead of our regular article, this weeks issue contains an easy holiday jigsaw puzzle that you can solve online. Have fun!
A Google ranking guarantee? There really is no catch.: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Every few weeks, we get an email from a potential customer who tells us that he does not believe our ranking guarantee. That's understandable. We guarantee that your website will be found in the regular (unpaid) search results on Google for the keywords of your choice. How does this work and will it work for your website?
Has your website the right reading level for Google?: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, Google introduced a new advanced search feature that enables you to filter search results by reading level. Which reading level is required to read your web pages and does this influence the position of your site in Google's search results?
How to get 33% more visitors for your website: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Your revenues are fine? You don't need more traffic? You're not interested in new website visitors? If you ignore the Bing/Yahoo alliance in your search engine optimization campaigns, you might be missing a lot of visitors.
The top 100 websites with the most backlinks: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Did you ever want to know which domains have the most backlinks? Worldwide or country by country? Now you can. The online SEO tool suite SEOprofiler.com publishes a free daily updated list of the domains with the most unique backlinks.
The perfect number of keywords for your website: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - The purpose of SEO is to get a lot of new customers through high rankings on Google and other search engines. If you have taken the time to find the best keywords for your website, you probably have a very long list with many keywords. How do you add that list to your website and what is the right number of keywords per page?
Four things that you can do to get more sales: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - It can be difficult to convince your website visitors to buy from you. Your visitors have to trust you before they buy. There are four easy things that you can do to make your website more trustworthy.
Get local: how to get on Google's first results with Google Places: Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting listed in Google Places has become very important with Google's recent algorithm change for local results. If you offer local services, you should make sure that your website is listed correctly. This week's article will help you to improve your results.
Blekko: a new search engine with a new approach: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Blekko is a new search engine that started a public beta test some days ago after a development period of 2.5 years. It uses an interesting new approach to improve the quality of the search results.
How to make people click on your search engine listings: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting listed on Google's first result page is great but it won't do your business any good if nobody clicks on your listing in the search results. This week's article contains several tips on how to improve your snippets so that searchers click on your listing.
How Google categorizes web pages and search queries: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has been granted another patent that describes how Google might categorize web pages and search queries. How does this affect your web pages and what should you do?
Time-shift: how Bing changes the search results based on temporal events: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - A new patent application of Microsoft indicates that Microsoft's search engine Bing might deliver different results based on the intent of the searcher and the time of the year. How is this done?
SEO Tai Chi: find the perfect balance: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Finding the right balance between several factors is important for many things in life. Search engine optimization is no different. If you want to get high rankings on Google, Bing or other major search engines, than you have to find the right balance between on-site factors and off-site factors.
First aid: how to recover lost rankings on Google: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - It's one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. This article will help you to recover your lost rankings on Google.
An insight into Google's 200 ranking factors: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google's Eric Schmidt said that listing Google's 200 ranking factors would reveal business secrets. Although Google does not officially publish their ranking algorithms, there is something that you can do to crack Google's secret algorithm.
How to get more visitors with Google Instant search: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google released Google Instant. You have to adapt to this change if you don't want to lose many website visitors. In this article, we'll explain what Google Instant is and you'll learn what you can do to benefit from the change.
How to become a trusted website to increase your search engine rankings: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - The authority of a website influences its position in the search results on Google and other search engines. If you want to see your website on Google's first result page, you have to make sure that search engines trust your site.
New Google patent: how to judge the value of a link: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has been granted a new patent some days ago. The patent can give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of the links to your site on your Google rankings.
Six points: how to turn more of your website visitors into customers: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Your website will only cost you money if your website visitors don't become customers of your company. For that reason, it is important that you get the basics right. Check the six points in this week's article to find out if your website turns enough visitors into customers.
How much money can you make with a single keyword?: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Having high rankings for the right keywords will have a big impact on your revenue. In this article, you'll learn how to judge the financial value of your keywords. You might be surprised.
The SEO pyramid: do the right things: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Get a solid foundation. The SEO pyramid shows you how to do the right things in the right order so that you get the best possible search engine rankings for your website.
Is Google going add their own links to your website content?: Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Is Google going to add their own links to your web pages? A new patent indicates that Google might plan to change your web page content.
How to prepare your website for the Yahoo-Bing change: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Yahoo is starting to display Bing results on the search result pages. Bing results are going to deliver a lot of traffic in the near future. Is your website prepared for that change or will you lose a lot of visitors?
Does Google show the right Sitelinks type for your website?: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - When Google displays Sitelinks below your website listing in the search results, it's very likely that your website will get more clicks and more visitors. This week's article explains how to check your Sitelinks and how to make sure that Google displays the right Sitelinks for your website.
How to tell Google that your website is not about toads: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - You know what you sell and you know the topic of your website. Are you sure that Google puts your website in the right category? If your website is about shoes, Google still might think that it is about frogs and toads. How can you tell Google that your website is not about toads?
Six things that you should know about SEO: Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Most people know that being listed on Google's first result page will bring them a lot of targeted visitors and that they will get a lot of sales through that listing. However, you also have to know what to do if you want to get these results. This week's article shows you six things that you absolutely must know about SEO.
Official Google statement: 6 tips to get quality links: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google published an official statement about quality links and their effect on your website rankings. In the statement, Google wants to explain their viewpoint on earning quality links. This week's article contains six link building tips that Google endorses.
New Google patent: the reasonable surfer and your links: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last month, Google was granted a patent that states that the different links on a linking page have a different effect on the linked pages. How does this affect your website and what do you have to do to secure your rankings?
Google Caffeine is live: what you need to know: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google officially announced that their new web indexing system "Caffeine" is live on all Google pages. What does this mean for your website and do you have to change anything on your pages?
Five things you have to do to get high Google rankings: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you must do the right things to succeed. You have to work on many different factors to make sure that your website performs better than the sites of your competitors. This week's article helps you to check the five most important points.
New data: how many clicks does the first result on Google get?: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - There's new data about the number of clicks that the first result on Google's result page gets. How does this affect your website and how can you judge the financial value of your rankings?
Six things you can do to remove bad press from the search results: Tue, 25 May 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them. What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on Google's first result page for your company name?
Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website: Tue, 18 May 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - The anchor text of the links that point to your website is very important when it comes to getting high rankings on Google. Unfortunately, Google might not use the anchor text of all the links that point to your website. In this article, you'll learn how to find these links.
Mayday: how Google's May update will affect your long tail rankings: Tue, 11 May 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has introduced another algorithm update this month and many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long (so called "long tail keywords"). How does this affect your website?
Eight things you can do to show search engines your most important pages: Tue, 04 May 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - How can you get search engines to display the web pages with the best conversion rate in the search results and what can you do to to make sure that unwanted pages are not listed? This week's article explains eight things that you can to do show search engines your most important pages.
Four steps to great keywords (without keyword tools): Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Most people use a keyword suggestion tool when they try to find new keywords for their campaigns. While keyword suggestion tools are good, they should not be the first step in your keyword research activities. This article helps you to find great keywords without using keyword tools.
The effect of latent semantic indexing (LSI) on your website rankings: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a technique that is used by all major search engines nowadays. Does your website take this into account? How does it influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?
It's official: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has confirmed that they use page speed as a ranking factor. Will your website drop in Google's search results? What can you do you keep your website listed?
Should you buy links? Google's Matt Cutts made a new announcement.: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's Matt Cutts recently made a new announcement about paid links. Buying links is a very hot and controversial topic among webmasters. Should you buy links to increase the position of your website on Google? Do paid links help your rankings? Are there any risks?
Pimp your links: how to improve your existing backlinks: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting links to your website is one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google and other big search engines. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult tasks. Do you make the most of your existing links? This week, we're going to pimp your links.
Official Google statements about ranking factors: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week Google's Matt Cutts gave an interview in which he revealed some things that will help webmasters to better optimize their websites. In this article, you'll find the most important things that Matt Cutts said in the interview.
A new Google penalty? What can you do against it?: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters in online forums reported an unusual Google behavior. New web pages of some sites are indexed with a longer delay. Is it a new Google penalty? Or is it just a bug that affects only certain websites?
Top 5 elements that you need for high rankings on Google: Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - A small error in one search engine optimization factor can destroy your efforts in all other elements. When you optimize your website for search engines, you have to consider several different factors. In this article, you'll find the five most important factors that influence your Google rankings.
Is your website exploited by proxy hijackers?: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Proxy hijacking still seems to be an issue on Google. Other websites might steal your website content and they can outrank your web pages on Google with the stolen content. Is your website affected? What can you do against these hijackers?
Double talk: do search engines understand your web pages?: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google does not list your web pages although you have a great site? This week's article lists 5 reasons why search engines won't list your website (solutions included).
Bing about web spam - Is your website considered spam?: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - All major search engines have special teams that try to eliminate web spam from their search result pages. Bing has just published an article about web spam. Is your website spam and are your rankings at risk?
Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling more: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - If you advertise your website on Google AdWords, chances are that you found out that you can spent a lot of money on AdWords without getting a lot in return. The reason why many people spend much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads is that they use the wrong settings in their campaigns.
How to get your breadcrumbs on Google's result pages: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters continue to see breadcrumbs on Google's result pages. What are breadcrumbs, for which websites does Google display them and how can you get Google to display breadcrumbs for your own website?
How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Google has announced a major change in the way that they handle search results by including synonyms for some words that may be used in queries. How does this affect the position of your web pages in Google's search results?
Official Google statement: how Google ranks tweets: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - How does Google rank tweets in the real-time results? The Google engineer who led Google's real-time search development shares some insights.
Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - How important are the long tail keywords in your search marketing campaign? Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords with little search volume? A new study has the answer.
How to get in Google's real-time results: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:36:36 +0100 - Last month, Google started to display real-time results on the search engine result pages. How are these results calculated and how can you get in these results?
Solve the holiday jigsaw puzzle and the latest SEO news: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Solve our holiday jigsaw puzzle online, get interesting 2009 statistics, learn about Google vs. Baidu and much more.
Will web page speed become a more important ranking factor?: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's Matt Cutts recently suggested that the speed of a web page might become more important in Google's ranking algorithm. How will this affect your website and what can you do to improve the speed of your website?
Google patent: how Google deals with duplicate content: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google was granted a patent this month that explains how search engines can deal with duplicate content issues. Does your website hvae duplicate content problems?
Google Caffeine: how will it affect the rankings of your web pages?: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's new Caffeine index is going to be released soon. What do you have to expect from this update and how will it affect the position of your web pages in Google?
Official search engine statement: link building do's and dont's: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of Bing's document can be found in this article.
Image optimization: get more visitors by being listed at the very top of Google's search results: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google Images has indexed billions of images. If your image can be found for the right keyword, then you will get targeted visitors to your website. We have six tips that help you to get your images on Google's first results page.
The right SEO tactic for low and high competition: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. Two charts illustrate the importance and the effect of different optimization tactics.
Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Links from related websites are very important for the position of your own site in Google's search results. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to convince other people to link to your site.
Paid links: do they really affect your Google rankings?: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or can you get in trouble if you use paid links?
Official Google statement: how to deal with bad inbound links: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters think that low quality links or links from spammy websites can have a negative effect on the ranking of their websites on Google. The problem with links from spammy websites is that it is very difficult to do something against them. Here's an official Google statement about bad links.
How to get your website above the regular results on Google - without paying for it: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're showing you how you can optimize the listings of your website on Google Maps. Good listings on Google Maps can result in many website visitors.
Five steps: How to outrank your competitors on Google: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - To get high rankings on Google, it is not necessary to have everything that Google expects from a great website. You just have to be better than your competitors. If you have a website with optimized web pages, it is usually the quality of the links that make the difference. The tips in this article will help you to get better rankings than your competitors.
What's the catch? How IBP's Google ranking guarantee works.: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - You have probably seen the top 10 ranking guarantee that we give users of our website promotion tool IBP: we guarantee that your website will be found in the regular (unpaid) search results on Google for the keywords of your choice. Is it really possible to guarantee a top 10 position on Google? What's the catch?
TrustRank revisited: do search engines trust your website?: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - All major search engines use some kind of TrustRank to rank your web pages. How does this affect the position of your website in the search results and how can you improve the TrustRank of your website?
Reciprocal links: are they great, crap or something in between?: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Reciprocal links are discussed controversially among search engine marketers. Some think that reciprocal links are great, others think that they are a waste of time, another group thinks that reciprocal links work to some degree. Is there a final answer?
A new free online keyword suggestion tool: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to succeed on the Internet, it is extremely important that you choose the right keywords for both organic search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. If you choose the wrong keywords, you'll waste a lot of time and money. A new frekeyword suggestion tool helps you to find good keywords.
The effect of your URL structure on your Google rankings: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Does Google care about the position of a web page on your server? Does it make a difference if a web page is in the root directory of your website or in a sub directory? How does your URL structure influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results? What can you do to improve the position of your website?
Google's human reviewers: real people judge about your Google rankings: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're taking a look at the effect of human reviewers on Google's ranking algorithm. Google employs several thousand people who manually review the search results. Do they like your website?
The winner takes it all: how to survive three rounds to get the sale: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - One of the main problems in Internet marketing is that it is often a "the winner takes it all" game. That means that the best website will get the deal and all other websites will get nothing, no matter how good they are. If you are just slightly better than your competitors, you will get many more sales.
Case study: are Internet directory submissions still a good SEO method?: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Do Internet directory links still have value when it comes to search engine rankings? Can you increase the position of your website in Google's search results by submitting your site to Internet directories? A small case study has some answers.
Optimizing your website is like working with a fitness coach: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, you'll find out why optimizing your website is like working with a fitness coach. Is your website fit enough to get page one listings on Google?
The effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - The Yahoo/Microsoft deal will have a major impact on the search engine landscape and there definitely will be effects on your website rankings and the number of visitors that your website will get..
How to get much better results with Google AdWords: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's AdWords system is a great way to get more website visitors. However, Google is also a business that needs to make money. That's why most people pay much more for their AdWords ads than they have to.
PageRank sculpting: does it still help you to get higher Google rankings?: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're taking a look at PageRank sculpting with the rel=nofollow attribute. Does it still work and can it help you to get better rankings on Google? What do you have to change on your own website?
How to outrank websites that have more backlinks than your website: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to get high rankings on Google, it is necessary that many other websites link to your website. This is something that most webmasters know. What many webmasters still don't know is that a website that has only a few inbound links can outrank a website that has many inbound links.
Action plan: how to change the titles of your web pages to get more visitors: Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - The titles that you use for your web pages are very important. Depending on the type of traffic that you want to attract, you should use different web page title types.
SEO is pointless if your website does not convert: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting listed on Google's first result page is great. It's not so great when you find out that you get a lot of visitors through your high search engine rankings but only a few customers. Search engine optimization is pointless if your website does not convert visitors into customers. You'll actually lose a lot of money if you don't take the time to optimize the conversion rate of your website.
For how many keywords should you optimize a web page?: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're taking a look at the number of keywords for which you should optimize a single page of your site. It is possible to optimize a web page for a single keyword and get rankings for many keywords.
How to save money with quickly created long tail keywords: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - If you choose the right keywords, then you will pay as little as possible for your ads and you will get more sales. This new tool helps you to quidkly create long tail keywords and keyword lists for Google AdWords.
A new keyword tool with a unique keyword database: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're taking a look at a brand new keyword suggestion tool that uses a unique keyword database that no other tool on the Internet can offer you. Finding the best keywords for search engine optimization is crucial if you want to succeed with your website. That's why you should take a look at this tool.
Microsoft's new search engine Bing - and how to optimize your website for Bing: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Microsoft's Bing search engine has just become publicly available, allowing you to decide whether Microsoft's latest effort has the goods to take on Google. Bing promises to be a success and this article reveals everything you need to know about this new search engine.
Has Google a new -50 penalty?: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters in an online webmaster forum observed an anomaly in Google's results that might indicate a new Google penalty. Which websites have been penalized and could this affect your own website?
How to find out which websites are hosted on the same server as your website: Tue, 19 May 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Are you living in a bad neighborhood? Your website could. Did you know that your web host probably hosts several websites on the same web server as yours? Some of these websites might belong to shady businesses. If they are major spammers, your website might be banned on Google.
How to create trust for high Google rankings: Tue, 12 May 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Trust is a major factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Some websites can get high rankings on Google for nearly any content they publish while other websites cannot get high rankings at all although they have optimized web page content. The reason why some websites do better than others is trust.
How to get indented listings for your website on Google: Tue, 05 May 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Wouldn't it be great if your website was listed twice in Google's top 10 results for your most important keywords? Although Google usually shows only one page from every site in the top results, it is possible to get two listings if you do the right things.
Three easy steps to optimize your existing links: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Link building is one of the hardest and one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google. As it takes so much time to get inbound links, it is very important to make sure that the links to your website contain the right keywords. Here are three things that you can do to optimize your existing links.
Improve your Google rankings with second-tier links: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Getting high quality links is crucial if you want high rankings on Google for competitive keywords. Links from old and reputable high authority sites work best. Unfortunately, it's often not easy to get links from high authority websites.
Do keywords in URLs improve your search engine rankings?: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Should you use your keywords in the URLs of your web pages? Do search engines look at the keywords that are included in the addresses of your web pages and do these keywords have an effect on the rankings of your website? Google and Yahoo made some statements about it.
How Google's latest algorithm changes affect your website: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - During the last weeks, Google changed three things on the result pages that are visible to all Google users. The changes are good for searchers but they might be bad for your website.
Ten things that you should know about search engine optimization (SEO): Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Search engine optimization is not difficult if you understand the basic concepts. If you know what to do, your website will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines. This article will help you to better understand SEO or to explain SEO to your clients.
How Google analyzes the top keywords on your website: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages. How does Google find the keywords on your website and how do they rank your website? What can you do to get better rankings?
Google's sandbox filter is still alive: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's sandbox is a filter that Google's search quality team created to fight spam in the search results. This Google filter is still alive and it might be the reason why your website is not listed as high as it could.
Nine factors that affect your website usability and SEO: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Optimizing web pages for search engines is often the same as optimizing web pages for web surfers. This week, we're taking a look at nine factors that can improve the usability of your website as well as your search engine rankings.
Action plan: how to get listed in Google's search results for many keywords: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Targeting several keywords on your website is crucial if you want to get high rankings on Google. The more keywords that are related to a special topic can be found on your website, the more likely it is that Google will find your website relevant to that topic.
100% natural: how to get high rankings with natural links: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Some years ago, it was enough to get many inbound links to get high rankings on Google. This has changed. As Google and other search engines continually improve the way they rank web pages, getting the right links is crucial if you want to be listed on the first search result page.
Google warning: is your site abused through redirects?: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google recently wrote in one of its official blogs that it is possible for spammers to take advantage of your website without ever setting a virtual foot in your server. Spammers can do this by abusing open redirects. What can you do to avoid this?
Three tips to compete with established websites on Google: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Old websites have a big advantage over new websites. Websites that were around several years ago had far fewer competitors and it was much easier for them to get high rankings in that environment. How can you compete with these websites? Here are three tips.
How long does it take to get top rankings on Google?: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Many people who start a website think that it is possible to get high rankings on Google within a few days. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Competition on the Internet is fierce and there are several factors that influence how long it takes until Google lists your website.
The art of writing a link exchange request that is not spam: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Link exchange requests have a very bad reputation. The reason for that is that many people send mass link exchange requests that are nothing more than spam. However, if you want to get links from authority sites, you have to send link exchange requests. The secret of successful requests is to write link exchange messages that aren't spam.
Why link building is like losing weight: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're telling you why link building is like losing weight and how this will help you to get better rankings on Google.
How to feed, indulge and guide Google's robot: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's robot decides whether your website will get high positions in the search results or not. Give Google's robot what it needs and your website will get better rankings on Google.
Website checklist for 2009: is your website ready for the new year?: Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:36:36 +0100 - The new year 2009 might be a tough year for many businesses but if you do it correctly, it can be a very successful year for you. Use our 5 step checklist to find out if your website succeeds in the new year.
News 2008: the dollar value of a Google ranking and much more: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - What is the dollar value of a top ranking in Google? How can you increase your rankings? What has changed? This and many tips and tricks can be found in our 2008 summary.
Find the hidden message: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're bringing you our Christmas puzzle instead of the main article. Can you find the hidden message?
How the bounce rate of your website can affect your Google rankings: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Does Google use the bounce rate of a web page to specify the position of that page in the search results? What does this mean for your website rankings and what can you do to get a better bounce rate?
Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - In an online webmaster forum, a webmaster described the link experiment that he did with his websites. He tried to find out how linking to the home page affected his rankings. Can too many links to the home page of your website have a negative effect on your rankings?
Action plan: what to do when your Google rankings have dropped: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Has your website lost its rankings in Google? Did your rankings drop or did your website vanish completely from Google? Many things can cause a ranking drop. This article explains what you can do to get your rankings back.
Google's search engine optimization starter guide: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Two weeks ago, Google released a so-called search engine optimization starter guide for webmasters. While the Google document does not tell you how your website can be listed on Google's first result page it will tell you what you shouldn't do if you want Google to index your web pages.
Do search engines think that your website is spam?: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - About three weeks ago, Microsoft was granted a new patent with the name Web Spam Classification Using Query Dependent Data. Although this patent application was filed by Microsoft, all major search engines probably use similar methods to classify web pages. Do search engines think that your website is spam?
Official Google statement: the effects of outbound links on your website: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Do links to other websites have a positive or a negative effect on their Google rankings of your website? Are there right and wrong links? Google has published an official statement.
Five internal linking tips that will improve your search engine rankings: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want your website to be indexed by search engines, it is important that your site has a good link architecture. Here are five tips that will help you to improve your link architecture as well as your search engine rankings.
Inbound link analysis: how long should a text link be?: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - The words that are used to link to your website improve your search engine rankings for these words on Google. But how long should the link text be? Which words will be considered? Is there an optimal length for text links?
Official Google statement: how to get high rankings: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google's Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get high rankings in Google's search result pages.
Two new spam tricks to get higher rankings on Google: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Many people will do anything do get on Google's first result page. That's why some webmasters regularly come up with new spam methods to get on Google's first result page. Here are two new methods that people use to get high rankings on Google.
How to increase your sales with less traffic: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Search engine optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It's about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better. This week, we're showing you that your sales can increase if your website gets less traffic. If you optimize your web pages correctly, you can multiply your revenue without working more.
Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn't like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized. Will Google forgive you if you remove the spam from your site?
Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Many people still don't know what it takes to convince Google that your website is more relevant than the millions of other websites on the Internet. There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google's first result page.
How your web page titles can help you with local search: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - If you're selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by the right people. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimize your web page titles.
How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site: Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site. How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.
How Google Suggest influences the traffic you get from Google (+ Google web browser): Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google added the Google Suggest feature that had been available in beta for a long time to its main page. This might sound like a small change but it can have a big effect on the traffic that you get from Google. In addition, Google has released its own web browser today.
Five easy to make mistakes that keep search engine robots away from your website: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters don't get high rankings on Google and other search engines just because Google's indexing robot has difficulty to index their web pages. Read this article to find out how you can get Google to index your web pages.
Being first in the search results is not always the right thing: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - The number one position on Google is something that most webmasters try to achive. Unfortunately, many webmasters don't take the time to plan to find the best keywords for optimization. This can lead to problems with pay per click and with organic search engine optimization.
How to write link texts that will increase your Google rankings: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Good link texts can give your website a boost in Google's search results. Unfortunately, many webmasters still don't take advantage of the full potential of optimized link texts. This article explains how you can make the most out of your links.
What Google's improved Flash indexing means for your website: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - A month ago, Google announced that they had improved the way it indexes Flash files. Has something changed in Google's search results in the meantime? Is this change good news for you if you have a Flash site?
A new search engine from Ex-Googlers challenges Google: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - A new search engine has been started by former Google employees. Could this be the next Google killer? How will this affect Google and your rankings?
Patent analysis: how search engines treat inbound links: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - This week, we're taking a look at a new ranking patent that has been granted to Yahoo. This patent can help you to better understand how to get higher rankings on Yahoo and Google.
How to GEO target Google: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Do you want to get customers from outside the United States? Is your business located in Europe or another part of the world? There are a few things to consider if your website is aimed at people outside the United States.
Step-by-step guide: How to get high quality links: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Link building is one of the most important search engine optimization steps. Without good inbound links, your website cannot get high rankings. These four easy steps will help you to link your website with some of the best sites on the Internet.
Top 4 reasons why your Google rankings have dropped: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Most webmasters face this problem sooner or later. The rankings of your website on Google have dropped and you don't know why this happened. Read this article to find out why this could happen to your website.
Does your CTR influence your Google rankings?: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Google uses the click through rate to rank the paid search results. The more clicks an ad gets, the higher it will be ranked in the search results. Does Google also use this method for the regular search results?
Can your business afford a quick and easy SEO solution?: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters want quick and easy solutions to their problems. Most people want to get high rankings in Google and they want these rankings now. Here are the most popular quick fix solutions.
Does your website have no or the wrong Sitelinks in Google?: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - More and more websites get Sitelinks in Google's search results. What are they, how can they help your website and how can you influence which links Google will use for your Sitelinks? What can you do if Google displays the wrong links?
Does your domain name prevent your website from getting high rankings?: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Does your domain name prevent your website from getting high rankings? This week, we're taking a look at the ranking problems that many webmasters experienced with .info domains. Is there a ranking filter for .info domains?
All you need to know about duplicate content: Tue, 27 May 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Although there is no such thing as a general duplicate content penalty it is difficult to get high rankings for a web page which contents can also be found on other web pages. What do search engines do with duplicate content and how can you avoid problems with duplicate content? All you need to know can be found in this article.
How to explain to your boss why website optimization is important: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - People not involved in website optimization often have difficulty to understand search engine optimization and the different methods that are involved. If you have to explain the basic SEO concepts to your boss, the following list will help you.
Google's -60 penalty and how to avoid it: Tue, 13 May 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - During the last weeks, people in online forums observed some strange Google result changes. Rumor has it that there is a new -60 penalty. Which websites are penalized? How can you avoid getting penalized?
How much is a Google top ranking worth?: Tue, 06 May 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - High rankings on Google can make the difference between an extremely successful online business and a total failure. The position of your website in Google's search results can make or break your business. But how much exactly is a top ranking on Google worth? What can a top ranking on Google do for your business?
Can your website usability influence your search engine rankings?: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not? A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design.
How the age of your and other people's websites affects your rankings: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - A new patent application with the name "Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity" shows how search engines could determine the quality of a web page by its age.
Study: what do people click in search results?: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - A new study about the click behavior of web searchers has been released this month. What do people click and what does this mean for your website rankings?
A major Google algorithm update might be on the way: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters in a discussion forum have noticed changes in Google's search results. Do we have to expect a larger ranking algorithm update? How will this influence the ranking of your web pages in Google's search results?
Is your website text too complicated for your website visitors?: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Are you sure that your website visitors understand the text on your web pages? If your web pages are difficult to understand, you might not earn as much as you could with your website. There is a simple test that enables you to check the readability of your web pages.
Does your website look like spam to search engines?: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Is your website nowhere to be seen in Google? It might be that Google doesn't like your website because it looks like spam. Check this list to find out whether your website might look like spam or not.
Are your AdWords results getting worse?: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - If you find that your per click prices are going through the roof while your conversions are going down you should check your AdWords strategy. These tips will help you to save a weak campaign.
How to get Google Sitelinks for your website: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters wonder how they can make Google display additional Sitelinks for their websites. What exactly are Sitelinks, how can you get them and are they worth the effort?
Google's new method to detect duplicate content: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Google's new patent application on near duplicate content describes a new method how Google tries to keep its users from finding redundant content in the result pages. How does this affect your web pages?
How Yahoo's phrased based indexing affects your website rankings: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Yahoo recently published a patent applications that gives some insight on how Yahoo finds and evaluates keyword phrases on web pages. How does this affect the position of your web pages in the search results?
Get top 10 rankings on Google with IBP 10: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - We released the brand new version of our popular SEO software tool IBP. The new version IBP 10 has everything that you need to get top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
Seven things you can do to improve the link structure of your website: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - The internal link structure of your site allows you to spread the link power of your home page to the individual pages of your site. The right structure can help you to increase your search engine rankings.
Google backs out of the position 6 penalty: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Three weeks ago, we informed you about Google's new position 6 penalty. At this time, it was unclear why Google assigned this penalty to some websites. It seems that Google doesn't use this penalty anymore. Why did this happen?
New technologies detect black-hat SEO methods: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Search engine optimization methods are divided in two categories: black hat SEO and white hat SEO. Recent developments indicate that websites that use black-hat methods will be in trouble soon.
Mosaic cloaking: a new form of search engine spam?: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters involved in rather shady search engine optimization methods invented a new form of cloaking. That new method has been called mosaic cloaking and it is an attempt to make cloaking less detectable.
Google's new position 6 penalty: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - A discussion in an online webmaster forum indicates that Google might have invented a new ranking penalty for websites that rank well for popular search terms. Is your website affected by this penalty?
Hot or not? Does Google really use a new ranking algorithm?: Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - Webmasters recently found an anomaly in Google's ranking results. Has Google changed its algorithm to artificially increase the ranking of new pages? This article has the details.
All important articles of 2007: Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:36:36 +0100 - We published many articles in 2007 that will help you to get more out of your website. The categorized articles in this issue help you to increase the rankings on your website on Google and other major search engines.
Axandra's Christmas SEO crossword puzzle: Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Instead of our regular weekly articles, news and facts, we decided to publish a Christmas crossword puzzle about search engine optimization this week. Have fun! :-)
How Google creates the description of your website for the result page: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Having high rankings on search engines is a great thing. However, it's also important that your web pages are displayed with an attractive description in the search results. If the description is not appealing to web surfers then they might not click the link.
Google, Yahoo, the X-Robots directive and your website rankings: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Yahoo announced that they now support the X-Robots-Tag in the HTTP header. This new tag allows you to influence how Google and Yahoo index your website pages. Has it an effect on your search engine rankings?
Google warns against cloaking: we can detect it: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - In a recent blog post, Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts wrote about cloaking. The blog post makes several things clear. You put your website at risk if you use cloaking.
New robots.txt commands: make sure that Google can index your site: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - It seems that Google is currently experimenting with new robots.txt commands. If your robots.txt file accidentally contains one of the new commands, it might be that your robots.txt file tells Google to go away.
Are you paying too much for your AdWords ads? Change it now!: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Pay per click marketing can be a good addition to organic search engine optimization. However, if you do it wrong, pay per click will cost you a fortune without bringing results. If you do it right, AdWords ads will help you to make more money.
Troubleshooting: how search engines can misunderstand your web pages: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - This is a common problem. Your web designer has created a beautiful page with nice graphics, great content and great Flash animations. Unfortunately, it seems that search engines won't list your website no matter what you do.
Top 6 reasons why your search engine rankings have dropped: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Have your rankings dropped recently? Before you do anything, you should try to find out what has caused your ranking drop.
Reciprocal links are alive and kicking: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.
How long does it take until a new site ranks in Google, Yahoo and MSN?: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - How long does it take exactly until search engines list a new site in the top 10 rankings? This test has the answers.
Are you unintentionally spamming search engines?: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Are you sure that your website is free of hidden text? There are many ways to create hidden text unintentionally. Google might penalize your website for something you did not intend to do.
How to overcome Google's filter for new websites: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - It's easier to get high rankings on Google with older websites than it is with new websites. Why is this so and what can you do to get high rankings on Google if you have a brand new website?
The most important factor for successful SEO (hint: it's not inbound links): Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to get high rankings on search engines then you have to consider many different factors. There is one factor that is more important than any other ranking factors.
The perfect incoming link for high search engine rankings: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - It's important that you get the right kind of links if you want to get high rankings on Google. If you have 20 good incoming links then you'll get better rankings than with 100 bad incoming links. So what makes a good incoming link? There are several points that can make a link better than other links.
4 tips to increase your sales by creating a trustworthy website: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Even if you have high search engine rankings, people still might not buy from you. The reason for that is that your website might not be trustworthy. Of course, you need a professional web design to create trust. However, there are a few other things that are necessary to convince your website visitors that they should do business with you.
Top 3 tips to get indexed on Google within 48 hours: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If you have a new website then it takes some time until Google visits your web pages. Even if you submit your website to Google via their regular submission form, it usually takes weeks until Google visits your site. There are some things you can do so that Google indexes your web page within 48 hours and not within weeks.
The effect of unnatural linking patterns on your search engine rankings: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Inbound links are one of the most important factors that Google uses to calculate the position of a website in the search results. Some years ago, it was enough to get a lot of inbound links to top Google's search results. Nowadays, it's not that easy. Google has started to detect unnatural linking patterns.
How to fake PageRank and how to find websites with faked PR: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Although most professional search engine optimizers agree that the green PageRank display has little to do with the actual performance of a website in Google and other search engines, many webmasters still focus on websites with a high PageRank when it comes to link building and website promotion. The PageRank a website can be faked easily.
Search engine market shares in Europe: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If you target international markets then it's important to know which search engines are used by European web surfers. Google has a large market share in the US. Astonishingly, Google's market share seems to be even bigger in Europe. Here are the numbers from Germany, France and the UK.
The importance of page 1 listings and how to get them: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - High search engine rankings are important if you want to get more customers and more sales. Is it important to be listed on the first result page or is it enough to be listed in the top 30 results?
How Google might filter annoying pages: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Google recently filed a patent application with the title "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents". Should you check your web pages?
Google's Matt Cutts: do not stuff your keywords: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest spamming techniques on the Internet. Many webmasters still use that technique although most search engines can detect it nowadays. Last week, Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts made fun of a website that used keyword stuffing.
How your competitors can sabotage your website rankings: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Not all of your competitors might have good business ethics. If someone wants to harm your online business, he might sabotage your website rankings.
A new SEO trick for high Google rankings: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Some webmaster use a new search engine optimization practice to get high rankings on Google. They hotlink images from other web servers to get on Google's first results page. Will this method also work for your site?
One-way links, reciprocal links, three-way-links. What's best?: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - There's a lot of rumor about one-way links, reciprocal links and three-way links on the Internet. Which of these links will work best for your business and which links do you need to get higher search engine rankings?
What is better: PPC or SEO?: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters are unsure whether they should advertise their website with SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising). Actually, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals.
The risk of over-optimization: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters overlook an important part of search engine optimization: if you over optimize your web pages, chances are that your website rankings might drop because your site has been designed for search engines and not for websurfers. Read this article to learn how to avoid over-optimization.
Insider information about Google's ranking algorithm: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - The New York Times has recently published an article about Amit Singhal. Amit Singhal is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. The interview reveals some interesting facts about Google's ranking algorithm.
Google ranking tips from a Google employee: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Last week, Google's Matt Cutts had a Q and A on the SearchMarketingExpo in Seattle. Here's a summary of the most important statements.
How to clear bad press from search engine results: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them. What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on the first result page for your company name?
Do no-follow links count for search engine rankings?: Tue, 29 May 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Actually, the rel=nofollow attribute should prevent search engines from following special links. Some webmasters might have found out that nofollow links will help your search engine rankings though.
New study: which web page elements lead to high Google rankings?: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results.
Are search engine spammers exploiting your web pages?: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - A recent thread in a webmaster forum indicated that some search engine spammers might exploit the new XML sitemaps files. Has your sitemaps file been abused by spammers? Can using a sitemaps file harm your rankings?
Two new Google ranking patents: Tue, 08 May 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Google filed two new ranking patents in April: Document Scoring Based on Traffic Associated with a Document and Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis. What do these new patents reveal about Google's ranking algorithm? How can they help you?
The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings: Tue, 01 May 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Semantic indexing is getting more and more important to search engines. What exactly is semantic indexing and how does it influence your search engine rankings?
What Google thinks about hidden and paid links: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Some webmasters use hidden or paid links to increase the link popularity of their websites. Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts recently commented on these links. Can you get in trouble?
Search engine submission with the new Sitemap protocol: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Ask.com has joined the team so that now all four major search engines support the Sitemap protocol. In addition, the search engines now can automatically detect your Sitemaps file. What does this mean for your web site?
How to deal with Google's latest ranking algorithm changes: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - There is a new change in Google's ranking algorithm. It looks as if more pages are added to Google's supplemental results and that Google might re-rank the results based on new quality criteria. How can your web site benefit from the new algorithm?
What Google could do if they were evil: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - You probably know Google's informal company motto "Don't be evil". Google is a very successful company that knows a lot about its advertisers and users. In addition, Google has a market share that would allow them do certain things. Read this article to learn what Google could do if they were evil.
All about Google's new PPA advertising product: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Until now, Google has primarily sold pay-per-click (PPC) ads, so-called AdWords ads: advertisers pay when someone on Google or a Google partner site clicks on the ad. Google is testing a new advertising system that allows businesses to advertise on a cost per action basis.
How to work around Google's spam filters - Part 5: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Duplicate content, false use of the robots.txt file and Google bowling can be the reason if your web site rankings on Google dropped. This article will help you to find a solution.
How to work around Google's spam filters - Part 4: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Co-citation, too many pages at once and over-optimization and cause problems with your Google rankings. Read this article to learn how to avoid these problems.
How to use the new NOYDIR tag on your web pages: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Yahoo announced support for a new meta tag called "NOYDIR". The new tag will complement the "NOODP" meta tag that is already supported by all major search engines. Read this article to learn how to use the new tag on your web pages.
How to work around Google's spam filters - Part 3: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If you use the wrong search engine optimization techniques then Google won't list your web site. Read this article to learn how to avoid getting caught be Google's spam filters.
15 Google spam filters and how to avoid them - Part 2: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If your web site gets caught by one of Google's spam filters, it will be very difficult to get high Google rankings. Did you check your web site against these three link filters? Read on to learn more.
15 Google spam filters and how to avoid them - Part 1: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If your web site gets caught by one of Google's spam filters, it will be very difficult to get high Google rankings. In this article series, we'll take a look a the 15 most common Google spam filters and we'll tell you how you can get around them.
The top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - If you want to have a successful web site and if you want to get high rankings on search engines then your web site must have the right factors. Here are the top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007.
The end of Google bombs?: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Google bombs have become a problem for Google. The official Google webmaster blog recently had a statement about Google bombs and how Google deals with them. How does this new algorithm affect your Google rankings?
Google's plans for the next weeks: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Matt Cutts has just revealed Google's latest ranking plans for 2007. Read this article to learn how your web site will be affected by these plans.
Will this famous Google SEO guru quit?: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Matt Cutts is the poster boy of Google and the search engine optimization (SEO) community. Thousands of webmasters follow every single word on this blog. Rumor has it that he is going to leave Google.
Does Google read your CSS files?: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Many webmasters reported that Google's spider started to index their external CSS files. What are CSS files, why does Google index them and how can this affect your rankings on Google and other search engines?
Official Google statement: How to deal with duplicate content problems: Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:36:36 +0100 - Duplicate content is a problem that worries many webmasters. Rumor has it that duplicate content can hurt your Google rankings and that web pages that copy your web site content can harm your rankings. Read this article to learn what Google has to say about duplicate content.

