Facebook… love the social network or hate it, finally went public today. Many investors are running wild to get their hands on some of the newly minted shares of the social media behemoth. Shares were set to open up at $38 a share, and according to CNN, the stock started trading at $42.05 when the stock began trading at 11:30ET. Shares are expected to jump much higher in the early going.

Some of the news I have heard today say that buying Facebook is a suckers bet. Big corporations and the rich get access to the stock first at the lower dollar amount, and turn around and sell it back to “the people” at an inflated price. I am sure there is a lot of that going on, but over all I think this is great for Facebook, Zuckerberg, and all the Facebook employees that will become millionaires today. In fact, I stand up and applaud… (and secretly wish I would have thought of it!… oops, guess that is not a secret now.)

The future of Facebook as a public company is what intriges me. Some people compare Facebook to Apple, but Apple has a definite product they are selling, not to mention a rabid fan base. What is it Facebook sells to consumers? Sure they have the game network, as well as the paid advertising platform… but at the end of the day, what will make this company worth the expected $104 billion dollars to you and me? And how does the love hate relationship users of the platform have, in regards to privacy, come into play?

I’d say the closest comparison to Facebook in the stock market world would be Google. Google makes most of their money from advertising… but they have jumped into consumer products with the Android platform etc. Will Facebook eventually come up with a product or service that people will want to actually buy? Or will Facebook even need to? Time will tell I suppose.

According to CBS news, today Facebook will be the 23rd largest company in the U.S. (as measured by stock market value) putting Facebook ahead of shopping giant Amazon.com. However, Facebook ranks 909th in terms of annual sales globally. Pretty interesting don’t you think?

So, for better or worse, today may very well be known as Facebook Day.

What are your thoughts… will you be buying shares of Facebook? Do you think the need to pander to investors will help, or hurt the social giant? Let’s keep the conversation going below in the comments!

Until next time…  Doc

Every  SEO campaign can be  broken down into 5 fundamentals, then segmented into off-site (link building) and on-site (content) approaches to identify and understand the application. This webinar recap and slide deck (at the bottom of this post) is a top level guide to assist you with setting the correct content marketing strategy today.

1. Have a Plan

A good content strategy will consist of a plan rooted in specific value-based principles. These values are those that make a website good, worth visiting, long lasting etc. The way I came to determine just what these values should be is by drawing some parallels beween human success and marketing success gleaned from the well-known self improvement book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

In the beginning of this book Stephen Covey outlines that all success literature over the last 2 centuries can be broken into two approaches to achieving success. One of these approaches should be considered primary, and the other secondary.

Character Ethic: This is the primary way to achieve success. It would be an approach based on principle based solutions. Covey calls this the “inside-out approach.” Meaning that if you focus on the key characters that make up who you actually are—such as honesty, integrity, creativity etc.—and as you work to improve yourself success will naturally follow.

Personality Ethic: This is the secondary approach. Often you could define these as quick fixes, superficial or even instant gratification. These are the appearance driven tactics you find in self-help books that only focus on the surface of who you really are. They can gain you short term success, but often wean off and deter your overall success in the long run.

While approaches to gaining success under the personality ethic are valid, they really only have long term value when they are utilized by a person who has mastered his character and established a personality rooted in strong value-based principles.

The Marketing Parallel

So it is with a website. No matter how many links you build (personality ethic), and how flashy your website looks—it’s long term success (traffic, leads, sales etc.) and sustainability of that success can only be secured if you first focus on the character of your website.

What this means is if you focus on your websites internal content strategy (character ethic) by applying the below value based principles to establish a well thought out strategy the longevity of your website will be secured.

Here is a quick mind map of what typically should branch off of these values and develop into your content marketing strategy:

And if you were to sequence these in order of priority I would lay them out as follows:

In the end, links are only as valuable as the website you pass them to. To put it in other words, no one cares if the directions you got to a party were great if the party isn’t any good.

As you focus on these core principles that make up a quality content marketing strategy I suggest approaching the plan with 3 specifics:

1. Measurable Goals
2. Target Audience
3. Target Keywords

As you approach these 3 things look at how they apply to the characteristics that make up an ideal content strategy by asking questions like:

2. Put People First

As you cater a content strategy to your specific audience or customer you will achieve higher success in content marketing. People enjoy making a connection. Understand the type of people your website is most directed toward and put these people first by ensuring you build a website with content that is:

Easy:

There is no doubt that people like easy. Which means as soon as the user opens a browser they are looking for a simple process.

• Building content that is optimized will ensure people can easily find your website
• Creating a logical navigation with clear taxonomy means people will easily be able to locate what they are looking for
• Integrating the right social network sharing capabilities in the right places makes sharing you website with others easy

Entertaining:

People love to be entertained. From the wording in your copy to the design to specific media used on the page each part of content is an opportunity to entertain your visitor in one way or another. As you plan your content, look to marry your brand with some form of entertainment that speaks to the targeted audience. And no matter the audience that entertainment will be most delivered best through a combination of:

• Remarkable graphics
• Spectacular videos
• Engaging content

Educational:

Just as much as we all love to have entertainment handed to us, we are drawn to learn more. The informational form of content is often one of the greatest for SEO purposes as well. Look at the questions your industry is currently asking and seek a unique way to deliver the right answers to the web.

3. Nitty Gritty SEO

Once your content is quality in terms of design and user experience then look to basic SEO implementations to ensure the nitty gritty is in order:

Titles:

Page titles are placed within the <head> area of the source code and should:

• Be between 65-70 characters typically
• Contain branding somewhere in the title
• Use 1-2 keyword phrases that are most relevant to the page (don’t overdo this)
• Read naturally (not spammy)
• Inform the searcher what they will find as they click through

Here are various acceptable formats to approach your page titles:

<title>Branding: Page Title With Keyword Here</title>

<title>Keyword Here In Title With Branding Included In Middle</title>

<title>Page Title & Keyword Inclusion Here | Branding</title>

Headings:

Your page headings <h1> are given more prominence and importance that paragraph content <p> by search engines. This means that the keywords and phrases used within headings are considered indicators as to the pages relevance. In approaching the use of your page headings you should:

• Not sacrifice true headings for keywords
• Use the most important/relevant key phrases naturally in the most prominent heading (the <h1>)
• Use supportive or variant phrases in subheadings (<h2> through <h6>)
• Not overuse headings on the page in an attempt to optimize for keywords

Content Placement:

Body content (or words) should be integrated into nearly every area of your website. Search engines view this as quality, and users benefit from it. Words on a page are not placed their solely for search engine optimization purposes. If they are, you have got it all wrong. The content you use should:

• Explain each page
• Direct the visitor
• Be placed both above and below the fold
• Be part of the design, not separate from it

Keyword Use:

Keyword Placement

Using keywords and variants of those keywords within the content is an integral part of making your website findable. Do not concern yourself with using the phrases a certain amount of times. In fact, using keywords correctly on a page will often happen naturally and without intention.

In approaching your content creating for a web page it is best to write the content first to be readable, purposeful and succinct. After this is done, review the content to determine if the correct key terms have been used. If they have not revise as needed.

Images:

One of the most under utilized areas of a website for optimization are images and graphics. In the placing of your images there are two opportunities for optimization for a topic:

• Alternate Text
• File Name

Navigation:

To correctly optimize a website navigation it is important that know what keywords you are targeting for each individual page. Typically this is referred to as establishing keyword mapped URLs. To ensure you navigation is best optimized it must be:

• Crawlable to search engines
• Contain a logical taxonomy

4. Stay Active

Beautifully designed static pages will become stagnant if you don’t have active content regularly supporting your websites relevance to major search terms and pushing visitors to landing pages. A major factor enabling web properties to gain increasingly more search engine real estate is active content production.

The idea is that you need to keep your website up-to-date and interesting both for people and for search engines by:

• Creating discussions about industry news
• Updating audience with business news
• Niche guides
• Case studies
• Instructional blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics

Above all else, the best way to ensure you content is active is to have a schedule laid out and broken down to the week or days if needed. Often this is referred to as an editorial calendar. Itemizing the content piece’s you plan to publish will help you look at everything with a bird’s eye, ruling out overuse of a specific topic or type of media. A well planned out content calendar successfully integrates with other marketing initiatives as well. For most internal blogs I find laying out a 12 month editorial calendar is best.

5. Don’t Overdo It

Over optimization is an increasingly detrimental issue in search marketing. It is very common for professionals to latch on to one specific strategy or become accustomed to a few singular approaches that, if done over a long period, can in turn deter the websites performance. While over-optimization has always been an issue, with the latest algorithm updates from Google, this has been publicly announced as a target.

Stay Away From Over-Optimization

There are many forms in which over optimization can creep into your websites SEO campaign, but looking specifically at your content on-site there 3 items to watch out for:

• No content above the fold
• Overuse of exact match anchor text internal links
• Overuse of keywords within page titles

Your Content Strategy Checklist

And if all else fails, here is a quick checklist of major items every great content strategy consists of:

What is your thought on this content strategy? Anything you would like to add? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

You can also view the recording of my webinar on this subject by clicking here

After a number of years working at an SEO services agency I have monitored, worked on, analyzed, and overseen many projects across nearly as many industries. Some of these projects were successful beyond both the clients’ and our expectations while others struggled to climb the in rankings. I have been very careful to note the similarities between the campaigns that have the most success.

Some companies assume that their success is directly related to the amount of resources dedicated to that campaign by the agency. Although the budget an agency is given dictates what resources they can use in a campaign, I have found a number of things that companies can do to maximize their results, whatever their budget. The following is not intended to be all-inclusive, but even adopting a few of these suggestions can greatly improve your SEO spending.

1. Update Your Site With Relevant, Quality Content

It should come as no surprise that a site is no better than what it contains. Content can including videos, interactive games, pictures, graphics, audio recordings, written information, forums, and blogs just to list a few. Regardless of how much an agency or individual promotes a site, if the site does not contain content relevant to the search, it will be more difficult to consistently rank well for that search term.

2. Provide Content For Your SEO Team’s Efforts Across The Web

I have worked on campaigns that range from high-end summer camps for teenagers to companies that help large corporations manage their network infrastructure with IPv4/IPv6 support. For some reason I, along with 90% of the population, would have a hard time speaking authoritatively about the nuances of IP address management and related topics.

A professional  SEO company can employ many different link building strategies that use content across the Web. Some of this content can be generated by writers at the agency and then published under a pseudonym, but this becomes exponentially more difficult if the subject is very specialized. Use your SEO agency to show off the industry experts that are already in your company. The one down side to writing under the names of the experts in your company is when they move on to another company you no longer have your expert. This is when pseudonyms come in handy.

3. Implement Suggested Changes To Sites (After Everyone’s On The Same Page) Quickly

Nearly every online marketing company will provide suggestion on how to better optimize your website. In its simplest form, search engine optimization is made up of two major parts: optimizing the site, and promoting it around the Web. From large corporate sites to small startups, getting the necessary changes made usually takes more time than one would expect. Each site has its own unique set of limitations that can cause problems. Generally, the person or team who built the site is going to be more familiar with these limitations and know how to work with them. If you no longer have access to those people, most search engine marketing companies should have resources, or trusted partners that can help make these changes.

There is a time delay between when those changes are made and when you see the results, though, so it is important to get it done correctly and in a timely manner. And remember: just because you have completed one set of changes that doesn’t mean you won’t be asked to make some more. A site can never be fully optimized for SEO let alone all the other parts of online marketing and there is always something more you can do to improve your rankings.

4. Discuss Major Changes To The Site With Your SEO Team Before Making Them

All too often I have had companies optimize their sites only to turn around and change everything again a few months later. Large websites often make this mistake because internal teams are not communicating. Whether the communication gap exists internally or between the agency and your company, it is more of chasm that can gulp up months of progress in seconds. Consider your agency an extension of your marketing team. Consult with them on everything from large, site-wide changes to any little modifications that you plan to make on the optimized pages. This will keep your campaign moving forward in a positive direction and give you greater ROI on your SEO budget.

5. Be Committed For The Long Haul

Companies sometimes come to me two or three months before their peak season and ask what we can do for them. Unfortunately, SEO results don’t happen overnight. If you want to increase your marketing budget to include SEO, consider doing it well in advance of your peak earning season so you will have plenty of time to rank.

If you don’t have time to climb the rankings before hitting this season you should think of any work done this time as an investment and head start on next season. Be committed to having an SEO campaign for years not months. You should be able to see progress, movement and patterns established in three to five months, but the most successful campaigns I have seen are ones that are years old. Don’t worry. I am not saying that it takes years to get a good ROI, but rather that just like good cheese or wines, SEO campaigns simply get better with time under the right conditions.

6. Be Open About Your Business And What Makes You The Most Money

This has got to be one of the biggest things you can do to help get the most out of your SEO budget. As a SEO expert I can take a look at keywords, words that could potentially drive traffic to your site, in any industry and come up with some potentially profitable solutions. What I don’t know is what products or services you would most like to sell. Maybe the basic service package you offer is actually the one with the best profit margins. Some businesses are apprehensive when it comes to sharing details about profits and profit margins. Just get your SEO company to sign a non-disclosure and move forward. Once I know what makes the client more money, I am better able to provide not just rankings but ROI.

7. Identify Goals With The Agency

Determine what you want from the beginning of the campaign. Are you looking for pure ROI, traffic, rankings on specific terms? What is the measuring stick for success? Goals are an important part of any project. SEO, as stated previously, is a long term marketing strategy, and setting goals all along the way will help you determine if a campaign is on the right path.

I want to issue a few words of warning, here. Often people come to us and say: “I want to show up on the first page when people type “door” into the search engine.” As a search marketer I know that although I could potentially get you ranked for door, or any other major term, it would probably come at a high cost, require a lot of time, and potentially not convert all that well. Be sure all parties involved have good input on these goals. Set some short-, medium- and long-term goals at the start of the campaign with the short-term goals getting you closer to your medium-term goals and so forth. Also be sure that you have a good way to quantify and measure your progress. Tracking comes in many forms and could be a blog post in itself, though, so I am going to leave it at that.

8. Identify The Largest Roadblocks To Your Goals And Help Remove Them

After your goals are identified, look to see what is keeping you from achieving them. Once you identify these roadblocks look for ways that you can help remove them. I have yet to see a roadblock that would not benefit from, and often require, the client’s help. The two most common roadblocks that I see come up in SEO campaigns are fixing issues with the website to make it more search engine friendly, and getting internal decisions made in large corporations. (Both of these items are addressed in other points in greater detail.)

9. Coordinate Efforts With The Agency Team

The larger the campaign, the more important coordination becomes. Often, after starting an SEO campaign, I learn of other efforts that the company is undertaking to promote themselves online. It is not uncommon to have large corporations come to us that already have other companies to take care of PPC (paid advertisement through Google and other sources) press releases, and social media among others. It is great to have all these teams to their online success, but usually there is little cooperation between these different teams or companies. You can even take it a step further and see that corporations rarely manage to coordinate their online and offline efforts. Make sure everybody is on the same page. For example if you have a booth at a large tradeshow:

• Let your social media team set up a campaign around the trade show
• Write a press release about about the trade show
• Identify potential keywords that people at that specific tradeshow might look for and have your SEO team work on getting them ranked by the tradeshow

This is just one way to coordinate efforts, and there are many others. Look for opportunities to have different facets of your marketing team work together on a campaign. The combined efforts of each team will help you get more out of your online, offline and social campaigns.

10. Have Key Players On Key Calls

This has been discussed in passing in several other points, but I feel it is important to discuss it in detail. When I get on a phone call to discuss site changes I want two people in particular on the call: the person that can authorize the changes, and the person that can make them. If those two are on the call, then by the end of the call I know the approval for the suggestions has taken place, and the technical person has asked all the questions she has. Sometimes the decision maker can’t get on the phone. If that is the case put the next person closest in line on the call – whatever it takes to expedite the decision making process.

Every company has limited resources and wants to maximize their budgets for a better ROI. By implementing these points a company will find themselves getting more out of their budgets. This is not a full list of things that a company can do to maximize their budget but rather a few tips. Are there any other things you see that companies can do to get the most out of their SEO spend? Would love to hear back from you in the comments below.

With the newest Google algorithm changes, penalties have been taken on many websites for unnatural and artificial linkbuilding tactics.  This update hit websites that used black hat SEO practices particularly hard, but it also affected many seemingly appropriate linkbuilding strategies. Because of these changes, careful, strategic, and natural linkbuilding is more important than ever. In the first part of this blog series by Rebecca, she talked about building natural links through event sponsorship, answering questions, holding contests, attending industry trade shows, and using public relations tactics. Let’s take a look at some additional ways to build great natural links.

Product Reviews

If you’d like to get the word out about a new products, reaching out to bloggers for a product review is a great idea. Many blogs regularly review products, services, and events, and offering a free item (or one at a significant discount) offers excellent incentive for bloggers to write about your new product. You can guide them to use the anchor text that you specify in order to maximize your links.

Another way to get links on product reviews is to search for existing reviews. Many blogs, such as The Impulsive Buy, specifically focus on reviewing brand new products found in the store. Once you find a blog post that already makes mention of your product, create a friendly and personalized email to contact the blogger about adding in a link. Setting Google Alerts is a handy way to monitor mentions of your brand, or products in your specific niche.

Pinterest

If your website is heavily dependent on pictures of clothes, design, beauty, entertainment, fashion, jewelry, photography, or food and recipes, your site is a natural fit for image sharing on Pinterest. Pinterest can generate great exposure for your brand through high quality, aesthetically pleasing photos of your products. It’s a great way to build a visual representation of your brand, find new followers who are interested in your products, and increase authority.

The trends in search engine optimization have been leading toward more social interaction, and Pinterest is a great way to communicate with people outside of your regular circles of interaction. The links on Pinterest became “nofollow” in March 2012, but that does not mean the links lack any value. Click-throughs on images on Pinterest are a great way to drive traffic to your site, especially now that Pinterest is the third most popular social network, behind Facebook and Twitter. In order for Pinterest to add value to your company, you need to be an online social butterfly. Be social, like, repin and comment on other users’ pins, and fly around to different pages to socialize with relevant users. Accounts that appear spammy will not gain a following like a comprehensive, personalized and organized Pinterest profile.

Legitimate Blog Networks

Before the changes of Panda, private blog networking websites like BuildMyRank.com, Unique Article Wizard, and SEOLinkVine were often used to bulk up link portfolios. In the past month, many of the links from these sites have either been deindexed or penalized. Does this mean that putting effort into any “blog network” site is a waste of time? Absolutely not.

There are many blog networks that are well-respected, moderated, and completely legitimate opportunities for linkbuilding. One of the most popular and robust blog networks is BlogHer. The site is geared toward women and divided up into several niches, such as family, sports, health, style, and tech. BlogHer operates an ad network to help bloggers monetize their blogs. They have stringent guidelines for what is posted on the site, where the links direct to, and have a no-tolerance policy for abuse and plagiarism. I have been a member of the BlogHer network for several years, and have not only found excellent content, but have created friendships and relationships with many bloggers within the network.

To join BlogHer, you just need to register for the website with your blog’s URL. Although the site has a feminine focus, there are male bloggers one the site as well. BlogHer does accept guest posted content, but they show preference to bloggers who are active in the network. Besides BlogHer, there are many other niche-specific blog networks. For instance, Entrepreneur.com accepts guest blog posts, is considered authoritative, and has a robust staff of industry experts on entrepreneurship. Search for networks within your niche or industry where you can interact with other users to gain credibility.

Testimonials

One great way to get the name of your brand out is through testimonials. Businesses love to get positive feedback, and asking them if they’d like a testimonial for their website is an excellent way to get your name and link on their site. They offer benefits to both the one who testifies, as well as the recipient. Testimonials are often placed on popular or important pages of a website, such as a homepage, which would be otherwise impossible with a standard link request. You can leverage existing relationships you have and ask if the site is interested in your feedback, and you will have a better chance getting a link by offering them something valuable.

What are some other tactics you use to build links using existing marketing strategies? I would love to hear your comments on how your linkbuilding has evolved, especially over the last few weeks since the most recent Google Panda and Penguin webspam updates.

One of the most common questions that come up at the beginning of an SEO campaign, when we outline to a client which keywords have been selected and which competitors have been assessed in approaching that selection is:

These aren’t my competitors. This website doesn’t even sell the exact same product/service as us. Why were these chosen rather than my real competitors?

Here is answer…

There is a difference between competitors in the industry and competitors online. When looking at search engine optimization our concern needs to be rankings and relevance. This means that even though Company A may be an industry competitor, if they aren’t ranking as well or as comprehensively as other online competitors, they are less of a priority/focus when assessing what needs to be done to compete for an authoritative online presence.

In online marketing we need to consider the current search results as our direct competitors for a web audience and overall leads.

Assess Online Competitors For:

1. Ranking Comparison: By looking at where your competitors rank overall, and  for certain terms, you can draw useful insight as that information is correlated to what each competitor and your valued web property are doing on-site to achieve those results. Often a revision to information architecture (labeling and layout of navigation), content strategy, and landing page copy will come from this type of an assessment.
2. Backlink Analysis: An assessment of your online competitors link portfolio is the equivalent of looking at a salesman’s rolodex back in the day. This is gives you valuable information about business partnerships, content strategies and milestones of the business helping you map out just what needs to be done to fill in the gap. More technically, this will also provide insight to the diversity of their portfolio and techniques they currently implement in their link building strategy.
3. Online Business Model: There are many ways to gain access to top search results. Some businesses go after this goal through brute force in link building, others simply have remarkable product and a clear way of communicating that to potential customers, and still others—as boring as their product may be—implement a sound content marketing approach that drives results. By knowing what your competitors do you can more easily map the estimated time it will take to gain and maintain results and what will be required in order to do so.

Conversely, it is all too often that I see digital marketers forgetting the value an industry competitor, with nearly no online presence, can bring to the table through competitive analysis.

Look at Industry Competitors For:

1. Outside of the Box: While online competitors give you direct and actionable information for an SEO strategy, the offline or industry competitors will often provide insight taking you a step beyond. The most important thing to realize about offline competitors is that they are still thriving without the internet. Which means they sure as hell are doing something right. Taking that marketing initiative, whatever it is, and molding it into an online strategy will place you leaps beyond what any online competitor is currently doing.
2. Describe Products/Services: One thing an online and offline competitor typically differ on is how they convey their product or service. Looking at the different ways industry competition explains and promotes their products can allow new strategies to come into play both on the website and within the content strategy.

What are some other considerations you have run into when determining and evaluating these two different types of competitors?

