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By Mark JacksonI've recently discussed some of the fundamentals of SEO that haven't changed for some time. Now let's touch upon the "new" realities of SEO and what you need to do to build your brand online. Why Branding?Well, you may have heard it mentioned that Google wants to rank brand Web sites. It isn't so much that Google only wants to rank big brands. But they do like all of the signals that these big brands carry. Big brands, more often than not, have very deep/informational Web sites and have their share of other Web sites linking to them. These are two very important "signals" of the authority of these Web sites. So, to dig into this deeper, I consult with Wikipedia (a "big brand"): People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. What Makes Your Web Presence 'Special or Unique'?How are you going about your brand management? Part of doing well, organically, in the search engines is having a deep, informational Web site that has plenty of (good) links to it. Wikipedia certainly measures up to this, with around 47 million pages indexed in Yahoo and 179 million backlinks, sitewide. This is the best example of creating good, unique content that people will want to link to as a reference (as I've just done). There are other signals that make you a "big brand" to the search engines; things that can help you build a big brand online, without the expense of international marketing efforts that may have made Coca-Cola and others big, back in the days of traditional marketing only. Today, it's possible -- even for smaller companies -- to build a big brand online at a greatly reduced price compared with what Coca-Cola had done through years of television, radio, and print advertising. And, the nice thing about these "branding" efforts is that they can, at least indirectly, be measured as they impact your ability to rank in the search engines, gain quality traffic to your Web site, and grow your bottom line. Expand Your Web PresenceHere's a list of some of the signals that you may want to begin strategizing against: - Blogging: This isn't new. Still today, however, some companies refuse to get into the blogging game for fear of what "might be said about them" or that they would have to divulge company secrets. Successful blogging requires that you provide something of value to your readers. When you provide useful information, and you promote it to the masses (social media marketing), you'll gain links to your Web site in much the same manner as Wikipedia.
- Press Releases: "Traditional" press releases were for the benefit of reaching journalists in the hopes that they might write an article in their magazines/newspapers or cover it on television news/radio. Today, these press releases can be found in Google's universal results (if you select the proper method of distribution) and add quality links to your Web site (using quality anchor text within the press release; drive deep links to areas of your Web site that you would like to promote).
- Social Media Channels: A quality post doesn't mean much if no one reads it or links to it. So, you must have access to a network of "friends" on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others to make sure you have readers. Be sure that your posts also allow the reader to easily promote the posts to their network.
- Link Building: Back in the old days, it was all about reciprocal link building (i.e., I add a link to your Web site and then request that you link back to me). What does this tell the search engines? That you're somehow affiliated or partnered with this company? Better still, that a number of people link to you and you aren't linking out to a number of people. Right? When that happens, it's probably a signal of your brand/authority. And, if a number of people that happen to be linking to you also happen to be within your industry, or are writing a blog post titled "Search Engine Optimization -- The Very Best Resource Available" and linking to http://searchenginewatch.com, that will probably be a good vote that Search Engine Watch is a great resource for "search engine optimization resources," right? If enough quality Web sites are doing this, that's a pretty strong signal to Google that you should be ranked.
All of these help you gain reach and frequency. More importantly, you'll reach those who are interested in your products and services. This isn't a "run of network" buy. This is targeted "advertising." Many of these channels aren't directly measureable to ROI, and I know that the struggle is how do you budget for something like this, call it "search engine optimization," and not have it be directly measureable to a ROI. The truth is, branding still works. And, there are methods to measure many of these to a ROI. But, the real benefits could be in the form of more people searching specifically for your brand. As I believe you'll find, these visitors are most likely to do business with you. That's the power of branding. [searchenginewatch] Labels: Current SEO Strategy
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One tactic frequently implemented successfully with Local SEO is the use of multiple URLs, or micro-sites. To better help you better understand how this functions, I've chosen to use a real life example of a site network in current use that is neither affiliated with me nor with Search Engine Journal. To begin, allow me to say that I will not be writing about how to implement this. You will be able to ascertain by reading between the lines how to do this (or by reading this post from the bottom up). Rather, I will be explaining exactly how I was able to reverse engineer the SEO strategy of this particular business and the thinking that leads to my methodology. My journey began with a search for the term 'Warminster carpet cleaning'. Directly below the Google Local results, appearing in position one, was the following:I clicked through to this site and noticed something very odd... The site had a handful of pages, but was specific to Warminster only? Now, for anyone unfamiliar with Warminster (PA), it is a pretty small town. There's no way a real carpet cleaning business would only service Warminster. There are dozens of towns within a few miles of Warminster yet the site does not mention any of them. That doesn't make sense. Between that oddity, and the fact that the URL exactly matched my original, non-branded search of 'Warminster carpet cleaning', I was able to conclude that there may be something worth looking into. From here, I chose to begin searching for 'carpet cleaning' in other nearby towns to see if I could find something similar. After all, it's only logical that if someone would use this tactic that they will own similar nearby geo URLs. I chose to search in 'Lansdale'. Sure enough, when I searched for 'Lansdale carpet cleaning', I found virtually the exact same result: The only difference was that the URL was an exact match for 'Lansdale' instead of 'Warminster'.The two sites are virtually identical (ie duplicate content) in every way if you look at the sites themselves. So, now I wanted to know how many sites (geos) are within this network and how they are linked. I wanted to know how big this is, and how successful it is. I could have simply done a domain lookup to see exactly what the registrant owns, but I also wanted to see their linking strategy for myself. For this reason, I chose to use Yahoo Site Explorer to see how, if at all, there is inter-linking in play here. Plus, honestly, I was curious to see if the URL ranked because of the exact match or if the site may be buying links. After choosing to have Site Explorer show links 'Except from this domain', this is the result: It's now clear that the only site linking to 'Warminstercarpetcleaning.com' is 'AllClean1.com'. The same holds true for 'Lansdalecarpetcleaning.com'. This means, when I go to 'AllClean1.com', I'll probably find the core of this network and some of the answers I was looking for. Sure enough, right in the footer of 'AllClean1.com', is the list of every geo included in the network, with links to outside 'CarpetCleaning' URLs. I have now been able look at a single ranking, and use a bit of competitive intelligence to rip apart the local SEO strategy this company is effectively implementing. This is not only an effective tactic for competitive intelligence, but for education as well. It's a great way to learn SEO or SEM. It's also a great test project to give an employee to see if they can determine the correct answer. [searchenginejournal] Labels: Local SEO
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By Brandon LeibowitzPay per click advertising is a huge market. The model is especially attractive to new companies that have not yet established themselves in the organic search engine rankings. The downside is that making PPC pay can be quite an exhausting and overwhelming task. There's much more to it than choosing keywords and creating ad variations. In these tough times, most companies are looking for ways to bolster their bottom lines, and PPC can be helpful. Following are some tips and tricks to help PPD users reduce costs and increase conversions. In essence, you want to persuade prospective buyers that you have the highest quality item for the lowest price compared to the competition. 1. Research Competitors' AdsThere is a wealth of free, valuable information on the Web waiting to be used. PPC ads are shown on most, if not all, search engines, and they can give you some insight into how your competition is advertising and what ad text they are using. If you want to go deeper, you can purchase tools that show you what your competitor's keywords are, what they are bidding, their ad text, and much more. With this information, you will have a good starting point for your PPC ads. 2. Explore Keyword VariationsFor your PPC campaign to succeed, it is imperative that you conduct a proper search for keywords, look at competitor keywords, and use proper keyword matching. It is important to know what keyword matching is and understand the difference between broad, phrase and exact keywords. Each has a different effect, and using the wrong one can ruin your entire ad campaign. Broad match keywords allow your ad to show up on similar phrases and relevant variations. Phrase match keywords allow your ad to show up on searches that match the exact phrase exclusively. Exact match keywords means that your ad shows up for that exact keyword exclusively. Negative match keywords are used to prevent your ad from showing up on specific keywords. 