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SEOmoz, a Seattle-based search engine optimization company, serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services.

The Hidden Factors in Accomplishing Your Online Marketing Goals - Whiteboard Friday

2012-02-02T21:42:02+01:00 -

Posted by randfish

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we go underneath the surface and bring to light some hidden factors in online marketing. These often overlooked details can have a huge impact in helping us accomplish our goals as online marketers. Please enjoy and don't forget to leave your comments below.

Please note that we shot this week's Whiteboard Friday on a brand new video camera and we still need to work out a few kinks. I apologize for the slight purple tint on the Whiteboard.

Video Transcription

Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk about the goals that we try to get people to accomplish on the Web, the things that we're trying to accomplish as online marketers, and what we're trying to optimize for, things like: click-through rate from search results; getting people to subscribe to RSS and e-mail; getting them to click links that are posted on social networks; getting them to share things on social networks, on blogs, on websites of all kinds; getting them to convert from browsing to buying; completing a free trial or downloading a white paper and giving you their information; staying a customer of a subscription product. These goals that we have are traditionally done through optimization tactics that we've talked about many, many times here. But there are hidden factors. There are things that hide beneath the surface that impact and affect all of these, all of the success rates and the conversion rates and the goal rates that you have. They can be so subtle sometimes and so hidden beneath the surface that we don't even realize what's going on. That's what I want to talk about today.

So in terms of impacting all of these items, there's traditional stuff that we know, we talk about. So things like, oh, and the click-through rate for the search results, I know that position matters. I know that getting a rich snippet matters. If I can have little stars next to mine; if I can have a picture, a photo, or a video, that usually increases click-through rate. I know that if I'm in special kinds of results, that can either increase or decrease my results. I know if I've got a listing and an indented listing below, that can help me. I know that with subscriptions to RSS and e-mail, I can test different buttons, different versions of the entry form; different calls to action. On links that I click, I can test different titles. All this kind of stuff, there are those traditional testing kinds of things, right?

So in that traditional CRO, that's been covered a ton of times. We don't need to cover this because you often know a lot of the things that are in there. You can find them. They're well-documented. The subtle stuff, the weird stuff is oftentimes around just two questions.

Number one: Does the product or service or thing that you want me to do meet my needs? It could be as simple as: Do I think when I click on this result in the search engine that it will answer the question that I originally asked? But there are so many subtleties that are involved in that, that we never think about, that doing traditional kinds of CRO testing and optimization, we'll never get there.

The second question is: Do I trust and like the brand and/or people behind the brand? This goes to fundamental marketing and branding awareness, and it is so pervasive in all the things that we do, whether it's in web marketing or in offline marketing, and yet oftentimes ignored by marketers like us, who operate in the inbound world of SEO and social media and content marketing and these kinds of things, because we're so analytics driven, that we see a lower click-through rate than we want, a lower conversion rate than we want, a lower subscription rate, a lower sharing rate than we want, and we think, hey, let's test these traditional types of CRO things. Sometimes the problem or the optimization tactics are at a much deeper level.

Let's start with the product/service meeting the needs. There's a bunch of things that go in here. Uptime and reliability is one of the biggest ones. So essentially, if I click a website and it is not speedy, delivering the things that I need, and consistent, I'm going to learn not to trust it, and I'm going to be less likely to click it. This is why you see things like speed being a factor, webpage load speed in Google's rankings, granted a very small factor, but certainly a much bigger factor when you're talking about, "Hey, I'm going to click this, and boy, it's going to take a long time."

I'll give you a good example. I personally think that a lot of the writing at Forbes is pretty darn good. Same with The Wall Street Journal, same with Bloomberg online. But they almost all have interstitial ads and very, very slow page load times. At least in my experience in the past, those websites have done that for me. Almost always have the interstitial, almost always takes a while to load, and then I have to wait through the interstitial. I hate it.

So if I see something else in the search results, a site in social media, I'm going to be less apt to share it. I'm going to be less apt to click on it. I've learned through the conditioning that those brands have given me that the uptime, reliability speed issues are problems.

Same thing with pricing. So I think Radian6 is an absolutely phenomenal product. I've heard great things about it, met the CEO, know some people there. Terrific product. Way too expensive! No way that I can justify affording it. Right now, I'm using Google Alerts and some combination of Google searches that I do every day, some other brand monitoring stuff that SEOmoz is working on in beta, the Blogscape Project, which of course I get kind of alpha access to.

Pricing is wrapped in there by necessity. When you worry, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm attracting all these visitors. They're not converting or they're not taking this action." They may have heard, or they may know, or they may have seen that your pricing simply doesn't match their market, or they have fears around that. That's why I'm such a big fan of transparency here, because I think that you will weed out and save your salespeople time, and save your customer service people time, and save your website bandwidth, if you're transparent about this most of the time.

Features and perceived features. Features is: Do you do the thing that I want you to do? When I'm talking about features, I could mean in software. I could mean in a product, like I'm buying a digital camera, I'm buying a car, I'm buying a whiteboard pen, I'm buying a subscription to a software service. I'm looking purely for information. The features are: Do you do the things that I want you do to? Oftentimes, that comes through brand perception as well.

So I know that a lot of the times when I visit an eHow type of website, that it doesn't have the features that I want, which is a reliable source that I know I can trust. Wikipedia's the same way. I only semi-trust Wikipedia, and I trust it on some topics and not others, and I always want to back it up with something else from some reliable source where I know the person there or I know the brand there, because Wikipedia could be edited by anybody, and I don't necessarily know who's behind it.

So those types of brands, and this is even true sometimes at About.com, where the writers in some categories are phenomenal. Southern food, I think is terrific. Some of the digital marketing ones are good. Some of them are mediocre. It's a trust factor around the features and the perception of features. Perception of features is often very different from actual features.

We find, for example, when we survey customers of SEOmoz that they have no idea that we actually will help track their Facebook pages, Insights data over time, and their Twitter data over time. Many people don't even know that Open Site Explorer and SEOmoz are offered in the same subscription. So this is clearly a problem that we have had on perception of features, not even on actual features.

Presentation. The way and the style in which the features and the information and the pricing and reliability and the uptime, all of that is presented is another big one. The thing about presentation is that it's a layer that impacts everything else, not just up here, but down here as well. It's often done terribly, terribly wrong on the Web.

Because it ties so much to the, "Do I like and trust these people," let's talk about those. This question, when you ask the question, "Do I like and trust the brand, and the people behind the brand," that goes to a bunch of inputs that are very, very far removed, all so far removed from traditional CRO stuff. That's things like design and UX, which we talk about many times here on Whiteboard Friday and on the site. Higher quality, more professional, more consistent with what your audience is looking for, just does a fantastically better job than, "Oh yeah, we bought some stock photography of some people in an office working, and don't they look attractive, don't they have perfect skin? And now, you know, that's our homepage, and then there's Services, and Contact, and About. Great, we have a professional website!" No, you don't. No, no, you don't!

Design UX isn't just about that. There are other inputs like domain name and brand name. One of the biggest reasons that I'm often against exact- match domains is because it is so tremendously hard to build up any sort of branding. If you name industries, you will very, very rarely hear that the generic, exact-match domain for what we call that industry is a market leader, a brand leader, and because of that and also because, to be totally fair, a lot of people in the domaining sphere and the affiliate marketing and SEO sphere noticed the power that these had in Google and abused them tremendously. So now consumers have an association, particularly savvy consumers have an association, a brand association with exact-match domains. That is, "Oh, that's probably a low-quality site. That's probably not the real brand. I don't know if I can trust it if I click on that," versus actual brand names.

I'll give you some very good examples. In the world of office supplies I've heard of Staples, right? I've heard of OfficeMax. I've heard of Office Depot. But if it's OfficeSupplies.net, I'm sure someone owns that domain. It could even be someone awesome. Maybe it's a great site, but if I see it in the search results, I'm going to be mighty suspicious. That suspicion just naturally creeps in. That's why domain name and brand name are so tied together in the perception of trust and can substantially impact things like click-through rate and conversion rate and subscription rate, etc.

Accessibility of contact information. It's funny, I was just on an e-mail thread yesterday night, and some folks in the SEO sphere said, hey, have you ever heard of this particular - it was an enterprise SEO software provider. I went, "No, I haven't heard of them. This is the first time. Let me go check out their site." I see they try and say a few futures, but there's literally nothing, no one mentioned on the site; no people who are using it, no people who are associated with the brand. The contact information is "Fill out a contact form" or "Here's our office." I think it was somewhere in the United States; I can't remember exactly where. But other than a mailing address and a phone number, there was no human being listed, which made me very suspicious, because why would you not show off the team? Like, here's the exec team behind it. Here are our engineers. That kind of transparency is natural in the software world. Something's weird if it doesn't exist there.

Being able to find that information - a phone number, e-mail, contact forms, here's our Twitter and our Facebook, and these kinds of things - you just expect those from web companies. When they don't exist, you become highly suspicious.

The authenticity of the content. One of my favorite examples is there's a brand that's been doing a ton of fantastic infographics. I think it's MBAonline or MBAeducation.com, one of the online education providers with a very generic name. They really do great infographics. They sponsor some awesome stuff. Sometimes they'll get featured on a Mashable or even a TechCrunch, or something like that. Tremendous work, excellent work getting that brand out there.

But I always look at them and think this doesn't have a relationship with what the services that you're trying to sell, which is you're an affiliate for a bunch of online education providers, which can be a little bit of a nasty, sort of spammy, aggressive field. The challenge here is, hey, yes, you've got the infographic, you've got the link. But when you're trying to tie back into consumers and earn their business, those of us who are savvy and sophisticated, we sort of get a funny feeling, like something doesn't match up. The content is not authentic to the brand. Why is it being produced?

I think a great example of this is OkTrends, which is OkCupid's blog. They essentially have dating content that matches up with what people are looking for from their site. So, here's how to optimize your dating profile, and by the way, we're a dating website. Great, makes perfect sense.

Hey, here's an infographic about the rise of Twitter or Twitter click- through rates or something - and by the way, we're an MBA online education provider. Why is that? It seems like it's just for the links and attention and awareness and has nothing to do with the actual brand. Highly suspicious, particularly in spheres that are very aggressive.

Industry reputation, word of mouth. I'll give you another example. So, there was another provider that was mentioned on this string in the SEO enterprise space. No, I'm sorry. It was another enterprise software provider, but not in SEO. There were some comments of, "Oh, hey, should we use this? Should we use this other one?" Someone remarked on an e-mail thread, "You know, the CEO of this particular company has treated women employees very badly."