There are many different ways that you can approach your SEO efforts to get to the top of search engines, however most of them are all designed to make your site and the back-link portfolio look authentic (unnatural links warning advice here by Albert Mitchell), not actually be authentic. In the past, this has been sufficient to get you top rankings. Depending on the methods used you may have been able to stay at the top for a very long time too and may even still be there. However, it is my opinion that those days are going to fade away. I am not sure how quickly this will happen, but it will happen.

What to Do About It?

While I am not advocating drastic and immediate overhauls to your site and back-link portfolio, I am advocating that business owners, marketing departments and web teams responsible for the company’s website and internet marketing begin figuring out how to be authentic and not just look authentic. It is time to look to offer more value to your clients through your website and stop looking for the easy way out. Unfortunately, some business owners and web teams want rankings, yet they don’t want to put the time and/or money into making their website worthy of having top rankings.If you want to be at the top of Google you have to make a website that deserves to be there. Google is getting better and better at figuring out the difference between looking authentic and actually being authentic.

Although you may not have been hit in the latest round of Panda updates (see David Malmborg’s Webinar and Slides on Panda effecting Content), maybe you were hit by the new Penguin update from Google combating webspam. All of these updates mean you will eventually lose traction if you do not work on being authentic. As more webmasters and business owners become concerned with the way that they have approached SEO in the past, they are going to build out content and value on their sites. If you do not keep pace you are going to get left behind, even if you never are “penalized”. Ironically, because SEO’s, webmasters, business owners and the like have all spent so much time on how to “look authentic”, we will all also have to work at “being authentic”. Here is a list of 20 things you can check on your site to make sure that you are seen as authentic by Google.

Onsite

1. Keywords in Body Text:  Be careful about how many times you have an exact match of your targeted keywords in the body text. Use variations and synonyms throughout the body text. The goal here should be to make sure that when you read your copy it reads well and that you are not repeating the exact same phrase over and over. I always advice clients to write content for the user first, and then go back and make sure the exact match keywords are in the content at least once or twice, but to be cautious about any more than that.
2. Exact Match Internal Links:  Every link from another page on your site does not need to be exact match anchor text. Again, use variations, synonyms and even… heaven forbid… “Click Here”. Do not make a link for the sake of a link on your site. Make sure that links are helpful to your user.
3. Footer Links:  Excessive footer links, especially exact match, are never a good idea to look natural. The footer links are for the most common pages a person may be looking for. Most often, these are going to be for what I call “Administrative” pages (ie- contact us, about us, sitemap, privacy policy, customer service, etc) and in some cases main level categories.
4. Exact Match Keywords in All Key Indicators on a Page (ie-title, h1, body, url): It is certainly okay to have an exact match keyword in the title of the page, or an h1 tag at the top of the page or in the body content or even in the url. However, if you have the exact match keyword in all of these places on the same page, it may be a bit too much. I would recommend putting it in the title of the page and then utilize variations, longtail and synonyms in these other places. Don’t work every keyword you are targeting on the page into the title. Pick the most important ones and let the others show up in the body of content on the page.
5. Exact Match Keywords in Navigation:  This one is similar to the previous one. Using a head term in the main navigation, linking to the page that keyword is targeted on, is probably okay. However, a long tail keyword should not be used in the navigation because it makes for an ugly looking navigation and it is not natural (and Google will know what you are trying to do)
6. Use Rich Content (images, video, graphics, etc):  No one is going to want to consume a long page of “text only” content. Make your content “consumable”.  By this I mean, use images, video, graphics, social plugins, etc along with text content. In addition, within the “text’ content, use headers, bullets, bold, etc. This makes it much easier to consume the “text content” and thus makes your text content easier to consume and your page more valuable and appealing. Again, build the page for the end user, not the search engines. You can tweak things for search engines after it is built, but it never works if you build it for search engines and then try to tweak for the end user.
7. Content Placement:  Large blocks of text that are placed at the bottom of the page scream “content for seo purposes only”. That is the lazy way out. Take the time to really integrate the content into the page so that it is helpful and useful for the users. Find ways to integrate text within graphics (as html text of course) rather than just sentences and paragraphs. Think outside the box on this one.
8. Active Blog:  One way to truly become authentic is to become the thought leader in the industry. By actively publishing industry related topics and topics that interest your clients you will build a lot of credibility and promote an active community, which will help in being authentic. It is also best if you develop the blog posts rather than an internet marketing company. They can certainly help you get the most from it, but you are the expert in your industry so you and your company need to be the ones that are developing the blog posts.
9. Useful Online Tools / Mobile Apps:  We are quickly becoming a society of apps users. Developing apps or online tools that your clients can use for free is a great way to reach your customer base. It is also a great way to signal to search engines that you have useful things for those who are searching keywords in your industry.  Again, this shows some authenticity about your business as one that is providing useful content.
10. Rel=”Author”:  Perhaps one of the most powerful tools you can use right now to display some authenticity is the rel=”author” tag. In the process of becoming authentic you are going to be producing a lot of content. Using the rel=”author” attribute on that content will help attribute that content to you. This will help you to prove to Google that you are the author of the content that you develop. In addition, it will give your content a better appearance in the search results, causing a higher click through rate. Learn about how to apply rel=”author” to your content right here.

Links

1. Active Facebook:  To be genuine you need to be active on your Facebook account. Answer people’s questions, hold contest that will generate natural links to the site, and post often. It is also a good idea to post on topics relating to your industry that are not directly promotional to you in nature. When you interact with your community in a way that is sharing, news or discussion oriented, rather than “buy my stuff”, you will have a more authentic Facebook account and your community will be more receptive to the times that you do put out promotional content.
2. Active YouTube:  If applicable, have a YouTube account and be active in posting videos and responding to questions as well as commenting on other videos.  Contests that involve videos from clients are another great way to generate natural links to your site. Again, the concept is to make the YouTube account authentic through interaction.
3. Active Twitter:  Become the thought leader in your industry through your twitter account. Reply to others, become an active participant in discussions with other industry thought leaders, use hashtags to get your message to those who are interested in the industry but are not yet following you and make sure you post often enough to keep things active and add value to your followers. Again, stay away from every tweet being promotional. In fact, the promotional tweets going out should be small percentage wise.
4. How to Guides:  Everyone is turning to the internet to learn how to do just about anything. Put together some really nice “How To” guide’  if it is applicable in your industry. This adds a lot of value and will generate a lot of links long term to your site. It also gives you a whole new range of related keywords that you potentially will show up for.
5. Instructional Video’s:  Having some instructional videos on the site is a great way to add value to your clients and also generate back links naturally. This is very similar to the “How To” guide’s, except it is now on video.
6. Meme’s:  This is one of the more recent ways people are getting links and having fun at the same time (I know, an amazing concept). Having a Meme contest is a great way to generate interaction with your clients and get back links at the same time. If you are not sure what this is, simply take a look at this page and you will quickly understand.
7.  Images:  Photo contests are another great way to build community with your customers and generate back-links at the same time. In addition, images are a great way to increase the length of stay of  site visitor to your website.
8.  Google+ Profile:  Google loves their own social profile and they want it to have relevance so badly that they seem to be placing some extra weight on this one. Go figure. This is still fine though because there has been enough adoption of it that you can make it natural with customers that are using Google+.
9. Google Places: If you are a local, brick and mortar store you absolutely need to make sure that you are listed in Google places. However, don’t stop there. To be natural means you are going to list in all thing local that you can to make sure your customers can find you, so list in Yahoo local, City Search, etc.
10.  Industry Directories/ Forums/Blogs:  Being natural means that you are being a part of the community in your industry. The best way to do this is to make sure that you are listed and found in industry directories, participate in industry forums and comment on other industry blogs.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, your internet marketing company can help you with how to get the most out of the content that you are creating along with the interaction that you are getting involved in through social networks and the like. However, it is you, the business owner, the marketing director, webmaster, etc (and others that work for you) that are the experts in your industry and it is time for you to become involved in the marketing of your website through content development.

As for the internet marketing guru’s reading this, any other ideas that you would share on how to “BE Authentic”? Please share in the comments below.

PS… I just couldn’t resist a stab at all you iPhone lovers. I am a Droid guy myself. Feel free to tell me all about why iPhone’s are better than Droid phones in the comments section below.

“Is anybody here a Marine Biologist?”

For the many Seinfeld fans out there, that marine biologist line is one of the more popular quotes out there.  To refresh your memory George Costanza is once again pretending to be someone he really isn’t, namely his dream job…a marine biologist. When the problem of a very real beached whale comes up, George is in the hot seat. George is forced to go and try to save the whale even though he doesn’t really know what he is doing. It’s quite a funny episode.

So how does that relate to SEO?  Well, I found myself thinking that we, as SEO professionals, claim to be the experts even though sometimes we might not really know everything. So, when the client is as upset as an old man trying to return soup at a deli, we often need to approach the situation with the knowledge we do have, and try to figure it out some things as we go.

In the SEO world, which is constantly evolving, there is so much to learn that staying on top of all the changes is practically another full-time job. I am going to relate the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Steven R. Covey, to the world of SEO in an attempt to help lay down some principles that will help you. Like Mr. Costanza says, “When the sea is angry my friends”, you need to step up and figure it out.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective SEOs

#1 Be Proactive:

The success of an search engine marketing campaign is determined by you as the expert, but that success hinges directly on your attitude.   The best part about being human is that we have the ability to choose. You can choose to have success, maintain a good attitude or even give in to failure. Some things that happen are beyond your control.  But for the most part, it comes down to being proactive and taking responsibility for SEO decisions.  You can blame Google for algorithm changes (like the recent Penguin update), you can blame your client, you can blame your computer – you can even blame the weather if you want.

A proactive person will use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.”– (S. Covey)

There are a lot of things that will and can affect any campaign for good or bad, and the greatest power you have is to choose your response.  A proactive SEO uses proactive language (“ I can,” “I will,” “I prefer,” etc) instead of language like “I can’t,” “I have to,” “if only.”  Focus time and energy on things that you can control.  You really can’t control what Google does but you can control what kind of links you build, what keywords you choose and what content to optimize.

#2 Begin with the End in Mind:

What do you want to know about SEO in one, three, five, or even 20 years?  What exactly do you want to see at the end of a client’s campaign?  Is your SEO knowledge where you want it to be? This second point is based on imagination, having the ability to envision in your mind the results that you cannot, at present, see with your eyes.  Results and success can be created twice, first as a mental-creation — to really look at a client’s site and envision page-one rankings and success for their targeted keywords — and again when those envisioned results are fully realized. This also means beginning each day, task or project with a clear vision of the direction you want to take the client’s site.  You can flex those proactive muscles to make it happen.  Make a personal mission statement for each of the clients you are working on.  Writing your personal goals down will give you something physical to look at which can serve as a motivation and a reminder.

#3 Put First Things First:

With any SEO campaign, figuring out the correct strategy that will work for a particular SERP is critical to the success of that campaign.  There are many different strategies to choose from.  Each SEO team has a certain way they start each campaign. Typically you’ll start with keyword research and map keywords to particular URLs, then figure out the correct link building strategies for those keywords.  After covering the basics of an SEO campaign it’s important to figure out which particular link-building strategies need to have top priority. Going back to habit two, what can you accomplish first that fits into your personal mission statement?  Not every client is going to need the same style of link-building. The first two habits are more conceptual, but habit number 3 brings them together to start taking action. As you start turning your mission statement into a strategy, you’ll begin to realize what the “first things” are, what is of most worth, and how to prioritize tasks in your campaign.

#4 Think Win-Win:

Success doesn’t come from being nice or developing a quick-fix technique. This is more character-based, having to do with human interaction and collaboration.  This principle can be related to client interactions and even interactions within your team or company. The majority of people have been brought up to have a competitive thought process — win or lose.

With SEO we need to think in a more cooperative state, seeking mutual benefit in all human interactions.   Our relationships with our teams and client’s all need to be mutually beneficial. When a win-win deal can’t be achieved with a client, we may need to accept that making no deal at all is the best alternative. I am not saying you should act super nice to the point people are walking all over you, but an aggressive attitude often just won’t work. To be able to accomplish this you should try to possess these three character traits:

• Integrity: Stick to your true feelings and values. This can be related to life values, but also SEO feelings and values.
• Maturity: Express your ideas and feelings with courage, keeping in mind the ideas of your team and client.
• And finally believe that there is enough for everyone, basically be a team player.

#5 Seek First to Understand, Then to Be understood:

SEO is more than just sitting in front of a computer and being a nerd. Like in life, communication is one of the most important skills you can have.  As an SEO expert you probably seek first to be understood, you want to get your point across. Sometimes we have selective hearing once we start speaking with a new client before we actually listen to them about their business strategy and goals.  The problem with this can be that we SEOs need to listen to the client and our teams with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. Effective listening will solve a lot of problems with clients because it will allow you to see things from their perspective. So the main point is to first seek to understand the client, and only then try to be understood.

#6 Synergize:

Following the definition of the word two heads are better than one.   I also interpret this as trustful communication; you need to earn someone’s trust.  This Habit is all about creating cooperation and teamwork.  Working with a team or with another expert can and will bring far better results than what just one great SEO-mind can come up with. This does come with an exception: people need to be willing to work with others and be open to one another’s ideas.   It will make your campaign that much stronger if you can take differences and turn them into strengths.  Be willing to learn from others and accept the fact that you aren’t Albert Einstein.

#7 Sharpen the Saw

So this one sounds easy enough.  What saw can you sharpen right now that would provide the most benefit to your clients and team?  This doesn’t have to be directly related to work, maybe there are things outside of work that is affecting you.  What Covey means by “sharpen the saw” is to have balance in our lives (physical, emotional, mental, etc.).  And I do believe that balance in our lives outside of work will help us stay more focused in our careers so that we can provide better professional SEO service to others.  That being said, look for balance in your SEO campaign—on-page, off-page, customer relationships, and team balance.  You will get to a point in your career when you become really good at certain tasks, and this can cause complacency.  It’s important to keep yourself fresh so you can constantly hone your existing skills and add new knowledge, and adapt to changes in the industry.  Every day is a new opportunity to recharge and learn more.

What do you think of these habits? Do you have additional ones you would add? If so, leave them in the comments below.

Link building strategies are a part of any successful search engine optimization marketing campaign. With Goggle’s newest algorithm update, it’s more important than ever to go after natural links which can help drive traffic to your site and improve your rankings in the search engines.

Natural links are gained when people find your website, product or service useful, interesting, relevant and important and link to your site for those reasons. Companies with existing marketing, public relations and social media strategies already in place should be on the lookout for link building opportunities to maximize efforts.

Here are a few examples about how to gain natural links through strategies that your company might already be doing (or can be doing):

Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring an event allows your company to show support for a cause you believe in and get your brand in front of a niche- targeted audience. Events are a fun way to grow a mutually beneficial relationship.

In-House Events

At SEO.com we host WordPress meet-ups every month. The meet-ups are open to employees and non-employees, developers, designers, SEOs and anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress. Not only are our meet-ups a great place for our employees to network and learn from others who are in a similar industry, the meet-ups also benefit our company as a whole. When people are talking about the past or future meet-ups they naturally link to our site.  The same concept works with our free webinars in the way that being involved in an event will naturally make people talk about you.

Collaborative Events

Corporate sponsorship of a collaborative event (such as a marathon, street carnival, beer festival etc.) is also beneficial for building valuable relationships. Relevance is the main key to sponsoring these types of events. For example, my co-worker organized The Front Runner Century, a fun 62- mile bike ride in Salt Lake (in which I will be riding!) and one of their main sponsors is a bike shop in Salt Lake called Canyons Sports. Canyons sports will provide support vehicles and help with bike repairs during the ride and the Front Runner Century has linked to their site and suggested that as a great place for a bike tune before the event. (This paragraph is a perfect example about how talking about events and linking works).

An event organizer for any collaborative event should have no problem placing a link on the event’s website with information about your product or service and post about your company through their social media outlets. As an added link bonus you can write a guest post for the event’s blog about your sponsorship involvement and the passion you have about the event and link to pages on your website.

Be a Useful Source of Information

On-Site Optimization

Your company can set yourself apart as an expert by providing useful information about your industry, service or product while you naturally increase traffic to your site. This highly- informative article is a great example of how SEO.com is doing just that, and if you find this article interesting you will hopefully link to it, tweet it or share it. All shameless plugs aside, there are two main places on your website where you can provide useful information:

• On a Business Blog: On your business blog you can answer questions, promote conversation, write about timely topics, increase brand awareness and build natural internal links to other pages on your site.
• On a Q & A Page: A Q&A page is a simple way to update your website with new content and information. You’ll also be able to add internal links naturally to other pages that provide information pertaining to the question. And if you can answer great questions like how to build natural links, other websites will link to you.

Off-Site Tactics

Besides providing information on your own website there are ways to provide useful information else-where on the Internet:

• Quora: Quora is a question and answer site that allows people to find information from experts in electronics, economy, ecommerce, business and just about any other topic you can think of. Inc.com wrote a nice article about how to use Quora for Buisness.
• Social Media Outlets: Channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are all places that people go to look for information. For example, if I want to know the set list for a concert I recently went to, I might post a comment on Explosions in the Sky’s Facebook page. They probably wouldn’t get back to me since 95% of businesses don’t answer their Facebook wall posts. Although companies are not obligated to respond to wall posts, engagement is one of the main goals of social media and a simple response goes a long way. Companies have an opportunity to show they care and maybe even turn a fan into an ambassador.
• InboxQ is great little application that helps you find questions on Twitter that you can answer and help build your following.

By answering a question on a social media site, more times than not you will be able to gain a link, but more importantly you’ll gain a relationship.

Run a Contest

By running a sweepstakes, contest or giveaway on your site, you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website and social media sites, generate leads, engage customers, gain customer insight and increase brand awareness. If you come up with a great contest idea, bloggers will want to write about your contest and users will want to share your link through their social media outlets.

• Essay Contest: Create a contest for bloggers to write a creative essay about your product.
• Photo or Video Contest: Photo or video contest for most creative way to use your product. Post best photos and videos on your website and social media outlets.
• Name a Product Contest: Best name for a new product wins that product. Have users vote on their favorite idea. Once the winner is picked write a blog post featured around their idea.

Attend an Industry Tradeshow

Industry trade shows are a great place to network with other professionals in your industry. Before you head to the tradeshow, consider writing a report about new findings and statistics in your industry. You’ll not only be providing valuable information, you’ll also set yourself apart as an industry leader. Place the information on your website so the trade show and other companies can find your study easily and link to it. You can also speak on behalf of your business at the show in which the tradeshow will naturally link to your company’s site.

Use Public Relations Tactics

Press Releases

I wrote about SEO press releases in a previous post, which are also a great way to gain media exposure and coverage on new sites that choose to publish a press release that contains links. Press releases are one small aspect of public relations and way to reach out to the media.

Blogger Events

Another way to build relationships in your community through public relations efforts could be to run a blogger event. A company could invite a group of bloggers into their factory or office and teach them about their company’s eco-friendly practices.  The more positive things that a company does, the more opportunities they open up for people talking about them (and linking to them).

My co-worker Nicole Bullock will write a Part 2 about more great ways to naturally build links. I’d love to hear about how your company has used traditional marketing techniques and as a result gained great exposure and links.

ביום שני בשבוע שעבר התקיים כנס מקדמי אתרים בתל אביב, שניים מהדוברים הציגו טכניקות אופטימיזציה וכלים אוטומטיים שנמצאים בשימושם והמוכרים בשם: Black Hat. יום אחר כך (וכנראה כתגובה לדברים בכנס…) פרסם מאט קאטס פוסט בשני בלוגים מרכזיים של גוגל (http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/ ו-http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) ובו הצהיר על שינוי חדש באלגוריתם של מנוע החיפוש (אשר זכה מאוחר יותר לכינוי "אלגוריתם פינגווין"), שאמור לפגוע במיקומים של אתרים המשתמשים בטכניקות Black Hat שכאלה והקרויות בפי גוגל בפשטות: Web Spam. אבל ידוע לנו לא מהיום שגוגל נלחם בספאם, אז מה חדש הפעם? נבדוק קודם מזה בעצם Black Hat ו-Web Spam ואז ננסה לענות על השאלה: מה השתנה העדכון הזה מכל העדכונים?

לעומת טכניקות ה-Black Hat קיימות שיטות SEO הקרויות White Hat שהמכנה המשותף שלהן הוא פעילות שנועדה בראש ובראשונה לשפר את חוויית המשתמש (UX) של הגולש האנושי – מתוך מחשבה ששיפור האתר יביא גם לדירוגו גבוה יותר בתוצאות החיפוש. גם כאן הפעילות משלבת עבודת On Site ו-Off Site. פעילות באתר עצמו כוללת התאמה של כותרות (Titles, Headings) ממצות ורלוונטיות לתוכן הדף, סידור האתר במבנה היררכי שיקל על הדפדוף (Browsing), חיבור נכון בין דפי האתר באמצעות קישורים, שימוש בתגיות שונות שיאפשרו לבעלי לקויות ראייה לגלוש באתר באמצעות דפדפנים מיוחדים, תיקון של בעיות סריקה המונעות מדפים מסוימים להיסרק על יד מנועי חיפוש, טיפול בתוכן כפול באתר, שיפור מהירות הטעינה של דפים וכו'. פעילות White Hat מחוץ לאתר כוללת בעיקר השגת קישורים לאתר באמצעות העלאה של מאמרים רלוונטיים לאתרי מאמרים, פרסום פוסטים אורח (Guest Posts) בבלוגים מהתחום, החלפות קישורים עם אתרים המציעים תוכן משלים לתוכן האתר, מענה על שאלות בפורומים בתחום, שימוש ברשתות החברתיות העיקריות כדי להפיץ את תוכן האתר בתפוצה ויראלית רחבה וכו'.

מנועי החיפוש מנסים לנטר את פעילויות ה-Black Hat שנעשתה באתר ולהעניש את האתר שנמצאה בו פעילות כזו. ענישה של אתר באמצעות מחיקתו מהאינדקס של מנוע חיפוש לא נעשית מסיבות מוסריות אידיאולוגיות אלא בראש ובראשונה מטעמים פרקטיים. כיוון שפעילות Black Hat היא כאמור ניסיון להטעות את מנוע החיפוש כאילו אתר מציג תוכן מסוים או כאילו אתר זוכה בהצבעות אמון ברשת בעוד שלמעשה האתר הוא דל תוכן וזניח ברשת, הצגה שלו בראש תוצאות החיפוש תהיה פגיעה באמון שרוכשים הגולשים לאותו מנוע חיפוש. גולש שיחפש מידע על משכנתא למשל ותוצאות החיפוש של מנוע מסוים יציגו לו דפים דלי תוכן שמטרתם העיקרית היא בכלל להפנותו לאתר המוכר ערכות דיאטה, יאבד את האמון במנוע החיפוש הזה ויפנה למנוע שיציג לו תשובות שימושיות.