3. Focus on Low-Cost KeywordsOverpriced keywords can cause a leakage in your PPC marketing Grow Your Business-Fast! Sign up for a FREE trial of Infusionsoft and double your sales in 12 months. budget. If you sell a product or service with a low profit margin, then you need to do everything in your power to avoid high-cost keywords. You cannot afford to pay US$1 per click when your profit margin is only $0.75. Some keywords can cost over $5 a click! You do not want to spend this much unless your profit margin is large enough, and you know you can compete with the competition. Most Internet advertisers want to look for highly searched keywords that are not overly priced. This can be done by studying the competition. Do a search for your keyword in your desired search engine and look at how many paid, or sponsored, listings appear. The fewer, the better off you are. 4. Avoid Hyper-Competitive KeywordsKeywords with a large search volume may be a viable keyword choice, but if the competition is too high, they may not be the best choice, unless you have an extraordinary budget set in place. The greater the competition level for keywords, the more you will have to pay per click. There are tons of tools -- both free and paid -- that can show you keyword competition levels, monthly traffic, and cost per click. A reliable free tool is Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google keyword tool. It is an effective medium for discovering profitable keywords that have not been tapped into yet. 5. Highlight Consumer SavingsPeople love to see words like "sale," "save," "discount," "free," "promo," "buy 1 get 1 free," etc., when looking at paid search results. The more you use these words, the greater visibility your ad will have in the consumer's eyes. The bigger the savings, the more likely you are to obtain a click-through and, ultimately, a conversion. Make sure to include good values, low prices, and timely promotions in all your ad groups. This is especially important if you have a product or service that is being marketed to highly price-sensitive shoppers. 6. Be Up Front With Your AdsI cannot stress this enough. Being misleading is the biggest mistake advertisers can make when participating in pay per click advertising. You do not want to lie or fluff up your ads in the hope of making more sales. This actually has the opposite effect; people will click through expecting what was outlined in the ad and come to see that it was false or misleading. This may get more clicks in organic rankings, but it will result in an extraordinarily high bounce rate. Prospective customers will leave the site in frustration over being misled, and you will have lost money for the cost of a click. Now, imagine this happening on a daily basis for months at a time. How much wasted money can there be before someone steps in and says, "STOP! You are doing this in the complete wrong way!" You need to be up front and honest to prevent excessive clicks from searchers expecting something you don't have to offer. 7. Target Your Ad Groups to the Landing PageTo get the best quality score for your PPC ads, you will want to make sure the keywords and the ad text relate to one another. You also want to make sure the landing page, where the searcher is taken when clicking on your link, is highly related to your keywords and ad text. This will get you the best results and ensure searchers are not directed to the wrong page. Do not bunch all your campaigns together; rather, separate them into appropriate categories. Then, create pages on your Web site specifically designed for PPC users to land on. You should not send PPC ads to your home page, but rather have targeted landing pages specifically designed for each PPC campaign. These pages should have a call to action inducting the searcher to perform some sort of action that is beneficial to your business, whether it be providing an email address, or making an actual purchase. Your end goal is to persuade the user do something. This will reduce the bounce-back rate and increase your chances of converting leads into sales. 8. Analyze Your Ads' Performance Over TimeMany people do not take the time to sit down and really analyze each campaign to see what is succeeding and what is leaking money. Once you have that information, you will want to fix the problem ads and leave the successful ads be. This seems obvious, but is not done often enough. I encourage reviewing your pay per click campaign once a day. If this is too much, then review it at least two to three times a week. This is your money, and you do not want to see it wasted with no returns. 9. Refine Your Ad groups to Focus on High PerformersAfter you have run your PPC campaigns for a few weeks, you can analyze the results and see what the top performers and failures are. To make sure this is an accurate representation, use many different ad variations -- have them set to rotate evenly at first. This will give you an idea of which selling points are working and which are draining your funds. Look at cost per conversion and make sure it does not exceed your profit margin. If so, stop the ad or make some major modifications to it. If an ad group has a low cost per conversion, keep it running and let it rake in the money. You should refine your ads on a regular basis to avoid campaign failures and focus more on success. 10. Look at the Bottom LineConversions are king for PPC, just as content is king for organic rankings. If you are doing all of the above and still are not converting sales, then it may be time to take a step back and contact a professional to review your campaign and look for any flaws. If you do not have the budget to do this, then pause your ads and just focus on refining one at a time. This will ensure that you do not use your entire budget, and it will allow you to spend more time figuring out why you are not succeeding. Once you figure out why one campaign is failing, it is much easier to spot trouble in your other campaigns. [ecommercetimes] Labels: PPC
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One of the most critical times for a site's rankings occur when there is a massive shift in URL structure across the site. Unfortunately, this is a common prescription for sites with unruly URLs with multiple parameters. Creating pretty, canonical URLs is easy enough, as is mapping old URLs to new with 301 redirects, but preventing duplicate content issues can be problematic. Each page on the web represents a destination that can be reached by links. Theoretically, without XML Sitemaps (or similar forms of direct page submission), there would be no way for Googlebot to find pages that are not connected by links. In our first example image, this site has a homepage and 4 subpages, connected by links, all of which have been cached by Google.  Let's assume that these 4 subpages have terrible URLs so the webmaster decides to rewrite the URLs to /about, /contact, /join and /terms. In the typical methodology, the webmaster 301 redirects all the old URLs to the nice URLs. Googlebot respiders the site and finds all the new pretty URLs. But herein lies the problem, can you spot it?  When rewriting the site and the URLs, the webmaster has effectively orphaned all former subpages on the site. Aside from pre-existing external backlinks to these pages, there is no way for Googlebot to follow a natural link course to reach the old pages, find the 301 redirect, and correctly remove them from the index. More importantly, unlike normal spidering where Google find's one page and uses it to find others on your site, Googlebot is redirected directly into your new site hierarchy, making it near to impossible for Google to quickly correct the old URL structure. This is why sites that change URL structure sitewide often see temporary increases in the number of indexed pages. Because the content has not changed, we have a potential duplicate content issue. Unless Google has queued up these old pages to be revisited, it can be days if not weeks before Google revisits the old URLs and finds the 301 redirects, subsequently removing the duplicate content from the index.  This is where Sitemap Assisted Redirects become effective. We can use XML sitemaps to coax the bots to revisit the old pages more rapidly, thus greatly lessening the likelihood of duplicate content. The first step is to create a sitemap with both the old and new URLs. The old URLs should have their lastmod attribute set to today's date, the changefreq should be set to always, and priority set to 1.0. This is basically giving each of your old pages a powerbar and a couple shots of espresso. Google now believes these pages are your most important and have been recently updated. Your new pages should be listed accurately - changefreq should be how often you update the content on the page, priority should be set appropriately, and lastmod should be set to the last day you updated the content (not when you simply changed the URL). This will coax Googlebot to quickly spider the old pages. When Google visits the old pages, they will find the 301s and remove them from the index, replacing them with the corrected new URLs. As soon as this has occured, remove the old URLs from your sitemap and you are good to go. [thegooglecache] Labels: Sitemap, White Hat SEO
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We hear lots of questions about site architecture issues and traffic drops, so it was a pleasure to talk about it in greater detail at SMX London and I'd like to highlight some key concepts from my presentation here. First off, let's gain a better understanding of drops in traffic, and then we'll take a look at site design and architecture issues. Understanding drops in trafficAs you know, fluctuations in search results happen all the time; the web is constantly evolving and so is our index. Improvements in our ability to understand our users' interests and queries also often lead to differences in how our algorithms select and rank pages. We realize, however, that such changes might be confusing and sometimes foster misconceptions, so we'd like to address a couple of these myths head-on. Myth number 1: Duplicate content causes drops in traffic!Webmasters often wonder if the duplicates on their site can have a negative effect on their site's traffic. As mentioned in our guidelines, unless this duplication is intended to manipulate Google and/or users, the duplication is not a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. The second part of my presentation illustrates in greater detail how to deal with duplicate content using canonicalization. Myth number 2: Affiliate programs cause drops in traffic!Original and compelling content is crucial for a good user experience. If your website participates in affiliate programs, it's essential to consider whether the same content is available in many other places on the web. Affiliate sites with little or no original and compelling content are not likely to rank well in Google search results, but including affiliate links within the context of original and compelling content isn't in itself the sort of thing that leads to traffic drops. For more information visit http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ Labels: traffic drops myths