You would never find that on the Web, right? That's not information that you're going to see. If you start searching for reviews, you won't find it on their website. It's something that's word-of-mouth only, but it's made its way to enough influencers that now that is an influential thing in the perception of, "Do I like the brand and the people?" Very frankly, I trust this source, and I know the source knows the CEO there, and I don't. I'm probably not going to buy from this particular enterprise software provider, even if they meet my needs up here. This is the type of stuff that influences conversion rate, that is so subtle and so hidden, that you're never going to realize it from a traditional CRO-type of perspective. And yet, it pays huge dividends to go and investigate this stuff and understand that perception.

The final one that I'll mention here is familiarity with the brand and social proof of the brand. A great example here, go to SurveyMonkey's website. If you're not logged in, the homepage is a woman from Facebook, her picture, she's a statistical analyst there, and she's giving an endorsement to SurveyMonkey. Now, Facebook is a phenomenal brand; they're very well-known. Their business practices are respected. People know that they're a great data-driven company, and so the fact that they trust SurveyMonkey strongly suggests SurveyMonkey must be a great provider. So, they've created that social proof, and they're using a brand that you're familiar with.

When you combine those things, it's absolutely excellent and incredibly powerful. When I go to websites and I see a lot of social proof from either people that are anonymous or people that provide only their fist name or people that I don't know, it's less powerful. When I have seen a brand, six, seven, eight times on the Web, at a conference, in various types of ways - I've heard from someone over e-mail, I know someone who's used them, I've had an experience with someone from that company - those types of things strongly influence these. Building up all of this builds up your conversion rates and builds up all of these metrics that you think about as an online marketer, and yet, we often have so little control or so little even ability to judge and record these things.

What I want to suggest is that, to those of you who are doing web marketing, when you're thinking about these metrics, remember that these are all inputs. Don't necessarily use them as excuses, but make sure that you're taking some action on them. Make sure that you're finding ways to measure them. Make sure that these aren't the reasons why your rates over here are low, rather than the stuff that you focus on, because it can be incredibly frustrating to find that, hey, the reason that we're not making good sales is because no one is familiar with our brand, and we don't have the right social proof, rather than, oh, it's because I didn't write the title tags correctly, and I don't have a compelling description for the content, and the page isn't optimized well. It doesn't have a good flow and conversion process and funnel. Sometimes these two things are mixed up together, and I worry about those hidden factors.

So, I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and I hope we'll see you again next week. Take care.

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Are Your Titles Irresistibly Click Worthy & Viral?!

2012-02-02T14:01:42+01:00 -

Posted by evolvingSEO

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

The 80/20 Value of Titles

Recently, Rand did one of the best Whiteboard Fridays I've seen in a while (I do watch all of them) about increasing the likelihood of your content going viral. He touches briefly upon the importance of your title for click through rate and sharability, but in this post I'd like to take a more in depth look at titles and how they help spread your content. (By the way, this is my first YouMoz - woohoo!)

In my opinion, the elements of writing click worthy titles deserve more attention. In the wonderful marketing book "Made To Stick", the Heath brothers note that any good news or editorial writer may spend 80% of their time crafting the title (or "lead") and then whatever time they have left on the body of the content.

For those familiar with 80/20, what this means is, the size of the title compared to the actual content (and time spent crafting it) disproportionately affects the success of that content. It's one small piece of text with a lot power!

Note: to clarify, I am not necessarily referring to the title tag exclusively. I'm referring to simply the title of a page, post, article... which as you will see below can be the same as your title tag, but doesn't have to be.

A Quick Analogy: The Internet As a Highway

If your webpage was a store on the side of a busy highway, the title's job would be to capture attention and get people in the door. As many of the right people as possible. If you've ever driven on Route 1 heading into Boston, MA, you know what I mean (see photo).

Lots of people may pass by your links, tweets and shares, but few may actually stop to come in and check things out.

I hope this little analogy illustrates the extreme importance of crafting a clickable title - and that you will join me as I suggest some ideas for making your titles more clickable. Let's go!!!

7 Ingredients of a Click Worthy Title

Assuming all other factors neutral for the moment, let's look at what I think are 7 most important ingredients of your titles;

Curiosity
Benefit
Emotion
Tangible
Appearance
Sound
Expectation

Ingredient 1: Curiosity

Your title should be clear enough that people know what they're going to get when they click, but also leave an element of curiosity - so you almost can't help but to click. You just have to find out what's on the other side. Some examples of elements that can entice curiosity;

Curiosity A: Unexpected

How do you make something unexpected? Combine two things that usually do not go together, like this;

"Diet Coke" is not something you usually expect to see in a post about SEO. 77 thumbs up.

Curiosity B: Incomplete Thought or Question

Pete's title here makes me curious, because he asks an open question, which I wonder how/if it will be answered within the post.

Curiosity C: Present A Conflict (Plot)

Rand does a great job here of introducing curiosity because there is an inherent conflict; a choice requiring resolution. Which one will he choose and why? Which do I choose and can I offer an alternative opinion? Will I agree with him?

Curiosity D: State What Something Isn't

I'm left thinking; It isn't? What Is? Do I know them? What's John going to say?

Ingredient 2: Highlight The Benefit

Benefit is congruent to differentiation. On the whole, people will visit a page because there is some sort of benefit to them. Useful content, entertainment, or even content that will make them look good if they share it. Why should someone click and visit your page? What are they going to get out of it? Some examples that imply benefit;

How to...
7 Ways...
Find Out How...
Introducing.... (implies newness)

These are all common elements of a title that hint at benefit. Like this;

Providing a clear benefit is also a way to differentiate your content from others, in that you're implying it holds unique value that can't be found elsewhere. I also like "face-off" - there's a lot of meaning (visual, emotion, tension, etc) packed into those two words.

Ingredient 3: Elicit Excitement/Emotion

People also act on emotion - excitement, fear, hope. Your title should conjure the right emotion in viewers. I don't think people always click purely on emotion, but emotion can certainly support the other ingredients. Things like;

Thanks for the tweet Tom :-) I think the emotional aspect (as in this case) can apply more to social media - the title you might craft in a tweet of something, such as Tom's "ridiculously awesome" text here. Some other emotional words are;

killer
amazingly
fantastic
FREE
mistakes
mind-blowing
surprising
staggering
surprisingly
uncommonly
unusually
myths
irresistibly
seductively
tempting
uncontrollably
unexpected
unbelievably
astonishing
astoundingly
remarkably
insanely
stupidly
wicked
viral
epic

You get the idea :-)

Note that adverbs (ending in "ly") are quite popular. Honestly, I'm just using the thesaurus for a lot of those :-) But if you're fine with describing your own work in such glamorous words, go for it! I typically reserve this for something I'm really confident about, or if I'm referring to something else, like a product review.

Also;

Exclamation points!!!!!!
ALL CAPS - You MUST Read This NOW
-------->Arrows. The Best Post Ever ---> Read Now
*Asterisks* - I Just *Love* The Ideas in blah blah blah....

Just remember that not all special type characters work well across different platforms (social, blog themes etc) so use carefully. And they can also get annoying quickly, so use sparingly.

Ingredient 4: Make It Tangible

The Health Brother's book "Made To Stick" talks a lot about making your ideas concrete or tangible. I highly recommend going to this page of resources and downloading the free PDF "Made To Stick Success Model" (and read their book!)

Great example here though by Mike King;

I'm sure we all get an instant clear picture in mind of the "Cat In The Hat", as it's a familiar tangible graphic. Also keep in mind that, in Mike's case especially, a great post can naturally lend its self to a great title.

Ingredient 5: Appearance & Length

Although, in my opinion, not as important as 1-4, but if you can get your titles to look aesthetically pleasing, even better. Like this;

I like what Neil has done here, however intentional or not. The title fits on one line. It looks pleasing graphically, and its seven words long (which is supposedly the recommended length of a title or headline).

Ingredient 6: Sound

I don't know about you, but I "hear" myself saying the titles in my head. Just like appearance, this is of secondary importance, but if you can put an artistic touch to your titles, it makes them that much better.

I'm going to use Neil's title (noted just above) again as an example here. It sounds nice. It has a poetic ring to it.

The alliteration "Lessons Learned".
The "esss" sound in "Lessons" and "SEO" fit nicely
as well as the "sea" sound in agency.

Can you tell I am a musician?

Again, the appearance and sound of your title is secondary, I believe, to the first four ingredients, but in my mind if you can get all 7 elements into a title, you're a freakin' genius. :-)

Ingredient 7: Expectations

Don't advertise "the best burger in town" and then have it be a veggie burger. It could be the best veggie burger that ever existed, but you set the wrong expectation. This is where you need to have some serious alignment and harmony between what you promise in the title and deliver with the content.

For this, I'd like to cite an example where the wrong expectation may have been set;

While honestly, I've only skimmed this post, the 17 thumbs down and people's comments (some about the title directly) illustrate the point that you don't want misrepresent the content of your post. Whether intentional or not, this post unfortunately seemed to do that. But conversely it did get quite a bit of attention (101 thumbs up and promotion to main blog) so it was a well-written title, just may not have been best aligned with the content.

So some questions to ask yourself to double check this;

Does the title match the content? - What would YOU expect to see on the other side if you read the title? Does it match in what you imply the benefits will be?
Does it imply content type? - Do you use the words "photo, video, graphic, interview, read, slideshow" etc implying what the core content type is going to be? Does that in fact match what's in the post?
How long will it take to consume? - Do you call something a "complete guide", implying extensive length, when it is just a short overview? Do you call something a "quick recap" when in fact it's an in-depth look? Or say "7 steps" when in fact that's only a piece of the whole content?

Finally, note that you don't have to have all of these ingredients all of the time. Certain content may be more inherently exciting, or other content more controversial and thus evokes more curiosity.

Breaking The Rules

There are, of course plenty of exceptions to these ingredients in the real world:

Exception 1: Created By Influential Person/Business

If Rand or Danny Sullivan or Avinash posts a new article, there is an inherent trust and reputation built in. I think the concept of authority is explained well in Rand's post about thought leadership. Along those lines, when Roger (@SEOmoz) tweets out the newest blog post, since this is coming from a popular SEO company, Roger's reputation can boost up click worthiness and thus, the title is not quite as important.

Exception 2: Extremely Noteworthy or Newsworthy Content

During the time of SOPA or the Google (Not Provided) dilemma or now SPYW, if you were to post something with a decent title that was timely, this would be more likely to get clicks, just by nature of it being a hot topic.

Exception 3: Rebellion / Pure Artistic Liberty / Don't Care

Obviously there are sectors of the web or moments where you just want to throw your hair down and crank out an over the top, creative, artistic, rebellious title. Of course, as I'm now typing this, those sound like they'd get some good clicks as well! They just won't follow the "formula".

I shamelessly use my own example;

When I was first getting my SEO blog going, I didn't care so much about getting tons of traffic, because I knew I was just starting to blog about SEO, and thus it wouldn't be my best content. It was more for practice, and to have some content there to build upon. So why not have some fun right?

And as I imply, the "ingredients" as described above do not always have to follow this formula, depending upon your audience and industry and even goals.

Where / How The Title Appears Around the Web

When you come up with a great title, where do you put it? Should it always go in your title tag? Header?

Most often, some version of your title is going to be in three places;

Title Tag
Header (which should be the H1)
URL (in a "clean" format, with hyphens etc).

But there are exceptions and considerations. A balance needs to be found between what will appear on-site, in the SERPs in social media or even bookmarking. Some things to keep in mind about each;

1. The SERPs

1.The title tag IS the anchor text in the SERPs (unless Google decides to change it).

I know this is basic, but SO important to remember when we're composing the title tag not only for rankings but CTR. Doesn't help if it ranks but no one clicks!

2. (In My Opinion) The Title Tag Should Be 50% for SEO and 50% for clicks

What do I mean by this? Good practice technical SEO (for ranking) says to put your most important keyword/keyphrase in the title tag, and as close to the front as possible. I'm speaking more about blog posts in this case, but I feel that if the keyword needs to be towards the end, or split up/modified in some way, to create a click worthy title, this is essential. Obviously if you're trying to rank a page for an extremely competitive keyword in the e-commerce space for example, this is going to differ, but that case may be extreme.

3. URLs - This is where you can win for rankings!!

Look at the URL in Avinash's post;

His TITLE (with "change or perish" is click worthy) but his URL does not need "change or perish". Keep your URLs as clean, focused and optimized as possible. This again is simply my opinion and experience and what I would recommend to clients in most cases. I even recommend switching the order of your words in the URL to get the keywords in the front of the URL, if this was not possible in the title tag.

The header will likely NOT appear in the SERPs, unless it ends up in the description.

2. Twitter

What I find unique about Twitter is, the link anchor text is not the title, which differs from most other places on the web. Thus why I like Twitter as a tool for experimentation, because you can change the headline easily just by writing a new tweet, but it is important to know where the title can come from.

Via The Tweet Button

Normally, what will auto-fill by default is the title tag;

Yet another reason to optimize your title tag for CTR!!!

You can of course control to an extent what text auto-fills via the tweet button, and I recommend starting with the Twitter documentation for this.

What The User Inputs

Often it's the case that people will create their own text to tweet a link, but in many cases they will just copy your page header (this is what I do anyway if just sharing quickly) because it's the easiest thing to do. In many cases, your CMS (WordPress for example) will make your title tag and header the same thing by default (and also add the website name at the end of the title tag).

Twitter and URLs

This is an interesting and outlying example that Rand pointed out, where the URL can potentially help CTR. That is, when you hover over most URLs in Twitter, you can see the full URL as you hover;

Very useful, and this for me will make or break a click 100% of the time. I always hover before clicking. Obviously this is limited to desktop/laptop devices :-)

But here you can see that is not always the case, and in this case I am much less likely to click;

3. Facebook

Ahh... Facebook and the Open Graph. This is where things get interesting for sure. I remember when I first was learning about the Facebook like/share/recommend buttons, I was confused how it all worked. In short though - you have to properly add the Facebook open graph meta tags to your site to control what appears when people use Facebook share buttons, and even to an extent, when people simply cut and paste a link into Facebook.

And I would highly recommend reading this post and especially ---> this post by Aaron Friedman on Search Engine Land for more details on controlling your Facebook titles around the web.

4. Google Plus

As expected, Goolge Plus uses your title tag for the title of a link when sharing;

It's OK to share stuff about Facebook on Google Plus right?

So to conclude for implementation, in general:

Write Title Tags for CTR with enough SEO to help rankings.
Write URLs mainly for SEO but descriptive enough for clicks. Keep them clean looking.
Write Headers that closely match your title but also look and feel great on-page.
While all three elements should contain your core keyword, the three elements do not have to be exactly the same.

Analyzing The Effectiveness Of Your Titles

While an in depth technique for measuring CTR is out of the scope of this post (it still seems CTR is one of those Holy Grail metrics for SEO - deceptively hard to calculate average CTR and even actual CTR for specific sites. Not just in SERPs, but everywhere around the web. If SEOmoz developed a way to truly and accurately measure this, I would use it! Do you agree?) .. I can however point you to a few resources, which can help you get a basic feel for how your CTR is going;

Bit.ly Data

There are many options for URL shorteners, but I personally use and like bit.ly, so we'll focus on that here.

First, I recommend reading bit.ly's documentation on how they capture data and display metrics.

Secondly, Rand mentions how if you add the + (plus) sign to the end of any bit.ly URL, you can see the stats for that link. This is awesome!!

For instance, take someone like Tim Ferriss, who has a relatively high amount of followers on Twitter. I can take a link he's shared on Twitter and see how many clicks its received. Not only that, I can look through his entire list of publically shortened URLs.

That said, I'm sure there are technical geniuses who can figure out a more robust method to measuring and using publically available data like this, but just eyeballing it is worthwhile, to study what titles have been effective.

External Resources

Click Through Rate For Twitter - Rand wrote a great post, which attempts to measure Twitter CTR in conjunction with some other interesting metrics.

SERP Turkey - The new tool by Tom Anthony, which allows you to test CTR in the SERPs. Admittedly I have not tried it yet, but would also like to say it deserves more attention! Richard Baxter wrote about it here in a fantastic post about how search intention may influence CTR.

Practice Writing Titles!

A/B Test Titles

Again, using bit.ly, you can;

Create two (or more if you want to go nuts) short links to the same article.
Tweet them both using two versions of the title in your tweet - try to keep other variables as similar as possible.
Look at your bit.ly stats and see which one got more clicks and shares.

This isn't to be scientific, as much as to practice and have fun!!

Re-Write Other People's Titles

I love this one. I regularly will compose tweets to other people's content and write my own title, use bit.ly and measure the clicks. Again, we're just having fun and practicing here, not necessarily being super scientific.

Write Ten Titles in 60 Seconds

Sometime you just have to get those ideas moving. Try setting a timer and jot down ten titles as fast as you can!! Just do it!! The creative moment can be a powerful thing.

Study Non-Web Sources

As Gianluca pointed out in his comments to Rand's post, look at how newspapers and editorial print publications compose titles. This is not a new concept, in fact as you'll learn in Made To Stick, the idea of crafting a lead has been around a long time!! You can gain a lot of inspiration from non-web sources.

Try Identifying the "Ingredients" Of Any Given Title;

Curiosity
Benefit
Emotion
Tangible
Appearance
Sound
Expectation

Inspiration & Resources

The Class I'd Like to Teach - 37Signals - Love this little piece by co-founder Jason Fried. He talks about writing a "one sentence paper" but the spirit of it certainly applies to titles.

6 Tips for Improving Twitter CTR - Get Elastic - Fantastic article with a wide variety of suggestions for improving CTR in Twitter (not just Titles), but things like link placement, length, word types etc.

Irresistible Headlines - Jonathan Fields - I confess, a few of my "ingredient" ideas for titles came from this post, and although Jonathan's SEO tips are pretty basic, there's some fantastic idea in this post. One interesting suggestion he makes is that the use of numbers, specifically the number '7' has shown highest success.

Anything You Want - Derek Sivers - Founder of CDBaby, Derek Sivers (I think) is brilliant at tangible little headlines. His work in general is of inspiration. But specifically, in his book "Anything You Want" he tells an interesting story about the value of user feedback when sending out huge bulk emails to their mailing list. If one sentence was slightly unclear, they'd get thousands of confused replies back, that would take $5,000 of man-hours to respond to. Many of us do not get this type of feedback loop from our webpages and titles. If something is unclear or uninspiring, all we get is silence. He makes the point - imagine you were to email thousands of people your webpage/article - would you get lots of confused replies back? To that I'd add - imagine your title was the subject of the email. Would it get opened?

Made To Stick Resources - The Heath Brothers - Previously mentioned a few times in this post, I probably learned the most about crafting a good title and making your words and ideas stick from their book. Highly recommend you check it out!

The Thesaurus - One of my favorite SEO tools!! Helps you find that perfect word.

Final Thought: Titles Are Timeless

Perhaps what I love most is the skill of crafting a click worthy title is timeless. While so many things in SEO change so fast, this is at least one facet that is deeply rooted in the past, and will thus endure for a long time.

To me, it's worthwhile and inspiring to step back and identify these timeless elements in a field that changes so rapidly. And it helps me remember that, despite the strong technical aspects to SEO, there is plenty of room for art and humanity. That, and we'll still all have jobs in 20 years :-)

What Did You Think?

As mentioned, this was my first YouMoz. *Wild Applause!!* Perhaps a bit overdue by my standards (I'd drafted and scrapped two posts prior to settling on this one). I would LOVE to hear your comments, suggestions and questions below: I will respond to all, promise :-)

You can also hit me up on Twitter.

The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links

2012-02-01T22:08:14+01:00 -

Posted by neilpatel

In the world of link building, getting an authority link to your site/blog has been one of the most important aspects of growing your blog. Back in 2009 Page Level Link Metrics and Domain Level Authority Features accounted for over 46% of your pages own authority:

In 2011, that percentage has dropped, but only by 4% [42.58%], suggesting that link building will continue to be a critical factor to your blog/website’s success.

But we pretty much know that not just any link will do. The better the site the link is coming from, the better the link.

That’s why your link-building campaigns need to be built around attracting authority links. But how do you do that? And what exactly is an authority link? Let me explain.

Absolute and relative authority links explained

There are two types of authorities. There are the absolute authority sites like Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Google’s blog. These sites are also labeled “informational” authorities versus navigational authorities like DMOZ.

On the other hand, you also have relative authority sites. These are sites run by bloggers or webmasters that are authorities in a niche. Bloggers like Robert Scoble, Dooce or Mashable are authorities in their markets. While the link juice they’ll give you if they link to you is not as high as what an absolute authority site could give you…they are definitely worth attracting.

But how do you actually get a link from these sites? Here are the ten golden rules to attracting authority links.

Rule 1: Write content that attracts Editorial In-content Links

The most fundamental tactic of attracting authority links is to write content that is worth a link. What does this content look like?

Cornerstone – this content fills an obvious gap in the web information world that you fill with expert advice, detailed posts and well-reasoned arguments. This content will also define you, so it’s important to establish up front what your blog/site is going to focus on. This is also a large portion of the content you share.
Personal content – About a quarter or less of the content should contain personal stories about yourself that helps your readers to understand who you are and where you come from. My How Being a Patel Made Me Somewhat Successful is a great example. It stays within the cornerstone content of the site, but it gives you a peek into my personal life.
Spicy content – This is a small fraction of your content and is made up of controversial posts you write about. Typically you attack a high-profile idea or person or explain why something popular is really dumb. These are for linkbait purposes typically, but generally also give your readers an idea of who you are.

Building up a blog/site with this kind of content will take time, so you may not pick up a natural authority link out of the gate. Better yet, once you have a solid archive of content, approach these authority sites and ask for a link. Give them a good reason, which could be one of the following:

You wrote about the author and now he might be interested in sharing with his circle the blog post that you published.
You wrote a post that works well with a series that he wrote our compliments it. You could even critique something he or she did, which might spark an across-blog debate. If that sparks a firestorm of other responses…then you’ve won!

Rule 2: Fix other people’s broken links

Links die all the time. People shut down website or pull web pages. When these documents or sites vanish all the links pointing to them are dead.

For example, if you work through a web page by a publisher who links out a lot and the page is a few years old, you are bound to find at least one or two dead links on that page. Work through the entire site and you could find dozens.

Mashable is a good example of a site that links out a lot and will probably have a lot of dead links on older pages since they tend to report on startups that don’t always last.

You can easily solve this in 2 ways:

Manual - Make a list of all the dead links you find, then approach the author of those pages. It’s better if you focus on one author/one person and offer several options for content instead of having to contact different authors for each dead link. That can become an administrative nightmare.
Link validator – Use a tool like the W3C’s Link Checker to find dead links on a website or blog. It’s pretty easy to do. Here are the steps I took to check Mashable.

Drop link into sub form:

Choose your options:

Click “done” and then wait 644.47 seconds:

You can then work your way through the status report:

From that report you can build a list of dead links, the pages that need to replaced and the authors you can approach if it is a multi-author site like Mashable.

Rule 3: Create a desirable image library

If you have high-quality images on our site, you can use those images as an incentive to get people to link to you. Imagine you have a gallery of large, high-resolution pictures…well, then offer a contact form that allows a person to grab the file and linking code right there on the page.

You don’t have to go all out like a photl.com:

Or freepixels.com:

But more like a Haw-lin:

The last site specialize in photos, for you though being a content publisher looking for ranking juice, you could build a sub-domain devoted to photos like these.

Here’s what you have to do, though.

Hire a decent amateur photographer - If you are not a good photographer and to keep it inexpensive you could hire a local photographer who is good but not really good to charge outlandish fees.
Use your phone - Now a days, however, most cameras on smart phones can take high-quality photos. It’s often the skill of taking a good picture…like having the right angle and light…that a decent photographer should know about. In any case, the better the photos, the more likely you will get interest in the images.

And to help you benefit fully from this tactic, keep this in mind when building a library of images:

The higher the quality of each image the better link building potential these photos will have.
Search out affordable ways to take pictures. This could mean hiring a inexpensive photographer or buying a decent smart phone with a great camera.
Each image should be posted on its own page.
The delivery service should be as easy as possible. Test different set ups and use the one that makes adoption easy.
Add images on a schedule, whether one a day or once a week.

Rule 4: Offer to write a column or do a guest post

Giving a publisher practical, highly-researched content as a guest post is a great way to get links to your site from him or her.

Keep in mind this tactic typically be easier to pull off for those relative authority content sites than absolute authority sites due to their blogging policy. But if you have a guest posting strategy that involves focusing on building links, traffic and exposure via guest posting on a select few relative authority sites, you’ll eventually have an arsenal of content that you can pitch to the absolute authority sites.

Some authority sites like Open Forum or Huffington Post have so much need for content that you can usually get a post on there. But you typically still have to provide a portfolio of posts so they can understand what level of writing you are at and not just someone off the street.