מנועי החיפוש הקימו חטיבות ענק הפועלות לנטר ולסנן פעילות Black Hat לא לגיטימית, והידועה ביניהן היא כמובן חטיבת האנטי ספאם של גוגל שבראשה עומד מאט קאטס. החטיבה קיימת מאז שגוגל הפכה למנוע חיפוש מוכר ובמשך שנותיה עסקה בפיתוח אלגוריתמים שנועדו לנקות את תוצאות החיפוש של גוגל מתוצאות לא ראויות (על כמה מהפטנטים בתחום הזה שרשמו במהלך השנים אפשר לקרוא במאמר הזה באתר SEO by the Sea). לרוב נראה שהעבודה של חטיבות האנטי ספאם היא סיזיפית – כל עדכון אלגוריתמי הביא את אנשי ה-Black Hat והספאם בכלל למצוא שיטות קידום חדשות. אבל נראה שהשנה האחרונה הביאה איתה בכל זאת כמה עדכונים שמקשים במיוחד על אתרי ספאם להתברג בראש התוצאות.

העדכון החשוב והידוע בשנה האחרונה הוא עדכון פנדה על שלל הגרסאות שלו, שמטרתו הייתה לסנן אתרים דלי תוכן בכלל ולא רק כאלה המיישמים שיטות Black Hat. עדכון פנדה פגע וממשיך לפגוע (בכל חודשיים-שלושה יוצאת גרסה חדשה של העדכון) באחוזים ניכרים מהאתרים בעולם. לפני כחודש הצהיר מאט קאטס בכנס SMX שמהנדסי גוגל עובדים זה כמה חודשים על עדכון אלגוריתמי הנועד לזהות אתרים שנראה שהשתמשו ב-Over Optimization ולבטל את היתרון היחסי שלכאורה ניסו להשיג מול אתרים שלא הקפידו במיוחד על SEO אבל השקיעו בתוכן מעניין. מהוOver Optimization? קשה להגדיר, אבל אפשר להשוות את זה ליופי טבעי הכולל פגמים פה ושם מול יופי פלסטי-מלאכותי מושלם לכאורה. למה אנשים יוצאים לעתים ממתיחת פנים אצל מנתח פלסטי יפים פחות משהיו? כי לפני הניתוח, היה – על אף הקמטים – משהו טבעי ואמיתי בפניהם, ואחרי הניתוח העור אמנם מתוח אבל הם נראים כמו בובות פלסטיק לא מוצלחות. אז גם אתרים שעברו Over Optimization נראים כמו אתרי פלסטיק לא מוצלחים – תוכן דפי האתר נקבע בדיוק על פי ביטויים בעלי נפחי חיפוש גדולים ב-Keyword Tool, הביטויים המרכזיים מופיעים בצפיפות "מושלמת" הן בכותרות, הן בתוכן ואפילו בתגי ה-ALT של התמונות, כל הקישורים הנכנסים יוצאים מטקסט עוגן חד-גוני על הביטויים המקודמים וכו' – בקיצור אתרים שעברו "מתיחת פנים" מוגזמת אצל מקדמי האתר. בשל כך Over Optimization נחשבת גם היא לספאם במשמעות הרחבה שלו כתוכן לא טבעי.

לכן, השינוי שעליו הצהיר קאטס בשבוע שעבר הוא המשך ישיר לפעילות האנטי ספאם האינטנסיבית של השנה האחרונה. אין בו למען האמת שום חידוש מבחינת השיטות הנחשבות בעיני גוגל לפרקטיקות Black Hat או Web Spam שחלקן הוזכרו כאן למעלה. נראה שהחידוש הוא ביכולות של גוגל לזהות פעילות כזו בצורה מהירה יותר. במשך שנים הצליחה אמנם גוגל לסנן אתרי ספאם מתוצאות החיפוש, אבל לעיתים הזיהוי ארך חודשים רבים. במהלך החודשים האלה אתרי הספאם שהשתמשו ב-Black Hat SEO דורגו גבוה בתוצאות ומשכו תנועה רבה שאת חלקה הצליחו להמיר להכנסות.

חשוב להזכיר כאן שהמערכת המדרגת אתרים בתוצאות החיפוש נפרדת מהמערכת המסננת מבין התוצאות את אתרי הספאם. הסיבה לצורת העבודה הזאת היא כנראה ההכרח של מנועי החיפוש להיות עדכניים ולהציג דפים חדשים ברשת במהירות האפשרית. אם כל דף חדש שהיה עולה היה צריך לעבור את פילטר הספאם לפני הופעתו בתוצאות החיפוש היינו יכולים לשכוח מתוצאות עדכניות ברשת. לכן דפים חדשים נסרקים במהירות ומדורגים מיד על פי פרמטרים שונים בדף עצמו (רלוונטיות התוכן למשל) ומחוץ לדף (כמות הקישורים לדף המהווים מעין המלצות לקריאת הדף). רק אחר כך הם נדרשים לעבור בפילטר הספאם שייקבע האם התוכן כתוב אכן בידי אדם או "מסובב" באמצעות מכונה והאם הקישורים אליהם אכן הושגו ממשתמשים אנושיים או נשתלו על ידי מכונה.

דרך הפעולה של הספאמרים הייתה אם כן כזאת: הקמה מהירה של אתר המוכר מוצר שנמכר היטב ברשת (או אתר המפנה במסגרת תכנית שותפים למשל לאתר אחר שמוכר את המוצר) וקידומו בצורה אגרסיבית ומהירה באמצעי Black Hat. לא פעם האתר היה מזנק לראש התוצאות בעקבות מאות אלפי קישורים למשל שהושגו באמצעות רובוטים כמו Xrummer או SENuke השותלים הודעות פיקטיביות בפורומים ובלוגים בעולם. פילטר האנטי ספאם של גוגל היה מגיע אליהם לבסוף ומוחק אותם מהתוצאות, אבל עד אז היו יכולים לעבור שבועות (ובשפות מסוימות ובתחומים מסוימים, אפילו חודשים!) שבהם גולשים נכנסו לאתרים האלה וחלקם כאמור אף קנו בהם מוצרים. ספאמרים מקימים אתרים חדשים כל הזמן ובדרך כלל עובדים עם מאות אתרים בכל רגע, ולכן מחיקה של אתר מסוים לא מעניינת אותם במיוחד – על כל אחד שיורד, אחר עולה…

לכן – על אף שאין על זה רמיזות בפוסט של קאטס שאומר בפירוש: "[…] we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results" – נראה שהשינוי הפעם הוא בעיקר שינוי של מהירות התגובה לספאם ברשת. ייתכן ש"חלונות הזהב" בין העלאת דף והסינון שלו שבהם הצליחו ספאמרים לשווק את המוצרים שלהם הולכים להצטמצם בזמן הקרוב. זאת ועוד, השינוי יחול באופן גורף על כל השפות בבת אחת, וישפיע על כ-3% עד 5% מכלל השאילתות ברשת (מספר עצום לנוכח כל שאילתות ה-Long Tail למיניהן). 'ויאגרה', 'דיאטה', 'הימורים' ו'סרטים להורדה' יהיו שם בטוח, מה עוד לדעתכם?

נושאים נוספים שאולי יעניינו אותך:

• 10 במרץ 2006 -- גוגל קונים את Writely
• 17 באפריל 2006 -- הרובוט של אדסנס מעדכן דפים באינדקס הרגיל
• 13 באפריל 2006 -- כלי חדש של מיקרוסופט לאיתור typo squatters
• 2 ביולי 2011 -- חדשות Google יוני 2011
• 21 ביוני 2010 -- הבדלים בין כלי מילות המפתח החדש לבין הישן

SMX Toronto was full of a lot of great information. I found that most sessions had at least one presentation that rivaled SMX Advanced conferences I’ve attended in the past, both in speaker quality and in content. In all sessions, every speaker hit it out of the park.

My favorite session was the day after the Penguin update hit, and amazingly there wasn’t a single mention of the webspam update, yet all the content was directly relevant. The session was the “Google Kitchen Sink Panel”, featuring speakers Duran Inci, Ken Dobell, Aaron Bradley, and Ryan Jones.

As a follow up to Greg’s post yesterday about the webspam update, I wanted to throw a quick bullet-point list of my takaways that can be implemented immediately by anyone.

Here is a summary, in short form, of the best takeaways that can help future-proof your site against updates like this Penguin update, or if you’ve already been “pecked” by the Penguin, this is your battle plan, with hand-picked points I took away with me from Toronto:

[Note: Up-to-date SEO professionals won't find anything new here, but I'm a big believer in checklists to hold ourselves to a broad set of best practices, which is why I hope this is universally useful to anyone. My favorite points are at the top and bolded.]

• 2012 SEO is about optimizing data, not keywords, it’s about making content accessible in a wide variety of formats across all devices. – Ken Dobell
• Develop “Power Content” – this is how it’s done:
• Create an update schedule for the top performing 100 pieces of content and update them every 90 days or less (includes home page). Every time you update it, make sure the “last modified” field in your XML sitemap is updated to mark the date of the change. This keeps content fresh. - Duran Inci
• 1000-2000 words in length, should be exceptional quality, use advanced research and present new or interesting ideas.
• Content does NOT equal “copy”. It needs to be RICH – use images, videos, formatting, headings, quotes, etc.
• Use this power content on main pages and category pages, if you have an ecommerce site.
• Get social sharing buttons on all your pages (in another session, Aaron Friedman cited a BrightEdge study stating that social sharing buttons make your content 7 times more visible)
• Remove all exact anchor text links, when possible. - Duran Inci
• Refresh the home page content often. - Duran Inci
• Fix all crawl errors.
• Edit and optimize all major page titles and descriptions so that they are not keyword stuffed, and so they are unique.
• Make sure the blog is in a subdirectory (not subdomain), and is updated regularly with high quality content.
• Create a mobile version of the website – Google cares about multiple devices now so make sure the site works on all of them.
• No link exchanges or sketchy link schemes.
• Create supplemental content for pages and products, like shopping guides. – Duran Inci
• Use a video sitemap, if applicable.
• This is my thought, but heck, even a geo sitemap, schema, and any other ‘bells and whistles’ we can throw on the site will help to differentiate.
• Focus on long-tail: Google’s average search query is over 4 words in length – also, broad (trophy) terms are not nearly as valuable in conversion.
• “A good SEO optimizes where Google is. A great SEO optimizes where Google is going to be.” – @RyanJones, paraphrasing the Great One.

Which of these methods have you already used in practice, and for how long? Is anything here new to you? Did you attend SMX Toronto and want to add anything to the list?

Let’s talk in the comments!

Last month at SXSW our good friend Matt Cutts announced that the web spam team was working on an over optimization algorithm update that would target and penalize sites that are “over-optimized” or “overly SEO’ed.”

Yesterday afternoon, Matt announced on the Webmaster Central Blog that they are officially rolling the update out “in the next few days” (we saw shake up in the SERPs starting around 8pm last night) and that the update will be focusing on cleaning up webspam and taking action against sites that violate their quality guidelines.

If you are in the online marketing space, you’ve been hearing about this all day today. Although it’s normal for Google to make tweaks to the algorithm after a major update improve upon the initial results, this is one of the worst updates since the Florida update in regards to ridding the search engine of webspam.

Early this morning, one of our guys sent me a link to the search query “make money online”. Here you can clearly see an example of what Google believes to be a better result for users.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Google is clearly favoring Blogspot (a Google property) for a very competitive term. Okay, maybe they earned that position, but wait a minute it gets worse… See the next screen shot.

Where’s the content? Clearly Google can’t think this is an authoritative site that provides value to the end user. If this is what you call webspam cleanup, we are all in for it! Thanks Google! (as of 4:52 Google has pulled this from their results after mass circulation on forums and social networks)

If you think this is an isolated example, let’s turn to Search Engine Land’s winners and losers that was published this afternoon.

So here’s our take on this. Clearly the update sucks and has negatively affected quite a few legitimate business out there. We realize that we are about 24 hours into this thing and Google can do one of three things, first, roll back the update, two, quickly make tweaks to help improve current results, or three, leave it as is and risk billions of dollars in paid advertising. Obviously the third is probably not an option for them.

In the meantime, it would be very smart for everyone to check their on page optimizations as referenced by Rand Fishkin on Friday of last week, and also check their off page link building efforts as referenced by our own Kevin Phelps on Monday. There are countless posts about how to properly publish content, attract quality backlinks, and convert your visitors into paying customers… so get busy!

In the last 12 months, nearly 70% of marketers redesigned their websites to modernize its appearance and bring it in line with their branding efforts or to optimize for better lead generation. Modern design elements and an intuitive navigation structure can have a large impact on how customers view your company, so it is extremely important that your website meet customer expectations and contribute to your SEO efforts.

Embed this image on your site:

<a href=" http://www.seo.com/blog/reasons-redesign-website-infographic"><img src="http://www.seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Reasons-To-Redesign-Your-Website-Infographic.png" alt="Reasons To Redesign Your Website - Infographic "width="100%" border="0" /></a>

When you begin a website redesign, always keep the search engines in mind. 62% of search users click a link on the first page of the search results. If they don’t immediately see what they need on that page, 41% of these users won’t bother going to page two. They will simply refine their keywords or switch search engines. 77% of search users still chose organic results over paid ads, so make sure that your website redesign can help propel you to the top of the rankings and appeals to your new customers.

If you’re wondering why this title sounds familiar, it’s because this blog post is meant to supplement Rand Fishkin’s recent Whiteboard Friday about 6 basic changes every SEO should make before Google’s new algorithm is rolled out. As always, Google is very vague about what changes they’re going to make which leaves us with many unknowns and what ifs.

What we do know is that the “over-optimization penalty” could be caused by manipulative on-site optimization techniques that bait the search engines, instead of serving the site user. Rand does a great job of outlining six main onsite elements you’re going to want to revise in the near future, which include: keyword stuffed title tags, spammy or manipulative internal linking, link filled footers with exact match anchor text keywords, keyword-filled content blocks, backlinks from penalty-likely sources (i.e. link networks, reciprocal linking, etc) and individual pages with content/keywords that only slightly vary. Rand covered the onsite, now let’s cover the offsite.

Six Red Flags to Look for in your Link Portfolio

To review these six flags, you’re going to want to look at your OpenSiteExplorer.org link data. Once your data has loaded, review the following steps, as they are the most used, manipulated and abused.

1. Exact-Match Anchor Text:
   Link building with exact match anchor text worked in the past, and it will certainly work in the future but to what extent is unknown. This element of link building certainly isn’t exempt from the term “everything in moderation”, but “moderation” is about to be redefined by Google. The ratio from exact match terms, to branded terms, to phrase match terms, to URL terms will probably be changing, so an auditing of your most used anchor text is needed.

   Take for example the image below of a certain review website’s most used anchor text on their homepage. Of the 335 links to this page, only 8 different anchor texts are being used. Even more extreme than that, 1 keyword takes up 66% of all anchor texts in all links. Every page is going to have several terms that are used more than most, but I wouldn’t want an individual keyword taking up more than 10-15% of all links. Having 5-7 keywords take up 60% of all links and the rest of the 40% completely unique variations would be (in my opinion) a solid strategy.

   

2. Linking from Questionable Sources:
   Look through your links and identify any links pages, foreign pages or adult websites. If you’ve hired a rogue SEO company instead of a reputable one, I wouldn’t be surprised to see links like this. If you do have an excessive amount of links like the ones mentioned, you may want to contact those webmasters to get them removed. Outweighing them with quality links (as we will discuss) will probably be the best plan.
3. Mass Article Networks/Directories:
   In the export of your OSE link data, filter the website title or URL column with a text filter of “article” or “directories”. By doing this, it will quickly give you a good idea of how many links you have that are most likely coming from article networks or general directories. Compare these links to the overall link count. Are half of your links from spammy sources? Two-thirds? Nearly all? This is going to be a major ranking factor as Google has already become aggressive enough to completely deindex BuildMyRank.com’s network and many others. Hopefully these two link building techniques haven’t been your priority.
   
4. Distribution of Links Across Pages:
   The key to link building is to keep everything natural. If there is anything that just doesn’t look organic from the search engines perspective, you’re doing it wrong. If you have a product website, make sure you’ve established the focus products, but don’t ignore others. The homepage is naturally going to have the most links, so if a category page two levels deep has 4x more links than any other page, something could look fishy. To look up your distribution of links, go to the “Top Pages” tab in OSE.
5. Consistent Domain/Page Authority of Backlinks:
   For the second time, everything in moderation! A normal looking backlink profile has high, medium and low quality links, so if you’re only building links on one end of the spectrum, this could trip a red flag with Google since it’s uncommon. View the “Inbound Links” tab to see the domain and page authority of these pages that are linking to your pages.
6. Frequency of Link Building:
   This audit requires the use of Majestic SEO’s backlink history checker, not OSE. The reason why the frequency of link building can be concerning is because if you build links in spurts, it can look unnatural. Websites that obtain ~50,000 links every month get them every day, not the first week of the month in a huge push. Again, make this look natural and perform continual link building. If you have the budget to drastically increase your SEO efforts, ease into it; don’t build hundreds of links overnight.

Link Building Methods That Caused This

As with everything in SEO, you need to adapt or die. If all you’re looking for is the quick win with the least amount of effort possible, you’re constantly going to be chasing rankings with elementary, spammy link build methods. Here are five link building techniques that need to be used as little as possible, if at all.

1. Article Spinning:
   {Pumping|Putting} {out|available} {50+|fifty+|50 plus} {articles|content articles} {from one|from just one} {original| authentic} {article|post } {doesn’t|does not} {mean|imply } {you’re|you are} {giving|offering} {unique content|original unique content} {towards the|for the} {search engines|search engine listings}.If you don’t understand what’s above, give yourself a pat on the back. If you do, delete your spinning software and keep reading.
2. Article Networks:
   This link building method may fix itself over time as Google deletes more article networks from their index, since they are obviously in violation of Google’s terms and conditions. Article networks aren’t the answer people, keep moving.
3. Links Pages:
   If you have a page in your navigation that says “Links”, get rid of it! And if you are searching Google for [INDUSTRY] “Links”, stop it and erase your history just for good measure.
4. Reciprocal Linking:
   This goes hand in hand with the links pages, but this method is just too easy to track and it’s time in the spotlight was up five years ago. This includes 3-way, 4-way and whatever other way you enjoy linking.
5. Link Purchasing:
   Sadly this technique isn’t going to go away since it works, but it’s just not worth the risk. Your money to buy these links is better spent on employees to work on the good stuff mentioned below. Yea, I’m talking to you JCPenney, we haven’t forgotten.

Link Building that Actually Helps your Link Portfolio

If what you found in the above link building audit is concerning, or if you’ve received a warning via Webmaster Tools, it’s time to start building links via quality content that people and robots alike will enjoy. Here are five of my favorites.

1. Guest Blog Posting:
   Whether you are requesting content or wanting to give yours away for a link, guest blog posting is a white-hat link strategy that serves more purposes than to boost your rankings, it’s actually good engaging content! MyBlogGuest.com, GuestBlogPoster.com and BloggerLinkUp.com are three excellent places to start building your brand, name and links.
2. Infographics/Viral Pieces:
   If you haven’t gotten on the infographic bandwagon, it’s finally time. Putting some thought, creativity and work into a quality infographic can land you on industry websites relatively easy. At the very least, it’s an easy way to get on graphic websites like InfographicHub.com and VisialLoop and typically, those types of websites will even spread your content on social sites.
3. Building Tools:
   This link building method is the hardest, but it can have incredible returns on links. By building a tool that people can embed on their websites, you save them time and give their users an answer to their problems. The easiest example that comes to mind is having a mortgage calculator that real estate agents can then embed on their personal sites. Brilliant, right?
4. Press Releases:
   This is one link building strategy that has been used and even abused for a long time, but it seems to be pretty easy for the search engines to sort through the nonsense. There are several press release distribution websites, just give it a quick search. Also, make sure what you are publishing in a press release is actually news worthy, not a minor change at your company or something completely made up.
5. Social Media:
   Who knew that talking to people and building relationships could turn into a link? To combine this method with guest blog posting, I’d check out Ethan Lyon’s post on how to use Twitter to obtain guest posts. I’ve personally used it and have loved it! Get involved with those that are within your industry and start being a resource of knowledge. Also, check out this Whiteboard Friday on the topic for more ideas.

Hopefully the OSE audit, the link building that needs to go and the link building that needs to stay has helped you identify what you need to change before Google lays down their rank-destroying hammer. Remember people, everything in moderation and let’s start using some of these white-hat link building methods.

I know there are other link building methods out there that work, and that the search engines will actually like. Don’t just close this tab in your browser, comment below and tweet @seocom while using the hashtag #WhiteHatTips and share your favorite white-hat link building method and I’ll credit your advice in this blog post.

Adwords הודיעו, שהחל מאמצע מאי יבוצע שינוי מהותי בהגדרת סוג ההתאמה המדויקת (Exact Match Keyword) והתאמה לביטוי (Phrase Match Keyword).

הודעת גוגל אדוורדס על השינויים בסוגי ההתאמה

השינוי יגרום לשגיאות כתיב, צורת יחיד-רבים, מילים נרדפות, ראשי תיבות, קיצורים מקובלים וכדומה, להפעיל את המודעות, גם במקרה שהשתמשתם בהתאמת Phrase או Exact (בדומה לשימוש באופציה של Broad Match Modifier או לזיהוי שגיאות באלגוריתם של התוצאות האורגניות).

כך לדוגמא, אם פרסמתם על ההתאמה המדויקת של הביטוי [קידום אתרים], המודעה תופעל גם על החיפוש "קידום אתר" (אך לא על "קידום אתרים בגוגל" לדוגמא). אם פרסמתם על [אינסטלטור], המודעה יכולה להופיע (בתיאוריה) גם על "שרברב" (כי זו מילה נרדפת).

באותה צורה, מי שיפרסם על "קידום אתרים" בהתאמה לביטוי, המודעה תופעל גם כשיחפשו "קדום אתרים בגוגל".