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Environmental search marketing campaigns could become the next frontier in tying a brand's reputation to social media and Web content served-up on engines and social media sites. Clownfish, a global sustainability consultancy firm, unveiled Monday a SEO program that gets consumers thinking about brands as being, well, green. Since sucess takes more than keywords in a client's list of media buys, Clownfish has developed an application that allows brands to participate online in conversations about green issues. Through a software matrix application developed with search engine marketing company iProspect, Clownfish can help consumers find the information on environmental issues. "Relying on keywords would require you to link with the words consumers search on, but no one will search for 'Coca-Cola's sustainable development policy,'" says Diana Verde Nieto, London-based Clownfish CEO. "Sometimes what the consumers search for and the words in Web content do not match." Verde Nieto says the "sustainability" strategy focuses on meeting the needs today of future generations without depleting natural resources. It emphasizes the relationship between people, planet and profit. Not philanthropic causes, but managing natural resources to create wealth for employees and communities. The matrix reviews factors that impact the brand's business, as well as the impact the brand has on social and environmental issues. This includes government legislation and economic frameworks. It also considers how consumers interpret this information in relation to the brand and analyzes the environmental, social and economic impacts. Brands need to become more aware of the impact Web and social media content has on the brand as they begin to manage their "green" reputation through search engine optimization. The service aims to provide insights into the things that will pull consumers to brands. As environmental and social concerns continue to climb, brands must communicate plans for sustainability as consumers seek information on the Web. Understanding how, why and where people search for environmental topics has become critical to developing effective communications strategies. Toyota, for example, likely finds it easy to communicate environmental benefits from its Prius hybrid model in search engine queries. Google, which supports search through huge server parks known to emit carbon, might have a more challenging time convincing environmentally conscious consumers it's a good idea to stick with purchasing carbon offsets as part of a portfolio of renewable energy and efficiency improvements. Carbon offsets are credits canceling out the purchaser's greenhouse gas emissions by triggering actions and projects that prevent pollution. Another factor, companies may not communicate corporate and sustainability strategies, similarly. "You can't communicate these messages through search alone with what's in social media, but you can put in the consumers' hands the necessary information," says Verde Nieto. The strategy also may require reviewing the brand's historic investments and projects on the topic, monitoring consumers' conversations and then, if required, creating the link that joins the two. [mediapost] Labels: Search Engine Optimization
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By Jim PattersonWith the escalating costs of PayPerClick Marketing, many people are turning back to Search Engine Optimization to supply them with traffic from the organic search engine results. At first the Search Engine Optimization arena seems to be so arcane and technical that they have little hope of achieving any significant results, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is that anyone can get real, lasting organic search engine results by building high pr backlinks with appropriate keywords or keyword phrases used as anchor text. You may have heard otherwise, so let's discuss a few of the reasons given to discourage the novice... The site where the backlink is posted must be relevant to your site, or the value is very limited. Google, as well as the rest of the search engines are aware that people with varied interests will want to link to your site. Nobody has any control over the way that backlinks spread across the internet. The fact is they want to see a wide array of backlinks from a wide variety of websites. High PR Sites don't necessarily have High PR (PageRank) on the pages where your links appear so they carry little or no Search Engine Optimization "Juice". The Search Engine Optimization Juice does in fact carry to interior pages. Web 2.0 Communities are some of the best sites to look for, and their profile pages may not carry the same PR as the root domain, but the juice is still there. Your results will show this. And again, the Community itself need not be relevant to your own website. Google's own backlink checker will not show most of these backlinks, so they don't count in Google's results. Google's backlink checker doesn't acknowledge most of the backlinks that their algorithm does, and the algorithm is all that matters, as it is what produces the organic Search Engine Optimization results. Try using the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool. It will also miss some but will give you a much clearer picture of how many backlinks are showing up in your sites as well as your competitors. The sites that show up on Google's first page have thousands of backlinks, and there is no way to compete! Some of them do have literally thousands of inbound links, but not all that many of them will be for the keywords you are working on. This is also where longtail keywords can help you. Do your keyword research carefully and you will find keyword phrases that you can compete on and get not just Google's first page, but the top spots... The only spots that really mean anything are the top 3 on the first page, and what chance do I have of getting one of these? If you approach them with a plan and consistently build your High PR Backlinks there is no reason you can't grab those top 3 spots for almost any keyword you choose. The long tail keyword phrases will come easiest and fastest, but don't give up on those highly sought after keywords the big dogs are sitting on, as they can be had with time and consistency. You need lots of technical skill to build backlinks with anchor text and I don't even know any HTML at all... Folks, I am the king of cut and paste. The only real code you need to build backlinks with anchor text is this: [a href="yourdomain.com";]Your Keyword or Phrase[/a] That's it! Just replace the opening and closing brackets [ and ] with <> and yourdomain.com with the url you want the backlink for and Your Keyword or Phrase with whatever keyword, keyword phrase or long tail keyword you choose. Just grab this snippet of code and save it in NotePad or any other text editor. As you can see, the common knowledge about building High PR Backlinks that discourages most from even trying isn't based on the reality of the situation. In fact it is designed to do exactly that: Discourage People! Put together a list of the keywords and phrases you want to rank for and go start building those High PR Backlinks today! Good keyword research and consistency are really all you need to succeed. [seekingalpha] Labels: High PR Backlinks
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Is your new website online yet? So far, I've shared with you ideas for creating a site and monetizing it. Now it's time to talk marketing. In a recession, when you're on a shoestring or no budget at all, marketing can be difficult. Here are five ways to reach potential customers without spending a dime. - Build Your Own Buzz -- Send out a press release when you launch your online business or introduce a new product. Popular sites like www.1888PressReleasecom, www.PRLog.org and www.Free-Press-Releasecom will distribute your release free.
BizBytes 101 Tip -- Court the media with newsworthy press releases -- no fluff. Take a look at national trends in your industry, write a release with an interesting local angle or useful tip and pitch it to a reporter or editor. If it's newsworthy, it will get noticed. - Get on the List -- Get your business information listed free in online directories like City
Search.com, Yellow Pages.com and Merchant Circle.com. BizBytes 101 Tip -- Yahoo Local, Google Local Business Center and Google Maps also offer free business listings that will expose your company to new customers. - Engage Your Audience With E-mail -- Create an e-newsletter for your company and send it out on a regular basis. Be consistent and offer great content people can use to keep them clicking through to your site.
Create one free in Microsoft Word and distribute it in Outlook or use a service like Mail Chimp to do it for you for as low as $10 per month. BizBytes 101 Tip -- Like Mail Chimp, Constant Contact.com, Contactology and Stream Send are cheap options for you to create an e-newsletter, distribute it and track how your customers view your content. Use the free, 30-day trial each service offers to get started. - Tweet Your Own Horn -- Most major corporations are doing it and so should you! Airlines like JetBlue and online retailers like Zappos.com are using Twitter to engage and inform their customers.
BizBytes 101 Tip -- Set up a Twitter feed to notify customers about sales, contests and order tracking, suggests Cristina Sotolongo, director of new media at Beber Silverstein Group in Miami. It's a great way to keep your customers focused on what you have to offer. While you're at it, Sotolongo suggests, create a page for your firm on Facebook and start friending your way to new potential business. - Bookmark Your Business -- Use free social bookmarking tools like Newsvine, Google Bookmarks, Propeller and Digg to market your site to the masses.
Social bookmarking, in plain English, is essentially tagging a website and viewing it later, except you're not saving it just to your favorites list. You're saving it to the Web and because what you've bookmarked is online, millions of other people can see, creating instant exposure for your business. BizBytes 101 Tip -- Get involved in the bookmarking communities you select by creating a profile, adding friends and posting regularly. Get your friends to vote for what you bookmark, including your site. Popular content tends to rank well with search engines, too. [miamiherald] Labels: web site marketing tips
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I took time last week to help some of my ClickZ, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Strategies colleagues man a booth at a virtual expo. It's not very often (except at certain live events) that I get a chance just to chit-chat about the industry with the various writers, editors, and organizers.
During a break from my booth duty, I read my colleague Erik Dafforn's column on educational requirements for search marketers. It's a very interesting read and I mentioned it at the booth, which prompted a little more dialogue on online marketing education.
It's an interesting discussion because I've looked at so many SEO (define) courses, classes, conferences, seminars, workshops, Webcasts, reference books, and downright spam manuals over the years. To date, everything I've learned (or not, as the case may be) I haven't been able to cohesively bring together and document. And the reason for that, I believe search is still very much a living experiment.