Here are some resource to help you write, submit and get published guest posts:

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Writing Your First Guest Post
Neil Patel’s Guide to Writing Popular Blog Posts
Write a Guest Post for I Will Teach You to Be Rich (while Ramit Sethi focuses on tips on how to write for his blog…they are valuable for any blog, really.)
Why Submit Your Best Posts as Guest Posts?
How to Land a Guest Post Without Fail: 21 Secret Tips

Rule 5: Go to where your target audience hangs out

As bloggers and people of the internet we often forget about all of the face-to-face connections that can provide us with valuable links from relative or absolute authority site publishers.

For example, travel to conferences and hook up with some of the people you want to influence and convince to link to your site. Don’t be a pest to these people, but hang out, be cool to them, and then leave them alone for the rest of the events. You then need to go to the after-event event at the bar. This is where you can make things happen by simply buying them a drink or two.

If you really want to take it to another level, offer to take them out for dinner and pick up the check. During that dinner suggest they link to you in some purposeful way…perhaps you offer to create an infographics or a beginner’s guide.

But even if you don’t get some agreement like that you can say as you grab the check, “No, let me get this. You give me a link or something.”

That way the person thinks, “A $50 dinner for a link? You got it.”

Rule 6: Fill gaps in content

As I mentioned above, when you are talking to content publishers, ask them what content they are missing…and offer to create it for them. It could be a video interview of Guy Kawaski or a periodic table of the fundamentals of link building. It could be an idea they’ve had for an ebook.

Whatever it is, offer to create it for them.

Once you create the content you will get the credit as a link back to your site. Make sure you offer content that you can create professionally and will attract people who are in your target audience. Creating a weight-loss calculator for a site when you are in real estate will drive traffic to your site…but it will be the wrong traffic. You might as well done nothing.

Rule 7: Contact big media at the right time

When you are trying to attract the attention of big media sites like CNN or The Economist, knowing when they publish their content is important.

For those sites who are less tied to a content schedule, like a Drudge Report, you will not need to know when they publish their links because they do it pretty much as the story breaks.

Still, having some kind of bead on when that time is will improve your chances. Here’s a guideline to follow:

For many absolute authorities like the one I mentioned above, you can be certain that they will plan Monday’s content on Sunday.
Around 6:30 am to 9:30 am, the media staff will put together a list of their top 15 stories for the day. This is the news list. Contacting them during this time is more likely to influence their decision even more than if you called or emailed them the day before.
The next step for the media staff is to present the completed list of news stories to a team who will then decide which stories will get front page billing. This usually happens around 9:30 am to noon. This is your last chance to send anything. Do it now, because unless you have something spectacular, sending anything over after 1 pm will end up in the trash.

And even if you do get coverage…it won’t be a lot and it probably won’t be a link. Late content entries are typically reduced to the show that doesn’t impact SEO at all.

8. Approach government or education sites

A sure sign of an authority site is a .edu or .gov. This could be a link from a college like Harvard or Stanford or a link from the White House or Usability.gov. Getting those links are not always easy.

One example is to look for ways you can register accounts with these institutions. For example, Harvard has The Harvard H20 Playlist Project. It’s simply a series of links to books, articles or content that hopes to spark content.

Simply create a playlist and add a link to a useful post inside your site.

Creating meaningful, researched content or break an interesting story and these sites might naturally attract these sites might link to you. Examples of content that you could write that might actually grab their attention include:

Write a solid, thorough review about one of their programs, pulling in information from historical data sets, current events and future predictions. This will likely catch their eye.
Sponsor a student event. This will not cost very much.
Volunteer to be a guest speaker for graduates.
Approach their business school and offer to be a case study.

The kind of content you could create that would attract a government link could be:

Create a community page/sub-domain on your site that supports some club or event in your city.
Create content that supports some sort of charitable cause.
Put on an event. Not only the .gov sites will approach you, but the local press will do so as well.
Run for an office in your community. The commitment is usually low, so it’s not like you will be consumed with it.

In some cases you will just have to approach these institutions. When you do, you are more likely to get an answer however, and a positive one at that, if you inspect their site, identify the content gaps and then offer to fill them.

Again, it’s going to be important that you have something to show that you can pull off the content professionally, so don’t try this tactic until you have a good catalog of posts in your archives.

9. Buy links without penalty

It’s no secret that buying links violates Google’s policy and the penalty can be very stiff. So you may be wonder why I’m suggesting you buy links.

There are ways to buy links that will not be a violation of Google’s policy. Here are two:

Donate to a charity – Depending on how much you donate, some organizations will display you name and donation amount on their sites.
Offer to pay influential bloggers to post on your site – The content is simple. Give an authoritative blogger some kind of incentive like cash to write a post you can post on your site. In all likelihood they’ll link to it once it’s published.
Fund research – Sometimes when you fund research projects people will link back to your website to show people who provided them with the funding. It’s their way of saying “thanks” and showing appreciation.

As you can see these examples are based on an exchange of value between two people and their websites that can relate to the relevancy of content…so it’s an ethical way of buying links.

Rule 10: Know the difference between a good and a bad site

Finally, one of the most fundamental rules to link building is knowing the difference between a good website and a bad one. This might sound obvious but it’s sometimes easy to get tricked into asking a site that looks like an authority but is in reality spammy.

What are the elements that determine if a website is a bad one? Here are five ways:

Negative PPC – If you come across a site that has SEO links based on pills, casinos or porn, then it’s not a good site to get a link from.
Link overload – Also avoid sites that have a high link-to-content ratio. Anything above 20% links to 80% content is probably too high.
Keyword stuffing – Some sites that rank high in search engines will be notorious for keyword stuff. You’re first clue is the title description. If it looks like someone treated it like a keyword meta tag, they are probably employing spam techniques elsewhere, too. Perhaps it’s in the footer, behind images or in the source code.:
Ad overload – These sites will be like a sore thumb when it comes to the number of ads they have. They’ll have ads down both sidebars, above the header and multiple times throughout the content.
Poor content - Another clue this is not a great site is the low content-to-ad ratio. This one can be tricky because even absolute authority sites can push the limits when it comes to displaying ads. Look at Marketing Pilgrim, for example:

Ads easily dominate 2/3 of the real estate. But it’s a legitimate website with pretty good content. If that’s the case, then evaluate the copy. Is it well written, heavily researched and specific? Is there an author attached to it? Is there a convincing author bio page? These are all elements you need to look at to determine whether you should write a guest post for them or not.

Poor design – Does the site look like they used a free theme? Are the fonts irregular in size or shape? These are usually signs that someone has not spent anyone on the site…which is a signal they could be spammers.

Conclusion

Trust me when I say that you will not be wasting your time if you invest it in attracting authority links to your website or blog. Remember: nearly half of what determines the rank of your site is based upon the types of links driving to your site. Hopefully this guide has given you the tips and the tools necessary to help you succeed.

About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.

Find New Keywords: Simplifying Keyword Research

2012-02-01T14:12:35+01:00 -

Posted by Karen Semyan

In December, we rolled out branded keyword rules and metrics to campaigns to help you segment your branded traffic. Now, we’re excited to introduce a companion feature to make your keyword research easier: Find New Keywords. With this feature, you can view keywords sending you organic search traffic, filter on your brand rules, and determine if you want to track them in your campaign.

First, the basics.

You’ll discover the Find New Keywords feature in a tab under your Manage Keywords section. (This feature requires that you connect your campaign to Google Analytics, so if you’re not connected to GA, you’ll find instructions on how to do this on the Find New Keywords tab.)

But wait, where did the Manage Brand Rules page go?! We’ve moved your brand rules page into a tab under Manage Keywords, as well, so you can easily move among these sections as you manage your keywords.

Now, on to the hunt for new keywords!

1. View the top 200 keywords sending you traffic that you’re not currently tracking.

Find New Keywords tab

Why stop at 200? We want to make it easier for you to add the keywords that may be most interesting to track because they are branded terms or common words heavily associated by searchers with your site. After that, you can go straight to GA to manually grab more terms. If we see high demand for showing more keywords, we’ll consider showing more terms in the future (so let us know what you think!).

2. Decide which keywords are candidates for tracking.
We show you a number of factors:

Keyword's position or "rank" in your current list of 200 keywords sending you organic search traffic.
Keyword’s traffic from the last week and last four weeks.
Branded vs, non-branded keyword filters, based on your brand rules.
Quick access to a full keyword analysis for keyword difficulty and full SERP analysis.

3. Add keywords of interest to your managed keywords list.
With some information in hand about the keyword’s relationship to your brand, traffic, difficulty, and SERP analysis details, you’re on your way to finding some keywords of interest to track.

One thing to note: If you are tracking all 200 (which we don’t necessarily recommend--please make your choices carefully), you’ll see a message telling you to check later for new keywords that have moved up the list.

We’d love to know what you think of the feature, so let us know! Leave a comment right here, e-mail help@seomoz.org, or share a feature suggestion in our feature request forum. Happy keyword finding!

The SEOmoz Help Team: How We Do Customer Service

2012-01-31T21:51:49+01:00 -

Posted by Aaron Wheeler

If you're reading this blog, congratulations! You are a customer of SEOmoz. I've probably personally spoken to at least a few of you, and provided help and support to many more of you. Have you ever wondered how SEOmoz supports 15,000 PRO members and over 250,000 free members and blog readers? After all, Roger can't personally answer every email we receive here. He's not Santa Claus! Instead, the six mozzers that make up the Help Team answer all of the emails, phone calls, and chat requests we get every day. I want to tell you a little bit more about them and give you a look at the way we've built the SEOmoz support channels to meet our overall goal: to provide the best customer service on the planet. It's a hard goal to reach, but I can't think of any more worthwhile endeavor.

The Help Teamsters

Crissy Hall

Crissy is old school! She came to SEOmoz in the spring of 2010. Back then, the Help Team was just Sarah Bird (our COO) and Crissy, and I joined soon after. She loves the fact that she’s been able to watch our team and SEOmoz grow since she started. Things are always changing with our site and tools, and as she says, it keeps us on our toes! Her favorite part of working at SEOmoz is the balance between fun and productivity that makes our team and company such an amazing place to work. Crissy spends her time helping users with their tool and billing questions, planning kick-ass Help Team outings (we made terrariums together last month), and helping the Marketing & Ops teams keep track of our weekly membership reporting.

When she’s not in the office, Crissy likes to take her son Sam on adventures around Seattle. She likes to sew up a storm, particularly to make clothes for her toddler (instant gratification, according to her). In the "warmer" Seattle months she rides her bicycle, named "Tom Selleck," to work and back.

Megan Singley

Megan's been a help teamster for a little over a year now and loves connecting with our users. With several years of experience in customer service, she really strives to make every interaction with SEOmoz users a positive one. Besides responding to emails, calls, and chats, Megan plans and organizes our weekly software demos and investigates billing issues to keep any possible fraudsters at bay. She's also been known to do some writing, whether it be on the SEOmoz blog or in product messages throughout the site.

When not at the MozPlex, Megan likes to watch The Daily Show and Battlestar Galactica with her cat, Lily, and her awesomely-cool-fun-amazing neighbor across the hall, me! (Those are her words of course.) She also enjoys reading anything she can get her hands on (lately, it's been The Hunger Games series) and even started a library for the office. On weekends, she hangs out with friends (including lots of fellow Mozzers), goes dancing to anything from funk & soul to 90's hip hop, and cooks as much as possible.

Kenny Martin

Kenny joined up last year and is one of our few Washington natives! He grew up in a small, sleepy Northwestern town, thus is afraid of the sun. He compensates for a lack of natural energy sources by drinking copious amounts of black coffee. Kenny spends most of his time pursuing the TAGFEE dream by diagnosing tough technical issues, getting his hands dirty with a little web design, and filming each week's Whiteboard Friday.

He never wanders off too far away from his MacBook and for this reason alone his girlfriend mistakenly thinks he loves it more than her. It's probably because most of his spare time is spent designing websites or leaning about some fantastic new technology on the internet. He also loves the Daily Show, puppies, pizza, and tacos.

Nick Sayers

Nick joined our team in September last year and got up to speed lickety-split! Like the rest of our team mates, he answers customer emails, phone calls, and live chat questions. Nick has also spear-headed our new help documentation project that gives customers the resources learn anything about SEOmoz's tool set. This effort makes our company more scalable by answering customers' questions before they call, write, or chat with us, which gives them more instant gratification, as well. Needless to say, he spends a lot of his time creating screencasts and typing up FAQs. Nick has a passion for educating and helping others, so is constantly looking for new resources to show SEOmoz's customers.

Nick enjoys film, video games, reading, and cooking. He is an avid reader of anything from Eastern Philosophy to some of the nerdiest sci-fi/fantasy novels ever written. When not at work, Nick is usually spending time with his wife and partner in crime, Becky. On most nights, they cook new recipes together, play an unhealthy amount of Left 4 Dead 2 or Skyrim, and watch movies. On the weekends, Nick and Becky explore Washington and go to retro theaters. Nick is also involved in independent film-making and has produced, written, and directed a feature film and many shorts. On the sci-fi geek front, Nick has a huge collection of memorabilia from the Alien(s) films. He also has a cat named Ash after Bruce Campbell's character in the Evil Dead series. Of course, this means Nick calls her Evil Ash when she is bad.

Chiaryn Miranda

Chiaryn is the newest addition to the team, having been here for about two months. Don't let that fool you though: she's caught up real quick-like! She's been doing customer service for a long time and is working on learning new things about SEO every day. What better place to learn, eh?

When she's not in the office, she likes to make art and take photographs. She's been working on a sketchbook that will be going on a national tour. She also likes to take trips around the beautiful Seattle waterfront with her camera. When she can, she tries to take candid portraits. Check out some of her artwork on her Art House Co-Op page. She's also an avid movie fan, with a particular love of horror movies, and reads as much as possible. In her words, she'll gobble up pretty much any nonfiction book you put in front of her. That's why we call her Turkey Miranda! Just kidding - that's not why we call her that.

Aaron Wheeler

If you've made it this far, you've probably figured out that this is me! I started at SEOmoz in the summer of 2010 and am loving every minute of being here. A couple months ago I became the manager of the Help Team, which means I do what I can to support the lovely members of our team, and provide our customers with the best service on the planet. It's a tough goal - we have very discerning customers - but a goal I think we can eventually fulfill. Some background: I studied sociology and cognitive science at UC San Diego, but starting doing SEO after graduating. Turns out that ranking for attorneys in San Diego is tough work! I left San Diego early 2010 for Seattle, and eventually found my way at SEOmoz.

Besides working at a place I love, I enjoy reading (currently Steve Jobs), watching great shows (currently my third run of Deadwood), and seeing my favorite bands in Seattle's historical music venues (this month: Junip, Nada Surf, and The Asteroids Galaxy Tour). I also enjoy trying out vegan recipes with my girlfriend, Holly Haymaker, who has the coolest name in the world and a whimsical interactive e-cards site, to boot!

What Do We Do?

You know how, sometimes, you have a question about our site and tools? Or about your account or payment? We're the people you call, email, live chat, and post to our help forums for. Unlike huge companies with call centers and many tiers of support and different people doing phones and chats, though, everyone on our team does everything. It's a great way to keep everyone fully informed about site issues and keep our support fresh and agile. That's not all we do, though! Let me show you all of the ways we keep our customers happy:

Email: Using a Robust Ticketing System

When you send an email to help@seomoz.org, it gets forwarded to our ticketing system. We use ZenDesk, the same help desk software used by companies like Groupon and Box.com. ZenDesk allows us to manage customer emails, assign them to specific people, and easily share them with engineering and product so we can get answers to questions quickly! This is important because we receive over 2,000 emails a month: way too many to respond to from a single email address effectively.

How Does It Work?

When we receive an email, the sender gets an email back with a ticket number. As you see, it gets added to our queue of tickets to reply to. We try to answer 80% of tickets within 8 hours, but if it's a situation where someone has a billing problem or can't access their account (lost password, etc.), we try to answer even faster than that. Our goal is for each member of the Help Team to answer 20 tickets per day. If we don't have the knowledge to answer a question, we'll send the ticket to our engineers and product managers to get an answer. If it's a bug, we let the customer know and open a bug fix with our Triage team. They assign the bug to an engineer, who fixes it and lets them know. Triage sends it back to us when it's fixed, and we email the customer and close the ticket.

When we close a ticket, we send a one-question survey through SurveyMonkey asking how happy we made a customer with our customer service. We try to make 90% of our customers happy, and 30% of our customers delighted. Sometimes, though, we fail to satisfy a customer. When this happens, we ask for the customer's email address and ticket number so we can get in touch and make it right. I've found that when a customer has had a bad experience, reaching out to them to make it right almost always turns the situation around.

Phones: Not a Phone Bank

We get a relatively small amount of calls at SEOmoz: about 100 to 150 a week. Makes sense, as most SEOs do their research online. =) We don't have a sales team and don't do phone marketing, so the only employees that really have phones here are in Operations or the Help Team. We get a lot of calls from potential customers asking about what we do, though we do get a few from PRO members, too. Here's a chart with our phone stats for last week:

How Does it Work?

When a person calls in to SEOmoz, they usually start out talking to Hillari, our fantastic office manager. She makes sure they're not a spambot and, when they're a lovely customer, transfers them to the Help Team pool. The first available person picks it up and starts helping! Pretty straightforward process, as you telephone users know. After the call is over, we try to create a ticket and follow up with the customer to make sure they had all their questions answered. If it's an SEO question, we refer them to the Q&A or to our list of recommended SEO consultants.

Live Chat: What You Need, When You Need It

When potential customers are browsing our software sales pages, they often have questions they want answered now. Same thing goes for existing customers with questions about a payment or their account status: these are the kinds of questions people want to know the answers to quickly. Live Chat comes to the rescue! Instead of requiring a customer to call or send in an email, we usually keep someone logged into Live Chat throughout the day so customers can get help immediately. This leads to happier customers and cuts down on our ticket and phone levels. We use the awesome chat widget SnapEngage, and installed it to a few choice pages.

How Does it Work?

Kenny coordinated with SnapEngage to create a custom view of the widget. When you click "Chat Now," it pops up a dialog box that displays three FAQs, and has a field for the email address of the customer and the question they have. When they've typed those in, all they have to do is click "Message" to open a ticket, or "Live Chat" to start talking! Interesting point: we didn't always have those three FAQs. Adding them reduced chats about these topics about 90%. Yay for preemptive answers!

After we finish chatting with a customer, the chat transcript is automatically added to ZenDesk as a ticket, where we can save it for future review and for long-term tracking. We can also follow up with a customer there. If we're offline, or if a customer chooses the "Message" option instead of the "Live Chat" option, it creates a ticket from the get-go instead.

We can also track the types of computers and browsers people are using when they chat with us, which helps us diagnose the issue faster and get an idea of what our average customer needing immediate support looks like. The chart to the left is a look at last month's chatters.

Forums & Documentation: Help More People More Quickly

We maintain both our customer service and API forums through the SEOmoz help desk. We've also started adding all of our tool documentation, videos, and walkthroughs here to make them all available in the same place. This makes our Help Desk a one-stop shop for looking at frequently asked questions, checking out known issues with the site or tools, and just generally getting more knowledgeable about how to use a PRO subscription to its fullest. It's also where we ask customers to submit feature requests.

How Does it Work?

When a customer has a question, they can go to our Help Desk and do a search for the answer, or browse existing questions and documentation. Many of the forums are straight-up questions and answers, but a lot of them are longer-form pages that are part of our documentation project. We want to document the bejewels out of our tools! Yes, there will always be questions from customers, but the more information you can put in their hands early on, the more happy they'll be, and the more scalable our service becomes.

One cool feature: the Feature Request Forum has a voting system so customers can vote on the features they want to see most. Our product team reviews this feedback to get an idea of what to prioritize and what to put further down the roadmap. It's a great way to get customers more involved in SEOmoz's future!

This, That & The Other: Events, Office Tours, Webinars, Demos, Cookies...

We do a bunch of other stuff to help our customers, and it's hard to get it all down in words! We give weekly software demos to help new customers get the most out of PRO,

represent at MozCations,

give tours of the MozPlex and help out at MozCon,

and bake plenty of cookies (you gotta help your fellow mozzers out, too!):

All in all, it's a wonderful life. SEOmoz has the best customers around, and there's no other place I'd rather be. I'd love to share more with you and hear your stories about great customer service, as well as get feedback on what you'd love to see more of in the customer service biznez. Please feel free to write me in the comments, shoot me an email, or tweet me at @aaron_wheeler. See you around the site!

5 Steps To Bootstrapping Your PR Efforts

2012-01-30T21:12:23+01:00 -

Posted by AndrewDumont

Public relations is just one of those things.

It's something that every company knows they should do, but only see two ways of making it happen -- hire an expensive PR firm or cross their fingers and hope for the best. The latter is, well, not really much of a PR strategy. There is a third option, however.

Bootstrapping.

I've written in the past about how to bootstrap your PR efforts, but never really dug into the nitty gritty. It's a time intensive process, but if you're up for the challenge, getting coverage in some of the top outlets in the world is possible, and even likely. I've tried many methods, failed many times, and ultimately boiled it down to this process.

Here it is, Moz family.

Step 1 - The Mirror Check

The first step is what I like to call the mirror check, something that gets glossed over far too often. You need to put yourself in the mind of a writer. People don't want to read shit stories, and writers don't want to write them; it's a simple relationship. Before you dig into the rest of the process, make sure you've got a story that you'd be interested in reading. Honestly. If you can't look yourself in the mirror and say that you would love to read what you're pitching, hold off.

Save your time, and more importantly, everyone else's.

Step 2 - Building Your Publication List

Once you've got a solid story, it's time to start building your list of publications. I've found it helpful to break it into larger categories, such as tech blogs, mainstream media, local press, niché publications and so on. That'll give you a good outline to begin digging into the specific publications you're looking to reach out to.

It's important to note that PR isn't a numbers game, as many think. It's a quality and relevance game, not a shotgun spray. To determine relevance, you really need to engulf yourself in the content of the publication -- read at least 5 articles. Without reading the content, you aren't able to truly understand the writing style and typical news they cover. Once you've done this, add only the publications that would be interested in your story, and omit those that wouldn't. It'll save you time when we get to the next step.

Step 3 - Finding the Right Contact

This is so important that it deserves its own step. Again, it's all about relevance, even more so when you're looking for the right person to pitch your story to. What's the sweet spot for one writer, may be completely irrelevant to another. If you pitch the wrong one, well, you blew your shot. You've got to dig deep on this step. Here's the info that my list usually contains:

The first three fields are fairly self explanatory, then we get into the meat of it. The "relevance point" refers to the overlap with the writer's past work. A good way of finding the right person to pitch your story to, is to go to the publication and search for relevant content.

For example, if I'm looking pitch an article on company culture, the best way to find the right person is to search the publication for the term "Company Culture". Crazy, I know. This will bring up a great list of past content that you can dig through to find the writer that normally covers the type of story you're pitching.

Once you've got the right person, the real investigative work starts happening. Depending on the publication, when you click the author's name, you're usually taken to a page with their contact info, bio, social profiles and the like. If you're not as lucky, you'll have to resort to a good ol' Google search (or Bing search :) to find what you're looking for.

For each author, I like to make sure I've got at least their Twitter handle, Linkedin profile, Facebook profile and personal site (if they have one). What this allows you to do, is not only track down an email address in most cases, but it also allows you to gain a good understanding of their personality. Make note of things they like, what they've done recently, where they're located -- it's all publicly available, and goes a long way in making you stand out. Like anyone else, writers appreciate when you take the time to do it right. Drop these hints of deep research in your pitch.

Finally, if you aren't able to track down their email address, use tools like Rapportive to help in guessing the right contact address. If it clicks and data appears, you've got the right email address.

Step 4 - Crafting Your Pitch and Subject Line

A lot of people mess up on the pitch, the eventual email that gets sent off. They get wordy, dance around the purpose of the email, attach a press release and ultimately fail miserably. Like this kid. The pitch needs to show relevance, be compelling and maintain brevity.

To provide an example, here's a pitch that I've used in the past:

Subject: Introducing Leatherbound, An eBook Search Engine Built in 48-Hours

Hope you’re well, *editor name.*

Wanted to pass this along for a potential post on *publication name,* as I thought it was a good fit after your post on climbing eBook sales.

The Pitch - We’ve been knee-deep in code for the past 48 hours during Rails Rumble, a worldwide developer competition. The result, a beautiful web app called Leatherbound that makes the search for eBooks simple, powerful, and efficient.

The Problem - The reading experience on Kindle, iBook and Nook apps are nearly identical, yet it’s extremely tedious to find the book you’re looking for, at the price you want for each platform. Sometimes the book is cheaper on Kindle, other times iBookstore doesn’t have what you’re looking for, but Nook does. That’s where Leatherbound comes into play.