מתוך ההסבר של גוגל אדוורדס על השינוי בסוגי ההתאמה

משמעויות, שאלות

1. השינוי הזה יכול להשפיע על החלוקה לקבוצות מודעות ועל המודעות עצמן. חשוב לבדוק היטב את מילות המפתח (כולל ביטויים שנשללו) ואת סוגי ההתאמה שלהן על מנת לוודא שהמודעות לא יופעלו עבור ביטויים לא רצויים.
2. לפי גוגל צפויה עלייה של כ- 3% בהקלקות, פירוש הדבר עליה בעלויות הקמפיין. לפחות בתקופה הראשונה לאחר שהשינויים יכנסו לתוקף, חשוב לנטר את הפעילות הממומנת בצורה הרבה יותר מדוקדקת מבדרך כלל.
3. ניתן לבטל את אפשרויות ההתאמה החדשות לקמפיין ספציפי:  settings –> Keyword matching options –> Do not include close variants
4. מודעות מסוג Dynamic Keyword Insertion) DKI) – אם יש לנו מודעה שכוללת את שאילתת החיפוש של הגולש, עתה עלול להיווצר מצב שבו המודעה שתוצג תכלול שגיאת כתיב או הקלדה (אלא אם האופציה הזו תיחסם בדרך כלשהי על ידי האלגוריתם החדש). על מנת להימנע מכך ניתן לשלול ביטויים של שגיאות איות או הקלדה נפוצות, או לייצר קמפיין ייעודי ולבטל בו את אפשרויות ההתאמה החדשות.
5. שגיאות הקלדה ואיות – אחת הטקטיקות של מפרסמים היא יצירת קבוצות מודעות ייחודיות עבור שאילתות חיפוש שמכילות שגיאות הקלדה ושגיאות איות נפוצות. עם סוגי ההתאמה החדשים, לא יהיה לנו יותר צורך בקבוצות מודעות ספציפיות מהסוג הזה (שימו לב, יש לבטל את קבוצות המודעות האלו או לבטל את אפשרויות ההתאמה החדשות אחרת תיווצר כפילות).
   מצד אחד זה יתרון, כי בדרך כלל ציון האיכות בקבוצות מודעות מהסוג הזה היה נמוך. עם אפשרויות ההתאמה החדשות ציון האיכות יתבסס על המילה המקורית בהתאמה מדויקת או לביטוי. זה יכול להוות גם חיסרון כי פעמים רבות המחיר לקליק בקבוצות האלו הוא נמוך משמעותית (מרבית ההתנגדויות של מפרסמים למהלך מגיעה בדיוק מהנקודה הזה, למשל כאן).
6. Broad Match Modifier – ההתאמה הרחבה שכוללת שימוש באופרטור + יכולה לחפוף במקרים מסוימים לסוגי ההתאמות החדשות. +נעלי +טניס היא צורת התאמה שונה מהביטוי "נעלי טניס" בהתאמה החדשה שכוללת ביטויים קרובים, כיוון שהיא מאפשרת לא רק ביטויים קרובים, אלא גם שינוי בסדר המילים. לעומת זאת, +טניס ו- [טניס] יביאו, ככל הנראה, לכפילות.
7. מילות מפתח שליליות – בפרסומים של גוגל אין התייחסות להשפעה של ההתאמות החדשות על מילות מפתח שליליות. במאמר באתר stonetemple.com, שכולל שיחה עם מנהלת הפרויקט בגוגל, מצוין שהשינוי לא יחול על ביטויים שליליים. אם זה אכן פרסום מדויק, המשמעות היא, שבמקרה הזה ההתנהלות ממשיכה להיות כפי שהיתה עד כה, כלומר, יש לשלול  כל ואריציה של הביטוי בנפרד.
8. ובעברית? עבור מפרסמים בעברית, אי הוודאות לגבי ההשלכות של השינויים גדולה יותר. ראשית, לא ברור האם נראה מייד את השינויים בהתאמות (למרות שבשום מקום לא מצוין שהשינויים הם רק באנגלית). מעבר לזה, בעברית יש כמובן מקרים שלא מתאימים להגדרות של השינויים באנגלית. למשל, האם תוספת של מיליות יחס לביטוי מתפקדות על תקן של ביטויים קרובים ויפעילו את המודעות? ומה לגבי מילות יחס?

בקיצור, נחכה לאמצע מאי על מנת להבין את מלוא ההשפעה של השינוי בהתאמות. שווה לעקוב מקרוב. אנחנו נעדכן, כמובן.

נושאים נוספים שאולי יעניינו אותך:

• 15 בפברואר 2012 -- חדשות גוגל אדוורדס: sitelinks משופרים למודעות
• 28 באוקטובר 2010 -- שירות פרסום חדש בגוגל – גוגל בוסט (Google Boost)
• 15 במאי 2010 -- הרחבת מודעות באמצעות תוספי מקום
• 6 בינואר 2010 -- מבט לאחור: סקירת חידושי גוגל בשנת 2009
• 25 בנובמבר 2009 -- טכניקות מתקדמות לשיפור ציון האיכות

Frequently clients ask the question:

How do we effectively manage our social media?

I would like to propose 4 steadfast rules to managing your social media here.

1. Establish Yourself

Without a well branded and comprehensive social profile for your business on each network, you have not yet established yourself as a qualifying entity there.

In order to effectively establish your company on any social network ensure you have done the following:

• Claim Your Name: If at all possible your brand or business name should be the username of your account.
• Fill Out Every Detail: A comprehensive user profile can go a long way.
• Strong profiles assist in managing a reputation by achieving high rankings for branded queries
• Complete profiles help customers find a quick way to contact you with an issue rather than blasting their complaint publicly within the network
• Comprehensive profiles often contain a link or multiple links to your web property. These links do provide assistance to your SEO.
• Make It Unique: Make sure you have a branded profile photo that incorporates your logo into it. If the network allows for custom background images use it as a further opportunity in branding. Do everything you can to ensure your profile within the network is distinct from others.

2. Build Your Audience

Your social network is only as strong as the audience you acquire. Now, more than ever, that fact is true. With Google+ becoming such an integral part to how search results are delivered within social networks, SEO and the way we influence rankings are becoming socially anchored.

As you increase your audience, and ensure that audience is engaged with your content, you effectively increase the amount of  times your organic search results and click through rate will lift.

To build a strong audience I would recommend:

• Every time you log into the account find and follow at least 5 individuals. The more you show an interest in others the more they will reciprocate the same attention.
• Make sure each update or post you place within the network is something worth sharing.
• Don’t give up. The longer you interact and engage – the stronger and larger your audience will become.

3. Interact

If you have established a branded social account on the major networks and done nothing with them you are doing it wrong. Conversely, if you have got the account up and are blasting via a megaphone “ME, ME, ME, LOOK AT ME” you are also doing it all wrong. Nobody likes a wallflower and nobody likes a know-it-all.

The key to effective social media interaction is moderation in all things. It is perfectly fine to share your latest sale, a fun blog post just published or nearly anything else about your business—as long as it is moderately threaded within other updates and conversations as well.

Here are a few tips to help with keeping that moderation in place:

• Run keyword searches to find people taking about products similar to yours. Engage in a conversation with them about it.
• Locate those in the network with a lot of influence. Engage with them outside of the network to establish a quality relationship. Often this will lead to their mentioning you within the network.
• Follow other people, listen to what they have to say, share or retweet their updates.
• Share thoughts, ideas and fun anecdotes that have nothing to do with your products services.
• Randomly giveaway stuff.
• Share photos.

4. Monitor

Social media is an effective way to manage your customers experience. By watching and monitoring what others are saying about your brand you may gain insight into each customer touch point of your business that likely would not have been attained anywhere else.

Take that information and use it to your benefit. Often a the negative experiences customers have are a companies greatest opportunity to build trust with that individual and the public by handling it well and handling it generously.

The Search Query report in Google Webmaster tools is more important than ever, with the ominous (not provided) mask hiding 25%-40% of referring keyword traffic in Google Analytics. Google recently made WMT data available through an open source Python Library, making it easy to transfer that data straight into Google Docs or to your desktop, but setup and configuration isn’t easy for most.

To make it a little easier to access that data, I’ll walk you through the beginners steps to get search queries from Google Webmaster Tools using the Google Data Python Library on Windows. Expect this to take at least 15 minutes.

1. Download and install Python

First, download the Windows Installer from the Python.org official download page. At the time of writing, you’ll want the “Python 2.7.2 Windows Installer (Windows binary — does not include source).” If you have a 64-bit machine, make sure you select the “X86-64 Installer.” Once downloaded, open it up and follow the installation wizard. I recommend choosing default settings if you’re a beginner but feel free to customize if you know what you’re doing.

Installing with default settings will install Python in the C:\Python27 directory. You don’t need to touch anything in there yet.

2. Download and extract the Google Data APIs Client Library for Python.

Download the latest Google Data API Client Library in .zip or .tar.gz format (recommended if you use WinRar or 7zip), depending on your preference, and extract the contents to the C:\Python27 folder.

That will place the zipped “gdata-2.0.16″ folder in your C:\Python27 folder, as follows: C:\Python27\gdata-2.0.16\ , which should contain the following contents:

IMPORTANT: Now, you need to copy ALL the contents of the gdata-2.0.16 folder and paste them straight into the Python27 folder. You will probably get a popup saying that the README file already exists – you can  replace it, or skip it, you don’t really need either unless you enjoy the literary merits of README files.

Read more about the Google Data APIs Python Client Library.

3. Install the Google Data API Client Library

Now it gets fun – it’s time to fire up your Windows Command Prompt by finding it in your “Accessories” folder, or by pressing Windows+R, typing “cmd” and hitting “Enter.”

• Navigate into the C:\Python27 folder by typing “cd \Python27” without quotes.
  “cd” is short for “change directory,” which is how to move from one folder (directory) to another from the command line.
  
• Now that you’re in the Python27 folder, type “python ./setup.py install” without quotes, which will install the client library. If you start seeing hundreds of scrolling lines, you’ve done everything correctly to this point.
  
• (optional) Now you can start playing around with the sample scripts that came with the Data API Library – here is some information on how to do that.

4. Create a ‘wmt’ folder, and set up scripts

• Create a folder in the Python27 folder called wmt, so that it can be found at C:\Python27\wmt
• Download and place the downloader.py script in the new wmt folder (either copy the code from that page into a new file and save it as downloader.py, or right click the “view raw file” link on that page and save it to the folder).
• Download and place the example-create-spreadsheet.py script to the wmt folder, and right click the file and select “Edit with IDLE”

5. Open the command line and start getting Search Query reports

Now that C:\Python27\wmt\example-create-spreadsheet.py has been updated with your website of choice, along with your Webmaster Tools username and password, open your Command Line prompt, (make sure you’re still working in the C:\Python27 directory), and type in this command:

• python ./wmt/example-create-spreadsheet.py

After several seconds you will see a message that says “Spreadsheet now accessible online at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/….,” and you can access the CSV file at that URL or by logging into Google Docs!

That’s it!

If you would rather download it directly to your desktop rather than transferring the data to Google Docs, use example-simple-download.py instead.

6. Handy tip

The example-create-spreadsheet.py code provided for Google is great if you consistently pull search query data from only one website, but if you’re like me and you need to easily pull reports for multiple websites, I recommend downloading my modified version:  sq-report.py (right click->Save as…). Everything is the same except for the website field, which you can now call from the command line like so:

python ./wmt/sq-report.py http://www.seo.com/

Replace http://www.seo.com/ with any website your Webmaster Tools account has access to – and don’t forget to edit the sq-report.py file with your username and password.

Now you can easily pull a report for any site you have access to, without editing the Python file every time!

7. Conclusion

I will follow up with instructions for automating this every month for compiling historic data, as Google Webmaster Tools only provides the past 30 days of data.

I hope this is helpful for the average Windows user who may find it trick to install and work with Python code, let me know how it goes and if you run into problems, contact me on Twitter or in the comments so I can help you troubleshoot.

SEO.com was recently invited to take part in a unique event featuring Daymond John from the popular show ‘Shark Tank’ and hundreds of high school students from around the country. Mr. McCauley, an amazing business teacher from Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah, started tweeting Daymond over a year ago to ask the business celebrity to make a guest appearance via Skype for his Entrepreneurship students.

As busy schedules go, nearly a year later, McCauley and Daymond arranged a hangout on Google+ but took it a step further by inviting hundreds of high school business classes to participate. The team at Google+ graciously came through at the last minute to extend the normal 10 person hangout limit so students around the country could participate.

The 45 minute Q&A session between the successful entrepreneur and aspiring high school students left us with several valuable lessons:

1. Fail, Fail and Fail Again

Unknown to many, Daymond John closed down his clothing brand, FUBU, three times in the early days in the early 1990′s. FUBU later went on to become a major pop culture brand and do millions in sales each year. This story is not uncommon to some of the most famous successful brands and entrepreneurs.

From a recent article on FastMoney.com:

Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that it had “catastrophically small numbers” in its first year after launch and that if he had listened to popular startup advice he probably would have quit.

James Dyson failed in 5,126 prototypes before perfecting his revolutionary vacuum cleaner. Groupon was put on life support and nearly shut down at one point in its meteoric rise.

The ubiquitous WD-40 lubricant got its name because the first 39 experiments failed. WD-40 literally stands for “Water Displacement–40th Attempt.” If they gave up early on like most of us do, we’d sure have a lot more squeaky hinges in the world.

The key to Daymond succeeding after closing his business multiple times was that he kept hustling and kept selling. Daymond recounted the story about him approaching rappers to wear his shirts in their videos and then he’d take the shirt back and go to the next video set. He did this over and over until 3 years later his brand was major success but very few people knew that for many years, he only had 10 shirts.

2. Know Your Numbers, Know Your Business

To an investor like Daymond, nothing is a quicker turn off than being pitched by an entrepreneur who doesn’t know his numbers. If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, you’ve likely seen the Sharks tear apart entrepreneurs who come unprepared or dodge the important questions.

Knowing your numbers applies at many levels. As an entrepreneur seeking investment, you should obviously be prepared with numbers regarding sales, pending orders, profit, expenses and market opportunity. The same principle applies as an employee of a company or as an agency offering consulting. Knowing your key numbers and key performance indicators is a valuable trait whether you work at one of the greatest SEO companies in the world or are in the early stages of launching one of the next greatest brands.

3. Analysis Paralysis & Common Sense

One thing that really struck me while listening to Daymond was how much gut feel and common sense play into his businesses and investments versus raw analysis of data and numbers. As mentioned earlier, you need to know your numbers but Daymond recommends avoiding analysis paralysis or over analyzing a situation. Sometimes you just need to dig in and get your hands dirty to learn or determine if an opportunity is good.

Daymond also discussed how the Sharks heavily consider the person when they invest, not just the business opportunity. They know that a given business may not work out but putting your money behind a hard working, smart entrepreneur is the safest bet they can make. Daymond, in particular, looks for a “hungry person with a great idea and a lot of desire”.

4. Born to be an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship and innovation is something that’s been on many people’s mind since the passing of Steve Jobs. As one of the world’s most innovative thinkers, Steve Jobs lived Apple’s slogan of “Think Different”.

The following quote from an inspiring video of Steve Jobs gives a very revealing look into his mind and how he sees the world of business and innovation.

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is to just live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls to much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money but that’s a very limited life.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you … the minute that you understand that you can poke life … that you can change it, you can mold it … that’s maybe the most important thing. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Daymond John echoed these feelings by Steve Jobs during his Google hangout when answering a student’s question about when he knew he was going to be an entrepreneur. Daymond stated that he believes were were all born thinking like entrepreneurs but society teaches us not to be entrepreneurs by correcting us at an early age and telling us how things are supposed to be or how we’ll embarrass ourselves by failing.

5. The Future of Education is Bright

Mr. McCauley of Davis High School is leading the way by utilizing technology and social media to go beyond the text book and provide his students with a cutting edge education. Social media platforms have allowed him and others to reach out and get in front of celebrities and industry experts like Daymond John. With simple and innovative technology like Google+ hangouts, these celebrities and experts can now quickly and effortlessly communicate with students, fans and anyone else interested.

I’d like to commend Mr. McCauley for going above and beyond for his students and hundreds of others that were able to tune in. I also have much respect for Daymond John who willingly took an hour out of his busy schedule to give back to students who regularly tune in to Shark Tank and look to Daymond and others for advice as they become the next wave of entrepreneurs and Sharks.

The Full Daymond John Google+ Hangout

For the past few months, the SEO world has been buzzing about two major developments. First there is the comment that Matt Cutts made at South by Southwest about a new over-optimization penalty. While that potential hammer is looming over the heads of many sites, Google Webmaster Tools’ warnings are already taking the SEO world by storm. Barry Schwartz wrote a post about this on March 5 at Search Engine Land. He started out by saying

“At SMX West last week Tiffany Oberoi from Google shared that Google has sent over 700,000 messages to webmasters via Google Webmaster Tools in January and February 2012. That is more than the total number of messages Google sent in 2011.”

This influx of messages seems to indicate that Google found some way to scale their messaging system, but there is no indication as to what percentage of these messages is manual vs. automatic. One of the notifications that seems to be getting sent out the most frequently is Google’s unnatural link warning:

“We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. 

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.”

So now that an “unnatural links” warning has been issued what is a webmaster to do? For the first time, webmasters and SEOs are getting warned before a penalty or a drop in ranking occurs. In the situation where a warning has been sent out but rankings have not dropped, there are a few basic strategies a webmaster might employ:

• Change the way you are link building moving forward to avoid getting penalized
• Identify potentially bad links and send a reconsideration letter to Google to show you are trying to remove them
• Ignore the warning, continue poor link building practices, and know you’re working against Google’s next algorithm update

As the last option is one that few people would ever consider, I want to go into greater detail on the first two strategies and compare potential thoughts on the pros and cons of each. If you had the same resources to dedicate to each of these two solutions, which would give you a better outcome?

Whether or not you’re innocent of the links that got the warning sent, there are reasons for choosing both options. Here are some questions you might be asking yourself along with potential answers for each strategy:

What is the best use of time moving forward after receiving this warning?

What should I do if I feel this is a manual warning?

What should I do if I feel this is an automatic warning?

What should I do if I was guilty of the links?

 What should I do if I was not guilty of the links?

Regardless of how I choose, Google will see a change in the number of new links being built or the overall number of links. Which is better? 

Whether you choose to  submit a reconsideration letter or not, one of two things is going to happen: your rankings stay the same or your rankings will drop. Google will think you were gaming the system or Google will figure those links were out of your control. It could end up good or bad for you either way you go.

Google has not given this much clarity into what they are doing, so the search engine optimization marketing world is in somewhat new territory.

These warnings are just one more reason why you need to have your Google Webmaster Tools set up properly and verified. If you don’t have a verified webmaster tools account for any site you run, do so as soon as possible.

If you’ve received this warning recently, your situation is a bit like one of those “Chose Your Own Adventure” books—Which door will you choose?

What happens when you gather 12 nervous students, a panel of judges, a customer with high expectations, and a room full of spectators? You get the final round of the Marriott School Sales Idol competition, held at the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Students in the Strategic Account Management class at the Marriott School of Management gathered on Thursday to put their knowledge and skills to the test, and met with a real customer to submit a proposal for services.

Each year the students are taught sales techniques in a curriculum based on the training program of Griffin Hill. This Utah-based company brings employees through a sales and customer service coaching program which focuses on integrity, and that’s exactly what sets this Strategic Account Management class apart from other classes in the same field.

“While this course is grounded in knowledge and sciences of human performance, psychology and marketing we are not satisfied in having students memorize and regurgitate theory.  Instead this course takes the student on a transformative journey where they apply the principles, processes, and skills of professional selling and account management through rigorous role-plays and case studies,”says Dr. Sterling Bone, a marketing professor who teaches this Strategic Account Management class at BYU.

Students in the class learn a variety of integrity-based sales techniques, from “case open” to “fulfillment and follow-up”. During the final round of this year’s competition, the 12 participants focused on the case open and needs audit portion of the sales cycle, and I was asked to participate as the “customer”. Since I’m a Manager here at SEO.com, I don’t necessarily need the services they were qualifying me for. I handle the marketing and SEO for my site in my spare time. However, I did learn a lot about my own needs, and the students had me thinking about my website in ways that I never would have considered before. That’s the great thing about working with an SEO firm- you have a second set of eyes looking at your web property, and collaboration can lead to great successes down the road. Speaking of that, why not request a free proposal from SEO.com, and see if an evaluation of your site’s online presence could help you reach your goals?

I met with 12 students individually (in front of the spectators, judges and Dr. Bone), and they asked me questions about the marketing needs of my Utah news site NewsUtah.org. They were each given about 8 minutes to gather all the information about my website that they needed, and made a promise to follow up with me in the near future to deliver a proposal of search engine marketing services they feel would help me reach the goals I’ve laid out for my website.

“Once the Sales Idol [competiton] rolls around the students have put in many hours of preparation, training, and role-playing with the Griffin Hill Integrity Sales System,” Dr. Bone points out.

After the interviews were finished, the judges and I left the classroom to evaluate the students on a number of criteria, including adherence to the sales processes they learned throughout the course. “I think the talent coming out of BYU’s business school is phenomenal,” said Dale Nguyen, Sales Manager for SEO.com. “The students were fantastic, and really used those skills developed through the Griffin Hill system.” Often these students are considered for sales positions with local companies, and Nguyen says many of the students in the competition would be great assets to both the sales and fulfillment departments at SEO.com.

Contestants were critiqued on their ability to speak to the specific needs of the business, if they were well versed in the online search marketing industry, if they could position the product based on real-time information, and if they were prepared to combat competitive objections.

Dr. Bone says that in the six years of the Marriott School Sales Idol competition, some students have even landed jobs with the companies like Kraft Foods, Ecolab, Durham Brands and SEO.com.

There were two classes in the final round, and the winner from each class received a trophy and a gift card. Second place winners also received a gift card. Not to mention the respect of their peers, and the cumulative knowledge and practical experience that they have gained throughout the year.

So, what’s in store for these students?

Keep your eyes on your favorite business magazine. You may see them on the cover in the future.

In light of the recent announcement by Matt Cutts at SXSW there has been a lot of speculation in the SEO industry as to what “over-optimization” entails.  Because this announcement has been vague, it forces many SEOs to rethink and reassess their current strategy.

More than ever, SEOs could learn a thing or two from TED; its tagline alone encapsulates what SEOs should embrace in one simple phrase, “Ideas Worth Spreading”.  As I think about the industry and the way it’s headed, this concept is more true than ever.  Content, products, services and ideas that are worthy of sharing are going to define successful business in terms of SEO and marketing.

There are many things I’ve learned from TED over the years, and I urge you to implement a few things that will strengthen your search marketing campaigns.  Before we get into the three things I’ve learned from TED, here are a few metrics from Open Site Explorer. This site has been able to build a strong domain authority with hundreds of thousands of links pointing to it, not to mention the number of shares it has across Facebook, Twitter and Google.

1. Content

The main thing that makes TED a success is the content across the site. Anyone that watches or listens to the talks can vouch for this. If marketers could create content, products or services that people are excited about, it would be shared and linked to naturally.  Rather than putting your effort into creating content for the sake of creating content, now is the time to rethink what content is, and understand how it benefits and interests your customer base. TED does an excellent job of this as they have thousands of videos that are interesting and engaging which makes it sharable and linkable.