I gave a presentation at a conference in Austin, Texas, this year regarding changes in approach since the arrival of universal search and blended results. Most of what I discussed was based on Google's and the other search engines' difficulties and changes that may occur in the future. Another panelist happened to be a Google engineer. As the first question was fired from the audience, she gestured toward me and said, "As you've just heard, search is not yet a solved problem."
If the mighty Google has not yet conquered the problem of search/information retrieval on the Web (and it's still a long way from it), should we be trying to develop long-term certified SEO programs?
As I struggle to come up with my own third book on search, I want to tear my hair out at times and set fire to my research work. It gets that frustrating when you finish part of your text and feeling quite pleased with your work, only to discover the next day that something in the industry has changed and you have to go back and rewrite again and again and again.
It's true that I've spoken to my publisher on numerous occasions to say that I heard a little whisper that such-and-such will change in the coming months, so let's put the launch date back. I've been doing that for nearly 18 months and my publisher is now pulling his hair out!
Mostly this is based on the fear that the minute I draw a line under the research and publish the actual book, it will be yesterday's news as soon as it hits the bookshelves. I have copies of all the most recent books on search engine marketing, and fortunately I also know the authors. Rarely is there a time I bump into them that I don't hear the words "and I'm so busy working on the next edition."
Strangely enough, in the introduction to my own second edition I used the idiom from the U.K. about painting the Forth Bridge. It refers to a never-ending task, where the moment you finish you have to start all over again. That was eight years ago and I don't think a lot has changed. Perhaps not for the same reasons, though. Back then, there was talk about how often the algorithm changed, and search engine crawler analysis was at its geekiest.
These days, the difference isn't so much about crawler limitations. It's more about the user's sophistication and his more immediate information need. We can study crawlers forever and a day but probably arrive at the same conclusion as many researchers in the field: the crawler is gradually losing the search battle.
I've talked many times about people employed in search needing to be constantly ready to change and adapt. It is my firm belief that search isn't about the battle of three giants to gain the most market share anymore. It's about satisfying end users' growing long-term information needs. These are end users who, like me, learned about the death of Michael Jackson via Twitter before a major search engine.
The huge success of Wholefoods (my local supermarket) on Twitter with nearly 500,000 followers for the global account and many, many more following individual stores is a fine example of how a business can cater to long-term information needs for its audience.
Does that mean SEO professionals who are more used to analyzing bots crawling around the Web should become social media experts? Or is that type of information retrieval a different field? More to the point, should I now consider writing a mighty chapter in my book on the social media phenomenon? Or will it be called something else and not be a phenomenon anymore by the time the book is published?
There will be convergence at some point in the future. But until then, I'm not sure what the best qualifications are for someone looking to get into SEO. To be honest, most of the successful search marketers I know range from, literally, rocket scientists to physicists, from direct marketers to journalists. In my own circle, I don't know any one of us who has the same background or qualifications.
However, we all seem to have done quite well in the business. I wonder: when we do have convergence and there is a course and qualification, how many of us would actually pass it?
[clickz]
Labels: SEO Education
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by Kevin Gibbons
When I attend my gym, the company isn't just worried about providing me with decent equipment and classes; it wants to ensure my experience is as good as it could be.
From the entrance, I am bombarded with positive marketing campaigns; happy, healthy receptionists; smoothie stands; and uplifting pop music. The rowing machine almost seems an afterthought.
It is the same everywhere. Go for a haircut and you get a massage and a latte. Businesses recognise that it isn't just the end product people care about, they want a package. That doesn't mean just extras, although of course they help customers feel cared for, the entire interaction needs to be positive. Search engine optimisation is a weird one. The end product is entirely measurable, the benefits are easy to see. Has the client's visibility increased? Have visitor numbers risen? Are those visitors relevant and are they carrying out the hoped-for action once they hit the site? These are simple to monitor. Yet, corporate clients also like to receive the experience, the package, to feel cared for. So what can we in the Search engine optimisation industry do to achieve that? Here are my ideas, feel free to add your own in the comments if you think I have missed anything. Be a person It is so easy in the online marketing sector to never meet your clients but simply email. Perhaps the occasional chat on the phone might be in order but it is all too easy to allow communications to become functional and minimal. Be a person to your clients. If it is at all possible, go and see them once you've won their business, get to know their names and interests, send them a Christmas card. It is not hard, it does not cost a great deal but it makes for a much stronger working relationship. Be contactable Give them your number. Tell them you are always pleased to hear from them or to answer any questions they may have and encourage them to pick up the phone whenever they need to. This will make your clients feel more connected, more able to approach you with concerns and questions and less likely to puzzle or fume in silence. Don't forget, if you are a client's contact and you go incommunicado for whatever reason, holiday, parental leave, conferences, whatever, it is important to let them know and give them an alternative contact name. Few things will upset a client as much as not receiving a response. Be at a decent location Now, if you're raising an eyebrow at this one, bear with me. Most businesses have an office but some Search engine optimisation start-ups are operating out of the developer's spare room. SEOptimise is lucky enough to have offices at the Oxford Science Park, but not everyone has reached that point in their business development. If you lack an office, or if your building is in some less-than-attractive area, it may be prudent to make use of a virtual office. This means you can have a city-centre address but even more importantly, a receptionist service. Most virtual offices will be able to rent you a meeting room at your virtual location, so you can meet your clients at the more impressive address and enhance their experience this way. Cynical perhaps, but definitely a sensible option for some smaller companies and one-man-bands. Be authoritative Companies invest a great deal of money in their search campaigns and it is reassuring to know they have entrusted that cash with a professional who really knows their stuff. By blogging, speaking at conferences if possible and providing guest articles, an Search engine optimisation professional can develop a reputation. It may take time and planning to create such articles but it adds to your clients' overall SEO experience and also makes you more of a personable individual. Be good I hardly need to add but it is important to remember that all of the above is mere window dressing. It is important but it is an important extra, not the service itself. The ultimate thing that determines the SEO experience is the success of the campaign. It doesn't matter how easy you are to contact, how authoritative and where your office is located if the service you deliver is less than expected. It is important not to lose sight of that when considering enhancing the overall package your Search engine optimisation company offers. [econsultancy] Labels: SEO Experience
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I've been working with companies on Search Engine Optimization for over a decade now, and there's one thing I've noticed: all things being equal, healthy companies with great cultures seem to do much better in organic search results. And by organic success, I mean the good, white-hat, Matt Cutts-approved kind of success. I bet that if you found the companies that do well in organic search, you'd also find companies that Jim Collins (author of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great") would be proud of. This correlation can't be coincidence, so I've outlined some reasons why this might be so:
Flatter and more-responsive organizations. Working on Search Engine Optimization is like taking your Web site to the doctor: a good Search Engine Optimization consultant will tell you what you have to do, but the hard work is up to you. Companies that listen and respond will do better than companies that justify, finger-point and go on the defensive. Healthy companies look for ways to improve; dysfunctional companies offer reasons why improvement is impossible. Companies that refuse to do the heavy lifting required to whip their site into shape generally are equally negligent in other areas of their business. Better communication channels. SEO is by nature a cross-functional exercise. It involves many different departments, all working together toward a common goal. This approach is well within the comfort zone of healthy organizations, but totally foreign to dysfunctional ones. An SEO initiative severely tests the communication and cooperative capabilities of an organization. It requires marketing, IT, product managers and often legal to all work together, and the faster they can do this, the more positive the results will be. Search Engine Optimization is not a one-shot tactic. In the most competitive categories, it's a full-out and ongoing war. The companies that can respond and adapt quickly will win that war. The ones mired in bureaucracy and butt-covering will inevitably sink in the rankings.
Healthy community connections. The new era of digital communications requires companies to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with their community of customers. Great companies do this instinctively. Bad companies put up huge corporate communication barricades, keeping the angry hordes at bay. Because much of this dialogue happens online, these dialogues tend to generate reams of content and links. Raving customers generate link love; angry customers generate link hate and reputation management problems. A company that can effectively engage in conversations with customers will find a natural lift in organic rankings is often the result.
Efficient execution habits. Companies that keep a clean house do better organically than companies that keep skeletons in the closet. Both approaches are symptomatic of the company's overall approach to business. Highly effective companies constantly upgrade systems and infrastructure, both in their organizations and their online presence. They invest in best of breed tools and technology. And they are able to quickly prioritize and executive as the landscape shifts. Again, a clean technical online infrastructure makes Search Engine Optimization much, much easier.