The site is dead simple, as it should be. Enter any book title or author and Leatherbound pulls book results on the iBookstore, Kindle and Nook in a single click, along with price, availability, description, etc.

Here’s a good example of the site at work -- not bad for 48 hours of work, if I do say so myself. ; )

Feel free to reach out if you need more info or want to chat, thought it’d be an awesome post for you guys.

Cheers,

@AndrewDumont

There's a few subtleties to highlight here. First, you've really got to take advantage of the subject line, craft it as if you were writing the article yourself -- turn the mirror your way. Pull the core "hooks" from your pitch and blend them together for your subject. Make it count, it's a make or break piece.

Next, you've got to keep it brief and call out the important parts. I usually like to clearly call out (in bold) the problem that the product is solving, the pitch, and a quick way to see what you're pitching in action. With the number of emails that a writer gets each day, you've got a second or two to grab their attention, this tells them exactly where to look for the info they need.

Finally, I try and add a little personality to it that matches up well with the personality of the writer (as I learn from their social profiles) -- no one wants to cover dull. Have fun with it, and allow them to find more info on you with your signature.

Step 5 - Let it Rip

Or, you could make it rain. Whichever you prefer.

This is the culmination of all the work you've put in. Obviously, you can't always time your news in the case of product launches and breaking news, but I've found that Sunday evening is a great time to put it out there. Most folks are lazy, and they aren't willing to put in the time on a Sunday, this leaves a nice window for your pitch and a Monday release date in most cases. It's not a necessity, but it may give you the best odds.

Also, this sounds obvious, but make sure you're ready for responses to your pitch. If the writer is interested, you'll hear back and they'll want more info. Respect their time and get back to them as soon as you can.

The rest is out of your hands.

Some General Don'ts

Before we wrap this up, I want to go over some general don'ts with PR. By no means is this list comprehensive, but it'll steer you away from the big screw-ups.

Avoid the Embargo - Generally speaking, writers don't like embargoes. It's a liability and a pain in the ass that many would like to avoid. Send your news out when it's ready and available for consumption.
Lose the Press Release - In my mind, the press release is dead. They're bloated, impersonal and a thing of the past. If you just want links on Yahoo! news, sure, go for it. It's not going to give you the coverage that's really valuable, though. At the very least, make sure not to attach a press release to your pitch. Do it for me, please.
Don't Double Pitch - Don't send the same pitch to multiple people at the same publication. It shows that you're just firing off as many emails as you can, and it's a sure way to get you ignored.
Skip the General Address - Most publications recommend that you send to a generic email address like news@publication.com, it's the catch-all for poor pitches. People that don't want to see success usually go this route, it's the easy way to spray the shotgun, but it rarely yields results. Use it as your last option, but not the default.
Put Down the Phone - This may be unconventional for most folks that do PR, but I believe that we live in a digital age, where phones are a secondary thing. Sure, if there's interest, hop on a call by all means. But don't do your pitching via a phone call. It catches folks off guard, and makes the encounter confrontational, with only a few seconds to tell them what they want to hear.
Don't Suck - Most importantly, don't suck. Be a good person, not someone that's just on the hunt for links. Provide the writer with value, help them do their job and be awesome. It's amazing what good intent can do.

Conclusion

Executing on a PR push is time intensive, and demanding of finesse. It's why PR firms demand upwards of $15,000/month, with no guarantee on output. I'm not a public relations pro. By no means is this the end all be all of PR processes, but it's what I've found to be successful in landing press -- earning coverage in Wired, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Mashable and many more. That said, what worked for me, may not work for all.

As with everything in tech, iterate, iterate, iterate.

If you run across any specific questions as you're working through it, feel free to drop them in the comments or just shoot me a line, I'm always happy to help.

Go forth!

Strategic Link Building: Why You Don't Need To Outrun Lions

2012-01-30T11:33:27+01:00 -

Posted by oline123

One of my favourite SEO anecdotes goes like this: two men are walking through an African game reserve when they come across a lion, one of the men calmly puts down his backpack and slips on the running shoes he has been carrying.

The other man chuckles and says, “You’ll never outrun a lion."

To which the other man calmly responds, “I don’t need to outrun the lion; I just need to outrun you."

SEO, contrary to popular belief, is not about ‘beating Google’ or ‘cracking their enigma code’; it is about beating the competing websites on the keywords that matter to your business. This means SERP analysis and competitor analysis should be key components in shaping your SEO strategy.

I am not advocating creating a carbon copy link profile for your site by building competitor links like for like. This methodology is about learning from their site and link profile in order to close the natural search gap; understand what is working (and to a certain extent, the limits); and then eventually to outmanoeuvre them.

In this post, I am going to explore a number of different eCommerce verticals and identify what I think makes that SERP ‘tick’ as well as the different link building tactics which can be utilised to ensure natural search dominance.

I wholeheartedly believe that when it comes to link building, quality and sustainability are the ‘end game.’ Google will eventually fully understand the true quality of a link. However, different markets have different ‘requirements.’ If you understand what it takes to rank in the market you are trying to target then you can ensure you are working strategically rather than adopting the “throw links at the wall and see what sticks” approach.

I will also be exploring how analysing the counterpart market in a more SEO-advanced country can help you understand the future of your home market.

The Data

Far too often in the world of SEO, sweeping statements and all-encompassing judgements are made with little evidence or data to back it up. This is just a snippet of the research I carried out which helps to underpin the conclusions I make later in this post

SERP 1 – ‘online shopping’ Google.com.au

According to SEOmoz’s Keyword Difficulty tool, this keyword has a 71% difficulty rating.

On the face of it, this would seem like a highly competitive keyword to try and target.

The number 1 result (http://www.oo.com.au) has over 36,000 external links, a high domain authority (59), and a domain mozRank of 4.9. A seemingly challenging keyword target. Don’t get me wrong, it won’t be easy; however, if we dig below the surface, we can get a clearer picture of just how OO.com.au is ranking which can help shape our link building strategy.

Link Quantity

Number of external links to the root domain according to OpenSiteExplorer

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
36,478	6,706	11,967

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 84,683

Anchor Text

Percentage of links with ‘online shopping’ as anchor text

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
17%	3.7%	3.8%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 7.35%

Link Quality

Percentage of links deemed to be of ‘low power’ by Link Research Tools. Cemper (the makers of Link Research Tools) guard their link power algorithm closely, but they have said that the link power is usually measured by looking at the number of links pointing at that page. A buried page in a rubbish web directory is likely to be considered low power as there will be very few links and certainly very few good quality links pointing at that page.

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
94%	94.2%	91.1%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 77.01%

Link Target

Percentage of links that point at the homepage according to Link Research T ools

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
78%	76.2%	88.7%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 73.37%

Link Status

Percentage of external followed links according to Link Research Tools

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
94%	73.4%	90.1%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 89.13%

Link Locality

Percentage of links from .au domains according to Link Research Tools

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
81.1%	13%	15.3%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 25.7%

Social Metrics

#1 – OO.com.au	#2 – TopBuy.com.au	#3 – Buyii.com.au
1,094 Facebook Shares	298 Facebook Shares	314 Facebook Shares
12 Google +1s	9 Google +1s	1 Google +1

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 465 Facebook Shares and 10 Google +1s

*Note – with regards to the social metrics, the figures are for social signals pointing at the homepage of the sites and have just been included for comparison purposes.

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

An immediate takeaway from this mini-study is that it would seem social signals aren’t weighted that heavily in this particular SERP.

Despite the furore around social media, this data right here proves that links should be your immediate focus and social should be a part of your SEO strategy in a long term sense. Google will undoubtedly get smarter on the social front; not only that, but also as competing websites become more social, there will be a natural progression towards social signals carrying more weight. No site wants to be left behind when/if this happens. Building links, certainly in this niche, is still the activity which delivers the results right now however.

To rank for this particular keyword, it could be argued that two particular factors appear to be the most pertinent: link volume and anchor text. This would seem to go against common wisdom that link quality is the overriding factor as, in this scenario, and according to Link Research Tools’ automated analysis, the vast majority of links pointing at the websites which rank highly are of ‘low power.'

Whilst some would say, high quality links are what you need to rank; for the keyword “online shopping,” you need to mix high-quality links that deliver longevity and stability with less powerful links that have the right anchor text in relatively large volumes.

Conclusion

In this scenario, suitable link building tactics include:

Thematic/ quality article submissions – despite Google’s Panda update, we still notch up good results utilising quality and thematic article submissions as a way of generating volume and anchor text specific links.
Guest Posting – a proactive link development campaign which involves content placement on niche and relevant websites in return for a link.
Infographic Promotion – developing an engaging linkable asset like an infographic can be a good way to generate high volumes of anchor text links by including an anchor text attribute link at the bottom of the graphic which automatically gets placed when somebody uses the embed code. Obviously, in some situations, this will be removed by a webmaster using the graphic on their website, but we have seen this work successfully.
Shopping Directory Listings – numerous submissions to good quality general and shopping directories still provide value in conjunction with other link development tactics.
Social Bookmarking – another link building tactic which is seen as low quality, but when used with other methods can deliver the kinds of results you need.

Remember, the methods discussed above do not constitute recommendations across the board as they are very much SERP-specific; you will see the need to tailor your tactics as we explore other SERPs.

SERP 2 – ‘online shopping’ Google.co.uk

On to our second SERP. For this one, I have chosen the same keyword; but this time, we’ll look at the UK SERP.

According to SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty tool, this is a terrifying 87% difficulty score. :)

ASOS.com, which ranks #1 in the UK for the term ‘online shopping,’ is similar to OO.com.au in Australia. It's a real juggernaut of the retail world with over 157,000 external links pointing at the domain; a domain mozRank of 6.26; and domain authority of 85. How on earth do you go about competing in a SERP like that then?

Link building with strategy ensures you are focusing on the SERP-specific metrics that appear to matter.

Link Quantity

Number of external links to the root domain according to OpenSiteExplorer

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
157,292	461,891	118,578

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 2,678,561 (this is skewed by Amazon.co.uk which has a colossal 15million external followed links).

Anchor Text

Percentage of links with ‘online shopping’ as anchor text

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
0%	0%	0%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 0%

In this SERP, anchor text doesn’t appear to be a ranking factor at all. Indeed, to demonstrate this a little further, I continued with my research, and the 16^th result had 1.2% links containing the anchor text ‘online shopping.’ Other than this result, the others were 0% anchor text.

This in itself would make building a great deal of anchor text links very suspicious indeed and likely very ineffective if you are looking to target this particular keyword.

Link Quality

Percentage of links deemed to be of ‘low power’ by Link Research Tools

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
0%	0%	67.4%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 30.23%

Link Target

Percentage of links that point at the homepage according to Link Research Tools

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
34%	41.1%	48.1%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 61.73%

Link Status

Percentage of external followed links according to Link Research Tools

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
88%	88.7%	91.2%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 91.61%

Link Locality

Percentage of links from .uk domains according to Link Research Tools

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
9.7%	22%	31.1%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 28.46%

Social Metrics

#1 – ASOS.com	#2 – Tesco.com	#3 – Next.co.uk
46,739 Facebook Shares	2,122 Facebook Shares	9,879 Facebook Shares
338 Google +1s	272 Google +1s	136 Google +1s

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 1393 Facebook Shares and 73.85 Google +1s

In comparison to its Australian counterpart, this SERP has a much higher average number of Facebook shares and Google +1s.

This bigger social signal sample appears to allow Google to make ranking decisions which are much more closely aligned with what the social signals are telling them rather than weighting link metrics so heavily, as is the case with the Australian SERP we investigated above.

Does this mean social should form more of an integral part of efforts to rank for this term? Almost certainly, but that doesn’t mean link metrics should be forgotten about.

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

On the face of it, this SERP appears very brand heavy with limited options for a website looking to break into the top 10 for this keyword, so what can be done? And what kinds of tactics are likely to be effective?

We would look to deploy combination link development and social tactics in order to help clients rank for this term.

Linkable assets – think Evolution of Western Dance Music, why witty job titles are all the rage, 12 awful Christmas presents, and Why Bill Gates is selling nuclear power to China. Linkable assets or linkbait come in all shapes and forms, not just infographics as the above examples demonstrate. Even news stories can be turned into link generation machines with a great title and the right composition.
Contests – great competitions and creative contests can generate a great deal of social attention and will usually attract links from blogs, forums, competition directories, and more.
Discount codes – a well-planned and properly seeded discount code or saving coupon can have a dramatic impact on the number of links you generate and the social activity you see around your site.
Blogger Partnerships – reaching out to bloggers and industry website owners by contributing your content, expertise, or even products for them to try can be a very effective way to build high numbers of good quality links; particularly as many bloggers read other blogs so the feature can very often have a viral effect.
Online press – if you have a product that you can create an engaging story around then generating online press is often easier than you might think.

This SERP is also a good example of a fast-paced environment where ongoing activities are vital in order to stay ahead of competing sites.

Referring Domains Discovery

The chart above looks at the number of referring domains linking to some of the top 10 results in the UK SERP for the keyword ‘online shopping.’ It gives a snapshot of the quarterly growth or decline in links from unique referring domains. This helps to give a more accurate reflection of the link profile as number of backlinks can be misleading if, for example, there are multiple links from the same site.

As I am sure you will notice, over the past 5 years, the sites have all followed near enough the same pattern. Only once or twice does a site rise or fall above the general trend: presumably as a site has a promotional push or something happens which causes a reduction in the number of unique referring domains.

This emphasises the importance of on-going link development and SEO campaigns. It also highlights an opportunity, because Google has recognised that there is, in some respects, a fault in their algorithm; there is nearly always a lag time between a page being important and useful enough to mean it should rank and when it has enough links to compete in that SERP.

In response to this, Google developed ‘Query Deserves Freshness’ or QDF which means a page doesn’t need as many links as the incumbent sites that rank if the page is generating a good number of fresh links. Google, logically, has determined that fresh links might indicate a more relevant page than thousands or even hundreds of thousands of stale links.

The internet is a dynamic place so it makes sense that a link profile should be constantly developing.

So in this particular scenario, we would also look at link building tactics that deliver fresh links in great numbers as an attempt to beat the incumbent sites on velocity rather than volume.

This makes tactics like contests and linkable assets such as infographics highly suited to ranking for keywords like this. It also makes it that much more important to coordinate your efforts to ensure maximum link and social impact.

SERP 3 – ‘online shopping’ Google.com

The final SERP we will take a look at is ‘online shopping’ in the US which, according to SEOmoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool, is extremely competitive and more challenging than any of the others we have looked at.

The top result, Overstock.com, has a domain authority of 90; a domain mozRank of 6.52; and nearly 300,000 external followed links, so this certainly looks the most challenging SERP to conquer.

As a side note, you might have seen the spot of bother Overstock.com got themselves into early on in 2011; it was encouraging links from college websites. Anyway, it cleaned up its act to the satisfaction of Google who released the retailer from the “sin bin” in late April 2011.

Link Quantity

Number of external links to the root domain according to OpenSiteExplorer

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
215,325	1,106,867	99,587

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 6,860,105 (this result is skewed by Ebay.com’s nearly 30million links)

Anchor Text

Percentage of links with ‘online shopping’ as anchor text

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
0.2%	56.4%	0%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 0%

Link Quality

Percentage of links deemed to be of ‘low power’ by Link Research Tools

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
0%	0%	0%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 3.75%

Link Target

Percentage of links that point at the homepage according to Link Research T ools

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
26.7%	79.9%	20.5%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 48.4%

Link Status

Percentage of external followed links according to Link Research Tools

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
86.2%	94.5%	95.9%

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results =65.81%

Link Locality

Analysing the locality of the links is a little more challenging with US SERPs because of the worldwide nature of the .com domain. We don’t know whether the link originates from the USA or elsewhere in the world.

Social Metrics

#1 – Overstock.com	#2 – HSN.com	#3 – Forever21.com
7,008 Facebook shares	217 Facebook shares	20,083 Facebook shares
194 Google +1s	72 Google +1s	459 Google +1s

*The average of the remaining 7 top 10 results = 19,708 Facebook Shares and 1441 Google +1s

Links over time

Similarly as we analysed the UK SERP of ‘online shopping’ for ongoing activity over time, below is a graph showing the non-cumulative view of referring domains pointing at the top 5 search results. You will note that Overstock.com and WalMart.com have largely mirrored each other in terms of link profile growth and decline over the past 5 years, and it could be argued, therefore, that they have been tussling in a competitive sense -- vying for the top search engine positions.

Referring Domains Discovery

This graph once again highlights the need for on-going activities to maintain and enhance positions as competitors react to your SEO. That isn’t to say that you need the same or even a greater volume of links in relation to your competitors. For example, Forever21.com ranks better than WalMart.com, but has fewer domains linking to it. But as the graph highlights, there is a need to be building or encouraging links on an ongoing basis. Overstock.com, at the start of 2011, acquired links with greater velocity than competing sites like Forever21.com and HSN.com, which likely contributed to their #1 position for this competitive keyword.

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

To come out on top in the US SERP – natural or certainly a natural appearance is the name of the game.

Link quality is paramount in order to rank for this keyword. There are next to no ‘low power’ links apparently contributing to the rankings of the top 10 results. This is different to the other SERPs we have analysed, because in the case of the UK and Australian SERPs, there are sites that are still very much enjoying prominent positions helped by low quality links.

Social is an equally important factor as we can see the top results have a much higher average Facebook share and Google +1 count -- in terms of the remaining 7 top 10 results -- than the other SERPs we looked at.

Also, in comparison to the other SERPs we have looked at, the distribution of links is also an important factor; it is natural for a website, particularly an eCommerce website, to have links to various sections and categories of the site rather than the majority of inbound links pointing at the homepage. Given this and the fact that Google is stepping up its efforts on unnatural linking patterns and communicating these warnings to site owners, I would think that HSN.com, which has a very high percentage of links to the homepage, is at least inviting a manual review from a Googler.

It could well be argued that the US SERP is the guinea-pig-lab-experiment for Google. This would seem to align with the way they roll out new features, e.g. US >> English Speaking Countries >> Rest of the world. If this is the case, the US SERP is probably the UK SERP of the future and so on.

It is also easier for Google to work more legitimate signals like social into the ranking algorithm and tuning down others in a Google.com SERP because there are more data points which would make the results more consistent with their quality expectations. In the Australian SERPs, there are sub-1000 social shares in most cases; whereas in the US SERPs, there are in most cases many thousands. Google, at this point, could not tune down link factors too much in the Australian SERPs because it would likely send the search results crazy as most sites that deserve to rank haven’t got the social signals in place to react to a switch of that kind.

My theory is that the difference in SERPs isn’t just down to a Google whim; it’s also the market as a whole.

What can we take-away from all this?

There is a trade-off that needs analysing…

Studying each of these SERPs as we have certainly raises the question of strategy.

As an SEO, you have to be strategic with your budget and resource allocation. Depending on your market and how ‘SEO-advanced’ it is, these factors will impact how and what you need to do to rank now and also continue to rank into the future.

It is a case of balancing appropriate financial investment, short term results, long term stability, and mitigating risks. Identifying not shortcuts, but fast and safe routes to the top is what any good SEO does.

Clients and agencies are fearful of low-quality link building; but as the data above suggests, in some markets, this is still a very effective tactic.

Although you don’t need me to tell you, only a fool is still freewheeling off the back of low-quality links alone.

From the above, we can deduce that in the US market -- arguably a more ‘SEO advanced’ market -- lower quality links are starting to wane in terms of effectiveness as the social signal dial gets turned up a little. So for anyone reading this in Australia, you could say that the US is our canary down the mine; and therefore, learning from what is working there and balancing it with what works here presently is the smartest strategy to adopt.

However, Wil Reynolds argued a strong case that -- even in markets like the US – links are still the dominant factor and not necessarily good quality links either; in fact quality and social signals don’t appear to impact rankings as much as you might think.

Balance your link building tactic portfolio – adopting a combination approach

You are likely familiar with the Boston Matrix, which is an established tool for analysing the product or service portfolio of a business.

Below is an adapted version of the Boston Matrix, which should help you to visualise and more effectively plan your link building efforts. Thus, ensuring you are getting the results you seek now whilst being mindful of future developments.

A balanced ‘portfolio’ is essential. Too much in one area can be hampering short-term success; too much in another area could be jeopardising long-term stability.

It is a balancing act, and what might seem like extra ‘paperwork’ is actually a quick and effective planning tool that can also help clients to better understand your approach.

How to use the matrix

Understand the segments (see below).
Categorise your tactics (depending upon your market).
Assign a percentage of your budget to each one (understand your own or your client’s objectives and expectations and then assign accordingly).
Monitor regularly (SEO is a constantly changing environment, and as such tactics will likely move through all stages of the matrix at some point).

New recipes

This is the ‘development kitchen’ for your link building efforts – where you explore new tactics which might or might not be providing value.

By new tactics, I am not specifically talking about ‘unheard of in the industry,’ but perhaps just new to your market or your site. Some verticals still have very few infographics, for example.

Consume in moderation

This segment is for tactics which offer medium to long-term value, but little in the way of short-term gains. So it should be consumed in moderation if you are looking to maximise return on investment.

Staple diet

This is the bread and butter segment and likely to be where most resources are allocated. You know these tactics work, and they provide short-term gain without compromising medium to long-term stability.

Fruitless

The graveyard of link building tactics. Obviously, it is up to you when you feel that a certain tactic is no longer pulling its weight. It can be an idea to keep a track of the ‘fruitless’ tactics and perhaps a note as to why; then if things should change, you have the option of pulling it back into your portfolio via the ‘new recipes’ section.

Furthermore, Google’s crackdown on unnatural link patterns means that now is definitely the time to be varying your anchor text to ensure your site’s profile is as natural looking as it possibly can be.

Overall conclusion

The overall conclusion we can draw is that link building is certainly not a one size fits all approach. Different SERPs, keywords, and markets require very different strategies.

You also need to be thinking SERP-specific when it comes to link building tactics. Certainly, there are other ways to view link building, but this is just the way I look at it so as to make it more tactical. Some would argue that by looking at what competitors are doing, you are always going to be chasing their tail. I would say this isn’t the case; as with my proposed methodology outlined above, you are learning from their successes and their mistakes. Then you are executing, using your own well thought out tactics, which should close the natural search gap and then outpace the competition over time.

An interesting point, up for discussion and testing, would be whether a company can leap-frog the lower-end link building and overcompensate with the more legitimate tactics and get this recognised and rewarded by Google. My instincts and research tell me no, but I would love to hear from you in the comments if you have any data or experiences that would go against this.

By David Klein, Founder and Director of Orange Line - SEO and online marketing specialists based in Sydney, Australia. Visit us for more information about our link building services and methodology.

Anchor Text Distribution: Avoiding Over Optimization

2012-01-29T22:33:22+01:00 -

Posted by Geoff Kenyon

The ‘over optimization’ of anchor text has been coming up a lot recently in conversations that I have been having and has been the subject of a few recent blog posts. For the sake of this post and to quell any arguments stemming from the phrase ‘over optimization’, I am, for this post, defining the term as: building too many links with targeted anchor text such that they a) no longer provides value or b) actually takes away value – basically you’ve built too many targeted links and you’re not seeing your rankings increase.

When I have talked to people about this recently, I have suggested that a 7:3 ratio of non-targeted: targeted anchor text would be a good frame of reference for emulating a ‘normal’ link profile. I got curious about this though and decided to do some research. I looked at product and category pages on ten different websites - these websites are all large national and international brands/ecommerce sites that are well linked to. Between the ten sites I analyzed the anchor text associated with 28 category pages and 31 product pages.

For each of these pages, I downloaded the anchor text report from OSE and looked at whether the ‘Number of Linking Root Domains Containing Anchor Text’ were optimized or not. Specifically, I looked at if the anchor text had the following attributes:

Brand Name - The brand name is the anchor text, e.g. Giant Bicycles
Branded - The brand was included in the anchor text (these did not include anchors that were the brand name), e.g. this cool company, Razoo
Keyword Branded - The anchor text combined a keyword (exact/phrase/partial match) and the Brand Name, e.g. a ton of motorcycle helmets at Dennis Kirk
Exact Match - The anchor text exactly matches a keyword, e.g. Downhill Bike
Phrase - The anchor text contained a keyword phrase or partial match anchor text, e.g. the monthly mountain bike magazine I get
Random - The anchor text does not contain the brand or any keywords (or partial keywords), e.g. this website
URL - There were no actual anchors, it was just a URL, e.g. http://www.malibuboats.com

I chose to only look at the number of domains linking with these anchors as site wides can disproportionately skew these ratios pretty quickly.

Finally, I looked at the sources of the links and did not include pages if it looked like they had links manually built.

Ok, now on to the interesting part.