Blendtec is a great example of a company that has been able to implement a great content strategy.  With a very small budget, it was able to create a viral ad campaign to showcase its blenders’ durability in the “Will It Blend” series.

2. Sharability

Once great content is created, it’s essential to make it easy to share.  An example of this on TED can be seen here.

As you are promoting content or products on your site, it is important to make it simple for people to share. This will increase the likelihood of it being shared across social networks, therefore increasing the visibility of your product/content and your brand. Whether it’s an image, advertisement or just a great guide you’ve created for your consumers, make it easy for them to share across their social networks; this will increase the likelihood of it being linked to.

3. Community

In the TED community for every video that is posted, every site visitor has the ability to easily join discussions and add comments to the videos.  This adds another element of engagement to the content they have on the site.

The stronger the sense of community a company creates for itself, the more engaged and attached its consumers will feel toward its brand.  The fact that some of these site visitors have made a contribution to the site makes them that much more attached and increases loyalty to the brand.  Yelp demonstrates this well, it has been able to create a community around food and local businesses.  It has created a platform that facilitates discussion between businesses and consumers. Many people contribute to Yelp and use it as a reputable source of information.

Through these strategic moves, TED has been able to build a strong relationship with their online viewers; therefore, increasing the strength of its brand.  This type of strategy will help companies sustain themselves in their industries.  Ultimately, links can help you gain rankings and traffic, but for a long-term strategy, it’s essential to build a strong brand for your business, as there is no algorithm update that can ruin your brand.

I am excited for this update as it is going to force SEOs to think with consumers in mind.  This will help SEOs be more reputable in the marketing industry. It also forces us to be more creative, and put more focus on social networks, user experiences and consumer relationships.

What are your thoughts in regards to Google’s over-optimization audit and how it’s going to affect SEOs? Would love to see your comments below.

As most everyone knows, we have recently redesigned our website, which is what spurred the topic of the webinar we held last Thursday morning. As promised at the end of the webinar, here is the blog post summarizing what I spoke about, hopefully in digestible pieces that you can take and create action around.

In the webinar I covered three different topics. First, when you should redesign your website. Second, why you should redesign your website. Third, how you should redesign your website. As you will see in this post, I spent the majority of my time talking about the how. So let’s jump in.

When To Redesign Your Website

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to how often you should redesign your website. HubSpot did some research and published that 39% of marketers feel that a company should redesign their website every 13-24 months. They also found that another 29% of marketers feel that a website should be redesigned every 25-36 months. So to sum it up, a large percent of marketers (68%) feel that a website should be redesigned every 1-3 years.

Why Redesign Your Website

There are many reasons why companies would want to redesign their website. Some of the more popular reasons are as follows:

• Companies want a website that is more user friendly
• Companies want to look more professional
• Companies want to stay in check with their competitors
• Companies want to improve branding or positioning
• Companies want more freedom to customize their website without all the hassle
• Companies want to better optimize for lead generation or sales

How To Redesign Your Website

As I said above, the majority of my time during the webinar was focused around the how. To get started, you should be designing your website for users first and then the search engines.

Structure For Users

Web design focused around usability generally has the following characteristics:

• Descriptive navigation
• Strong internal linking
• Content that answers your customers questions
• Content that helps solve your customers problems
• Visible calls to action that helps guide your customers to their solution

Also, a website focused on usability typically generates a lot of content. When writing your content, you should remember to follow these best practices:

• Get to the point quickly
• Cut out unnecessary information
• Use easy to understand, shorter, and common words and phrases
• Avoid long paragraphs
• Use headings to break up content
• Put the most important or newsworthy content toward the top of the page or post
• Use bulleted lists

After you have your site structure and content ironed out, you need to make sure that you have built in social awareness and social sharing features to help your users engage with you and your content.

I am a huge advocate of having the major social profiles that you participate on front and center on your website. When we redesigned, we built our profiles into a slider that you can see to the very right of each page. This helps your users know where you “hang out” online and encourages them to come “hang out” with you.

I, along with every other search marketer are huge advocates of making your content super easy to share. I like to doing this by  having your major social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of all content you want shared. The major social sharing buttons are Twitter, Facebook, Google +, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest. Since I’m on the topic of Pinterest, you should check out this three part series we wrote about a pretty robust Pinterest strategy.

Structure for Crawlers

Now that your site is easy to navigate, has great content that helps people, and is easy to share, we need to focus on site structure to ensure that the search engine crawlers can access your site, crawl it, associate your content with keyword themes, and then rank your site accordingly.

Whenever designing or redesigning a website, I always recommend using WordPress as your CMS. WordPress right out of the box is pretty search engine friendly, but by adding plugins to your WordPress install, you can supercharge your SEO efforts. Some of the WordPress plugins that I personally use to help with my SEO are as follows:

• WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Yet Another Related Posts
• Google Site Verification
• Google XML Sitemap
• Redirection
• SEO Smart Links
• SEO Firendly Images
• WP Super Cache
• Broken Link Checker

There are many other SEO plugins that are really good, but these are my core plugins.While we are talking about SEO plugins, you should probably check out this great post by Claye where he talks about top three SEO plugins.

Attribution

When building your website, it is important to build in tools to help you attribute your successes to particular marketing efforts, either online or offline. I like to do this through installing an Analytics package and call tracking. I always use Google Analytics and tend to lean toward Century Interactive when choosing a call tracking provider.

When setting up your Google Analytics, please remember to use the most up to date code and also make sure to set up lead tracking, event tracking, ecommerce tracking or whatever type of tracking you need to track conversions.

Navigation

There’s not much to say here other than don’t code your navigation in flash or javascript. Yes, the search engines crawlers are getting more sophisticated and are getting better at reading both of these, however, I never leave it up to chance and prefer to code my navigation in HTML so that the crawlers can crawl my whole site and improve indexation.

URL Structure

The biggest mistake that companies make when determining their URL structure is generating URLs that are not easy to understand for users or the search engines. When structuring your URLs, remember to keep them short, descriptive, use a keyword, and absolutely, positively, avoid parameters in your URLs. Whenever possibly, I always recommend using semantic URL structures like www.somecoolurl.com/really-good-food/ vs www.somecoolurl.com/?reallygoodfood786.html

Internal Linking

As with having a solid navigation, internal linking helps improve crawlability and indexation, helps your users navigate to other relevant pages, and helps the crawlers understand what the linked to content might be about.

Schema Markup & Authorship Markup

Schema & Authorship markup are fairly new pieces of the puzzle when building and optimizing websites. In short, schemas are a collection of HTML tags that web designers can use to markup their content in ways that are recognized by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex). Basically, these tags tell the engines exactly what your content is about, instead of letting them interpret it themselves. Some of the more popular schemas are products, locations, events, people, and reviews. Adding schemas to your website does require some additional code to your site, you can learn more about it here.

Authorship markup, aka the really cool pictures you are seeing attached to search results (see image below) is how Google describes “a way to connect authors with their content on the web”. As with schema, it does require some additional code on your site, but it’s pretty easy to implement, you can learn how by clicking here.

In conclusion, a typical website redesign should probably happen about every one to three years. When redesigning, marketing professionals redesign to improve usability, increase professionalism, improve branding, make customization or updates more easily, and help with lead generation. Also, when redesigning you should make sure that your new website is first and foremost, user friendly and then worry about the SEO friendliness of the site.

If you have any questions or would like to add to the conversation, please do so below.

In the meantime, take a look at the slide presentation from our recent webinar on this subject.

Images have been published on web pages for nearly 20 years but the search engines have continued to give greater placement to images on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This may come from the fact that Facebook receives nearly 250 million picture uploads daily and Pinterest reaches 50 million blog post mentions.

Take these two examples from Bing and Google respectively:

As you can see below, these image blocks are listed among web page listings, paid ads, navigational links, shopping listings, maps listings to local ATV shops, and other media formats. When the search engines correctly anticipate user intent, by including images, these draw the users eye; and their clicks by nearly 200%.

So how do you give yourself the best probability of ranking images when the search engines decide to display images within the SERPs? Like all things in search engine optimization, there are several factors that play into your rankability. It’s more difficult to encourage the search engines to include image blocks because user intent plays more into this than can be influenced from basic image optimization. Images that attract many links and/or embeds, or pins on Pinterest, as well as those displayed on highly credible sites have a great ranking advantage.

Image SEO Ranking Factors

• Keywords in filename
• Keywords in alt text
• Keywords in URL of image
• Keywords in content near image
• Strength of page(s) containing image
• Links
• Embeds (republished images)
• +1/Shares/Tweets/Embeds
• Color & image size
• CTR from SERPs
• Category & Tags
• Speed & consistency of interest
• Image sitemaps

Google allows for image sitemaps to be uploaded. It’s still unclear whether Bing has this ability today but they’re working on video sitemaps according to Bing Webmaster Tools. By submitting your images through a sitemap, you’re telling the search engines exactly where to find your images as well as include meta data about each image as you can see below from Google.

Types of Images

Below is a short list of some different image types but there are countless images that attract interest including promotional materials and humorous memes.

• Products
• Resources
• Statistics
• Leaks
• Cross promotions
• Infographics
• Events
• Screenshot (demo)

Obviously, product images have been online for nearly 20 years but most are not optimized in a way that gives the online store any visibility. Attributes most lacking on product images include photo quality, size, suggestions to link/share/embed, captions, promotional messaging, uniqueness, and images that are interesting.

Other popular images of late include statistics and infographics like the following example we posted on Small Business and Marketing.

As you can see, there is a lot to take into consideration when it comes to getting your images to rank in the search engines. Do you have additional tips, suggestions? Leave them in the comments section below.

Also, feel free to download my slides on Image SEO Tips.

I was thrilled to be asked to captain a team, with my friend Scott, by Chevrolet’s PR team to be a part of the #ChevySXSW Road Trip. We were asked to drive to SXSW (South by Southwest) in Austin Texas along with other teams from all across the country.

Our task: Drive 1400 miles to Austin Texas from Salt Lake City in a Chevy Traverse (provided by Chevy), and make 3 stops along the way to elementary schools to speak to kids about what drives them, what motivates them, and what they want to be when they grow up. We also talked a little about social media marketing and the SXSW event. In addition, we were to tweet, and blog along the way in hopes of raising awareness for each teacher’s class, and hopefully raise some money along the way.

Stop #1: Angela Patterson – James E. Moss Elementary – Kindergarten – Salt Lake City, UT

Unfortunately our first stop in Salt Lake City was cancelled, so we drove on to Albuquerque, New Mexico for our official first stop.

Stop #2: Patricia Kincaid – Pajarito Elementary –  3^rd Grade Albuquerque, NM

While the drive here was quite exhausting (drove straight through on day 1), we had a lot of fun along the way, and thankfully a day of rest before our visit to the school.

This class absolutely made our trip worth it!  We scheduled a 30 minute visit, and it turned into almost 2 hours with these amazing kids. The class was so awesome they did not want us to leave, at one point asking how many days will we be there, and if we will come back on our way home.

We hung out and talked with each of the kids, did some assignments with them, and Scott even read them a story. Towards the end we passed out some SEO.com pens and stickers to the kids, and next thing we know we are signing autographs for each and every one of them… what a hoot!

All the kids created a bunch of art and posters that we took to Austin to put up and display. Unfortunately, after we handed it all off to the Chevy PR team, we never did find where it was all displayed. But the effort the kids put into it all was just awesome.

In the video below, you can get a taste of what this class is all about. All of our teachers signed up with Adopt-a-Classroom, and Patricia’s class is really in need of some help. Some of these kids live off in the flats around the school, in mobile homes with no running water… yet they make it to class every day, and are extremely positive, as well as very smart and outgoing! The big focus we had when speaking with them was in line with the schools efforts to decrease bullying. Check out the video!

Immediately after the class visit, we headed off to Austin. We hoped to stay someplace along the way, but as midnight rolled on, we could not find any rooms available… assuming we could find a town to begin with. So we pushed on, drove all night arriving in Austin at 6:30AM. After some breakfast (at Waffle House – my new favorite place EVER) we finally got our hotel room just in time to freshen up for the 2PM class visit in Austin

Stop #3: Minda Anderson – Becker Elementary – 1st Grade – Austin, TX

What a great teacher and students here in Austin. This is a bi-lingual class, so they learn both in English and Spanish.  Our visit here was only about 30 minutes, but we got to talk to the kids in a group setting, asking what they wanted to be when they grew up etc. We also got to meet with the kids in groups as they showed us some of the projects they were working on.  What a very bright bunch of kids. The teacher is doing a great job with the resources she has, but could still use some help.

Final Stop: The #ChevySXSW Welcome Party

That evening, after 36 hours of no sleep, we attended the Chevy Road Trip party. They created drinks at the bar for each team that drove in, had some great food… and over all, capped off the awesome journey to Austin in style.  The other teams were awesome, and it was fun to share the stories about each other’s trips. They even had past teams at the event to meet and hang out with. I hope to attend again next year as alumni.

In my next post, I will discuss my actual SXSW interactive experience, and share some tips of what I would do next time I go. SXSW is an amazing experience, but can be quite overwhelming… so stay tuned.

Until next time…

Doc

PS… you can learn more about the trip and each of the classes by visiting our #SLCSXSW website and click on Adopt Our Classrooms.

Paid links are fairly taboo to discuss in the world of search engine optimization marketing. More often than not, they are dismissed immediately as black hat and evil, and this is definitely not always the case. What I propose is that you can buy plenty of great links if you try to help people! We are going to tread through the awesome world of how to buy links and help people with varying budgets and how to find those linking opportunities.

1. Contests

Budget: $5-$2,000

How to Get Links: The point of the contest is to buy something, tell people about it, and give it away. People get excited about free stuff so you can give away a coffee machine or the latest iPad; someone wants it, and they will link for it. The most common method to run an online contest is through your company’s blog or social media. Create a page on your company’s site and find the most commonly used social media marketing platform within your industry. Design the contest to get the most valuable asset your community has: their content. Have entrants create a blog post on their own site, post comments, share on Facebook, or tweet/retweet that link to the contest page on your site. Take advantage of great minds available to you and give something back to your fans.

Finding the Prospects: Social media users and bloggers are your best prospects for contests. For Twitter, use hashtags in your tweets like #Giveaway or #Contest to capture people along with keywords about what is being given away. On Facebook, incentivizing people to share your page can get more attention and be scalable. When finding bloggers, contact bloggers that you already know to spread the word and take advantage of their communities. Once you have exhausted those resources, head to Google and plug in some queries like “keyword + intitle:mommy + inurl:blog.”

Bonus: Because you already found some bloggers online, ask if you can sponsor their blog for a link in their blogroll or if any of the bloggers would like to do a paid review on one of your products. Continue to develop relationships with bloggers and other people in your community!

2. Scholarships

Budget: $100-$1,000

How to Get Links:  Create a blog post or a page on your site devoted to the scholarship. Write out a set of rules for winning the scholarship that require prospects to write an essay about your industry and why they should win, link back to the scholarship page if they have a site and post the essay online, or share socially depending on the type of links you want. Once the due date is past, judge and celebrate the winner’s victory with a blog post and give the scholarship money to the winner. If you would like, 301 redirect that link juice to another page.

Finding the Prospects: There are two ways to find our prospects for scholarships: on school sites that list scholarships and scholarship directories. To find school sites, use variations of the following query: site:.edu  scholarships. If you have a particular school in mind, plug in the actual URL for the school’s site. For example, if I wanted to reach out to the University of Houston, use the query “site:uh.edu scholarships.” Scan the site for contact information by looking for keywords like “Contact Us”, “Contact”, and “Phone.” When reaching out, the best method for contacting is to give the decision maker a call.

For scholarship directories, try getting your scholarship listed on the following sites to start off:

• FastAid – http://www.fastaid.com/
• College Answer – http://www.collegeanswer.com/
• FastWeb – http://www.fastweb.com/
• FinAid – http://www.finaid.org/
• CollegeView – http://www.collegeview.com/
• Peterson’s – http://www.petersons.com/
• NextStudent – http://www.nextstudent.com/
• College Toolkit – http://www.collegetoolkit.com/
• Scholarship Experts – http://www.scholarshipexperts.com/
• American Education Success – http://www.aesuccess.org/
• Scholarship America – http://www.scholarshipamerica.org/
• Student Scholarship Search – http://www.studentscholarshipsearch.com/

Beyond these sites, you can use a query like: scholarships intitle:”list of” OR intitle:listings. Play around with different reoccurring words that you see in titles and meta descriptions on other scholarship directories.

Bonus: Within the rules, state that you are able to publish and use the submitted content however you like. After the contest is over, you are left with all of the essays. Feel free to repurpose and publish on your own blog. Depending on how many entrants you get, you could have free content for awhile.

3. Charities

Budget: $50-$10,000

How to Get Links: There are plenty of charities and non-profits that do lots of good that could use our help. Sometimes these organizations show some link love with pages devoted to their sponsors and donors, and these are the people we want to help. Have your company brainstorm a few causes or types of organizations they would like to support and, after finding them, donate to their cause.

Finding the Prospects: From here we are going to find the linking organizations on the web using advanced search queries like the following: help children in Africa site:.org inurl:sponsor OR inurl:donors. Research the organization on their site and determine whether they are someone you want to support and they give out links.

Bonus: After your site gets a link, write a blog post about your company helping out and how great the organization is. It will attract attention to the causes that your company cares about, and it makes your company look good.

Buying Link Juice for Good

Buying links is potentially an awesome thing for people around the world. Go into it with good intentions, and you can be rewarded with some link love. Think about it: what are other ways that I can use my resources to help someone else while getting a link in turn?

Here are the most common occurrences of duplicate homepages:

Example.com
Example.com/index.php (or .html)
Example.com/default.aspx
Example.com/home.php (or .html)
www.example.com
www.example.com/index.php (or .html)
www.example.com/default.aspx
www.example.com/home.php (or .html)

Even though you end up seeing the same content at all of these URL’s, they are unique URL’s that can each be indexed by Google, Bing and other search engines.

If your homepage will load (without redirecting) at multiple URL’s like the examples above, you have a great opportunity to make a small tweak that could give you a little boost in the search results.

Link & Authority Consolidation

Perhaps the best reason to eliminate duplicate homepage URL’s is to consolidate all of your links and authority to one URL.  As you can see in the screenshot below, this site has some decent links and authority going to www.ledges.com and ledges.com (without the WWW).  By combining these URL’s (through 301 redirects), we can consolidate those links and authority to make the most out of what we already have.

Common Homepage Duplicate Content Problems & Fixes

Forcing the WWW: Example.com vs. www.Example.com

If your site has this duplicate content issue, it’s probably affecting all of the pages on your site.  It doesn’t necessarily matter whether you force your site to load with or without the WWW as long as you choose one version or the other.  My preference is with the WWW.  As evolved as the Internet is, it seems that most people still expect (and link to) sites using WWW at the beginning.

Forcing the WWW on your site is a pretty easy fix through the .htaccess file on your apache server.

WARNING: htaccess files can be your best friend and your worst enemy.  Make sure you create a backup copy of the original before making any edits.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

In this example, you just need to change “domain.com” to your actual domain.

You can also give Google a heads up on your WWW preference by letting them know in your Google Webmaster Tools account.  Go to “Site Configuration”, then “Settings” and tell Google if you want to display URL’s with or without the WWW.

Rewriting Homepage and Index Files

Depending on the CMS, language or other technical intricacies of your website, it’s pretty common to have a homepage file like index.html (.php, .aspx, etc.) or home.html (.php, .aspx, etc.).  For most websites, this is another quick fix that can be done through the .htaccess file of your apache server.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301,L]

In this example, you would just need to enter your website instead of “yourdomain.com” and change “index” and “.php” to match the file on your website.

After fixing both of these issues, your website should resolve to www.yourdomain.com whether you enter yourdomain.com, yourdomain.com/index.html or www.yourdomain.com/index.html.  Over the next few weeks, search engines will crawl your site and evaluate the 301 redirects.  These redirects aren’t the silver bullet that will push you to the top but it’s one of the many pieces to the puzzle that will help you get there.

The Announcement

First off, in all my time in the SEO industry I do not recall any time in which Google has announced a change to the algorithm, ahead of the change. This is a little different than other updates that have come in the past. At a technology conference called South by Southwest, or simply SXSW (see the post on Doc’s road trip to SXSW), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, made an announcement of sorts when he answered a conference attendee’s question (paraphrased) “what happens when everyone is optimizing and some can afford thousands of dollars a month then the mom and pop shops will never show up”? Matt’s answer was a bit surprising to most SEO’s who attend conferences like this because he essentially pre-announced a change to Google’s algorithm.

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

You can listen to the session yourself here. What a refreshing insight for those of us who work in the industry. It is nice to have a little heads up so that we can evaluate our strategies and make sure that we are in line with the update that is coming.

The Update

In a nut shell, the update is targeting the content on websites. More specifically, it is targeting content that is written and presented solely for the purpose of search engine optimization. While this is a new update to the algorithm at Google that will be rolling out in the near future, it is not a new concept for them. They have long stated that they prefer and want to rank the sites that have the most useful and helpful content for their users. This update is simply trying to bring the search results (SERPS) in line with their stated objective.

The Past Results

In the past, although Google has stated that they wanted to rank the most relevant, useful and helpful content at the top of the SEPRS, that has not always been the case. The signals that they have used to rank content (otherwise known as web pages) in the past have not always produced the desired result. It has been possible for some to essentially bully their way to the top by simply overpowering other, more relevant sites with the sheer amount of links and SEO they have done in comparison.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much of a Good Thing?

The newest update that is coming is being referred to as the over-optimization penalty. While Google has always said that this did not exist in the past, most any SEO will tell you that it did, regardless of what it was called. So what is the difference now? Google is getting better at recognizing all the elements of the content on a page rather than relying so heavily on the links pointing back to the site.

What Does This Means for SEO’S?

For those of us who work in the SEO industry this change will impact in some areas more than others. Many of the changes to the approach that an SEO services company will take as long as they have been doing it right to begin with, will be subtle. The largest change will come in the need to increase our ability to communicate how important great content on a page is going to be in obtaining rankings. In the past, despite clients not implementing the changes we recommended, we often could obtain the desired rankings through link building efforts alone, though it took longer to do so. Now, that may be near impossible after these changes.

What Does This Mean for Business Owners

For a business owner, this is going to mean that there truly is a need to determine what their targeted market wants and deliver it to them. This means that they will be rewarded for their efforts in adding value to the industry space on the web. The time spent to develop out great, valuable content is well worth the effort.