Executives that "get it." C-level executives who make SEO a priority realize that the marketing landscape is shifting quickly. They've been paying attention to customer behavioral trends and have committed to being proactive rather than reactive. This usually indicates well-placed intelligence gathering "antennae" and feedback loops. It also indicates an executive who isn't hopelessly mired in "old-boy" thinking and outdated command and control management models.
Corporate pride. Content might not be the sole king anymore but it's still part of the ruling class. Great cultures tend to engender pride that naturally precipitates an explosion of content. People blog about where they work, people tweet and product managers enthuse verbosely about what they're working on. All of this generates great, searchable content online.
Companies get the SEO rankings they deserve. I'm guessing that if you asked any SEO consultant in the world, they'll tell you their favorite clients are the ones that are the easiest to work with: clients who listen, are proactive and for whom continual improvement is a religion. Based on what I've seen in the past decade, this attitude extends beyond the Search Engine Optimization team and permeates the entire culture. There are those who game the system and gain undeserved rankings, but more and more, "organic" rankings are just that: rankings that come from the very nature of the company and how they conduct themselves in the marketplace.
[mediapost] Labels: SEO Success
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Experts agree that having compelling, quality content on a website is one of the best ways to increase its search engine optimization, but as one online marketing CEO points out, duplicate content can do just the opposite. In an article for PromotionWorld, Brian Easter, head of internet marketing firm NeboWeb, says that having content that appears in numerous places on the web can have a negative impact on a company's SEO strategy. "If your content starts appearing in too many places on the web, the major search engines may penalize your pages for duplicate content," he writes. "This can have a dramatically negative effect on your rankings and thus on your traffic and overall presence online." But companies looking to increase their search engine optimization do want their content to go viral and be linked in reputable places that can increase traffic - something that can happen when original compelling content is created. Writing last month for Search Engine Journal, David Risley noted that this kind of viral traffic comes when people write content aimed at humans rather than search engines. By creating content that is appealing to readers, Risley says that sites have a greater chance of being linked on sites like Digg or Reddit or being mentioned by users of social networking sites like Twitter - all of which can spread a company's message throughout the web. [brafton] Labels: content writing
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I don't know whether you ever get this thought when touring the web, but there are some sites that I think 'I wish I could get my hands on it!. where you can see that Search Engine Optimization hasn't even been given a second thought, but where great gains could be made from a few simple improvements! This would be the honeymoon period: simple changes and fast results. Honeymoon: Fast ResultsI know I have seen and worked on a number of sites where I can see that a couple of relatively straight-forward changes would make a huge difference. Simple changes and fast results can be from things like:- Title tag optimisation
- Semantically structuring the text on each page
- Dropping images for CSS and floating text
- Internal linking structures and anchor text optimisation
- Installing an analytics package (and analysing the results of course).
- Keyword research and analysis - site-wide and page-by-page
- Including a clear call-to-action
the simplicity of implementing these examples naturally varies, and might quite obviously depend on the CMS's versatility, for instance but these are examples of items to look out for.
Honeymoon: An Untapped Resource
So, OK, you take on a new project. what happens next? Some sites have a whole host of resources and a genuine USP that nobody knows about. whereby the owners have followed the principle 'build-it and they will come'! Well, it's not always as simple as that, so a little bit of promo and improved onsite management could go a long way. The results from this might be impressive but how are you going to sustain them and naturally manage this client relationship. The SEO honeymoon period could have a sting in the tail. So what can you do about it?
You now need to ensure that you can maintain a return on investment that warrants keeping you in a job.
Educate the client in the process
If you want to enjoy the SEO honeymoon period, ensure that you are placing resources into the longer-term results with these kind of sites. How are you going to take advantage of this increased visibility? How are you going to keep up the momentum and build this into the planning with the client? Here are a few ideas.
- How does Search Engine Optimization, social media, link-building, online PR etc work together for longevity of results? How will the results look in 6, 12, 24 months. can you even begin to lay down targets here?
- Expectations management - some quick wins but these should not be devalued just because they were quick. The long-term results will be where the real profits (for both parties) are made.
- What you are reporting on and how this can feed in to planning decisions.
Transparency in Result Aspirations: Good and BadTalk them through the initial quick-wins. Be honest. Maintaining credible and justified results through transparent planning is a great way to develop your client relationship. An adverse example of this is taking on a client with an unhealthy amount of Text Link Ads in their link-profile, and gradually phasing them out at but at the expense of some short-term losses. Budgetary managementFollowing the honeymoon period, results may slow and as a result reducing CPA's (cost per account / purchase / sign-up) may stall. It's worth being mindful of this early-on because it will help work out where your budgets are best aligned to maintain some of this growth. Ploughing all your budgets in to front-end activity, without planning for when and where longer-term results will come from could be disastrous for longer-term CPA's and end the honeymoon period with a thump, as you're kicked out of bed. This naturally depends on a regular review of which account metrics are the short-term and long-term priority. Importantly though, be proactive. You can work to build more momentum with this growth and extend your honeymoon period. Just because you see some easy results coming your way, you can quite easily maintain this growth in results (if the niche has the volume), if you remember one thing. visibility breeds visibility. So, ask yourself, how are you going to capitalise on this increased exposure? An increase in the volumes and frequency of the people that see you in the SERPs means a greater brand awareness, the more people that talk about your brand, and the more people that cite your website. Easy. Both traditional and digital forms of marketing work on this cumulative, multiplier principle. Oh, but in reality.Even the fast results don't come easily. Taking on a new client, involves a great deal of work for both a freelance Search Engine Optimization consultant and a team of SEO's working on behalf of corporate clients. At the very least you need to put time into: - Aligning, integrating and understanding each other's data, management systems and analysis techniques.
- Agreeing on targets, strategy and tactics.
- And merging two (often) very different cultural worlds.