Targeted vs. Non Targeted Anchors

Across category pages and product pages, I found that 34.6% of links were targeted (targeted anchor text collectively refers to exact match anchors and phrase while non targeted anchor text is everything else).

anchor text distribution

Here is a breakdown of this distribution:

Here is a simpler breakdown, consolidating brand related anchors:

Category Pages

If we take a more in-depth look at category pages, we find some variance from the collective distribution above. The data shows that only 25% of links to category pages are targeted - people are less likely to link with good keywords to your category pages.

Looking at the ‘other’ anchor text distribution, the number of links for branded and URL anchors increase 5% and 7%, respectively. Most of the gain in the branded links were keyword branded links.

Product Page

The product pages show a higher proportion of targeted anchor text, making the targeted and non-targeted distribution roughly equal.

Looking at the distribution of anchors for product pages, we find that there are more links with exact match and phrase match links to product pages than to category pages. Exact match links jumped up about 7% and phrase match jumped up about 4%.

So What Does This Mean

For a lot of people, this means you should probably decrease the amount of targeted links you are building and add in some varying anchor text. It is important to keep in mind that this research, while it was time consuming, is by no means exhaustive, so you shouldn’t take this as fact. That said, I think it gives a pretty good rough estimate of what normal might look like. I like to be a little more conservative so, especially with the product pages, I will probably keep trying to stick to the 7:3 ratio I first mentioned.

If you have been doing a lot of SEO work and are still having trouble ranking, this is a factor that you might want to look at as you may need to start building different anchors to balance out your profile.

The sites sampled spread several industries. Your industry will probably look a little different, as such, you should do your own research and determine what 'normal' looks like for your industry. To do this, just pull the anchor text report from OSE for sites from the SERPs. If all the pages ranking have a lot of SEO'd links, look at those sites and try to find non optimized pages and use those to help establish your baseline.

To help you do your own analysis, I made a Google Doc that will help you calculate these percentages.

Want Guest Post Links? Find Them Via Twitter [TOOL]

2012-01-28T09:58:23+01:00 -

Posted by Ethan Lyon

For a long time I’ve been pulling an RSS feed from Twitter for the query: “guest post” OR “guest author” [TOPIC] into my Google Reader. Every morning I would check it, blaze through 15-20 URLs -- most of which were the same URL being tweeted. Then, I'd record the best guest post opportunities, reach out to bloggers, publish a guest post and get links. It was a great strategy and resulted in a lot of guest post links.

Although having an RSS feed was a bit more efficient than performing a Twitter search every day, it was boring, time consuming and I just really didn’t like doing it. Things you don’t like, don’t last.

So, I made a tool that does all the heavy lifting. This tool pulls the same RSS feed that I had in my Google Reader into Google Docs, finds all of the t.co URLs, enlarges them, eliminates duplicates based on domain, and presents them in a nice package.

Because it has helped me tremendously, I thought it could also help out other agency SEOs and small business marketers / owners.

How to use it

1. Go to http://ow.ly/8x9gF.

2. Make a copy of the sheet.

3. Type a one word topic that most describes your client / niche in cell B1.

You’ve likely chosen a topic too narrow if you’re seeing an error.

4. You’ll notice a bunch of t.co links populating cell A2. Wait five seconds (I know, tough, right?) and they will change into unique URLs.

5. Copy 5-6 URLs:

6. Paste them into Ontolo’s Link Reviewer: http://ontolo.com/link-building-url-reviewer

7. Click “Review URLs” and watch all of the URLs open in new tabs in your browser:

8. When you find a viable linking opportunity, paste the URL in column D:

9. Because no one expects you to remember all of the linking prospects in column D, it will tell you if there’s a duplicate in column F:

10. Now, add your link prospect’s contact info in column G.

11. Go to your calendar, create an event about an hour after you wake up that says, “Find Guest Posts Via Twitter” and add this link: http://ow.ly/8x9gF in the event. Set it to repeat every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

12. Lastly, perform outreach. Use John Doherty's Twitter outreach article as a base and start building links!

Parting Remarks

Because the guest post opportunities are curated by Twitter users, it could pick up posts that might not explicitly say guest post in the title or even in the body of the article, yet be a guest post. So it should help you uncover some gems that you might not find via Google.

Next Versions

In next versions, expect to see Google Blog Search, multiple queries and URL analysis. That’s what I had in mind but I’d love to hear what you would like to see in the next version of this tool.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post / watch the video and hopefully you can benefit as much as I have. Looking forward to your thoughts!

SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Algorithm analysis, Web community relationship analysis, SEO practices and techniques, industry news, etc.

Radial Information Conveyance Methods and Limitations: Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:00:27 +0000 - Radial Information Movement Economics (RIME) encompasses the cost/benefit structures of broadcasting information into a receptive/resistant medium. In other words, you create an information source that pumps new information in all directions (broadcasting); the medium receives and transmits the information but there are characteristics of the medium that resist the transmission of the information, such that at some distance from the point of origin the information ceases radial movement. The SEO Theory blog serves as a radial core or focus (as in the center of a circle) of a radial field for information about theoretical search engine optimization concepts. The information flows outward from this blog multiple radii (pathways) such as search engine listings, my Twitter accounts, the two subscription mechanisms this Website provides, the RSS feeds for posts and comments, and through links to SEO Theory articles that are placed on other Websites. The information from SEO Theory is received or embedded if it is replicated on another Website or reshared in a social media service. I have described these receptions previously (December 2008) as “echo events” in Simple Wave Theory for the Web. We can think of the resistance of the medium as being represented by the degree of [...]
Why Clients Make Irrational SEO Decisions: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:00:56 +0000 - Loss Aversion describes the tendency of people to avoid experiencing loss more than to experience gain. Psychologists argue there are evolutionary reasons for this fundamental human practice. For example, suppose you are traveling across the plains of Africa with your band of hunter-gatherers. You’re starving. You come to a place where a lot of game animals are trapped in the mud and drowning or suffocating. You have the opportunity to collect as much food as your little group needs. What do you do? Most people would, in fact, move on without trying to harvest the freshly killed or dying animals. Why? Because the chance they might be caught in the mud and die a long, frustrating death is sufficient enough to frighten them (even though as intelligent, rational beings they probably have the skills and tools to retrieve all the animals they need without losing any member of their group). The threat of great loss devalues the promise of great reward. Loss Aversion gradually transforms into Risk Aversion for a number of reasons, one of which is closely tied to how much we think we posssess compared to the people around us. For example, if you ask a random set [...]
Why Not Use Alexa for Competitor Analysis?: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:27:40 +0000 - Competitive analysis is one of the great time wasters of search engine optimization practices. People set such unrealistic expectations for competitive analysis that they weaken their strategic search optimization capabilities by devoting resources to tracking and monitoring useless information. I have been asked to write many competitive analyses through the years. I have never been asked to write a useful, actionable competitive analysis, although I have occasionally tried to include some real value into these nonsensical reports. If You’re Looking at Competitors, Then Just Profile Them One of the few useful forms of competitive analysis is competitor profiling. A competitive profile determines who the competitors are in a vertical, what strategies they employ, and where they are devoting their time and resources. In some verticals, you can almost fill in the last part in advance with “link building”. A competitor profile doesn’t provide you with any insight into what actually works — it merely shows you what a competitor is doing. It’s very similar to doing a correlation study of search results: you won’t see which “ranking factors” are influencing search results, but you’ll see the obvious things that the Websites in the search results are doing. Competitor profiling does [...]
How the Anti-SOPA Message Tricked So Many People So Quickly: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:23 +0000 - The principles we use for establishing Brand Value or stimulating the Perception of Brand Value are best described in terms of Propaganda Theory, which holds that a message is conveyed to an audience for the purpose of shaping the audience’s response to some stimulus. Classic examples of propaganda include: Pavlov’s Dog experiment, where he rang a bell when a group of dogs were fed, thus training them to salivate whenever the bell was rung regardless of whether food was served; behavioral experiments designed to elicit mimicking behaviors from passersby, such as when people stand and stare at the tops of tall buildings for no obvious reason; and “staging” houses and offices that are being presented for sale, giving visitors (prospective buyers) a clear image of the potential value of the facilities. The supporters for two sports teams may engage in simple propaganda, each group promoting the best qualities and members of their favorite teams. American automobile manufacturers have included comparative messages in their advertising for decades, thus eliciting a competitive response in customers (e.g. “I’m a Ford man”, “GM all the way”). Propaganda does not have to clearly enunciate its message in order to sway the minds of people. Innuendo [...]
Coping With Link Viscosity Inflow and Outflow: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:00:45 +0000 - Link viscosity is the resistance of a linking Web page to change which results in the removal of an outbound link from the page. What does that mean? — Link Viscosity is an expression I use to describe the tendency of a page to change its content over time, such that a given link on the page may be removed through any of several processes. For example, a typical blog may publish its latest articles on the front page in full, plain view requiring no further action from a visitor to read the articles. This is in fact the default behavior of WordPress blogs and many SEOs publish only excerpts of articles on their front pages to encourage click-throughs (which inflates “stickiness” data and refines “funnel” data). So let’s suppose you show your full articles on the front page of your blog and you show up to five articles at a time. How long does it take for an article to “slide” off the front page into the scrolling posts archive? That dropoff rate, sliding frequency, scroll rate, scrolling frequency — whatever you wish to call it — is equivalent to one type of link viscosity. In another example, you [...]
How To Stop Scraper Sites Dead in Their Tracks: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:34:37 +0000 - So you’re tired of complaining to Google about scraper sites and want to see some action taken against them? Say good-bye to the only means you would have had to compel Google to actually stop PAYING SCRAPERS TO STEAL YOUR CONTENT AND USE IT FOR THEIR OWN GAIN. Too damn few of you actually read this act. You’ve read all the hysterical Chicken Little blogs and you have absolutely no clue what the heck this act proposes. Well, here’s a clue (courtesy of The Library of Congress). Understand that everything this bill proposed, with one exception, has already been in force AND used under various United States laws for several years. Your “freedom of speech” hasn’t been infringed by those applications of these powers. Your “due process” didn’t vanish overnight. You’re still here. People are still innovating. Companies are still suing startups and yet we still see new startups. So read the Act as it was proposed and try to ignore the lies and propaganda that you have been buried under for weeks. THINK for yourselves. The old Nazi tactic of repeating a lie enough times until people believe it to be true is working just fine for Google — [...]
How To Kick-start an SEO Campaign: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:46 +0000 - There are certain things many people (and companies) are reluctant (or unable) to do with their Websites. Stopping in mid-campaign and starting over from scratch is one of those impossible tasks that people typically reject out of hand. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have advised people to start over from scratch only to be told, “That is not an option.” Rather than ridicule someone who seems to transform infinite possibility into IMpossibility, I accept that perhaps circumstances are beyond that person’s control and so proposing the BEST SEO OPTION is not really providing the right help. Nonetheless, falling back on band-aid solutions and targeting only modest improvement over existing traffic is not very satisfying for either the SEO technician (who often feels frustrated and under-employed) or the client. So let’s take a look at how to reframe the possibilities as a PLAN C. You the SEO Should Always Have Three Plans In Your Pocket So you want to keep your reputation as a miracle worker but you find that doubling your time estimates doesn’t work as well for you as it does for Commander Scott on Star Trek. Scotty gets away with it because he [...]
Consumer Intent Modeling: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:00:59 +0000 - A great way to build and expand on a keyword strategy is to use Consumer Intent Modeling. The concept of consumer intent modeling is not really new but it is unique to many small to midsized companies. Essentially understanding consumer intent means having a good idea of the needs and wants of your target audience as it relates to your products. It is so surprising how often marketers spend time promoting their products based on what they think their customer or audience wants to hear. Unfortunately, this often appears very one-sided in its approach and can alienate the target customers. Please remember this: “you are not your target audience”. This is one of the best reminders for getting and keeping the right mindset for marketing anywhere but especially on the web. Successful marketers go to great lengths to research and understand the mindset, attitudes, needs and behavior of their target audience. They are great marketers because they speak directly to these needs and desires with compelling messages and calls-to-action. When looking for ways to capture consumer intent, marketers can turn to a number of industry sources detailing everything from consumer trends in retail categories to specific buying patterns that are [...]

Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Search engine marketing news and information you can use to grow your business.

The Super Simple Guide to Using and Marketing Through Pinterest - Part Two

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:29:20 -0600 -

by Jennifer Cario

(If you are new to Pinterest and don't already have an account, make sure to read part one in this series.)

Now that you've gotten youself up and running with a Pinterest account, it's time to put it to use to start collecting ideas, links and pictures. Remember, Pinterest is a powerful online filing system that gives you visual access to the things you might wish to use down the road. Back in part one we talked about setting up some topical boards to sort the "pins" you find. Today we're going to talk about how to find those pins.

Browsing Your Friends' Pins and Repinning

The absolute easiest way to find pins (and the way most people get started) is by looking though the feed produced for you by your friends' activity and "repinning" their pins. A repin is the Pinterest equivalent of a Twitter retweet or a Facebook share. When you log in to Pinterest, your friends' activity feed is the first thing that pops up.

You can scroll through these listings to see if anything strikes your fancy. If it does, you have one of two options.

The first is to hover your mouse over it and wait for the Repin, Like and Comment options to pop up. Clicking the like button will add your vote to the mix right there on the page. Clicking the comment button will add a comment window to the bottom of the listing and clicking the Repin button will pop up a screen designed to let you pin the item to your own boards. It's important to note you can also check the Facebook and Twitter boxes in this window to automatically share your pin there as well.

You can select the category you wish to pin it to from the drop down menu or create a new one right there in the menu. You can also choose to pin it with the existing description, or write your own. Once you've hit submit, the pin will be added to your category and will show up in the streams of users who follow you.

Your other option when you see a pin you are interested in is to click on the image itself. This will take you to the actual pin listing page, which looks like this:

Apart from getting a larger picture and a full description plus comments on this page, you also get some interesting information to help you dig deeper with your Pinning habits. At the bottom of the listing, you'll notice three key areas. "Pinned onto the board," "Originally Pinned by," and "Pinned from."

The first one tells you what board the person who pinned it placed it in. The thinking here is that if you like this pin, you may like the other pins they've collected on that topic. It will also give you some thumbnail snapshots of other pins from that board to check out. Below that, you'll find a link to the person who originally found the post and added it to Pinterest. Again, chances are high you may want to consider following this person as well, since you like the content they added. Finally, the "pinned from" section will give you a full page showing the other pins that have been added from that site.

This can be an excellent way to find a new site to visit and even more ideas to pin.

Finding Pins by Topic

One of my favorite ways to use Pinterest is to browse the pins being added by all members to specific categories. If you look at the top of the page when you are logged in to Pinterest, you'll notice a link that reads "Everything."

Click on this link and you'll get a drop down menu that allows you to select a category. Select your category and you'll be taken to a real time feed of the most recent pins added to that category. (There are also links to view the latest video pins, the most popular pins and a breakdown of product pins by price.)

This is one of the things that makes Pinterest such an addictive time killer and that keeps people on the site for so long. In fact, the average time on site for a Pinterest user in the month of November last year was 88 minutes. Making it the third most "sticky" social media site behind Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes), according to Billboard.

Finding Pins by Searching

The absolute most useful thing about Pinterest, in my opinion, is the search feature. Take a gander at the top left side of the Pinterest home page and you'll spot the search box.

Type in almost anything you can think of and you'll be treated a vast array of ideas gathered and archived by millions of Pinterest users. It's one of they key features I use when I need a specific answer or idea. Trying to figure out how to create an indoor herb garden for my kitchen? I ask Pinterest:

Looking for some color palette ideas for a new web site design or for a home decorating project? Yep, you can ask Pinterest.

But it's not just about using the content that is already on the site.

Pinning Content Using the "Pin It" Button

Another common way to pin items to your board is to make use of the "Pin it" social sharing buttons that have started to pop up on web sites across the web. For the most part, this button is still rare, showing up mostly on wedding, recipe and craft related sites, but as more and more Internet users discover the benefits of visual bookmarking, it's beginning to spread.

When you visit a blog post or product page, just look for the red "Pin it" icon that often shows up along side the +1, Like and Tweet buttons at the top or bottom of a post.

Clicking the button will launch a pop up window much like the Pin it option within the Pinterest site. Use the drop down menu to select your category, edit the description to something of your choosing and decide whether or not to share to Facebook and Twitter before hitting "Pin it" and sending the image to your board. Pinterest will take care of linking the image to the proper page.

Pinning Content Using the "Pin It" Bookmarklet

Since so few sites have added Pin it buttons to the mix, most Pinterest users rely on the Pinterest Bookmarklet. To install it, go to the Pinterest Goodies page click on the Pin it button and drag it to your tool bar. This will create a handy little bookmark on your tool bar that you can simply click on any time you are on a page you'd like to pin.

The nice thing about using the bookmarklet is that it gives you a choice of what image to use for your pin. (The other options select the picture automatically.) Clicking the bookmarklet while on the blog post shown above will take you to a page like this:

Simply browse through the images from the page and click the one you'd like to feature. This will launch a pop-up window like the one seen before, allowing you to select a category, add a description and publish it to other social networks.

Coming up in Part Three

Ok, so maybe you are sold on the idea of using Pinterest as an image based bookmark solution, but you're asking what it does in terms of marketing. In other words, can you use it to drive traffic to your site? The answer is a definite yes, but hinges on the concept that most traffic campaigns do...high quality original content. We'll talk more about this coming up in part three.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Super Simple Guide to Using and Marketing Through Pinterest - Part One

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:52:53 -0600 -

by Jennifer Cario

Pinterest is a virtual pin board that allows you to collect images and links to things you like on the web. If you've ever seen someone pull out a scrapbook filled with recipe clippings or a binder full of wedding or home remodel ideas, you've got the general idea. The difference with Pinterest is the fact that it all takes place online in an environment where you can share your collection with your friends and vice versa. To put it in the simplest of terms, Pinterest is an image based version of bookmarks.

Pinterest is Growing Rapidly

A few months ago, I would have forgiven you if you hadn't heard of Pinterest. It was like a sneaky, lovable cat. The kind that curls up in your lap and gives you the warm fuzzies while you pet it, but that remains quietly invisible to anyone not already in the know. The past month or so though, it's all begun to change. Pinterest has finally reached it's tipping point and the masses are starting to pour into the site to explore what it has to offer. If you are a marketer, a blogger, or a business owner, it's time to invest some effort into learning whether or not Pinterest needs to be part of your marketing strategy.

I first heard Pinterest mentioned last summer by a friend who is a professional photographer. She mentioned it as a great place to stash your collection of ideas and inspiration. It sounded intriguing, but not enough so to actually visit the site. (Since I was sort of busy with an out of state move and planning a wedding of my own.) I found my way back to the site last fall while hunting for some Christmas ideas online. Every other crafting site I ran across had a "Pin it" button showing up s part of the blog post. Within ten minutes of finally visiting the site, I was hooked.

Since then, I've been a daily Pinterest addict. It's my new time killer when I'm waiting in line or killing a few minutes of boredom. It's my source (and storage) for inspiration on food, my home, and a huge portion of the things I do in my every day life.

Intrigued yet? You should be.

Let me give you a tour.

When you head over to Pinterest, you're going to see a bunch of random picture with commentary and some numbered tallies underneath them.

There's no rhyme or reason to it because when you first log in, you're just going to see the current most popular posts. At this point, if you click on an image, you're going to get a notice to sign up for an account.

When you fill out the request for an invite, don't fret. Most folks seem to get their invite within 12-48 hours these days. You'll be up and running in no time. Of course if you have a friend using the service already, they can send you an invite which you'll receive almost immediately.

Once you get your invite, click the link in the email to get started. It will take you to this page.

You'll have the choice to link your account to either Twitter or Facebook. It's a personal preference that doesn't hold a LOT of weight because Pinterest will only share your pins via those networks if you ask it to. For the purpose of this article, we'll go with Facebook. Clicking on it will take you to your Facebook sign-in page.

Once you're signed in, you'll need to approve the app to work in Facebook.

To note, if you haven't already upgraded to Facebook Timeline, you'll need to do it to get Pinterest synched up. Consider whether you want to leave things set to display to all your friends or if you want narrow the friend group, then click through to move along. From there, it's onto finally setting up your Pinterest account.

Once you've finished this step, Pinterest will try to get you started with some people to follow.

My suggestion? Refrain from picking categories you like unless you want Pinterest to fill up your boards with people you don't know. For the sake of this article, I set up an account for my husband and it set him up with a dozen people to follow. I had to then go unfollow them all. It will also look to see which of your Facebook friends are on Pinterest and will follow them as well, so plan to edit people out accordingly.

Your next step in the process is to create some boards. Boards are Pinterest's version of visual filing cabinets. They are usually topical and give you a chance to categorize your pins for easy access. Take a minute to set one or two up, but realize you can add more at any time.

Once you've set up your starter categories, you're ready to get going. At this point, you'll be able to view your Pinterest stream. In this case, that stream looks like this:

Of course chances are high you'll see a lot of things you aren't interested in. Just because you're friends with someone on Facebook doesn't mean you're interested in every little thing they want to save in their scrapbooks. There are two different ways to work around this. The first is to delete people totally. To do this, click on the username that shows up under the photo. This will take you to their Pinterest page where you can find the greyed out "unfollow" button under their avatar. Click this button and you'll remove them from your stream.

Now, let's say you've got someone in your stream that you want to follow, but who posts WAY more content than you are interested in, or things you simply don't care about. Say, for instance you have a friend who has great taste in food, but also has a love for polymer clay and crafting that is flooding your stream. Find one of their posts, click the username and go to their page the same way you did when you planned to unfollow someone. Click the unfollow button again. At this point, each of the "boards" (categories) the Pinterest user has created will have a follow button associated with them. Scan through their list and follow any of the boards you think you might be interested in. This will segment their feed and serve up only a portion for you. (One of Pinterest's strongest features, in my opinion.)

Once you've done this, you'll find your feed has cleared out a bit and feature more post you are interested in.

Now that you've gotten everything set up, you can begin using Pinterest. There are three primary ways to do this. You can browse the overall database of pins you can browse your individual feed or you can go looking for new things to add to Pinterest.

We'll explore those options coming up in part two of this series on Pinterest.

Want to learn even more about Pinterest and how to use it to market your business or drive traffic to your web site? Join Jennifer Cario for a FREE Market Motive workshop on Pinterest next Thursday, February 9th at 12:30pm EST. Registration is required.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Don't Waste Time Looking at Web Data Until You Do This - Part 2

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:11:44 -0600 -

by Mike Fleming

Cutting through all the clutter of data, which metrics are your critical few? You probably have at most three critical few metrics that define your existence...If you can't take action with anything, then perhaps you are using the wrong metric for your business...the simple process of identifying a metric as your key performance indicator and creating a graph of it rarely helps you find insights...before you diagnose how to improve a metric, you have to identify all the influencing variables...analyzing the variables will help you identify where the true opportunities for improvement are...it forces you to dig in a methodical manner and let the data, not opinions, drive action...

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

We've talked about what makes a good metric to look at for your business. But, you have to be careful here. There is soooo much data wrapped up in what seems at times like an endless amount of possible metrics. If you are not careful, you will catch yourself wasting your time lost at sea with no idea how to get back home where you belong. By "home" I mean those critical metrics that will measure what needs to change at this specific point in time for your online efforts to improve. So, before you dive in and drown in data, the first and maybe most important thing you can do is determine where to focus your attention. By doing this first, you create a map that will guide you to the right places to dive for those golden insights you so desperately need to make your next decisions for action.

This is what you want, right? Don't get me wrong, it's great to take a few moments and bask in the glory of your achievements or sulk in the pain of your failures. Both can be tremendous motivators. But the bulk of your time looking at all the pretty charts, graphs, numbers and arrows should be to find out what to do next. What should you do more of? Less of? Who should get a raise and who should get fired? Remember, these decisions shouldn't be faith-based initiatives. Don't let your opinion get in the way. They should be backed by solid data that tells a story that leads you to conclusions that show you actions that give you results.

But, remember the data you're looking at should be that which will tell you if what you were shooting for with your previous actions was accomplished or not. This is how you and everyone else working with your site should be judged. If what you were shooting for was to sell 20% more stuff than last year, who cares if visitors went up by 40% if it didn't result in 20% more sales! There's a problem. And who cares if visitors didn't go up at all if sales went up by 20%! Someone deserves some love. Sure, the two will most likely be intimately tied together, but why worry about what doesn't directly matter. Focus on what matters and figure out what you can do to make it better.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Perception is Worth 1,001 Words

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:51:10 -0600 -

by Stoney deGeyter

In the world of business, marketing and advertising is everything. Marketing is at least as important as the products or services you sell. Without marketing, you have no one to demonstrate the superiority of what you offer!

There is a reason people build businesses in cities surrounded by people, rather than in a desert surrounded by cactus! You need people to market to, and you need customers coming in your door. The success of your business relies on how well you market your product or service first, and second by how well you deliver it. Very few businesses survive on word of mouth alone. But what many small business owners fail to realize is that while marketing is everything, everything you do is marketing!