My Professional Conclusion for Business Owners

1. This change in the Google Algorithm should be one that business owners are happy about and embrace. In the past it was sometimes difficult to merge the business message and the desires on how a business owner wanted to present their content and implement the necessary SEO strategy within the content on the site. This change will merge these two things better.
2. Your SEO Company will likely be asking you to change and improve your content. Don’t resist this change. Change is good. If you are not a fan of change, you can at least like “change” here.
3. Good content, in addition to being excellent and valuable to your industry, also refers to how it is arranged and how diverse it is. In other words, use video, pictures, text, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, headers to the sections of content, etc. In other words, how easy is your content to consume. Pay attention to the content you consume and what is easiest for you.
4. Even if this new update does not impact the search results as much as Google would like it to, it is still good to make these changes. Google has said what they want to rank well and they have said it for years. With each update they make, they are getting closer to making their mission a reality.

SEO content that we can all agree on

If you’ve been around the SEO spacedock a time or two, you may have heard that “content is king.” This fun little alliterative statement serves as a useful reminder of the important role that fresh and unique content plays in establishing a strong online presence.

The difficulty that many would-be content creators run into is that there are really two audiences that they must be aware of at all times: people (website visitors) and robots (search engines). These audiences use very different methods of processing information, making it all too easy to write for the one while ignoring the needs of the other.

Despite the challenges, SEO works best when your content works to keep both of these audiences happy. Search engine-optimized content can lead people to your site, and people-optimized content can convince them to stay there. Ideally, everything you write—website copy, blog posts, social media shares, etc.—should work for both.

Write Great SEO Content in 10 Easy Steps

• Step1: Write a clickable headline– The headline is the first thing that both readers and robots see. Make the title as compelling as possible, and work a keyword or two to the search engines know what your content is about. You can entice more readers to click by promising, either explicitly or implicitly, that your content will improve their lives in some way.If you want examples of some excellent titles, you need look no further than our own SEO.com blog:
  • 3 Actionable Tactics For Content Creation Using Quora
  • 4 Competitive Reports Your SEO Will Die Without

  These two headlines use specific details to create a sense of urgency and invite website visitors to read more.

• Step 2: Make good use of keywords – Putting keywords to good use in content does not mean over-stuffing or creating spammy articles. Use your keywords a few times near the beginning of your content to let the robots know what the page is about, but make sure they sound natural to the real people who will actually read the sentence.
• Step 3: Be useful – Readers crave useful information, and SEO-friendly content gives it to them. Useful content can take on a few different forms; it may be entertaining, educational, newsworthy, or informational. Useful content adds to your customers’ lives, answers their questions, and encourages them to share what they’ve read.For an example of extremely useful content, check out our three part series explaining Pinterest. This series serves to answer many of the questions that readers have about an extremely timely topic.
• Step 4: Insert some personality – Nothing drives readers away faster than boring copy. People enjoy writing that is conversational and entertaining. Write as if you were talking to a friend. Try to make yourself and your product likeable.
• Step 5: Avoid jargon – Every industry has buzzwords and phrases that only an insider would understand. Don’t annoy or confuse your readers by using a lot of technical terms, acronyms, or pointless wordiness. Write so that your meaning is clear and to-the-point.
• Step 6: Format for scannability – Very seldom do people read every word on a webpage. Make your content user friendly by using plenty of subheadings (keyword-optimized h2 and h3 tags), lists, and text formatting to draw the eye and emphasize important points. Top ten lists and how-to articles work extremely well.
• Step 7: Differentiate yourself – Stand out from other websites by posting unique and original content. If you’re writing in an overly-saturated industry, try developing a niche topic or creating a unique voice.
• Step 8: Use multimedia – People and search engines love multimedia. Insert photos, charts, videos, infographics, and graphs into your content to illustrate what you’re trying to say, and use SEO-friendly markup to let the search engines know what they’re about.
• Step 9: Longer is not always better – Say whatever you have to say and then stop.
• Step 10: Build authority – Create content that is relevant to your readers on a regular basis. If you do this, both people and search engines will come to regard you as an authority on your subject, and whenever they need information about it, they will turn to your website first.

Carefully crafting SEO content that works for search engines and for people can lead to more website visitors and, ultimately, more conversions. These steps can help you whether you’re selling business software or secret plans for a certain weaponized space station capable of blowing up an entire planet.

What is your advice for how to keep the people and the robots happy? What techniques have you found to be the most valuable?

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At this point I wanted to dive into ecommerce metrics in Google Analytics to show the revenue that each of these keywords had brought in for the last thirty days, and found something that I wasn’t expecting.

I sorted by organic traffic, then clicked on Ecommerce then sorted by revenue.

In a 30-day period, there were 13 of our target keywords that didn’t bring in any revenue. These keywords had decent search volume, which was why they were selected ahead of other keywords.  To make sure that it wasn’t a fluke, I also looked at the same time period the previous year for the same keywords. I found out of the 13 keywords that didn’t bring in revenue, 11 didn’t bring in revenue for the previous year.

Now I understand that this is just a thirty day period of time, and to get a clearer picture I would need to expand the data, but this was very interesting to me.  Here are the 11 keywords and the search volume and the rankings for those keywords.

Many of these keywords had a decent amount of global monthly searches but weren’t bringing in the revenue that our client needed to see.

I decided to look at the data from the past year instead of just a thirty day period of time.  I used the following RegEx expression to exclude many branded terms  (^(branded keyword 1|branded keyword 2|branded keyword 3| branded keyword 4)$ and sorted again by revenue.  I expanded the list to show 500 keywords and downloaded the data for Excel.  Once in excel I was able to format and make it look like this:

This chart shows visits, revenue, transactions, and search volume for non-branded keywords in the year 2011.  The rows in green highlight keywords that we weren’t currently targeting in our search engine optimization efforts, but did generate revenue.  The fourth one down from the top was very interesting to me because it only had 46 global monthly searches but was the fourth highest revenue driving keyword for 2011.

Presenting this information to the client allowed us to switch out the 11 keywords that weren’t bringing in any revenue, and replace them with the 12 keywords here in green.

I found that my client was excited about refining these keywords by targeting keywords that were already bringing in revenue.   In the SEO world, we are constantly trying to find ways to show our value to our clients.

This also helped me realize that choosing the best keywords was not all about search volume; but instead, it should be based on the keywords that visitors use to purchase products, regardless the search volume.  Focusing on keywords that convert to revenue for ecommerce sites (or goals for non-ecommerce sites) is better than focusing on keywords that have high search volume but aren’t being used to make purchases or complete goals.

How do you constantly show value to your clients in your SEO efforts?

Disclaimer: advice given here can be helpful but not necessarily the “golden ticket” to your search engine success. We recommend conducting your own research, drawing your own conclusions and using this advice as a guideline to your overall link building strategy. Many of these situational link building strategies are based off of real world SEO campaigns specific to real businesses. As such, this advice does not guarantee the same results for your unique situation.

If you don’t have a solid link building strategy guiding your SEO campaign, you might fall short of your goals because of mediocre results. There is no “one size fits all” link building campaign, despite what you may find with other illegitimate ‘SEO firms’. A true link building strategy needs to be custom to provide optimal results, which includes researching your competitors, understanding the status quo of your site and establishing the strengths and weaknesses of your backlink portfolio.

Situation #1: Extremely authoritative site, 5+ year old domain and no prior SEO campaigns.

• Symptoms: Websites that fall under this category have significant age– at least 5+ years. You must be an authority within your industry both online and offline and have had no prior SEO campaigns. Websites in this situation are interested in getting on the SEO bandwagon, but haven’t because of a focus on other marketing channels.
• Diagnosis: So, how do you improve your rankings based on this situation? First things first, if your website is highly authoritative, start with a complete site optimization by adding your keywords in the appropriate sections. Chances are, once this is completed and is indexed, your keyword rankings will have an initial spike.Then, run a report in OpenSiteExplorer.org and “Show ALL links from ONLY EXTERNAL pages to THIS PAGE.” Click the “Anchor Text” tab. All websites naturally accumulate links from random websites across the internet. This will show you what the most used anchor text will be. Likely, it’s going to be branded terms.The type of link building that you engage in to boost those rankings is very important. Right now your website’s link portfolio doesn’t have the right balance of quality and quantity. If you haven’t done link building before, chances are you already have many quality links, but they’re missing critical elements needed to translate into better keyword rankings.

• Treatment: Your website needs more links using keyword specific anchor text. This doesn’t need to be exact match anchor text, but the search engines are currently only seeing your brand name. While it’s not the highest quality link building, simple directory submissions or quick article distribution websites using your keywords in the anchor text will go a long way. Don’t go overboard. Remember, everything in moderation.

Situation #2: 2-5 year old aged site, little authority and highly optimized onsite and offsite.

• Symptoms: You’ve been playing the SEO game for the past few years, with both link building and onsite optimization. Maybe you’ve gone through a couple of outsourced SEO firms that did mediocre work, or you’ve attempted link building before, but with no real direction.
• Diagnosis: The fact that your site has little authority shows that the link building that’s been done was subpar. Likely only directory submissions, bookmark links and shadier-than-normal article directories. If your website is in this position, it’s likely that the SEO wasn’t really taken seriously, and the “get rich quick” mindset was all too involved.
• Treatment: It’s apparent that the SEO thus far has been substandard. I would recommend reviewing the onsite optimization for the pages you are trying to rank. How relevant are these pages for their keywords vs. other pages? Do you have internal linking going on throughout your blog/article section and on other key pages? Once that’s corrected, link building should consist of mainly press releases, viral pieces (e.g. infographics, widgets, tools), guest blog posting and very selective industry forums/directories. Unless the anchor text you’ve used in the past was only branded, I would recommend staying away from exact match anchor text since that’s what is commonly used with poor, bulk link building.  Use branded anchor text or a mix between branded and keyword specific text.

Situation #3: Brand new website, no links and no optimization of any kind.

• Symptoms: Your website is less than 3 months old, you don’t have any backlinks and you haven’t started optimizing your website for your keywords. Essentially, this is starting from scratch.
• Diagnosis: Link building strategies for new websites are actually fairly simple. OpenSiteExplorer.org is going to be your best friend for this because you need to look at your competitors to see what they’re doing. What is their ratio of non-branded terms to branded? How many links do they have? How many of their links are using exact match anchor texts? Emulate these good practices in your new link portfolio.The term “everything in moderation” is truer in this situation than in any other. You have no authority or history with the search engines, which essentially means they don’t trust you.

• Treatment: Your website needs authority, and the best way to do this is through guest blog posting. Focusing on this link building method will also prevent you from getting an over optimization penalty, which results from too many links containing too similar of anchor text. We need to make sure these links look natural to the search engines. It’s best to widely vary the anchor text you’re using, and including branded terms in anchor text is also highly recommended. Don’t count out industry or local specific directories (these are still very valuable) but I wouldn’t recommend going out and blasting 300 directory submissions every week. Article distribution services should be used sparingly, and press releases will be very valuable because of the authoritative websites you’ll be getting the links from. The key to this situation is to not overdo it, because you could potentially be hit with a penalty. One last note– don’t be surprised if you cannot rank for highly competitive terms in the first 9 months. The conspiracy theorist in me is a believer in Google’s “sandbox theory”, which doesn’t allow your website to reach its potential in the search results for X amount of time for highly competitive search terms.

Situation #4: Extremely authoritative site, 7+ year old domain and highly optimized.

• Symptoms: Sites in this situation include major industry leaders for massive keywords like “hotels”, “SEO” or “computers”. The work your team has done is probably plateauing, because traditional link building methods don’t move the needle like they used to.
• Diagnosis: Smaller, newer websites don’t really have a chance of ranking for these keywords unless they are backed by years of SEO work and a strong presence, both online and offline. Because the keywords for this situation are so competitive, that is the problem you are running into.
• Treatment: If you want to rank for million dollar keywords, you need to think outside the box. Directory submissions, bookmarking links, article distribution sites aren’t really going to serve the purpose that they do with smaller websites. Where you’re going to find the value, at the very minimum, is guest blog posting. Key factors that play into the success many large companies have with their SEO include running contests, promoting infographics, distributing press releases and having a major social presence and following.

Situation #5: 18-month old website, little authority and possible Google penalty.

• Symptoms: You had success at some point over the last 18 months, but something happened. Either Google updated their algorithm, or they finally caught on to your spammy link building tactics. Your keyword rankings were rising, but now that they have been hit, you don’t have anything on the first page of Google anymore.
• Diagnosis: I’m going to guess that the majority of the link building you were doing consisted of low level tactics like directory submissions, bookmark linking and bulk article distribution sites. While those have their place in some search engine optimization campaigns, you were putting all your eggs in one basket. On top of that, the anchor text you were using was rarely varied. These are all classic symptoms of an over-optimization penalty from Google.
• Treatment: Stop what you’re doing! Google doesn’t it like it, and now they don’t like you either. You need to start guest blog posting, submitting press releases, building tools and providing quality content to your readers. By doing this, you will become a real resource within your industry, and one that Google can trust. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to send Google a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools just to cover all of your bases. Get involved in social media and start promoting your content there. With all the buzz around the new social signals that the search engines will be using, you don’t want to be left behind and play catch up again.Do not expect a quick turnaround. You could be working at repairing your rankings for 4-6 months before anything starts to come back. Spammy tactics don’t pay off. It’s kind of like the phrase “don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time”.

I’m 100% certain that there is more to add to this list. As this is a great starting point for many site owners, I encourage all of you to add your advice to whichever situation you’re familiar with. I’ve had client experiences that touch on every situation above, but I want to hear from you!

Social networking sites are important tools for Internet marketers. These sites are a way for companies to connect with fans of their products and services, and this is becoming apparent as more and more people spread the word through social media. Through Facebook Likes, Tweets, Pinterest Pins, and social bookmarks, companies can get an amazing return on investment for social efforts. But how do you tap into the power of social feedback from your customers?

Not every social interaction can be directly tied to ROI, but there is no value in ignoring your customers. Many companies have Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts, but only a small percentage of these companies are using these tools to their full potential.  According to a recent post on Mashable Social Media, 85% of marketers believe customer insight is the greatest potential advantage of social media, but only 6% of businesses are actually using social media to collect social feedback.

There are several advantages to social media marketing over traditional marketing methods. Social insights are real and organic, helping marketers escape from potentially contrived feedback methods. In the social world, there is direct access to honest opinions and criticism. Individual users can be very powerful with social tools, having the ability to break a brand’s credibility with an influential negative comment. With this in mind, I suggest these ideas to help your social media efforts.

Invest Time Daily:

Because social networking allows real-time feedback, an hour’s effort here or there will not be enough. The most successful companies monitor their social tools 24/7, and will strive to respond to all comments in a timely manner.  50-75% of social chatter about a brand does not require any action, but finding the comments that require resolution is worth the time investment. Fans and followers will say what they think about your company, products, and marketing efforts without being prompted, and social media tells you what is working – quickly and directly. When it is not, you have a direct connection to help resolve concerns. These conversations can help mold your social strategy and brand perception.

Be Diverse:

Did you know there are over 200 social networking sites in use internationally? In addition to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn, there many niche-specific social networking sites. These topic-specific sites range from sports to gaming. Research the social networking sites that are related to your industry and create a comprehensive profile. There is little reason to be on a site like Twitter if less than 10% of your target market is actively using it. Use social bookmarking sites to follow industry trends by topic, and share bookmarked content.

Join the Conversation:

Engagement with customers and followers shows that you care about their feedback. Be authentic, and show that your brand has a personality. Ask questions, and respond to answers. Analyzing customer feedback and conversation can help you come up with strategy ideas that you would not create otherwise. Watch what is being said during product announcements to tweak how you do the next one. Find out what trends your followers like, and integrate those trends into your strategy. Follow and respond to your customers/followers reactions. Ask for opinions and you shall receive.

Recognize Loyal Followers:

When you have identified enthusiastic followers of your brand, tag them in Facebook posts and send @reply messages on Twitter. Publicly reward the people who promote you for free. Forge relationships with influential followers, and reach out to see if they are interested in a partnership as a brand ambassador. These brand ambassadors will represent the brand publicly in a positive way and educate consumers about a brand.  Brand ambassadors appeal to the human side of the product, offering personal stories and opinions to their network of influence.

Consider a Social Media Marketing Firm:

If your company does not have the expertise or manpower to manage social efforts, consider outsourcing to a social media firm. With a social marketing partnership, experts will manage profiles, create content, assist with blog marketing, and provide the education needed to help you make the most of various social tools. When selecting a firm to help with your social efforts, be sure to choose a firm that will tailor a marketing plan to your company’s specific needs. With the right assistance, you will present the best image possible and help potential clients become an engaged part of your community.

What other ways do you have to turn social feedback into valuable data? Would love to hear all about them in the comments below.

Press releases are an important ingredient to add to the mix because they can help you build high quality backlinks from reputable news websites and blogs and potentially help you gain media coverage.

Here are some dos and don’ts about how to write press releases for SEO purposes:

Creating Story ideas

Don’t send out a press release if you don’t have anything to announce. It sounds simple enough but so many times, SEO campaigns follow time guidelines and send out releases that aren’t timely, news worthy or high-quality. This will actually work against your campaign. Creating an idea for a great press release isn’t as hard as it sounds. Here are topic ideas for timely and newsworthy press releases:

• Grand opening of a business
• New product, service or website and how it fills void in industry
• Market research, statics, polls and results pertaining to your industry or business
• Tips or ideas for an upcoming holiday or event
• Announcement for winning a prestigious Award
• Celebration of a company milestone
• How your business is “Green”
• Charity work, scholarship programs, community outreach programs or charitable contribution
• Stock offerings or financial updates
• What bigger companies are doing in your industry and how your services compare

SEO Friendly Titles

Do use Keywords in your title. The title of your press release should ideally contain one or more of your keywords and the name of your company. Thousands of headline impressions that run RSS feeds will publish your release. Because your title becomes the title tag, it’s a very important part of what helps a website rank for your keyword. Your title should also be fun and “clickable.” A clickable title is informative, witty, interesting and hopefully all three.

Using Keyword Rich Anchor Text

Do use strategic keyword rich anchor text. The best practice to follow is not to use more than two keyword links per press release and place the most important link in the first sentence. Read, 5 Steps to Killer Keyword Research, to learn more about keywords and phrases you should target. The linked keywords that you choose to use in a press release depend on the campaign. Most of the time, you should use bigger keywords that are showing great movement and keep the momentum building. Other times, it might be necessary to give keywords that have grown stale a boost by adding them into the release in a relevant way. If a company is not ranking for any keywords going after low hanging fruit early in a campaign can help ROI immediately. Branded keywords work well in press releases, especially compared to using them in other link building strategies, such as blog posts. You can fit keywords in naturally by writing your release first, and then adding the links so your links don’t feel forced.

Quotes and Bragging Rights

Do use compelling quotes. Incorporating quotes into press releases is an easy way to toot your own horn. You should never call your company or product the greatest, best or most unique. When you are using quotes it’s okay to brag a little bit as long as you can back it up. Having a quotation come directly from the authorities within the company will help your release get picked up, and bloggers and writers will appreciate that they can pull the quotes directly from your release to use in their story.

Example of a bad quote:

We’re excited that our seat belts will be available to lot of people,” said SeatBelt Company CEO. “Our seatbelts are the safest in the World.

Example of a good quote:

With the release of the SafeBelt system, Seatbelt Company will be able to help decrease the impact that a human takes during a car crash,” said SeatBelt Company CEO. “Our ultimate goal is to help save lives. We will continue to do research in order to engineer the safest seatbelts in the world.

Optimizing your Content

Do think like Public a Relations Professional. Press releases are news announcements, regardless of whether they are for SEO purposes or not. By writing high quality, rich content that directly relates to your business your release will be naturally optimized. All releases should include the name of your organization, geographical information, a contact e-mail address and phone number. Don’t forget you are writing for the web so keep your release at 400-600 words and include a boilerplate at the end of your release. You’re allowed to use fun language but avoid colloquialisms and dragged out sentences at all costs. Press releases typically receive the most impressions and reads if they are sent out first thing on Monday or Tuesday. However it’s most important to send your release out in a time that makes sense to the topic that you’re writing about.

Adding Multimedia

Don’t forget about logos, photos, embedded videos and infographics. By including multimedia, the likelihood that a news source or blog will take your whole press release package and publish it on their site (gaining you high quality links) will increase. Including logos and photos in your press release is also a great way to get your company ranked in Google Images. When doing this, make sure that your file name contains a concise clear description of the image and a keyword. Youtube videos have a great social following, and they will help increase the reach of your video and press release.

Completing the Circle

Don’t think that after you submit your release that you’re done. Press Releases, social media and other SEO strategies should all come together on a unified front. You should take the time to publish your press releases on your twitter feed, Facebook and other social platforms. After at least two weeks, do an analysis of your release and see the reach it achieved. PRWeb has a great analytical report you can download. If the press release site you use doesn’t have those statistics, an easy way to track your reach is to place quotes around the title and search it in Google. Pay attention to where your release ranks in search engines for certain keywords and your company name. Track how well it drives traffic and sales to your company’s website and how many views it receives. The goal is to get it picked up by as many reputable news organizations as possible so that your linked keywords point back to your page and boosts your SEO. Your press release will also have a chance of ranking in Google and Yahoo News for your keywords.

Don’t waste your time and money on sending out a release that is filled with jargon that no one wants to read; what you’ll get a few links from the same root domains, unnatural linking patterns and no social attributes.  If you follow these press release ideas you’ll be adding a special link building element to your SEO potion.

I’d love to hear about other tips and ideas that you use when writing press releases and some success stories where press releases have helped your SEO campaign. Please leave your comments below.

In today’s post we are going to be discussing two inbound marketing techniques that will not only bring backlinks to your website or blog, but also bring targeted traffic. When you are a small business owner or even a marketing director on a limited budget, it might feel painful spending some or all of that budget on link acquisition, but I can tell you this, it’s not as painful if you are bringing potential customers to your website in the process, which is what inbound marketing is all about. The first technique that I would like to talk about about today is comment marketing.

Comment Marketing

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself, what in the world is commenting marketing? Most of the online marketing world refers to this technique as blog or forum commenting and most believe that it is a very spammy technique. I don’t believe it to be a spammy technique, unless all you are doing it for is a quick link and you aren’t adding any real value to the blog or forum. Let’s talk about how to be a legitimate and respectable comment marketer.

Let’s start off by talking about why comment marketing is an effective inbound marketing technique. First and foremost, by identifying and commenting on high profile blogs and forums in your niche, you start to build credibility in the community. That is ultimately my end goal when it comes to comment marketing. If I can gain the trust of others in the community, I start to build brand advocates and guess what brand advocates do? One, they come to your website and often times purchase your products and services and two, they link back to your website which strengthens the credibility of your site in the eyes of the search engines. To me, that’s a win-win and an effective use of my time!