so this whole SEO Honeymoon period is over-rated right? Well, no, not really. great results are of course very achievable quite quickly, but they're even greater if you can put a plan in place to maintain their growth, that's all. Are you suffering from a honeymoon hangover? Put yourself down as an 'Anon' and share your thoughts below. [searchenginejournal]
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Search Engine Optimization training comes in many forms these days as times pushes forward more and more business owners would like to educate themselves on the efforts of search engine optimization and how it is brought into the overall picture for any business owner's strategy. Search Engine Optimization can sometimes be a very difficult task and just the idea of it SEO can be difficult for many business to sometimes comprehend. For any slightly less internet savvy business owners these types of efforts sometimes quickly become frustrating and a need for helping hand is evident. An Search Engine Optimization webinar is a quick and easy way for any aspiring business owner to learn the basics of search engine optimization. This Search Engine Optimization webinar is also ideal for any company or organization to send an online marketing manager or dedicated Search Engine Optimization person for further learning and education. Nick Stamoulis a prominent SEO Consultant and president of the SEO firm, Brick Marketing, has realized a need for education and has put together a comprehensive Search Engine Optimization webinar that is dedicated towards all business sizes. This Search Engine Optimization webinar will go over everything from the basics of search engine optimization to more advanced topics as well. SEO training is something Nick Stamoulis has been passionate for over 12 years. Nick Stamoulis has spent many years training small to large fortune 500 companies on various online marketing strategies. Nick Stamoulis has the experience of all areas of online marketing including blog marketing, social marketing and pay per click marketing and this Search Engine Optimization webinar will allow any business owner to take an online entity of a specific business to a whole new level. Most business owners have realized this is any area that needs to be approached but many are hesitant to approach for fear of the unknown. Nick Stamoulis has personally helped over five hundred companies with SEO over his twelve year span in the online marketing industry. Nick Stamoulis has experience across all vertical markets so all industries are welcome to participate in this search engine optimization webinar. This Search Engine Optimization webinar will allow all attendees to submit specific questions prior to the start of the webinar and Nick Stamoulis will have sometime carved out to answer all questions submitted by attendees. The Search Engine Optimization webinar will go approximately 2 hours and all attendees will be given a PDF version of the Search Engine Optimization webinar so they can later study the material. An Search Engine Optimization webinar is a perfect choice for any business on a budget looking to learn online marketing strategy from professional at a fraction of the cost. A webinar is a judgment free zone where all experience levels are welcomed and encouraged. Nick Stamoulis's Search Engine Optimization webinar is convenient and in challenging economic times not having to incorporate travel plans into training with an expert of positive for any growing company. Just by signing up and logging in can be done from the comfort of any computer whether at home or the office. [chiroeco]
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Bing is doing its best to differentiate itself from Google. Attempting to claim some high ground, Microsoft is positioning Bing as the world's first "decision engine" as opposed to its predecessors, the search engines. Differentiation requires using different algorithms and a new design on the search engine results page. New design or not the SERP's on Bing do resemble Google's at first glance. Depending on the search, Bing delivers either highly relevant results or something a little less so. Searches in Microsoft's wheelhouse of health, local, travel, and shopping are better than most others on Bing. The wheelhouse group was not arrived at by accident. These markets carry high potential for advertising revenues and have historically been among the highest revenue generators on the internet. Bing isn't going as far as saying that it will change search engine optimization, yet. In early June, a whitepaper released by Bing's Webmaster Center Team stated "Ultimately, Search Engine Optimization is still SEO. Bing doesn't change that. Bing's new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design." The Bing Team emphasizes that good content and search engine optimization are crucial elements in website design so it appears that what applies to Google and Yahoo will work with Bing. It also appears that attempts to optimize for Bing will bring similar results to the other search engines as well. The Bing team hasn't given much other information beyond emphasizing on page content and standard Search Engine Optimization practices and maybe that what's important at the moment. Based on PowerSet, Bing will definitely give more weight to content, at the expense of visuals. Still in its infancy, Bing will need to broaden its wheelhouse to avoid turning off searchers that come over for a try, find a bunch of irrelevant results and never return. Initial traffic numbers were conflicted but it appeared that Bing had attracted some significant numbers, whether at the expense of Google and Yahoo, or not. The rest remains to be seen. [promotionworld]
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Many of our customers are curious about search engine optimization for the Bing "decision" engine. The short answer is that if you were found on... MSN Live Search, you are likely to have the same positions on Bing. This is because Bings search results are nearly identical to their previous incarnations on Live Search, but Bings interface and functionality have been upgraded to present people with more choices in the related search menu at the left of the page, and also shows you previous searches in the same area. The related search feature is the "decision engine" factor, but overall you still need to show up near the top of the list of results if you want to get found. Over the past few weeks, one of the differences for our customers involved an increase in traffic compared to previous MSN Live Search data, which was noted once Google updated its Analytics to track Bing as a search engine. The traffic increase is likely due to the fact that Bing has quickly taken a bigger market share over Yahoo search, probably because Microsoft is spending a few hundred million dollars on advertisements. How long Bing keeps its share of the marketplace is anyones guess, but overall people seem to be having a positive search experience. One of the problems with Bing and its predecessor Live Search has to do with the volatility seen in search results. Web.com Search Agency tracks results for several clients, and their competitors, and MSNs volatility has been noticeable for multiple sites, not all of which are even using Search Engine Optimization practices. Keywords will move several spaces up or down, even from week to week, with a churn rate that almost always exceeds Google or Yahoo search results. Combined with the fact that MSN was always the #3 search engine, there was little interest in optimizing MSN over Google, or even Yahoo for that matter. One of the differences between Bing and other engines is that its algorith is not necessarily as dependant on link popularity, so on page factors are more paramount. For people who want to be found in Bing, several of the old MSN Search rules apply. First, you need to cached by Bing, which is done by submitting your site. MSNbot is still the crawler that will visit your website, so make sure you arent excluding it in your robots.txt file. MSN also has a Webmaster Center, which is not as famous as Googles, but still highly recommended if Bing is important to you or your clients. Second, you want to make sure your site has fresh content. What is fresh content? Essentially, updates to pages, added functionality, and more information about products or services will give you a boost. One way to keep content fresh involves updating a blog regularly, or referencing new press releases from your homepage. You should also be doing periodic keyword research to see if there are any new phrases that are worth going after, and then build fresh content around those keywords. Many sources on the internet report that MSNs algorithm is more keyword oriented, but you should still keep in line with rules that Yahoo and Google use to prevent keyword stuffing. Third, ensure that your metatags are descriptive and reference your major keywords, since the general SEO consensus is that Bing and its predecessor use these as part of their indexing. As always, try to avoid keyword stuffing and keep in mind that you dont want to go too deep into any gray areas, because Bing may also be spending more dollars on algorithm improvement in the future, which will help it to filter out lower quality sites. One potential advantage you may have with Bing is that you can look at the related search menu and see if you have any relevant topics that you can build into your own site. Assuming that people who search for general topics will follow this menu, you have a chance to sharpen your relevance in one or more of these fields. If Bing retains its position over Yahoo or takes a greater market share, you will have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Another topic of note is that Bing, like Google, has a certain preference for exact match domain names, but it also will list .tv and .cc domains among its results, which is less common for Google. Therefore, a truly competitive or low volume/high margin term from one of these extensions may be profitable. As a rule, a site that is good for Google will fall into line with Yahoo and MSN, but new content appears to get a better boost, at least for awhile. New sites almost always show up first in MSN/Bing, which may create a credibility gap because there are a lot of new sites that arent good resources for their topic matter. For people who try out different search engines, the quickest correct answer is going to be the determining factor in market share longevity. Any improvement to the search experience is going to keep internet users coming back, which means that search engines are always going to be looking for the best possible resource related to the topic typed into the search box. Aside from all the talk about semantic matching, link-based algorithms, and domain trust, the main takeaway for anyone interested in optimizing for Bing (or any other engine) is that creating a useful, readable site is the first step to SEO success. [searchnewz]
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I recently returned from the successful SMX-Advanced SEO and advertising conference, and I had an epiphany: as a speaker, usability principles are applicable to these conferences. Which usability principle, you might ask? Before usability professionals create an information architecture and corresponding interfaces, they must identify and address various personas or profiles. The primary persona is the group of people whose needs and expectations must be met at all times. Normally, for a website, there is only one primary persona. However, I believe that for search engine conferences, there are three primary personas: - Decision makers
- Hands-on
- How-tos
The decision-maker personaI did learn something new and interesting this year about search engine conference personas. For the most part, conference attendees do not want to hear what appears to be a pure sales pitcha or so I thought. Attendees who have management positions often like to hear sales pitches and case studies. They do not always want to know the hows and the whys, the nuts-and-bolts of search engine optimization or search engine advertising. They want to know about companies or consultants who have successfully performed Search Engine Optimization and/or search engine advertising on sites in their industry - and the same optimization techniques are applicable to their sites. Additionally, some attendees are in a position where they must convince decision makers that search engine marketing is a viable marketing strategy. And part of the marketing budget should be allocated to search. They need third-party case studies to support their cases. This persona is very much one whose needs should be addressed. The hands-on personaThis persona encompasses a wide variety of jobs: - Website designers and developers
- Programmers and other IT staff
- Copywriters and content providers
- Advertisers
For example, many people who fit this persona want to know how to optimize a website. They will return to their company and do it themselves. They want to know the latest and the greatest coding, scripting, and programming strategies that are applicable to their types of websites. They want these search engine strategies to be scalable and as easy to implement as possible. Copywriters, advertisers, and marketers also fit the "how-to" persona. They want to know how to write effective ads and website copy. They want to write effective calls to action. They want to monitor the effectiveness of their work via web analytics and other reporting software. I love addressing this type of persona because members not only want to know how to optimize websites and ads, they also want to know why to optimize websites and ads. Personally, I find this persona to be the most detail oriented. The how-to personaOn the surface, might seem that the hands-on persona and the how-to persona are the same persona. There is one crucial difference - people who fit "hands-on" persona want to actually apply the tip or strategy themselves. People who fit the "how-to" persona want to know how to implement a strategy but will not necessarily implement it themselves. Here is an example. Many people in the marketing department must communicate with people in an IT department to do something, such as ensure 301 redirects are implemented appropriately. Duplicate content delivery is a common problem. Many IT professionals unwittingly deliver duplicate content to the search engines because, in their eyes, the content isn't redundant. And it is often left up to marketing staff to explain the concept and give IT staff direction to address the issue. Therefore, people who fit the "how-to" persona need assistance in how to communicate some very technical concepts and strategies. In addition, many companies do not host their own sites. These website owners want to know how to communicate effectively to the companies that do host their sites. Finding the critical balanceRemember when you were a college or university freshman, and during freshman orientation, an orientation speaker said, "Look at the person sitting to your left. Look at the person sitting to your right. Only one of you will graduate," ? Well, I like to think of conference personas in a similar way. Look at the person sitting to your left. It might be a "hands-on" web developer, who wants to know an AJAX workaround and could care less about a case study. Look at the person to your right. That person might be a marketing manager who is having problems deciding whether or not to use Flash on a the site, and must report back to the Chief Marketing Officer. All types of people with a wide variety of job responsibilities attend search engine conferences. And these appear to be the 3 personas, from my perspective. Personally, I wish all presenters and attendees would remember that. Do any of you see other types of personas? [searchengineland]
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UK Search Engine Optimization Company has announced the online publication of an industry glossary to assist people interested learning more about SEO .