Everything you do, as a small business, has an impact on your marketing message and ability to get that message out to your customer base. How/whether you answer your phones, how you reply to email messages, what you say on Twitter/Facebook, the presentation of your website, and your ability to produce satisfied customers all play a role in your ongoing marketing efforts.

How are you perceived?

My company helps business owners build and execute their web marketing strategies. But all too often, many are missing even the most fundamental marketing and common-sense business development components. We can help them online, but lacking the offline aspects, we are simply attempting to fill a bucket that has holes in it.

Perception matters. If your potential customer's perception of you, true or not, is less than they expect, you're going to have trouble selling them. Would you trust a mechanic with a poorly tuned vehicle? A lawyer who drives a Yaris? A contractor with a run-down office? A landscaper with an overgrown lawn?

You might, but I guarantee you'd think twice before you do. None of these things demonstrate how well any of these business owners do their job, but the perception is, if they can't take care of themselves, how can you trust them to take care of you?

When performing link building for our clients, they are often picky about where we get links from. So are we, but they often want to get links only from high-caliber sites, when their site is somewhere below that. In link building, people will generally only link to site's of equal or higher caliber than themselves. If you want a link from a high-caliber site, you have to be one. Otherwise, take what you can get from those below you!

The little things matter the most

Businesses purchase online marketing because they want to increase sales. But if the SEO is doing its job but sales don't follow, there may be something else at play. Lack of business success doesn't always fall on the marketer's shoulders. In fact, such woes may directly be caused by how the business is being run.

The SEO's job doesn't include running your business. There are a lot of things that fall outside the SEO's area that can make or break your business success, and even your search engine rankings!

As an SEO, we routinely try to help our clients in areas that fall far outside the SEO box. We'll provide feedback on design, programming and presentation, just to name a few. We want our customers to succeed, and sometimes that means we have to help in areas that we were not necessarily hired for.

Everything matters, and when it comes to business success, everything should be on the table for a discussion on how to improve your ROI. If your SEO thinks your design isn't great, it may be worth discussing in greater detail, even if you love it. There might be a reason they hate it that goes beyond personal preference. If your SEO provides a recommendation on how something looks or appears on the website, it many worth noting, even if you can't change it right away.

Little things can create big perceptions. Especially when it comes to usability issues. It's not just website design, it's also communication, problem resolution, response times and a whole lot more.

A picture on your website may be worth a thousand words, but perception is worth 1001. You are what you're perceived to be. That's true whether you believe it or not.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Writing Google Places Reviews to Improve Rankings

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:28:05 -0600 -

by Dave Cosper

A business owner recently asked me how to go about building positive reviews in a way that would "optimize" their Google Maps listing. This is about as provocative a topic as it gets in the Local Search community, I know, but it's also an unavoidable subject worth addressing. Search marketers ponder the same "How To" question, if for nothing else to try and understand every aspect of local search ranking factors and translate this to practical advice for SMB's.

Google Places has become an essential tool in increasing popularity of a business on the Web to attract local consumers. It is a huge opportunity for local businesses to get exposure, but ranking in Google Places does not happen automatically - and building reviews takes time (any effort to improve ranking should be measured in months not weeks).

For every local search, Google does its best to display relevant businesses, favoring those its algorithm determines to be prominent (well-established) and well-liked in the area.

If Google made a habit of recommending local businesses that offered poor products and service, how long do you think people would continue using Google Maps? So Google has more confidence in "recommending" a local business if it has mostly positive reviews and ratings.

Google Places reviews have four primary signals that affect local search ranking:

Volume of reviews/ratings
Velocity of reviews/ratings
Sentiment of reviews/ratings
Keywords in reviews

Volume

The quantity of reviews needed to improve rankings depends on the business type and the number of reviews relative to local competitors. It's important to identify how many reviews competing listings have acquired and use this as the relative benchmark.

Velocity

Amassing lots of reviews is great, but acquiring them all in bulk or too quickly is not - this will set off red flags. Steadily building quality reviews is ideal.

Sentiment

While most review building strategies focus on soliciting reviews from happy customers, a natural distribution of mostly positive and even some negative reviews is best. There are a number of signals Google relies on, and crawling review content and extracting sentiment analysis is one of them.

Keywords

The quality of the written review is also important. While keywords in the review have been shown to help a listing rank, it's important that the description not appear spammy. Keyword stuffing in reviews is NOT good. But, the appearance of multiple reviews with consistent use of the right keywords, used sparingly, typically has a very positive impact on rankings for those particular keywords - especially long-tail keyword phrases.

Some examples:

Not good: General dentist Dr. Williams in Chicago, IL provides general dentistry and general dental care procedures, such as: Chicago general dentistry for children, general dentistry in Chicago for adults, and Chicago general dentist for seniors.

Good: Chalk up another great appointment with Dr. Williams in Chicago. He really cares about your teeth and takes the time to explain all procedures to make you feel comfortable. The entire staff is very friendly and prices are reasonable. Beyond general dentistry he also offers cosmetic dentistry like dental implants and natural looking filings. I highly recommend Dr. Williams!

To sum up Google's review policy: No fake reviews, no keyword-stuffed reviews, and no direct incentives for reviews. And apparently, according to Mike Blumenthal's blog, representatives of Google claim on-site review stations are permissible and even encouraged.

Additionally, other factors of influence include quantity, velocity and sentiment of reviews stemming from relevant third-party sites: IYPs, vertical/niche directories, and data aggregators, Facebook page likes, social media mentions on sites like Twitter, Foursquare check-ins, and Google+ shares. The entire local-social-mobile ecosystem is becoming increasingly more connected and continuing to play a bigger role in ranking.

Google's assessment of reviews also relies on the relative prominence of the person (account) posting the mention. A person with a history of quality reviews, on Hotpot for example, carries more weight.

The Anatomy of Stellar "Optimized" Reviews:

After five or more reviews, an average star rating with the total number of reviews appears on the search results page along with the listing:

It's common to see a boost in both ranking and conversion once five reviews are achieved and the average star rating has been activated - as long as the reviews are good!

Optimally, the person writing the review places the best descriptive text at the very beginning of the review as a concise summary statement. The summary can then be expanded upon in the rest of the review. Google routinely places select keywords from the review in bold.

Below is an example of how bold keyword phrases appear in the published review:

Google also offers review guidelines to share tips on how to write constructive reviews. Some of these tips include how to make the reviews informative and insightful, using real stories and not stuff that didn't actually happen, being nice even with negative reviews by making them constructive and not disrespectful, and finally writing them using proper grammar - avoiding excessive capitalization or punctuation.

Spammy Reviews Can do More Damage than Good:

What happens if business owners write their own (fake) reviews? The business can end up in Google purgatory!

Google employs a number of measures to prevent fake reviews including checking to see if reviews are being left by an email address tied to the business's domain or stemming from the same or similar IP address. If Google is suspicious of fake reviews or sees too many reviews all happening over a very short period of time, the listing could wind up suspended and perhaps even permanently blacklisted if the tactics are blatant enough.

Bottom line is, if you own a business you need to commit to an effective and long-term strategy in building online reviews. Instead of direct incentives, focus on encouraging happy customers at, or shortly after, the point of sale. From a local search marketing standpoint, this topic cannot be ignored. After all, Google Maps is, at its core, a recommendation engine.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Shady Practice Of Spinning Articles To Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:33:27 -0600 -

by Miriam Ellis

If you've been walking on the sunny side of a clean street on your Search Marketing journey, hopefully you've skipped right past that dark and narrow alleyway in which lurks the spin monster. The practice of 'spinning' articles for directory submission isn't new, but it has come to my notice that marketing firms are currently utilizing this as a post-Panda effort for avoiding the dread Google duplicate content label, and I'm writing this article today to describe what the process is. If you're about to hire a marketer/SEO whose methods of promotion include submitting 'spun' articles to content sites, read this first before you sign that contract.

How To Spin An Article

In a rancid little nutshell, spinning articles involves creating synonyms or alternates for words and phrases within the body of the copy so that the text can be hashed up and put together again as though it were multiple pieces of content instead of just one. Here is an example of what this looks like:

{Some marketers | Some SEOs | Some consultants} {persist in | insist on} believing that it is better to {attempt to | try to} {hoodwink | fool | trick} Google than to devote {time | effort | money} towards playing by the rules for their clients' long-term success.

From the above example, you can see how choosing the alternate wordings would enable one to create copy with a certain percentage of distinctness. The whole point, as far as I understand it, is that you can then submit the spun articles to multiple sources for the sole sake of backlinks. The education, engagement and reading pleasure of human beings is definitely not the object.

You can hire a 'copywriter' to manually spin articles for you, or you can shove the task off onto a helpless computer program which is, of course, incapable of protest. Either way, you are engaging in a practice which I can only view as one of those ugly outcomes of Google's historic dependence on links as a metric for relevance and authority.

Why I Think Article Spinning Is Shady

As a professional copywriter, my instinctive response to what this practice does with the English language is one of revulsion. Language can be so powerful, and to see it reduced to this purpose is like watching someone whittle a Redwood into a toothpick. In my opinion, this type of marketing hinges on the lowest form of communication of feeding the stupidest of the bots. Why settle for this when your alternatives have the potential to inspire, enlighten and satisfy those real human beings - your customers?

My tender personal feelings about fine prose aside, every business owner must realistically confront the fact that everything published by him and about him on the web is a piece of his reputation. Do you really think that having your linked signature on an article at garbage-content.com is going to show you in a professional light? Consider that.

Thirdly, I find article spinning to be a poor concept from its very foundations because it is built on deception. The intent is to deceive Internet users, search engine bots and, possibly, content sites. If your marketer thinks that the best way to get ahead is with a good old lie - well, you've got a problem on your hands.

Finally, the fact that dubious marketing firms are apparently seeing this as the answer to Panda means that some people have come out of that web-wide shakeup without having learned a lesson. Instead of trying to become more genuine in their business practices, some business owners/SEOs are simply trying to find other ways to game the system. Of course, there is some money to be made in being tricky, or no one would be doing it, but in my opinion, everyone comes out of this situation a loser. Why?

The public loses because the web is further polluted with flotsam and jetsam that is devoid of usefulness or real expertise. The business owner loses because he is wasting his own profits on a marketing strategy that will attach his name to idiotic documents across the web. Further, the next panda-esque debacle may include new sophistication that will render an increased number of content farms inert. The time and money invested will thus be voided. The marketing firm loses because it is risking being called out for selling bad product and it is making its money by offering the worst kind of education to its own clients. It may well be soliciting its own demise.

But Isn't There Any Value In Article Marketing Anymore?

We can debate this for days. I thought Michael Gray's 2011 article on post-Panda article marketing was pretty on-target, but frankly, I am still convinced that building out your own website's content brings greater rewards than handing it away to somebody else. There will, of course, be exceptions to this, and linkbuilding is every bit as much on the SEO table in 2012 as ever, but be honest with yourself about what you're actually doing.

I have found it exceptionally interesting to watch Social Media begin to sway the big discussion towards genuineness. Being real with your real audience, being accountable, being transparent and honest - these are the practices that are now being cited as carrying the richest long-term rewards. I can certainly recall the days of the really dumb bots of a decade ago, and confess I was even amused at some of the gaming going on, but remember this - the humans were never dumb.

All of this stuff your business is putting out there on the web - an audience is on the receiving end. That audience contains your potential customers. And, honestly, they are not going to be impressed by finding 6 versions of your story about pet allergies that cleverly substitute the word 'canine' for 'dog'. There are more intelligent ways to engage people.

We can do better than this.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Don't Waste Time Looking at Web Data Until You Do This

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:21:14 -0600 -

by Mike Fleming

...life is about taking action, and if your work is not driving action, you need to stop and reboot...hits and pageviews don't mean anything except that someone came to your site and consumed some content...metrics are a dime a dozen, so how do you know which ones to use? They should have the following four attributes...

Uncomplex - If you want action, everyone involved in the decision-making must easily comprehend performance.
Relevant - they must be measuring the success objectives that are unique to you and your website.
Timely - Even the greatest metric in the world is useless if it takes nine days while your world changes every three days.
Instantly Useful - you need to be able to find insights as soon as you look at it.

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

Your business is different than everyone else's, so why would you look at the same measurements of success as everyone else? Everyone looks at visitors to their site, but what does that tell you about how your business is doing? If you sell a high-end product and the only people coming to your site are those looking for a cheap solution, it doesn't matter how far up and to the right that blue line goes for visitors, your business isn't growing. You want to look at the metrics that will tell you if you are progressing with growth. That's why the most important step you can take toward success is identifying the metrics that will tell you if what you really want to happen for your business is happening or not.

What actions do you need your customers in order to achieve the site outcomes you desire? Do they need to consume more content? Do more of them need to make it to your product detail pages instead of bouncing off your home page? Do you need to increase visitors from a certain website that sends high-converting traffic? Do you need more conversions from PPC traffic? What needs to happen on your site to get your business to where you want it to be? Once you've got this down, you can now find out what metric will tell you if it's happening or not.

If I need visitors to consume more content so that they can learn about how my product or service benefits them, my metrics for success might be Time on Site or Pageviews/Visit. If more visitors need to make it to my product detail pages, I might make Product Detail Page Entrances on my site my chosen metric and ramp up my PPC and SEO to those pages. If I need more conversions from PPC, I might use clicks and conversion rate as my primary metrics. Bottom line: what you spend your time looking at and trying to improve should align with the outcomes that will grow your business.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Difference between Good SEO and Great SEO

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:56:17 -0600 -

by Stoney deGeyter

Designing a great looking website is good. Putting it on a strong information architecture is better.

Rolling out a newly optimized website is good. Checking it first is better.

Investing in SEO is good. Investing in ROI is better.

Optimizing your e-commerce site is good. Using optimized concantenation schema is better.

Quick-fix SEO is good. Long-term SEO is better.

Performing SEO correctly is good. Doing what you can quickly is better.

Keyword research is good. Keyword research and segmentation is better.

Adding keywords to content is good. Following user-friendly keyword optimization guidelines is better.

Having content on your website is good. Having unique content is better.

Being unique is good. Being remarkable is better.

Meeting your audience's needs is good. Making your audience feel special is better.

Optimizing for your important keywords is good. Optimizing for a lot of great keywords is better.

Expecting rankings is good. Getting rankings is better.

Getting rankings is good. Growing your business is better.

Increasing traffic is good. Persuading visitors to buy is better.

Growing your business is good. Increasing profits is better.

Understanding algorithms is good. Understanding analytics is better.

Charging (or paying) for SEO services is good. Being fair with charges is better.

Writing about SEO is good. Writing about SEO while trashing Will Ferrell is better.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Where You Should Invest Your Web Marketing Budget

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:46:38 -0600 -

by Mike Fleming

...the bottom line for magnificent success is the people...invest multiple times more in her or him, or more of them, if you truly want to take action on your data. Otherwise, you are simply data rich and information poor...a great tool in the hands of your reporting squirrel is useless. A free/inexpensive/underpowered tool in the hands of your analysis ninja will yield massive results that impact your bottom line...

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

Web data is easy to get at; and it can even be free. Yes! That is awesomeness. But, you know what's not easy to get and is not free? The insights you can get from the data that will result in wise decisions and actions for business growth. Since this is the case, it just makes sense that you would spend way more on what will get you insights than you do on what gets you the data. The bottom line is that you have to invest in talented people. Without them, your data is useless (except you may FEEL good if the blue line goes up and to the right).

That is what you want, right? To build your business? Well then, you have to know what to do next to make it better. Your opinion, although well-intentioned, may not be well-informed. Well-intentioned decisions tend to cost more in time and money than you'll ever invest in people that can give you well-informed insights.

If your goal is to grow your site's effectiveness, then you need analysis ninjas that know what to do with all that data you've been gathering in your analytics tool. Without them, you're relying on faith alone. Faith is good, but faith without data is dead.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Editing: Is social media realtime or permanent?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:42:31 -0600 -

by Mike Moran

As social media has (somewhat) matured, an interesting culture has grown up around the idea of editing social media content. And for reasons that I don't understand, it isn't one culture--it seems as though every kind of social media has developed its own culture around editing content. It is as if we can't decide whether social media is a realtime force that is stream of consciousness and should never be changed, or it is a permanent record of activity that ought to be updated as it changes, or something in between. Some kinds of social media (Wikipedia) couldn't exist without editing while others (Twitter) do not even allow editing. What gives?

To me, it shows both that we use different kinds of social media for different purposes (think Wikipedia vs. Twitter) but it also shows an ambivalence over what we expect social media to be. So, while it is perfectly reasonable for most people to say that Wikipedia is all about the editing--what we want to see is the latest groupthink on a subject--Wikipedia also contains and exhaustive revision history for every page for transparency into how the page has evolved over time.

But most social media venues fall far short of that kind of transparency. As the founder of the Biznology blog, I struggle with exactly how to handle edits. Very frequently, I see typos, broken links, or other problems crop up on blog pages--sometimes freshly-minted posts and sometimes posts from years ago--and I usually just change them without documenting the changes. One exception is when a commenter points out an error--then I thank the commenter and note that the change has been applied.

Now, if there is a substantive error--a fact is wrong or a breaking story needs to be updated--I change the post and clearly mark that it was updated, along with the date it was changed. This has evolved as the way to edit posts in the blogging world. But I struggle as to when to do that. I have many posts that give advice that is now outdated, because it was good advice in 2006 but not terribly relevant now. Those posts are still out there and they come up in search results. Often, much of the post is still good advice, so I am not sure I should remove the posts, but some of the advice is not helpful. Should I go back and edit those? There is no clear blogging editing norm for outdated posts.

How about YouTube? Mostly videos don't get edited. They just sit out there forever and you can upload a new video if you want to cover the same subject again. Does that make sense? I don't know.

But social networks are my favorite. Facebook and Twitter allow no editing at all. So, you can post something that gets retweeted a hundred times and notice there is a huge, dumb typo in it and you can't change it. You are forced to leave it out there or to delete the tweet. How many stories have you read about someone tweeting something embarrassing where the offending tweet has been deleted by the time the story runs, leaving you with the obligatory screen shot of the rogue tweet to prove that it really happened, because Twitter now has no record of the exchange. There is something wrong when the most newsworthy things that happen are lost to history. Bloggers can take down their own content also, so it's not just Twitter and Facebook, but bloggers could edit a post to add an apology and they can answer comments with new comments.

Google+, ostensibly the same type of social media as Twitter and Facebook, does allow editing. While Google+ has not caught on yet, I think that Google will stick with it until it finds a following, so it will be interesting to see if people take advantage of being able to edit an embarrassing Google+ post, and how transparent they will be as they do it. Does Google show everyone that you edited your post? Or, like blogging, is it up to you how transparent you are?

Message boards are equally schizophrenic. Some do not allow any editing of posts. Some allow editing whenever you want. Some allow editing, but only within a short window and then the post becomes permanent. As with blogging, it's up to you as to how transparent you are about your changes.

One of the reasons editing is so important is that social media often starts a conversation. If I write something and ten people start talking about it, then is it reasonable for me to edit my original post even if it makes the conversation that already exists look weird? Wikipedia hosts a discussion about improving the page which obviously becomes outdated as those improvements are adopted, but at least you can look at the version of the page that people were talking about if you want to.

I don't know what the answer is here, but it strikes me that as social media ages, we'll need to make conscious decisions about which content needs to survive for years and create a record of what happened, which content needs to be updated to remain accurate, and which ought to be deleted as too ephemeral to be relevant. And all of it needs a transparent method of editing it. Where is a good historian when you need one? Calling all archivists and librarians: Big opportunity here...

Originally published on Biznology

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

6 Reasons 2012 is the Perfect Time for Social Media

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:06:06 -0600 -

by Jennifer Cario

As we roll into 2012 companies are looking at ways to either boost their social media campaigns, or in some cases, launch them for the first time. One of the big questions they have is whether or not they're too late to the game. While I'm not going to lie and say it's the easiest it's ever been to get in the game, I can say more companies will find it easier to get involved today than they ever have before. I see six key reasons for this.

Reason #1 - Social Media has Reached a Saturation Point

While I work with all shapes and sizes of business, small business is where my heart lies. Limited staffing and limited budgets leaves little room for "let's just try this" in the small business marketing budget and forces you to really focus in on what you want to accomplish and how to get there in the most efficient manner. That means I spend a lot of time watching social media outlets and making judgement calls on when they've reached a saturation point. I rarely suggest a company begin utilizing a social media outlet until it's crystal clear that outlet has enough members of their target audience to be worth the time and effort.

Social media as a whole has reached a saturation point. Forrester research now reports that 86% of the online U.S. population engages in social media these days. Its no longer a growing medium, it's simply an accepted form of communication. Facebook claims one out of every thirteen people on EARTH have an account. 86% usage rates means your customers ARE on social media, end of story. You'll still have to do some research to find out where they are, but they ARE there. You can stop wondering if it's worthwhile to be there and start worrying about what you'll do to reach them.

Reasons #2 - Social Sharing Continues to Rise

If you get involved with social media for no other reason, it should be to take advantage of the sheer volume of sharing that happens online on a daily basis. Add This shows astronominal growth rates for sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, among others. Interestingly, copy and paste from the URL bar into emails, intant messages and other social channels still makes up an ever larger portion of sharing than simple "click to share" options. That means a ton of people are sharing, without even realizing they're taking part in "social media."

Very few businesses can't benefit from word of mouth. Unless you are one of them, you need to have a plan in place to leverage it online. Social media is what helps you do that.

Reason #3 - Social Media is Diversifying

For some reason, a large portion of companies still think social media equals Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. It's a short sighted way of looking at things and for specialty, niche and most B2B businesses, it's a mistake. Whether you're a small online clothing boutique hawking your wares through Polyvore, a donut shop in Youngstown, Ohio pulling new customers from UrbanSpoon, an extreme fitness studio attracting new students from LivingSocial or a Etsy shop driving sales from Pinterest, the options online are almost limitless. Sure, it's great to build at least a baseline presence with the major players, but more and more companies are finding success by building strong and loyal following on some of the specialty social media sites.

If you are only looking at the biggest players, the game is going to seem a little overwhelming. If you start digging deeper to find those pockets of conversation your audience is having online, there's wonderful opportunity to build a grassroots social media campaign.

Reason #4 - Staffing is Easier to Come By

Sure, there's still a distinct lack of people in the marketing world who really understand social media from the perspective of how it can impact your business...but it's way better than it was even just a few years ago. College students and recent grads understand the new environment and are constantly exploring new outlets. Find one with grea communication skills and provide them with a little direction from someone with actual marketing experience and an understanding of your business and you can go a long way in a short time. Whether you choose to hire a team in-house, hire out a consultant to help keep your team focused, or turn the entire thing over to an agency...there are enough workers out there now to actually give you a choice in whom you hire.

Reason #5 - Social Media Analytics Have Come a Long Way

Remember when people cheered because they gained a Facebook fan, or got X number of retweets? Those things still count, but we've finally matured social media to the point where we dig deeper. Social media isn't just about presence and engagement anymore. The tools are rising to the challenge issued by marketers and our ability to track actions across networks gives us more data than ever. We're understanding the need to create social media specific metrics like amplification and applause and we're finally getting companies to look at business goals and figure out how social media can be used to address them.

This makes it easier than ever for companies to carve out dollars for social media. It was one thing to say "we need to try this." It's an entirely different thing to say "we need to accomplish X and we have Y dollars to do it. Can you make this work?" Companies that embrace social media from the latter perspective will see far more success.

Reason #6 - Offline and Online Experiences are Converging

A girl walks into a bar and sees a cowboy, a clown and a priest having dinner. It may be a joke, or it may be a social media post. With the proliferation of smart phones and social media apps, our every day lives now intersect so tightly with our online lives that they're barely distinguishable. Congregations check in on Facebook on Sunday mornings to share their choice of church with their friends. People take pictures of the things they want for Christmas and post them to their Tumblr accounts for all to see. Live tweeting happens during everything from conferences to earthquakes. Brick and mortar stores are finding new ways to encourage foot traffic to broadcast their activity online by offing coupons, discounts or special experiences. Every experience is sharable and every share is trackable, giving businesses more insight into their customers than they've ever had before.

Do It, But Do It With a Goal

Here's the one down side to all this. The more options you have, the more likely you are to get caught up in the rush and get lost. Take the time to think about the goals you have for your business in 2012. Write them down. Then look at them and ask yourself if you can think of any way social media might be able to help you reach those goals. If you aren't certain, ask a trusted voice in the business. A good social media marketer will tell you if you just aren't ready, or if your goals aren't realistic. Once you find a fit though, it's time to map out a strategy to meet those goals and to get yourself to work.