Now that we understand how comment marketing can help bring customers to your site and how it can also help with your link building efforts, lets talk about how to find opportunities. There are two types of opportunities, those directly related to what you do and those that are indirectly related. Lets give an example of sites directly related to one another and sites indirectly related.

Directly Related: The SEO.com blog is directly related to the Seer Interactive blog. Both talk about SEO and other online marketing tactics and both have the exact same audience.

Indirectly Related: The SEO.com blog is indirectly related to the Lendio blog. The Lendio blog speaks to entrepreneurs looking for small business loans. We may not be in the business of providing small businesses loans, but we are looking for entrepreneurs starting businesses to become clients. If our comments are tailored to the audience, it would be a perfect opportunity to get in front of potential clients.

Okay, so how to find these opportunities. The first thing I like to do is use one of the simplest tools of all, “The Google”. Open up a fresh tab or window, head over to Google and type in your targeted search term. For this example, I am using search engine marketing.

In the left hand column you will see lots of different content categories, one of them is blogs, clicking this displays blog results related to the search query. Another is discussions, this displays forum results that are related to the search query. Both are golden in finding these comment marketing opportunities.

The last piece of the puzzle is learning how to provide comments that add to the current discussion and also entice people to click thru to your website. Please raise you hand if you have ever made the following comment on a blog post before, “Nice post! I really learned a lot”. Yes, this is a legitimate comment but it doesn’t exactly provide value to the discussion.

To build a comment that adds value to the discussion and will likely bring visitors to your website, your comment has to be thought provoking and also have a call to action. Try giving your own spin on the topic and adding a point that the author may have overlooked or didn’t think of. If you know of another good resource (preferably not on your website), drop a link in the comments and invite the readers to have a look. The reason I say not on your website is because you are already getting a link by adding your name and URL to the comment and you want to show you are legitimately adding to the discussion and not self promoting.

It’s really as simple as that, so now that we’ve got a good grasp on comment marketing, let’s move on to the second technique I wanted to discuss today and that is answer marketing.

Monthly Cost: Time

Answer Marketing

As you were with commenting marketing, you are probably wondering what answer marketing is. Answer marketing is where you participate in question and answer based communities like Yahoo Answers and Quora, provide resources (some to your site and some to others), and build your and your brands credibility.

In these communities, your already “qualified customers” are asking questions directly related to what products or services you offer and you have the opportunity to swoop in, be the hero and provide solutions to their questions/problems. For example, a few weeks back the LCD screen in my MacBook crapped out on me. Not wanting to replace my whole machine, I turned to the search engines to see how hard it would be to replace my own screen. I stumbled upon a question asked on Yahoo Answers on how to replace my LCD. In the answer provided, there was a link to a tutorial video on ifixit.com and guess what… On the tutorial page was a link to the exact LCD I needed and guess what again… I bought it! This is a perfect example of how powerful answer marketing is for your business.

Alright, let’s talk about how to tackle this technique. First thing, you need to dedicate some resources to being on these communities each day, searching for people asking questions about what you do. If you don’t have the resources, hire them in. If I were a marketing director, I would find college interns or possibly a sharp high school student that lives down the road from me that could come in for a few hours and bang this out.

Next, once you find good questions to answer, make sure you have a quality piece of content to point them to. Like in my example above, they pointed me to exactly what I was looking for, not just a link to their home page. If you don’t have the content, build it! I can guarantee you will use it over and over again. I have found that interactive content like videos are more engaging and help convert your visitors, but a simple blog post or white paper will do the trick as well. Just make sure it provides value and helps answer a question or solves a problem.

Monthly Cost: Time

So there you have it, phase two of marketing your business for under five dollars per month. I’ll probably do two or three more of these hitting on some highly effective, very affordable inbound marketing techniques, so be sure to tune back in next month.

In today’s post we are going to be discussing two inbound marketing techniques that will not only bring backlinks to your website or blog, but also bring targeted traffic. When you are a small business owner or even a marketing director on a limited budget, it might feel painful spending some or all of that budget on link acquisition, but I can tell you this, it’s not as painful if you are bringing potential customers to your website in the process, which is what inbound marketing is all about. The first technique that I would like to talk about about today is comment marketing.

Comment Marketing

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself, what in the world is commenting marketing? Most of the online marketing world refers to this technique as blog or forum commenting and most believe that it is a very spammy technique. I don’t believe it to be a spammy technique, unless all you are doing it for is a quick link and you aren’t adding any real value to the blog or forum. Let’s talk about how to be a legitimate and respectable comment marketer.

Let’s start off by talking about why comment marketing is an effective inbound marketing technique. First and foremost, by identifying and commenting on high profile blogs and forums in your niche, you start to build credibility in the community. That is ultimately my end goal when it comes to comment marketing. If I can gain the trust of others in the community, I start to build brand advocates and guess what brand advocates do? One, they come to your website and often times purchase your products and services and two, they link back to your website which strengthens the credibility of your site in the eyes of the search engines. To me, that’s a win-win and an effective use of my time!

Now that we understand how comment marketing can help bring customers to your site and how it can also help with your link building efforts, lets talk about how to find opportunities. There are two types of opportunities, those directly related to what you do and those that are indirectly related. Lets give an example of sites directly related to one another and sites indirectly related.

Directly Related: The SEO.com blog is directly related to the Seer Interactive blog. Both talk about SEO and other online marketing tactics and both have the exact same audience.

Indirectly Related: The SEO.com blog is indirectly related to the Lendio blog. The Lendio blog speaks to entrepreneurs looking for small business loans. We may not be in the business of providing small businesses loans, but we are looking for entrepreneurs starting businesses to become clients. If our comments are tailored to the audience, it would be a perfect opportunity to get in front of potential clients.

Okay, so how to find these opportunities. The first thing I like to do is use one of the simplest tools of all, “The Google”. Open up a fresh tab or window, head over to Google and type in your targeted search term. For this example, I am using search engine marketing.

In the left hand column you will see lots of different content categories, one of them is blogs, clicking this displays blog results related to the search query. Another is discussions, this displays forum results that are related to the search query. Both are golden in finding these comment marketing opportunities.

The last piece of the puzzle is learning how to provide comments that add to the current discussion and also entice people to click thru to your website. Please raise you hand if you have ever made the following comment on a blog post before, “Nice post! I really learned a lot”. Yes, this is a legitimate comment but it doesn’t exactly provide value to the discussion.

To build a comment that adds value to the discussion and will likely bring visitors to your website, your comment has to be thought provoking and also have a call to action. Try giving your own spin on the topic and adding a point that the author may have overlooked or didn’t think of. If you know of another good resource (preferably not on your website), drop a link in the comments and invite the readers to have a look. The reason I say not on your website is because you are already getting a link by adding your name and URL to the comment and you want to show you are legitimately adding to the discussion and not self promoting.

It’s really as simple as that, so now that we’ve got a good grasp on comment marketing, let’s move on to the second technique I wanted to discuss today and that is answer marketing.

Monthly Cost: Time

Answer Marketing

As you were with commenting marketing, you are probably wondering what answer marketing is. Answer marketing is where you participate in question and answer based communities like Yahoo Answers and Quora, provide resources (some to your site and some to others), and build your and your brands credibility.

In these communities, your already “qualified customers” are asking questions directly related to what products or services you offer and you have the opportunity to swoop in, be the hero and provide solutions to their questions/problems. For example, a few weeks back the LCD screen in my MacBook crapped out on me. Not wanting to replace my whole machine, I turned to the search engines to see how hard it would be to replace my own screen. I stumbled upon a question asked on Yahoo Answers on how to replace my LCD. In the answer provided, there was a link to a tutorial video on ifixit.com and guess what… On the tutorial page was a link to the exact LCD I needed and guess what again… I bought it! This is a perfect example of how powerful answer marketing is for your business.

Alright, let’s talk about how to tackle this technique. First thing, you need to dedicate some resources to being on these communities each day, searching for people asking questions about what you do. If you don’t have the resources, hire them in. If I were a marketing director, I would find college interns or possibly a sharp high school student that lives down the road from me that could come in for a few hours and bang this out.

Next, once you find good questions to answer, make sure you have a quality piece of content to point them to. Like in my example above, they pointed me to exactly what I was looking for, not just a link to their home page. If you don’t have the content, build it! I can guarantee you will use it over and over again. I have found that interactive content like videos are more engaging and help convert your visitors, but a simple blog post or white paper will do the trick as well. Just make sure it provides value and helps answer a question or solves a problem.

Monthly Cost: Time

So there you have it, phase two of marketing your business for under five dollars per month. I’ll probably do two or three more of these hitting on some highly effective, very affordable inbound marketing techniques, so be sure to tune back in next month.

You’d think they are wanting to influence and “lobby” congress, but Google’s PAC is not raising a lot of money, especially compared to their rivals Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter.  After the influence they exerted against SOPA and PIPA it appears Google might not have to lobby congress the traditional way.  Google has a direct and strong connection with its users and exerted their power and influence to stop SOPA and PIPA.

Google is looking to prove Google’s worth and value to the political community.  Some estimates have it that Obama alone will have $1 Billion dollars to spend and Google wants to position themselves to earn a chunk of that cash.

Google’s Case

Google is making their case that if campaigns are not spending money with them, then their campaign will get left behind. Big political campaigns will have a fair amount of cash on hand yet that cash is held with a tight grip. Google is making their case to earn a bigger portion of the tight budget.

Recently Google hired a outside polling company to find out how many people were interacting with politics online (using data to prove their case). Ultimately the polling firm concluded that, “Our findings in South Carolina reaffirm that campaigns which do not fully embrace the Internet as a means to engage voters — for fundraising, persuasion, and turnout — do so at their own peril.” While Google is making its case for more money they’ve also tried to “predict” the outcomes of the Republican Primaries.

Predicting Results

Google has massive amounts of data and the ability to chart trends of search volume.  Initially Google thought they could “predict” the results of the Republican primary elections.  But after an unconventional primary season and some surprising results Google has learned that it is a lot harder to predict human voting behavior than they ever imagined.

Google has changed their stance from predicting the primaries to reporting after the fact. For example they’ve published reports predicting the election results of South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, but not of Arizona, Michigan, and Florida.

Will Mitt Win?

Mitt Romney won Arizona and Michigan, and Washington votes this Saturday.  He’s up in the delegate count and President Obama’s campaign continues to attack him.  These are indications that Mitt will win the Republican nomination and maybe the global search trends will prove accurate, because Mitt Romney has the most search volume in the world, at least out of the other republican contenders.

Additional Resources:

• Regional Search Trends  http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Global Search Trends https://plus.google.com/114401727024677849167/posts/RtNT8doEjV1
• Twitter Mentions http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mention-machine
• YouTube Videos http://www.youtube.com/politics
• Google News Mentions http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Ad Spending http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/track-presidential-campaign-ads-2012/

Update: Mitt Romney is winning Super Tuesday in search volume

You’d think they are wanting to influence and “lobby” congress, but Google’s PAC is not raising a lot of money, especially compared to their rivals Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter.  After the influence they exerted against SOPA and PIPA it appears Google might not have to lobby congress the traditional way.  Google has a direct and strong connection with its users and exerted their power and influence to stop SOPA and PIPA.

Google is looking to prove Google’s worth and value to the political community.  Some estimates have it that Obama alone will have $1 Billion dollars to spend and Google wants to position themselves to earn a chunk of that cash.

Google’s Case

Google is making their case that if campaigns are not spending money with them, then their campaign will get left behind. Big political campaigns will have a fair amount of cash on hand yet that cash is held with a tight grip. Google is making their case to earn a bigger portion of the tight budget.

Recently Google hired a outside polling company to find out how many people were interacting with politics online (using data to prove their case). Ultimately the polling firm concluded that, “Our findings in South Carolina reaffirm that campaigns which do not fully embrace the Internet as a means to engage voters — for fundraising, persuasion, and turnout — do so at their own peril.” While Google is making its case for more money they’ve also tried to “predict” the outcomes of the Republican Primaries.

Predicting Results

Google has massive amounts of data and the ability to chart trends of search volume.  Initially Google thought they could “predict” the results of the Republican primary elections.  But after an unconventional primary season and some surprising results Google has learned that it is a lot harder to predict human voting behavior than they ever imagined.

Google has changed their stance from predicting the primaries to reporting after the fact. For example they’ve published reports predicting the election results of South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, but not of Arizona, Michigan, and Florida.

Will Mitt Win?

Mitt Romney won Arizona and Michigan, and Washington votes this Saturday.  He’s up in the delegate count and President Obama’s campaign continues to attack him.  These are indications that Mitt will win the Republican nomination and maybe the global search trends will prove accurate, because Mitt Romney has the most search volume in the world, at least out of the other republican contenders.

Additional Resources:

• Regional Search Trends  http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Global Search Trends https://plus.google.com/114401727024677849167/posts/RtNT8doEjV1
• Twitter Mentions http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mention-machine
• YouTube Videos http://www.youtube.com/politics
• Google News Mentions http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Ad Spending http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/track-presidential-campaign-ads-2012/

כמדי חודש בשנה האחרונה גוגל העלתה פוסט בבלוג Inside Search הסוקר את השינויים באלגוריתם החיפוש שלה בחודש באחרון. בחודש פברואר 2012 שברו מהנדסי גוגל שיא חדש וקבעו 40 עדכוני אלגוריתם – בהם חשובים יותר וחשובים פחות. הרשימה אם כך די ארוכה, ולרבים מהעדכונים אין נגיעה ישירה ומיידית למנוע החיפוש בעברית, אבל יש כמה מעניינים למדי, וביניהם אחד שכבר יש כאלה הרואים בו עדכון היסטורי המבשר מהפכה שלמה בעולם החיפוש! נתחיל דווקא בעדכונים הקטנים יותר ונסיים בפצצת החיפוש שלכאורה נחתה עלינו החודש:

• שני עדכונים עוסקים בשיפור נוסף של אופציית החיפושים הקשורים (Related Searches) המופיעים בתחתית דף תוצאות החיפוש ומציגים בדרך כלל ביטויי זנב ארוך של שאילתת החיפוש שלנו. גוגל מצהירים שמקור מידע חדש (שלצערם הם אינם יכולים לגלות לנו אותו…) יסייע מעתה להציג חיפושים קשורים לא רק בשאילתות כלליות אלא גם בשאילתות ממוקדות יותר. גוגל כן מספרים לנו שהישנות קבועה של מילים בסדר מסוים בשאילתות חיפוש היא אחד הפרמטרים להצגת החיפושים הקשורים. למשל אם משתמשים כותבים באופן קבוע את המילים "תל אביב" לאחר המילה "הפועל" זה סימן ששני הביטויים אכן קשורים זה לזה, ומעתה מי שיחפש את המילה "הפועל" לבדה יקבל בחיפושים הקשורים את האפשרות "הפועל תל אביב". גוגל הצהירו שבמהלך פברואר כל בסיס הנתונים של הביטויים הקשורים האלה עודכן.
• עדכון מעניין נוסף הוא הבחנה טובה יותר של אתרים רשמיים, Official Sites של חברות מוכרות. זו בשורה טובה לאתרי חברות המותגים הגדולות (ולמקדמים שלהם…). גוגל אמורים לזהות עכשיו טוב יותר את האתרים הרשמיים ולדרג אותם בראש התוצאות על מוצרי החברה. אבל בכל מקרה נראה שלא יזיק להוסיף ב-Titles של דפי האתר את הצירוף "האתר הרשמי של חברת X".
• הרחבה של התוצאות מ-Google Images בתוצאות החיפוש האורגניות הרוחביות (Universal Search). מעתה נראה יותר תמונות בתוצאות החיפוש – ואכן אני יכול רק להעיד שרק לפני כמה ימים נוספו לארבע התמונות שהייתי רגיל לראות בתוצאות של חיפוש מסוים עוד שתי תמונות חדשות (ולא מחמיאות במיוחד דרך אגב…)
• מערכת חדשה תתאים טוב יותר בין מיקומו של הגולש (למשל העיר שלו) לבין תוצאות החיפוש, כלומר אילתי שמחפש "מסעדות" יקבל מסעדות אילתיות. זה בעצם שיפור נוסף לעדכון ג'אז שנסקר כאן כבר לפני שנה.
• עדכון בתוצאות המתקבלות באמצעות שימוש באופרטור "site:" יציג גיוון ודירוג משופרים של דפי האתר המבוקש.
• גוגל שמחה לבשר שתוכל מעתה לזהות גם בפורטוגזית, הולנדית ואיטלקית דפי soft 404 – דפי שגיאה שלא מחזירים תגובה 404 כנדרש אלא 200 . האמת היא שלא ברור לי למה קשה כל כך לזהות כמה וריאציות בסיסיות של המשפט "Page not found" בכל השפות שגוגל סורקת ולא להתקדם בקצב של 3 שפות בכל כמה עדכונים. הרי מנוע החיפוש הזה מתיימר להבין תוכן מורכב קצת יותר משלוש המילים האלה בעשרות שפות. מעניין בהקשר זה אם גוגל יצליחו להבין שהדף הזה שכיכב בקבוצת הפייסבוק "קידום אתרים מקצועי" הוא דף שגיאה גם אם יחזיר 200…
• השקה בינלאומית של Shopping rich snippets תאפשר מעכשיו גם לאתרי קניות בעברית שהטמיעו Rich snippets מתאימים להופיע בתוצאות החיפוש עם הדגשה של המחיר, הזמינות, דירוג הכוכבים וביקורות הגולשים.
• יש גם מתיחת פנים לתצוגת סרטוני ווידאו בערוצים אישיים ב-YouTube או Hulu, ועדכון נוסף לפנדה הנלחם בספאם (שגוגל לא מרחיבים עליו…) ועוד ועוד, אבל נפסיק כאן את החימום ונעבור להופעה המרכזית: מבין 40 עדכוני פברואר 2012, עדכון אחד הקפיץ בלוגרים בתחום קידום האתרים בעולם ובארץ – איתי ברנד למשל מ-Ask Pavel כתב על העדכון: "יתכן שדווקא העדכון הזה יהיה העדכון המשמעותי והחשוב ביותר של גוגל בשנים האחרונות".
• העדכון המשמעותי והחשוב של גוגל בשנים האחרונות? הוא צריך יחס מיוחד, אז הנה הוא לפניכם במלוא הדרו:

Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years.

האמת היא שכשגוגל מצהירים בבלוג הרשמי: "We have changed the way in which we evaluate links" מקדמי אתרים רבים נתקפים חולשה ומבקשים מיד כוס מים. אז בואו נבחן את שני המשפטים המבהילים האלה וננסה להבין מה קורה פה.

ראשית, גוגל מודים שלעתים קרובות הם השתמשו במאפיינים מסוימים של הקישור כדי להבין טוב יותר את הנושא של הדף המקושר. איזה מאפיין בקישור יכול לעזור להבין במה עוסק הדף המקושר? לקישור יש שני מאפיינים חשובים: מתודת הקישור (Href, JS, Flash) וטקסט העוגן. על פניו אפשר לחשוב שהמאפיין הוא המתודה של הקישור – כלומר שגוגל מעידים שמעתה הם קוראים קישורי JS ו-Flash ולא רק Href סטנדרטי. אבל אז הם לא היו מדגישים את המילים the topic of a linked page. הרי למתודת הקישור אין שום השפעה על נושא הדף המקושר, ולכן נותרנו עם האפשרות השנייה: טקסט העוגן. (במאמר מוסגר כדאי להזכיר בהזדמנות הזאת שגם קישורי JS ו-Flash הם כבר לא מה שהיו פעם מבחינת מנועי החיפוש… אבל לא זה הנושא של הפוסט).

או-קיי, אז אנחנו יודעים שגוגל נעזרו בטקסט העוגן בדף המקשר כדי להבין את תוכן הדף המקושר. שימו לב, לא רק ה-Title של הדף או ה-Description שלו קבעו את הנושא שלו, יותר מזה – לא רק ה-headings והתוכן עצמו קבעו על מה הדף, אלא טקסט העוגן שקישר אליו. אם נעשה פראפרזה מדפי אינטרנט לבני אדם, נוכל לומר שכדי להבין מי אתה לא מספיק לשמוע מה אתה אומר על עצמך (Title, Description) אלא מה אחרים אומרים עליך (Anchor Text).

האמת היא שההסתמכות הזו על טקסט העוגן עשתה לגוגל לא פעם בושות, אפשר רק להיזכר בכמה ממקרי ה-Google bombing המשעשעים: ממקרה Adobe Reader וטקסט העוגן: Click here (כיוון שטקסט העוגן Click here הופיע במיליוני דפים שקישרו להורדה של קורא ה-PDF של Adobe, מי שחיפש בגוגל את הביטוי Click here היה מקבל את האתר של Adobe) ועד למקרה Miserable failure של הנשיא בוש והמקבילה הישראלית "כישלון חרוץ" עם אולמרט וביבי.

זה בעצם היה הבסיס לביטוי החביב כל כך על מקדמי אתרים – והדי סתום ת'אמת – "מעביר אנקור". במשך שנים מקדמי אתרים הוציאו את הנשמה זה לזה כדי להשיג קישור ש"מעביר אנקור" – כלומר קישור מדויק על הביטוי המקודם על ידם. בארץ ההתעקשות על טקסט עוגן מדויק הגיע לפעמים למחוזות אבסורדיים: אוי ואבוי אם הייתה מצטרפת לפני טקסט הקישור ו' החיבור או ה' הידיעה, על פסיק או נקודה בסוף הביטוי היו מפוצצים את כל ההחלפה. אז נולד בעברית תחביר חדש לגמרי, למשל שימוש תמוה במקפים: "ב-קידום אתרים" לפני הקישור, או השארת רווחים מוזרים אחריו: "קידום אתרים ."