A UK SEO Company has announced the online publication of an industry glossary to assist people interested learning more about Search Engine Optimization. More than a dictionary, it explains the meanings of terms such as back links, clickthrough rate, outbound links, keyword and Web2.0. The comprehensive SEO glossary provides over 280 definitions. "We wanted this glossary to be useful to both the novice users and experienced Search Engine Optimization professionals," said Steven Cossins, Director of Business Development. "In the field of SEO there is always more to learn. As an SEO market leader we feel it is vital to keep updating our glossary as this dynamic industry is constantly evolving. It is a good starting point for people to strengthen their knowledge and learn more about us as an Search Engine Optimization company and our Search Engine Optimization Services." A few interesting entries from the glossary are: Black Hat SEO: Is sometimes called spamdexing (the opposite of White Hat SEO). Black Hat Search Engine Optimization can be any optimization tactics that cause a site to rank more highly than its content would otherwise justify or any changes made specifically for search engines that don't improve the user's experience of the site. In other words, Black Hat SEO is optimizations that are against search engine guidelines. If you step too far over the mark, your site may be penalized or even removed from the index. For example, adding product reviews to e-commerce site is encouraged, because it adds useful content to the site. However, using bait-and-switch techniques to create a doorway page that hooks people querying for information on soccer, it then leads to information about health products will be unacceptable. PageRank (PR): Google uses a weighted form of link popularity called PageRank ™ Not all links are created equal. Google differentiates a link from an important site (such as CNN.com) as being better than a link from Jim-Bob's personal home page. The Google Toolbar (which is a free download from http://toolbar.google.com) has a PageRank meter built into it, to see which web pages are considered important by Google and which aren't. PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PageRank scores get exponentially harder to achieve the closer to 10 they are. For example, increasing your own homepage's PageRank from a 2 to 3 is easy with not a lot of additional links, jumping from a 7 to an 8 is very difficult to achieve. The higher the PageRank of the page that's linking to you, the more your site's PageRank will benefit. The better your PageRank, the better you'll do in Google, all else being equal. Tracking: Online advertising opens the opportunity to track audience response throughout the life of a campaign. Tracking and reporting tools can help you learn as you go, so you can refine your ad creative, placement options, and spending levels if you're not seeing the results you expect. The publisher of your ads typically will provide reports on ad impressions and clickthrough. For additional analysis of your traffic and actual customer conversion rates, you'll need to build tracking mechanisms into your website. For more information visit UK SEO .
[officialwire]
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By David CarletonAs I'm sure you've already discovered, it now takes more than your typical newspaper ad, radio spot and networking meeting to get the sales you used to get. Why? Because the dynamics of the market have changed. Consumers are better educated and have more choices than ever before. In addition, there are fewer buyers out there and more intense competition from everywhere to capture their business. It seems as though the worldwide recession changed the rules of marketing. Companies are now finding that the marketing tools and techniques considered valuable and effective just a few years ago, are no longer bringing in the sales they once were. More and more companies are seeking out low cost "guerrilla" marketing techniques that they can implement quickly and easily. Social media is an easy and affordable way to do just that if you have the strategies in place. But social media marketing is very different than traditional marketing methods. Don't think for one minute that just because you have an in-house marketing staff or outside agencies handling your public relations, creating brochures or managing your ad campaigns that they automatically know how to create and manage your social media marketing efforts. Social media marketing and traditional forms of marketing require different skill sets and strategies. Don't assume that just because your agency can write great copy, and are whiz-kids when it comes to search engine optimization or creating websites that they can handle your social media marketing efforts. I am often asked, "I don't get how I can use social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to help my business." To help you get your "creative juices flowing, " I have listed 20 different ways that social media marketing can help your business. Future articles will go into more depth on how to get achieve resutls. The Top 20 Business Reasons to Use Social Media Marketing: - Improve customer and prospect relationships
- Conduct inexpensive yet effective market research
- Build brand awareness, authority and credibility
- Drive traffic to your website
- Ability to obtain insight into targeted niche markets
- Find new distribution channels
- Improve search engine rankings through link building
- Find and research targeted decision makers, prospects, customers and contacts
- Monitor reputation - what are people saying about you or your company
- Attain expert status for you, your company or your brand
- An effective form of communicating with past, present and future clients
- Share information used to educate prospects
- Spy on your competition
- Provides increased visibility for you, your products or your brand
- Generate more leads
- Get more referrals
- Find joint venture partners
- A new vehicle to post PR, events and articles
- Provide better customer service
- And of course - INCREASE SALES!
As President of Street Smart Sales and Marketing, David Carleton specializes in helping companies spend less and get more from their marketing and advertising using low cost guerrilla tactics in lead generation and social media marketing. For more information and resources about social media, go to ExpertsInSocialMedia.com
[examiner]
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To get good Search Engine Optimization resulsts, your website needs to have quality content. That's not all it needs, but when you have a quality Search Engine Optimization company like LoveClients at your back, a lot of the heavy lifting gets done for you. You don't need to mess around with complicated optimization and keyword research-that's what great Search Engine Optimization does for you. But you do need content on your site. That's right: precise, good writing is very important online. Whether you need to explain your product, write a catchy "About Your Company" page, or talk about a new offering you're rolling out, your Search Engine Optimization will always be better when your website contains fresh, interesting information. Not Everyone is a Writer:And therein lies the problem. Not everyone can write. It's just not possible for everyone to be great. We all write emails every day, and probably do some level of reading, but when it comes to writing in a clear, precise way, many of us are at a loss. It simply takes too much work, too much editing, too much knowledge of those obscure rules of grammar and style to churn out good, readable prose. Writing is a Skill, Like Many Others:So if we aren't farming the writing out to wordier relatives, or hiring overpriced ad agencies to write about our products, what are we doing? Trying to write the stuff ourselves, that's what. Writing really is a skill that can be developed and improved, no matter how subtle and frustrating it may seem. There is a wealth of knowledge on how to write well, a lot of it contradictory. Writers are famous for making definitive-sounding declarations on what 'good' writing is, only to have another critic come and disagree immediately. Why Do Authors From Hundreds of Years Ago Have the Best Advice on Good Writing?So I've found some advice for you, narrowing our focus down to four writers-all of whom died before the year 1900. Why go back so far? It's simple, really: These pieces of advice were expressly designed to simplify a very complicated beast. Have you ever tried to read literature from 200-300 years ago? Direct, clear, pared-down style did not exist. Remember, Hemingway and Orwell were centuries away, words were longer, more obscure, and the culture was simply very different. Reading was undertaken with long, sustained concentration, and writing was dense and difficult. So the writers desperately urging precision and clarity were doing so because these qualities were in very short supply. Their advice is relevant and to the point, no matter how old it is. Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
-Matthew Arnold
I can't offer much commentary on something so simply expressed. If there's one word to keep in your mind while writing, you could do far worse than clarity.
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it-whole-heartedly-and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.
Murder your darlings.
-Arthur Quiller-Couch
Rightly famous. Get all your bad, puffed-up writing out in the first draft, and then delete it all. Look, he didn't even say erase or cancel it, he said delete! A man ahead of his time.
You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing 's curst hard reading.
-Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Maybe you're like me, and read that second line as something to do with 'crust'. I believe we would use the word 'cursed' nowadays. 'Don't show off, because it'll make your writing hard to read' has never been expressed so lightly.
The virtue of books is to be readable.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm sure there are many other virtues, too, but hey-he said it. Write with an audience in mind: your customers.