Photos via Creative Commons license from Flickr users Fabio.Dilupo, laubarnes

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Your Local SEO Checklist For 2012!

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:35:30 -0600 -

by Miriam Ellis

Whether 2012 is the year you start marketing a local business from scratch or the year you get serious about learning how to use Local SEO to best advantage for a company that's been drifting in Local limbo for years, here is my must-do checklist for your success in Local!

Some of these tips may sound like no-brainers to you, but fora across the web are filled with business owners who have skipped steps in the Local learning process and are failing to get the results they want because of it. My advice: don't skip a single tip on this list!

1. Invest Real Money In Your Website

Don't pick your web designer out of a hat with your eyes closed. If you run a local-focused business, hire a design firm that designs local-focused websites. This is a world apart from designing national or global-focused sites. Your website is way more than 1/2 the picture in terms of your ability to compete, rank and serve. Be prepared to make a serious investment in an excellent, usable, optimized website if you want to see serious results.

2. Read The Google Places Quality Guidelines

From my work with my own clients and my work at SEOmoz and Cre8site Forums, I would estimate that 1/2 of all Local-related questions being asked could be answered by a few minutes spent reviewing the Google Places Quality Guidelines. Determining your business' eligibility for inclusion, the number of Place Pages you are allowed to have and how to avoid committing what appear to be the most common violations are all explained in this simple page of guidelines. Read 'em! A couple of times a year - because Google does update the guidelines periodically and the changes can be very important to your business.

3. Read The Google Places Review Guidelines

Spam with a capital 'S' is everywhere in the review portion of Places/Maps, much of it quite deliberate...but you are an honest business person and don't want to accidentally spam this area of Google just because you've never read the Review Guidelines. Who can leave reviews of your business, can you incentivize reviews, can you have reviews removed? All of these issues are covered in the guidelines.

4. Follow The Guidelines To The Letter

Once you've read the guidelines, you are ready to create a violation-free listing for your business or to attempt to clean up past violations you have committed. I wish I could then promise that all will be peachy keen, but Google Places remains bug ridden. Despite your best efforts, you may run into bugs and errors. Google has repeatedly admitted its own mistakes in regards to Places and a single bug in this arena has the potential to affect thousands of business owners. But hang on...don't give up hope. Read tip 5!

5. The Google Places Help Forum - It's Alive! It's Alive!

For a number of years, the Google Places Help Forum has been the best evidence of the damage and confusion being wrought by the Frankenstein-like monster Google had created. Thousands of agitated questions in ALL CAPS flooded the forum, demanding help but almost never receiving any answers. It was a pretty sorry situation.

Things Have Changed! Very, very recently, remarkable alterations have occurred in Google's staffing and in their handling of the forum. Googler, Vanessa Schneider, is doing a commendable job at the helm in the forum, and of perhaps equal importance, the folks Google has deemed to be 'Top Contributors' have been given some very important powers in offering assistance in the forum. These TCs include friends and colleagues Mike Blumenthal, Linda Buquet and Nyagoslav Zhekov.

If you run into a mind-bending problem in Places, having any of these 3 TCs respond is likely to be a real lifesaver, and each of them has the ability to communicate directly with Google if they can't resolve the problem themselves. Google Places remains a buggy juggernaut, but the new energy being poured into offering help and guidance to local business owners is a landmark improvement of the first order! You are operating in a very different environment in Local in 2012 than you were just a year ago - an environment in which problems are much more likely to be resolved.

6 Don't Forget All Those Non-Google Opportunities

Yahoo! Local has telephone support! Best of the Web has a slick interface. MapQuest has such an easy process for listing your business, you almost feel like getting listed is over too soon, too simply. And then there's HotFrog, Merchant Circle, Yelp, Bing Local...the list goes on.

Get your business listed in as many local business indexes as you can. Some will act as citations for your Google Place Page and others are just smart places to be included. Myles Anderson's Top 50 Citation Sources For UK and US Local Businesses post at Search Engine Land is a truly fine place for you to start figuring out where to list your business.

7. Read Mike Blumenthal's Blog

This simple tip, if followed, will be your surest route for keeping current on the most important changes in Local - and Local changes constantly. Mike's Blog wins my vote as the industry standard in Local reporting. Nobody does it better!

8. Be Sociable

From Facebook, to Twitter, to Google Plus, to check-in sites, coupon sites, video and photo sharing sites and review communities, there are so many directions you can go in once you've got the basics of your powerhouse website and clean listings covered. You may not be able to do everything all at once. Pick the platforms that make the most sense to you and see how far you can get with them.

9. Realize You've Gone Into The Publishing Business

Every business taken onto the web has just gone into the publishing business. So many business owners fail to realize this very critical fact. From the tiniest text description on a business listing to the most in-depth article on a website, words are the chief content of the Internet. You've got to be prepared with an arsenal of nouns, verbs and adjectives if you want to be recognized. Don't know what to write? Hire a copywriter who writes for local-focused businesses and who knows how to produce persuasive, clean, optimized copy. As long as your business exists, you will need to keep the words flowing on your website, your listings, your profiles, your reviews. Get writing!

10. Do Something Not On This List

The tips in this article are standard, best-practice advice. Creativity and a spirit of innovation can take you a step beyond. Do something no one has ever thought of before, online or off, to put your business on the map of the public mind. Ideas sell and persistence is rewarded.

May Your Local 2012 Be Your Most Profitable, Exciting Year Yet!

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Forget the Sale. Focus on the Customer

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:56:58 -0600 -

by Stoney deGeyter

There are a lot of phases to the buying cycle. Searchers begin with a thought and then start researching answers via their favorite search engine. As they learn more about their query, they move into shopping and buying modes that hopefully lead them to a satisfied purchase.

In each phase of this cycle, the searcher is typing in a unique set or words or phrases. Each search is designed to provide more relevant information than the last. As the searcher learns, the search phrases reflect what they know and what new information they need.

There is value in building a website that provides information to each of these searchers, but the value in each isn't the same. By understanding the full marketing value and potential of your website, you can build an effective sales funnel that provides each and every visitor the information they need to make the decision you are hoping for.

Your website is a pre-sell channel

Not every visitor who comes to your website is ready to buy right now. In fact, many searchers are merely curious and are looking for knowledge they don't already have. These researchers could turn into buyers, but the chances of making a sale today are slimmer than me turning down a free lunch at Chipotle. It can happen, it's just not likely. (Try me and find out!)

Instead of trying to force your visitors to give you what you want, why not give the visitor what they want?

Every business website should implement a variety of pre-sell strategies. If you think about it, only your product/service pages are doing the actual selling. This leaves the rest of your site to walk people through the research and shopping cycles, pre-selling them on what you offer, so that when they are ready to buy, they come you.

Your home page, product category pages, about us pages, etc., are great places to engage in active pre-selling. They provide a goldmine of opportunities. Use these pages strategically to talk about your brand, your product selection, your value, quality of service, and whatever else will give your visitors confidence in you and your products. This won't sell any single product by itself, but it will reinforce to the searcher that you are a reputably and trustworthy site to purchase from.

Content: Enter stage right

A lot of ecommerce business owners tell me they don't like SEOs that want to add a bunch of text on the page. Instead, they just want to push the visitors to the product. This is the right strategy for those searchers already in the buying phase of the cycle, but most aren't. At least not yet. And those that are - they are likely using search phrases that deliver them directly to your product pages!

If you're not writing great content for your category and sub-category pages (or are hiding it), you're not using your website as a pre-sell tool. This leaves you only with the sales channel after the visitor has already performed all their research searches on Google. Ultimately, you'll have missed out on a lot of potential traffic and branding opportunities that would likely have brought many of the buyers back to your site for a purchase.

Your website is a sales channel

The sales channel is where the majority of the "value" of any website comes in. It's certainly the most trackable and justifiable. Implementing analytics and conversion testing will allow you to tweak your conversion funnel to capture more sales and generate a higher ROI.

A lot of websites focused on selling products or services fail in this area. It's almost like they tried to recreate the magical experience of the paper catalog online. File that under 'FoMP' - Failure of Monumental Proportions!

Your website sales channel must express your unique value to your potential customers. This is especially true if your products are sold at any number of other outlets. Why should they buy from you instead of that other guy?

Your customers should feel you know your products better than the manufacturer does. You can do this by writing unique product descriptions and value-based headlines and using language that is customer-needs centric. Telling your customers what you or your products do is good. Telling your customers the benefit you or your products provide is better.

Building up your tips, tools and helpful article database can be an asset to the active sales funnel. If a potential customer has a question that can be answered right from your website, helping them finalize their purchase decision, you both win.

Your website is a post-sales channel

When the sale is done, the sell isn't done!

We all know it costs far less to keep a customer than to get a new customer. Unfortunately, too many online marketers fail at pursuing the customers they already have and continue to spend, spend, spend on acquiring new ones. (A great book about this is Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe.)

A good portion of your online marketing budget should be used to maintain customer loyalty. There are a lot of ways you can do this; you can provide customer loyalty and rewards cards, re-marketing through PPC, coupons and discounts for a follow-up purchase, email follow-ups with "on sale" updates, etc.

Give your customers a reason to come back to your site, or, at the very least, a reason to stay in contact with you.

Social Media: Enter stage left

A great way to do this is with regular blog updates providing helpful tips and tutorials that let your customers know you care about them, not just their wallets. Use Twitter and Facebook to engage your customers and deal with potential PR nightmares before they get a chance to take a foot hold. Make sure your website allows customers to easily contact you when there is a problem.

If you're not implementing some kind of follow up or engagement after the sale, you're losing thousands of dollars worth of profit. Who better to convince to buy from you than an already happy customer?

We often build websites with a singular thought in mind: selling our products or services. Unfortunately, we usually do that with a singular method--getting a sale. But we don't think about what happens before the sale is ready to be made, or after it has been completed. We have to be willing to lay a little groundwork to build credibility, build branding, and lay the foundation for a potential sale in the future.

And once the sale is complete, why give up there? Continue to pursue the customer. Let them know just how much you appreciate them and wish to continue a mutually beneficial relationship. Don't just focus on getting new sales. Focus on building customer relationships before, during and after the sale.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Does your marketing have "readability"?

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:23:00 -0600 -

by Mike Moran

I don't know a lot about robotics, but I have read a few articles recently about the biggest problem that robot manufacturer have in entering the home. They need the robots to behave differently so that people know how to interact with robots. For example, if a robot needs to open a door, it moves to the door and then must scan the door to locate the doorknob, identify the kind of doorknob, and then begin moving its robotic arm to open the door. Sometimes it takes a little time to do all these things before starting to move its arm, which to a person looks like it is frozen. But when designers began having the robot move its head up and down while scanning, people realized what it was doing. Having robots signal what they are doing to watching people is called "readability," and it is important for your marketing as well.

Why do robots need readability? Because a person who thinks a robot is frozen will intervene (resetting it, physically moving it, opening the door for the robot) when nothing is really wrong. Someone who realizes that the robot is simply scanning a strange door to understand what to do next will leave it alone.

So what does this have to do with marketing? More than you might think.

We talk a lot about transparency, by which we mean that we should be more forthcoming about what is going on inside our companies. And that is a very good thing, but I want to think about a related concept.

I want us to start thinking about readability, so that people will leave us alone when nothing is wrong. For example, suppose a prominent blogger reports a serious problem with your product. Instead of scrambling the jets to figure out immediately whether the blogger is right and figure out how to respond, immediately respond.

Not sure what to say? If you don't know what is going on, how can you respond? Just say something! Say that this sounds terrible and that you'll get to the bottom of it. That way, everyone can see that you are scanning the unfamiliar door and figuring out what to do. That's readability.

Now, when you find out what is happening, you can tell everyone the truth, which is transparency. But readability comes first. Make sure that you aren't a "black box" to the outside world. If you let people know what you are thinking, they'll cut you more slack then if you don't.

Originally published on Biznology

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Compare your AdWords account to others--for free

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:08:07 -0600 -

by Mike Moran

Have you ever asked yourself whether you paid search program is all that it can be? Most of us suspect that we fall short in some areas, but who has the time to stay on top of every aspect of a Google AdWords account, on top of everything else we do all day? Or perhaps you want to check out what kind of job your agency is doing with all your paid search money. Well, WordStream has put together a scoring tool called AdWords Grader that tries to do exactly that--show you how your paid search campaign compares against everyone else who has scored their own campaigns. And best of all, it's free.

Recently, WordStream CEO Larry Kim took me through the thought process behind AdWords Grader and shared with me two contrasting anonymized reports--one for a horrendous AdWords account and one for a great one, to show off what AdWords Grader can do. Check them out one after the other and take a closer look here and here.

WordStream AdWords Grader bad account

That's a lot of data for a free tool, so Larry Kim and team should be commended for providing such value, and the tool is extremely simple to use, also. All you need to do is to put in your credentials for Google AdWords and the tool does the rest.

I asked Larry what his motivation was for the tool, and he told me that "PPC is hard for SMBs" and that "advertisers are struggling more than I previously thought."

Larry told me that "the problem is that people have the wrong expectation--an instant success--but lack of time and education produces crappy campaigns get penalized by Google and starts a downward spiral that keeps raising your click costs." He compared the start of most campaigns to "making a bad impression on your in-laws."

And much of the data revealed by AdWords Grader truly can help search marketers see what they have been missing. Helping people understand Quality Scores, Clickthrough Rates, and their share of impressions can be extremely useful.

Having said that, some of the metrics shown seem dubious to me. As much as I hate to criticize a free tool--I laud WordStream for giving this away--I am not sure that merely looking at negative keywords truly identifies wasted spending or that flagging accounts for less activity means that they are somehow missing the boat. But these are minor quibbles with a tool that is valuable and--did I mention?--free.

It is valuable to know how you stack up against other Adwords accounts, not because you should sit back if you are scoring well or freak out if you're not. But to the extent that it shows you important metrics that help you focus on where to take action, it's a good thing.

Originally published on Biznology

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Bruce Clay Blog

SEO and Internet Marketing Blog

The Optimized Future: SEO in the Year 2022

The Optimized Future: SEO in the Year 2022 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

What will SEO and SEM look like in the year 2022? In this post by BCI staffer Bob Meinke, he dives into the possibilities of the future as marketers in his entry into a content hosted by SEO Chicks, dubbed "SEO: The Next Generation." Read more of The Optimized Future: SEO in the Year 2022.

Why Page Titles Matter

Why Page Titles Matter was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Google recently reminded webmasters that page Titles matter and are an important part of the search results displayed. Why did Google write another post about "better page titles in search results" when the majority of webmasters already know that relevant descriptive Title tags are an important component of a properly constructed Web page? Google primarily uses the tag, if one exists, to display the hyperlinked headlines users’ see in the search engine results pages. Since that is the case, this is likely a reason Google elected to spend the time to remind webmasters of the value it places on page Titles. Read more of Why Page Titles Matter.

Bruce Clay Inc.’s Statement on Local Paid Inclusion

Bruce Clay Inc.’s Statement on Local Paid Inclusion was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Late Monday, we announced the service “Local Paid Inclusion,” which we said gives local merchants higher rankings in the Places and local search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. We believed that the service offering was finalized between our backend partner and the aforementioned search engines. So far, we have determined that it is not [...]

Google’s New Privacy Policy 101: You In or Out?

Google’s New Privacy Policy 101: You In or Out? was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Have you taken a moment to read about Google’s new privacy policy and how it affects the information you share, effective March 1? Privacy policies and terms of service aren’t exactly riveting literature, so if you haven’t rushed into cuddling up with the thing and getting to know it better, I don’t blame you. So, I thought I’d take a few minutes to give an overview of what it is and the important takeaways. In sum, Google’s new privacy policy is essentially a way for Google to try and ensure there won’t be mass public freak-outs or lawsuits over the new “Search, plus Your World” function, as well as more and more personalized search results to come. And as much as Google is trying to make this information public and available to its users, let’s be real, freak-outs will still ensue.

16 SEM Predictions, Understand Search + Your World, Guide to Google’s Freshness Score

16 SEM Predictions, Understand Search + Your World, Guide to Google’s Freshness Score was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Our first newsletter of 2012 is packed with search marketing goodness, and we’re giving you a sneak peek into this month’s articles before it hits inboxes everywhere. If you love this edition, go ahead and subscribe to our SEO Newsletter; it’s a great way to ensure you’re up to date on the industry’s hot topics and provides a deeper glimpse into some of the trends and issues online business faces every month. So, without further adieux, here are the highlights of January's SEO Newsletter. Read more of 16 SEM Predictions, Understand Search + Your World, Guide to Google’s Freshness Score.

3 Reasons to Always Have Structured URLs

3 Reasons to Always Have Structured URLs was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Since the flat site architecture concept appeared on the SEO horizon and gained some traction around 2010, many SEO consultants got it wrong. The flat site architecture concept is related to the click distance between pages in a site, and how relevancy is distributed according to internal links structure -- yet has nothing to do with URLs. The main misunderstanding was, and unfortunately still is, that you have to get rid of directories in URL structures. Although it is widely agreed that you may want to keep URLs short and locate keywords close to the root or left part of the URL, there are many reasons why you should keep a certain structure of folders or directories there. This is what I’m going to explain in this post. Read more of 3 Reasons to Always Have Structured URLs.

10 Biggest Facebook Marketing Mistakes of 2011

10 Biggest Facebook Marketing Mistakes of 2011 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Welcome to 2012. It may rock for you, especially if you don’t make the same social media mistakes people did in 2011. If you’re doing any kind of marketing on Facebook this year, try not to make the same following 10 mistakes that are, unfortunately, all too common: 1. Overestimating the Importance of Facebook Pages Less than 1 percent of page fans ever go back to your page. You can create a custom tab and set it as the default for non-fans. So, your custom tab might be seen by non-fans, assuming they didn’t already like your page from a Like box on your website or the Like button on a fan-growth ad. Read more of 10 Biggest Facebook Marketing Mistakes of 2011.

Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay’s Analysis

Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay’s Analysis was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Hate to say I told you so... scratch that. This time it feels good. Last month we let you in on the new direction of SEM Synergy: short-form video with an experimental format (Q&As, site reviews, couch-side kick backs). Today we're happy to present to you the first video episode of the SEM Synergy Web series. Topic du jour: Google instituting a ranking penalty on its Chrome browser after paid links were uncovered. Find the transcript for the video below, and check out the Bruce Clay, Inc. YouTube channel for a look at our still evolving platform for the video series. If you like it, come back tomorrow as we dissect the process of producing and publishing video content. As we learn, we plan to share our experiences with trying to create sticky and interesting show. To that end, I do my best Larry King impression as we dive into a hot, timely issue. Read more of Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay's Analysis.

How to Choose Social Media Share Buttons

How to Choose Social Media Share Buttons was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Social share buttons are a great way to spread the content you have deeper into networks across the Web – but which social share buttons are right for your site? Sometimes, the “catch-all” approach to buttons that we so often see isn’t the best route. You know, those widgets that produce a bunch of buttons for social communities for the sake of trying to reach everybody and their mother. Oftentimes, this can just confuse readers or make them think more than they should have to in order to share the content they like. There are several approaches to how you can identify which social share buttons you should include on your Web pages. One is checking traffic sources in your site’s analytics. Another is knowing who your target audience is and where they are hanging out socially online. And yet another is assessing the importance of individual social share buttons as metrics in whatever goals you have for the business. Virginia and I recently decided to do an analysis of the social share buttons on the SEO Newsletter article pages, since they hadn’t been refreshed in quite some time. I’m going to share with you what we uncovered about some of the social share buttons, what we plan to do with it and how you can better assess the social share buttons on your (or your client’s) site. Read more of How to Choose Social Media Share Buttons.

Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 3

Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 3 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Day 3 of our "Best of Search Conferences 2011" is upon us, and this post wraps up the series here on our blog. Looking through the coverage, one thing we can say for certain is that there are a ton of enthusiastic, brilliant people in the search marketing community who have a passion for sharing ideas. Thanks to all of them, and special thanks to the conference producers who offer a vehicle for these people to share knowledge with the community. Today's Day 3 coverage is all about exploring thought-provoking topics in the areas of understanding your audience, holistic marketing, online reputation management and branding, plus cutting-edge topics from this year's search marketing events. And don't forget to check out Day 1 and Day 2 if you happened to miss them. Read more of Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 3.

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SEO Training

SEO Mentor Garrett Pierson here to help you Learn SEO. Search Engine Optimization SEO help training Course blog.

Check out a Questionnaire Example to Take Your Business to the Next Level: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:33:58 +0000 - Every businessperson wants to be able to get a “leg up” on the competition. This has been the case for thousands of years and will be the case in the future. Therefore, why wouldn’t every business strive to make the most of all the potential resources at hand? A prudent person handles the operation of [...]
The Power of Customer Surveys: Mon, 03 May 2010 21:14:29 +0000 - Everyday more online retailers are adding customer surveys to their checkout process. Without consumer ratings, often merchants find that assessing whether or not customers are pleased is a somewhat of a guessing game. Consumer ratings have many benefits including the fact that merchants can gain valuable feedback about the shopping experience from the customer’s point [...]
The Power of Social Proof: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:42:19 +0000 - How does Social Proof affect your business? If you don’t know the answer to the question above you may be missing out on tons of extra revenue each and every day. Social Proof is not a new concept but it is definitely overlooked by businesses and entrepreneurs. I want to share with you a video [...]
Google Real-Time Search: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:25:16 +0000 - It is actually here. Some might be saying, “It is About Time.” Monday December 7th, 2009 Google rolled out real-time search results. Although it is live some of us may not see it yet depending on your location. Here is a pretty cool video that Google put together on the new Real Time Search: To [...]
Building Social Equity 2.0 – Social Media Training: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:03:05 +0000 - BuildingSocialEquity.com What is Building Social Equity 2.0? Why is it important? How can I get it? So if you watched my video above you know that I am launching my new Social Media Training Course – Building Social Equity 2.0! The tag line is “SEO Meets Social Media” because I teach step-by-step how to use [...]
Social Media Blog: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:03:09 +0000 - This is going to be one of my shortest posts ever!!! I just wanted to announce that I am the new owner and content contributor of the Social Media Blog SocialMediaVision.com. Social Media Vision Blog is a focused on Social Media, New Media, Technology, and all things Web 2.0. Social Media Vision is a blog [...]
Big Week For Google Search: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:21:31 +0000 - Big couple weeks for Google Search with Music, Social Search, and Twitter.
SEO Dojo is the Place to Be!: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:52:32 +0000 - SEO Dojo community launches to the public. Get an exclusive discount to the SEO Dojo membership site.

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Video Transcription

The 80/20 Value of Titles

A Quick Analogy: The Internet As a Highway

7 Ingredients of a Click Worthy Title

Ingredient 1: Curiosity

Ingredient 3: Elicit Excitement/Emotion

Ingredient 4: Make It Tangible

Ingredient 5: Appearance & Length

Ingredient 6: Sound

Ingredient 7: Expectations

Breaking The Rules

Exception 1: Created By Influential Person/Business

Exception 2: Extremely Noteworthy or Newsworthy Content

Exception 3: Rebellion / Pure Artistic Liberty / Don't Care

Where / How The Title Appears Around the Web

1. The SERPs

2. Twitter

3. Facebook

4. Google Plus

Analyzing The Effectiveness Of Your Titles

Bit.ly Data

External Resources

Practice Writing Titles!

A/B Test Titles

Re-Write Other People's Titles

Write Ten Titles in 60 Seconds

Study Non-Web Sources

Try Identifying the "Ingredients" Of Any Given Title;

Inspiration & Resources

Final Thought: Titles Are Timeless

What Did You Think?

First, the basics.

Now, on to the hunt for new keywords!

The Help Teamsters

Crissy Hall

Megan Singley

Kenny Martin

Nick Sayers

Chiaryn Miranda

Aaron Wheeler

What Do We Do?

Email: Using a Robust Ticketing System

Phones: Not a Phone Bank

Live Chat: What You Need, When You Need It

Forums & Documentation: Help More People More Quickly

This, That & The Other: Events, Office Tours, Webinars, Demos, Cookies...

Step 1 - The Mirror Check

Step 2 - Building Your Publication List

Step 3 - Finding the Right Contact

Step 4 - Crafting Your Pitch and Subject Line

Step 5 - Let it Rip

Some General Don'ts

Conclusion

The Data

SERP 1 – ‘online shopping’ Google.com.au

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

Conclusion

SERP 2 – ‘online shopping’ Google.co.uk

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

SERP 3 – ‘online shopping’ Google.com

Analysis – how can we come out on top?

What can we take-away from all this?

Balance your link building tactic portfolio – adopting a combination approach

Overall conclusion

Targeted vs. Non Targeted Anchors

Category Pages

Product Page

So What Does This Mean

How to use it

Parting Remarks

Next Versions

SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

How are you perceived?

The little things matter the most

Your website is a pre-sell channel

Your website is a sales channel