[blog.loveclients.com]
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The independent authority in search, topseos.com, has completed its monthly list of the best pay per click companies in the world. After a strict evaluation process, topseos.com has narrowed down the list to 30 premiere web marketing firms focusing on PPC from hundreds of hopeful applicants. This list was compiled to showcase the best PPC firms the web has to offer. Pay per click is the marketing strategy that makes use of search technology. Pay per click ads are displayed to a target demographic with a focus on a specific keywords. As a result, the ads reach consumers that are interested in the product or service, therefore making the sale easier to close. Another aspect that makes Pay-Per-Click favorable for many companies is because advertisers only pay for each click that successfully drives traffic to their site. Each of the firms on this list have a proven track record of driving traffic into a website through Pay-Per-Click. The top 30 PPC firms on the list are: - JumpFly, Inc.
- Intrapromote PPC Agency
- SEOP
- WebiMax
- Increase Visibility Inc.
- WebMetro
- SEO Image Inc.
- Oneupweb
- ThinkBIGsites
- Customer Magnetism
- Bruce Clay Inc.
- SEO Inc.
- Web.com Search Agency
- Location3 Media
- First In Search Inc.
- Efficient Frontier Inc.
- Maximum Hit
- Reprise Media
- Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.
- Morpheus Media LLC
- Target Logics
- KeyRelevance
- Response Mine
- Page Zero Media
- eVision LLC.
- SpiderSplat Consulting Inc.
- Pure Visibility Inc.
- NetSetGo Marketing
- Point It, Inc.
- Acxiom Digital
Each of the companies in this prestigious list had to go through a rigorous evaluation process that looks into each firm's performance. It is important for topseos.com to properly gauge each of the firm's depth of knowledge, return on investment and, most importantly, their drive for overall customer satisfaction. To finally get a clear view of the rankings topseos had to ask the clients of these firms questions like "What was your total investment?" and "By what % have you increased your PPC budget and over what time?"
[prweb]
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Senior marketers in the US are increasing their investment in search engine optimisation, according to a new survey. The Client-Agency Economic Outlook Survey by Reardon Smith Whittaker showed that nine per cent of marketers said their Search Engine Optimization spending is significantly higher this year compared with 2008, while 23 per cent said it is "somewhat higher" in comparison. Other areas of online marketing identified by Reardon Smith Whittaker as seeing growth during the recession included social media, email marketing and banner advertising. Commenting on the implications of the results, the company said: "If you don't have a good grasp of these newer media, you had better get on it. "If you don't want to bring the resources in, there are plenty of other firms that can help you out." According to eMarketer, it is likely that US spending on Search Engine Optimization will overtake expenditure on contextual advertising by 2013. The firm said that this can be attributed to the fact that web users are more likely to click on organic listings than pay-per-click or other types of ads and also to the viability of Search Engine Optimization as a tool for finding new customers. [directnews.co.uk]
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Search engine optimisation is still a key tool for business-to-business (B2B) marketers looking to drum up coverage of their organisations in the press, despite the rise of social media. This is according to Arketi Group, which conducted a survey suggesting that while 68 per cent of journalists think the effect of social media on B2B online news reporting has been positive, the most popular online activity among news writers is using search engines. Other top web-based tasks include reading online news, using email and finding ideas for stories. And while 92 per cent of journalists obtain story ideas from online news releases, just 12 per cent use Twitter for the same purpose. Mike Neumeier, principal of Arketi, said: "Our findings indicate B2B marketers should not discount tried-and-true internet technology. " Search Engine Optimization and building media-friendly websites remain vital to reaching the business media." Earlier this year, a survey by TEKgroup found that less than 15 per cent of journalists use Facebook, MySpace or YouTube to obtain online news on a particular company. [directnews.co.uk]
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It's clear that original content is an important part of a good search engine optimization strategy, but as more and more information proliferates the web, it is also important that this content is relevant to what people are searching for. In a post on Marketing Pilgrim as part of its SEM Scholarship contest, Frankie Fredericks of The Web Uncovered, writes that because of the increasing importance of real-time search, it is all the more necessary for companies to have content that is relevant. An example Fredericks uses is the Huffington Post and the traffic it has received because of its constant updates on the recent unrest in Iran. Unlike more traditional news outlets that only update the story occasionally throughout the day, the Huffington Post posts new information a few times each hour. In addition to having content that will show up in a search, Fredericks says the content must "engage" a reader and give them a reason to repost this information - to make it viral. "Viral marketing is word of mouth in the digital age, and thus, the same rules apply as do to traditional marketing," he writes. "People want to laugh, be touched, see the underdog win, and be privy to the next best thing. The best practices are only a means to a viral end." At the SMX West conference earlier this year, Bruce Clay noted that original content - like news and press releases - can help create a viral effect for the businesses that use them, saying that getting content into Google News is "worth its weight in gold." [brafton]
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By Mike DobbsWith all the rumors suggesting that Google will soon offer real-time search capabilities, indexing Tweets and other real-time web data, now is a good time to take a closer look at your Twitter (Twitter) presence. Even now, what you tweet can be held against you on the engines, although it can also work to your advantage. As an example, Google (Google) is already indexing tweets (albeit not in real-time) so Twitter pages and even individual tweets have already started appearing within Google search results.   But, never fear, you still have time to start optimizing your Twitter presence before your random tweets about what you ate for lunch start appearing in searches for your name. By following these ten Twitter tips, you, your company or your brand can build up more prominent links in high places on the engines. 1. Choose a good handle:Be sure to pick an optimal handle that's relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember. Your handle (also known as your Username) then becomes part of your customized Twitter URL such as twitter.com/yoursite or twitter.com/yourtopic. Doing this creates a static address for future search indexing, which also helps usability for other cross-channel promotions. So choose wisely! The fun challenge: doing all this while keeping your name short and succinct so it's easily tweetable. 2. Select an account name wisely:Optimize the Twitter account name to best reflect your brand. Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your handle/URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand. You should also consider which variation of you brand name has the most search frequency every month. 3. Make your bio count:Optimize your Twitter page's "Bio" line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! (Yep, that's right: They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.) Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance. 4. Spread the word:Now think about ways to build the link reputation of this newfound social web address. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site's Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines. 5. Remember your URL:In the account settings, be sure to add your website's URL or perhaps use it to promote your presence on another social platform, for example, yoursite.com. This is a great way to drive traffic back to your destination of choice; although, truth be told, the link does not provide any offsite reputation - a.k.a. Search Engine Optimization link juice - due to a "Nofollow" attribute that Twitter has in place. (Sorry Twitter spammers!) 6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully:The "lead-in" of each tweet appears to be important for Search Engine Optimization as it will determine what appears in the tweet's title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet's title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though.  7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible:Wherever possible, start your tweet with a primary keyword phrase to theme each message. Take advantage of any "active lingo" or buzz words as this will enable you to capitalize on timely searches on those terms. Of course, this doesn't mean you should fill your tweets with buzz words at the expense of providing value to your followers! Rather, think carefully about which word choices will best convey your message and also allow you to leverage the real-time and long-term index relevance across the engines that continuously spider and index tweets. 8. Mind your retweetability:Make sure your tweet's character limits allow for optimal "retweetability." If you want a message to proliferate on Twitter, it's ideal to keep it under 120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. However, the exact number is different from everyone as it depends on the number of characters needed for someone to include the phrase "RT @yourname" in their re-tweet. 9. Provide some link love:Insert back links to redirect users back to your content. Twitter has proven to be a significant traffic driver for bloggers and others using the space to share links. If you do share links, use one of the many URL shorteners available ( TinyURL and Bit.ly are two common shorteners). We recommend using the URL shortener Bit.ly, as it tracks click-throughs for the specific links you share on the platform. Bit.ly even has the power to track links in aggregate. For example, if multiple Bit.ly URLs were created and shared by separate users, all leading back to the same URL, the service can track and report click-throughs for all of them in aggregate. Bit.ly also tracks clicks over time, so you can see when people are clicking your links most. 10. As always, give 'em what they want:When providing Bit.ly links or any other URLs, make sure the redirection leads to pages which provide a richer content experience. Twitter users are hungry for information and accustomed to getting it "right now." Send users directly to the details instead of having them fish around for it. [mashable]
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