אבל צריך לקוות שרוב כותבי התוכן והמקדמים כבר הבינו מזמן שהוספת מקפים ורווחים לא במקומות שיועדו להם עושה רק דבר אחד – מכערת את דף, ואם גוגל חכמים מספיק בעברית (ואני לא בטוח…) היא מעידה בראש ובראשונה על over optimization שאמורה לפגוע בציון הדף. מי שחושש שגוגל לא תבין ביטוי מקודם אם מצורפת לו ו' החיבור שישתמש במילות חיבור מקובלות בעברית. אבל בשביל זה לא היה צריך את העדכון האחרון של גוגל…

העדכון האחרון של גוגל – וכאן אנחנו מגיעים למשפט השני של ההצהרה הבומבסטית – מודיע שמעתה שיטה ששימשה את גוגל שנים בניתוח הקישורים תיעלם: We are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. והשיטה היא כאמור המשקל שניתן לטקסט עוגן בהבנת הנושא של הדף שאליו הוא מקשר. מהיום כך נראה גוגל לא תיעזר (כמעט או בכלל) בטקסט העוגן בשביל להבין על מה הדף. אז על מה היא כן תסתמך? על ה-Title, על ה-Description ועל תוכן הדף עצמו. רמז עבה קיבלנו מגוגל עצמה לפני 4 חודשים באותו בלוג עצמו. כך נכתב שם אז על תיקון חדש באלגוריתם:

Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

אז הצהירה גוגל שהיא תציג Titles טובים יותר בעזרת הפחתה בהשפעה שיש לטקסט העוגן על קביעת ה-Titles של דפים בתוצאות החיפוש (למי שלא ידע, גוגל אכן נעזרו גם בטקסט העוגן של קישורים ולא רק בתג ה-Title שבקוד הדף בקביעת תצוגת ה-Titles בתוצאות החיפוש שלהם). אבל אסור לטעות ולהסיק מכך שגוגל פשוט החליטה להחזיר את מנוע החיפוש 10 שנים לאחור ולסווג דפים רק על פי מה שכתוב ב-Title שלהם. גוגל מדייקים בדרך כלל מאוד בניסוחים שלהם ולכן כדאי לקרוא בתשומת לב: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title […] The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

כלומר, רלוונטיות בין תוכן הדף ותג ה-Title שלו תקבע איזה Title יוצג בתוצאות החיפוש – אם על פי חישובי גוגל תג ה-Title אכן מתאים לתוכן עצמו היא תציג אותו, ואם לא – היא תקבע Title משלה שמתאים יותר לתוכן הדף עצמו. גוגל לא מעוניינת להציג כותרות "שיווקיות" המושכות הקלקות ומעלות CTR אם הן לא מתמצתות במדויק את מה שהדף עוסק בו.

ואיך כל זה קשור לדירוגי דפים ולעבודת SEO? פשוט מאוד: הבנה של התוכן שבו עוסק הדף וקביעת ה-Title המוצג שלו קובעת על אילו ביטויים יעלה הדף במקומות גבוהים בתוצאות החיפוש. אם נסכם עכשיו את עדכון Link evaluation המרגש כל כך מקדמים בעולם נאמר כך:

גוגל הצהירה החודש שתפסיק להיעזר בטקסט העוגן של קישורים בהבנת התוכן של הדף המקושר. כמו כן, גוגל כבר הצהירה לא מזמן שהפסיקה להיעזר בטקסט העוגן של קישורים בקביעת ה-Titles של דפים. מעתה גוגל תסתמך על ניתוח תוכן הדף עצמו בקביעת ה-Title הנראה שלו ובהבנה של הנושאים שבהם הוא עוסק. מסקנה לבניית פרופיל קישורים לאתר: מה שייכתב בטקסט העוגן של הקישורים לאתר לא יישנה את דעתה של גוגל לגבי הנושא של הדף הזה ומכאן לא יישנה את דירוגו של הדף על הביטוי שמופיע בטקסט העוגן. לא משנה כמה קישורים נוציא על הביטוי המדויק "קידום אתרים", דירוגו של הדף המקושר על הביטוי "קידום אתרים" לא ישתנה בגוגל. צריך להבין טוב – מדובר על טקסט העוגן ולא על עצם הקישור עצמו! אין טענה שקישורים חיצוניים הפסיקו לקדם את הדפים המקושרים, הטענה היא שכבר לא משנה מה יהיה טקסט העוגן המדויק של הקישורים האלה.

זהו, עכשיו תחליטו בעצמכם אם אכן זהו "העדכון המשמעותי והחשוב ביותר של גוגל בשנים האחרונות"…

נושאים נוספים שאולי יעניינו אותך:

• 20 באפריל 2007 -- מדריך עיצוב אתרים – שיפור צבעי האתר
• 9 ביולי 2009 -- גוגל כרום – בקרוב גם מערכת הפעלה
• 20 באוקטובר 2007 -- כמה נתונים מעניינים על גוגל אדסנס
• 15 בפברואר 2009 -- תג קנוניקל (Canonical) והמלחמה בתוכן המשוכפל
• 28 באוגוסט 2005 -- שני טיפים ממהנדס של גוגל

There is still good news, though. If your job, company or project involves any type of content creation, Quora can be very effective.

Quora is essentially a more hip Yahoo answers. It lures tech savvy-crowds and niche experts (or sometimes people pretending to be smart). If something is “buzzing”, you’ll probably find people talking about it on Quora.

Topics are fresh and relevant, which is what we want for cutting-edge content, right?

So now what?

Here are 3 actionable tactics to build content using Quora:

1. Use Quora To Find Topic Suggestions

This can be a huge time saver for big companies with a demanding editorial calendar, or even small businesses with a low content creation budget.

Simply use the search box at the top of the site to search topics.  You will see that many of the broad topics have sub-topics, and the sub-topics have individual questions. In this example we will search for “local search engine optimization“. Browse the topics and parse the unanswered questions within the topics to trigger ideas.

Once you have decided on your blog topic, keep browsing more unanswered questions to help formulate more specific ideas within your content.  Finally, follow the topics and unanswered questions that you are using for your post so you can easily answer (and link back to your blog post) once your content goes live.

2. Find Quotes From Industry Professionals

Find answers that experts have already answered. Browse the boards for answers that were well-received (most votes) and quote them in your content if they are informative, creative or amusing.

3. Reach Out To Experts Of Your Topic

Browse other professionals and ask them to answer your question for your blog post. Think of this like tweeting to somebody, although I have found that if you specifically reach out to people on Quora, they’ll usually answer.

Remember, Quora has a “credit” system, where:

“You’ll spend credits to add a question, ask someone to answer, or promote content. You’ll earn credits when people vote up your answers or follow your questions” (Quora.com).

Be careful not to waste your credits on asking unqualified people to answer. Do your homework first. Every user starts with 500 credits so it takes awhile to run out.

Finally, as you are reaching out to people, be patient, as I have found it can take a few days (even weeks) to get responses.

Have you used Quora to help with your content creation? What other ideas do you have? Please leave your comments below and let’s continue the conversation.

There is still good news, though. If your job, company or project involves any type of content creation, Quora can be very effective.

Quora is essentially a more hip Yahoo answers. It lures tech savvy-crowds and niche experts (or sometimes people pretending to be smart). If something is “buzzing”, you’ll probably find people talking about it on Quora.

Topics are fresh and relevant, which is what we want for cutting-edge content, right?

So now what?

Here are 3 actionable tactics to build content using Quora:

1. Use Quora To Find Topic Suggestions

This can be a huge time saver for big companies with a demanding editorial calendar, or even small businesses with a low content creation budget.

Simply use the search box at the top of the site to search topics.  You will see that many of the broad topics have sub-topics, and the sub-topics have individual questions. In this example we will search for “local search engine optimization“. Browse the topics and parse the unanswered questions within the topics to trigger ideas.

Once you have decided on your blog topic, keep browsing more unanswered questions to help formulate more specific ideas within your content.  Finally, follow the topics and unanswered questions that you are using for your post so you can easily answer (and link back to your blog post) once your content goes live.

2. Find Quotes From Industry Professionals

Find answers that experts have already answered. Browse the boards for answers that were well-received (most votes) and quote them in your content if they are informative, creative or amusing.

3. Reach Out To Experts Of Your Topic

Browse other professionals and ask them to answer your question for your blog post. Think of this like tweeting to somebody, although I have found that if you specifically reach out to people on Quora, they’ll usually answer.

Remember, Quora has a “credit” system, where:

“You’ll spend credits to add a question, ask someone to answer, or promote content. You’ll earn credits when people vote up your answers or follow your questions” (Quora.com).

Be careful not to waste your credits on asking unqualified people to answer. Do your homework first. Every user starts with 500 credits so it takes awhile to run out.

Finally, as you are reaching out to people, be patient, as I have found it can take a few days (even weeks) to get responses.

Have you used Quora to help with your content creation? What other ideas do you have? Please leave your comments below and let’s continue the conversation.

As you have read from Lauren’s and Suzanne’s past Pinterest posts, this social network is quickly becoming a major contender within its realm, as evidenced by a 429% increase of unique visitors to the site from September to December 2011 via 11 million monthly visitors, making it the fastest growing website to surpass the 10 million mark.

In this final piece of our three-part puzzle, I will be discussing how to take advantage of Pinterest’s potential to build your brand. Branding is all about the real estate you take up in someone’s mind and Pinterest occupies this real estate like no other social media tool. Allow me to discuss four monikers (similar to the site’s “Pin It” mantra) for successfully leveraging Pinterest’s branding potential.

Number 1: Start It

The largest and simplest way to brand your business with Pinterest is by simply starting. I mean it kindly, but the more you put in to the network, the more your business will get out of it. Create your profile, build your boards, and let the fun begin. Leverage the site to introduce new products, show off best sellers, and present your business directly to your customer.  For example, Etsy showcases 26 boards that feature products from its marketplace including Gift Ideas, DIY Projects, and Etsy Kids.

Remember, like all social media sites, content is king. Curate your brand by featuring content that is applicable, pleasant, shareable and adds value to your brand. As Suzanne mentioned in her post, Pinterest has great potential for your internet marketing strategy, make sure you utilize keyword-rich captions for your pins. As appealing as “Awwwww” or “Cuuuuute” may seem as captions, it does not add to your credibility, creativity or SEO. 

Number 2: Personalize It

Let me illustrate my next point with the archetype example of how NOT to pin. I am sure you are well familiar with the sleazy sales guy who is constantly pushing their product through your window after you slammed the door. Pinterest is not the place to be “that guy”. Nothing destroys value like the constant, straight-up sales pitch.

Don’t misunderstand my first suggestion, obviously there needs to do some self promotion, but there is a limit. One of the best statutes of social media is the 80-20 rule, and it is as applicable to Pinterest as it is with Facebook or Twitter. Let 20% of your content come directly from your site and pin/repin the other 80%.  It is essential to share content from sources beyond your website and your brand.

One of my favorite fashion powerhouses, Nordstrom, does this quite well. For every product based board, there are boards for inspirations like NYC Fashion Week, and color palette ideas. Your boards should be a commemoration of things that invigorate your business, your best services, and specific stylistic representations of your brand.

Pinterest goes beyond simply featuring your products; it is an opportunity to interpret the lifestyle of your clientele.  Feature your items together – not only does it make it easier to up-sell, it makes your posts look more organized. By doing this, you resonate with your customer’s needs.

By personalizing your brand, you humanize your business. Leverage a board to showcase employees with photos and bios, give a glimpse of behind the scenes of the office, commemorate special events, or provide tutorials. Additionally, Pinterest allows for multiple collaborators on their boards – having employee contribution not only adds to the human element, but builds office unity.

Number 3: Engage It

Next step: engage your customers. Respond to comments, feature their boards, run contests – the possibilities are endless. Pinterest is another venue for customer interface, so interact, socialize, and connect. One of the best ways to engage is to promote others’ pins through likes, comments, and re-pins. Pin images that flatter your brand and provide a diverse mix of images from your industry. ModCloth shares pins from bloggers and websites that share their mutual admiration for all things eclectic, and vintage.

As far as contests go, reach beyond the typical “Pin It to Win It”. Harness the creative power of your Pinterest followers.  Engage your followers by asking their opinion on the next marketing strategy, comment on the new office designs or vote on the trends they most want to see in your next collection. Choose the winners by awarding points based on likes, comment and re-pins.

One final way to engage your customer base: add the “Pin It” button to your product pages to help your customers build the brand. For example, Etsy includes the “Pin It” button on all listing pages, alongside the usual “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, allowing their 55 thousand followers to actively participate in the content distributed on Pinterest.

Number 4: Learn From It

Pinterest also provides ways to do some quick research that is directly corresponding from your customer base. Every pin displays consequential information such as comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. However, the most interesting information presented is the exact URL from which the image was pinned. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page your site. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to leverage it? Type the following URL into your browser http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site URL . You’ll quickly be able to see the images pinned directly from your site with additional information like re-Pins and comments. Furthermore, you are able to understand how your customer perceives your product. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. You may see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, and “My Future Home”. What are they saying about your product?  If nothing is said, a simple pin/re-pin shows generated interest. Use this free information to your advantage!

Conclude It

Successfully making branding via Pinterest is not difficult, and there are multiple ways of leveraging it. It is now your chance to go and explore how your business can utilize the newest social jewel to brand your business. Get your free Pinterest invite today.

Let’s talk in the comments section – what do you love or hate about brands you’ve seen on Pinterest?

Here are the links to the previous two Pinterest Posts in the series.

• Pinterest… What’s The Biog Deal? – Part 1 
• How To Leverage Pinterest In Your SEM Strategy – Part 2

As you have read from Lauren’s and Suzanne’s past Pinterest posts, this social network is quickly becoming a major contender within its realm, as evidenced by a 429% increase of unique visitors to the site from September to December 2011 via 11 million monthly visitors, making it the fastest growing website to surpass the 10 million mark.

In this final piece of our three-part puzzle, I will be discussing how to take advantage of Pinterest’s potential to build your brand. Branding is all about the real estate you take up in someone’s mind and Pinterest occupies this real estate like no other social media tool. Allow me to discuss four monikers (similar to the site’s “Pin It” mantra) for successfully leveraging Pinterest’s branding potential.

Number 1: Start It

The largest and simplest way to brand your business with Pinterest is by simply starting. I mean it kindly, but the more you put in to the network, the more your business will get out of it. Create your profile, build your boards, and let the fun begin. Leverage the site to introduce new products, show off best sellers, and present your business directly to your customer.  For example, Etsy showcases 26 boards that feature products from its marketplace including Gift Ideas, DIY Projects, and Etsy Kids.

Remember, like all social media sites, content is king. Curate your brand by featuring content that is applicable, pleasant, shareable and adds value to your brand. As Suzanne mentioned in her post, Pinterest has great potential for your internet marketing strategy, make sure you utilize keyword-rich captions for your pins. As appealing as “Awwwww” or “Cuuuuute” may seem as captions, it does not add to your credibility, creativity or SEO. 

Number 2: Personalize It

Let me illustrate my next point with the archetype example of how NOT to pin. I am sure you are well familiar with the sleazy sales guy who is constantly pushing their product through your window after you slammed the door. Pinterest is not the place to be “that guy”. Nothing destroys value like the constant, straight-up sales pitch.

Don’t misunderstand my first suggestion, obviously there needs to do some self promotion, but there is a limit. One of the best statutes of social media is the 80-20 rule, and it is as applicable to Pinterest as it is with Facebook or Twitter. Let 20% of your content come directly from your site and pin/repin the other 80%.  It is essential to share content from sources beyond your website and your brand.

One of my favorite fashion powerhouses, Nordstrom, does this quite well. For every product based board, there are boards for inspirations like NYC Fashion Week, and color palette ideas. Your boards should be a commemoration of things that invigorate your business, your best services, and specific stylistic representations of your brand.

Pinterest goes beyond simply featuring your products; it is an opportunity to interpret the lifestyle of your clientele.  Feature your items together – not only does it make it easier to up-sell, it makes your posts look more organized. By doing this, you resonate with your customer’s needs.

By personalizing your brand, you humanize your business. Leverage a board to showcase employees with photos and bios, give a glimpse of behind the scenes of the office, commemorate special events, or provide tutorials. Additionally, Pinterest allows for multiple collaborators on their boards – having employee contribution not only adds to the human element, but builds office unity.

Number 3: Engage It

Next step: engage your customers. Respond to comments, feature their boards, run contests – the possibilities are endless. Pinterest is another venue for customer interface, so interact, socialize, and connect. One of the best ways to engage is to promote others’ pins through likes, comments, and re-pins. Pin images that flatter your brand and provide a diverse mix of images from your industry. ModCloth shares pins from bloggers and websites that share their mutual admiration for all things eclectic, and vintage.

As far as contests go, reach beyond the typical “Pin It to Win It”. Harness the creative power of your Pinterest followers.  Engage your followers by asking their opinion on the next marketing strategy, comment on the new office designs or vote on the trends they most want to see in your next collection. Choose the winners by awarding points based on likes, comment and re-pins.

One final way to engage your customer base: add the “Pin It” button to your product pages to help your customers build the brand. For example, Etsy includes the “Pin It” button on all listing pages, alongside the usual “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, allowing their 55 thousand followers to actively participate in the content distributed on Pinterest.

Number 4: Learn From It

Pinterest also provides ways to do some quick research that is directly corresponding from your customer base. Every pin displays consequential information such as comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. However, the most interesting information presented is the exact URL from which the image was pinned. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page your site. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to leverage it? Type the following URL into your browser http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site URL . You’ll quickly be able to see the images pinned directly from your site with additional information like re-Pins and comments. Furthermore, you are able to understand how your customer perceives your product. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. You may see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, and “My Future Home”. What are they saying about your product?  If nothing is said, a simple pin/re-pin shows generated interest. Use this free information to your advantage!

Conclude It

Successfully making branding via Pinterest is not difficult, and there are multiple ways of leveraging it. It is now your chance to go and explore how your business can utilize the newest social jewel to brand your business. Get your free Pinterest invite today.

Let’s talk in the comments section – what do you love or hate about brands you’ve seen on Pinterest?

Here are the links to the previous two Pinterest Posts in the series.

• Pinterest… What’s The Biog Deal? – Part 1 
• How To Leverage Pinterest In Your SEM Strategy – Part 2

As an SEO Manager, I am often asked by new clients, “What version of my domain should I use, the www or the non-www?”  This question has a simple answer because in terms of SEO (search engine optimization), it doesn’t really matter.

In order to choose between domains, there are a couple of things to consider.  A new site that has not yet been indexed will probably want to use the traditional www version.  For an older site that may already be ranking for key terms, take a look at which version of the site is already ranking and stick with whichever one is ranking.  Take a look at the backlink portfolio for each domain as well to see which has more links built.

Once a domain has been chosen, some house cleaning is in order.  Update sitemaps and internal link structure in order to reflect the correct version of the domain.  Place a canonical tag or 301 redirect on the version of the domain you choose not to use.  Finally, log into webmaster tools in order to set the preferred domain.

As an SEO Manager, I am often asked by new clients, “What version of my domain should I use, the www or the non-www?”  This question has a simple answer because in terms of SEO (search engine optimization), it doesn’t really matter.

In order to choose between domains, there are a couple of things to consider.  A new site that has not yet been indexed will probably want to use the traditional www version.  For an older site that may already be ranking for key terms, take a look at which version of the site is already ranking and stick with whichever one is ranking.  Take a look at the backlink portfolio for each domain as well to see which has more links built.

Once a domain has been chosen, some house cleaning is in order.  Update sitemaps and internal link structure in order to reflect the correct version of the domain.  Place a canonical tag or 301 redirect on the version of the domain you choose not to use.  Finally, log into webmaster tools in order to set the preferred domain.

Press releases are an important ingredient to add to the mix because they can help you build high quality backlinks from reputable news websites and blogs and potentially help you gain media coverage.

Here are some dos and don’ts about how to write press releases for SEO purposes:

Creating Story ideas

Don’t send out a press release if you don’t have anything to announce. It sounds simple enough but so many times, SEO campaigns follow time guidelines and send out releases that aren’t timely, news worthy or high-quality. This will actually work against your campaign. Creating an idea for a great press release isn’t as hard as it sounds. Here are topic ideas for timely and newsworthy press releases:

• Grand opening of a business
• New product, service or website and how it fills void in industry
• Market research, statics, polls and results pertaining to your industry or business
• Tips or ideas for an upcoming holiday or event
• Announcement for winning a prestigious Award
• Celebration of a company milestone
• How your business is “Green”
• Charity work, scholarship programs, community outreach programs or charitable contribution
• Stock offerings or financial updates
• What bigger companies are doing in your industry and how your services compare

SEO Friendly Titles

Do use Keywords in your title. The title of your press release should ideally contain one or more of your keywords and the name of your company. Thousands of headline impressions that run RSS feeds will publish your release. Because your title becomes the title tag, it’s a very important part of what helps a website rank for your keyword. Your title should also be fun and “clickable.” A clickable title is informative, witty, interesting and hopefully all three.

Using Keyword Rich Anchor Text

Do use strategic keyword rich anchor text. The best practice to follow is not to use more than two keyword links per press release and place the most important link in the first sentence. Read, 5 Steps to Killer Keyword Research, to learn more about keywords and phrases you should target. The linked keywords that you choose to use in a press release depend on the campaign. Most of the time, you should use bigger keywords that are showing great movement and keep the momentum building. Other times, it might be necessary to give keywords that have grown stale a boost by adding them into the release in a relevant way. If a company is not ranking for any keywords going after low hanging fruit early in a campaign can help ROI immediately. Branded keywords work well in press releases, especially compared to using them in other link building strategies, such as blog posts. You can fit keywords in naturally by writing your release first, and then adding the links so your links don’t feel forced.

Quotes and Bragging Rights

Do use compelling quotes. Incorporating quotes into press releases is an easy way to toot your own horn. You should never call your company or product the greatest, best or most unique. When you are using quotes it’s okay to brag a little bit as long as you can back it up. Having a quotation come directly from the authorities within the company will help your release get picked up, and bloggers and writers will appreciate that they can pull the quotes directly from your release to use in their story.

Example of a bad quote:

“We’re excited that our seat belts will be available to lot of people,” said SeatBelt Company CEO. “Our seatbelts are the safest in the World.”

Example of a good quote:

“With the release of the SafeBelt system, Seatbelt Company will be able to help decrease the impact that a human takes during a car crash,” said SeatBelt Company CEO. “Our ultimate goal is to help save lives. We will continue to do research in order to engineer the safest seatbelts in the world.”

Optimizing your Content

Do think like Public a Relations Professional. Press releases are news announcements, regardless of whether they are for SEO purposes or not. By writing high quality, rich content that directly relates to your business your release will be naturally optimized. All releases should include the name of your organization, geographical information, a contact e-mail address and phone number. Don’t forget you are writing for the web so keep your release at 400-600 words and include a boilerplate at the end of your release. You’re allowed to use fun language but avoid colloquialisms and dragged out sentences at all costs. Press releases typically receive the most impressions and reads if they are sent out first thing on Monday or Tuesday. However it’s most important to send your release out in a time that makes sense to the topic that you’re writing about.

Adding Multimedia

Don’t forget about logos, photos, embedded videos and infographics. By including multimedia, the likelihood that a news source or blog will take your whole press release package and publish it on their site (gaining you high quality links) will increase. Including logos and photos in your press release is also a great way to get your company ranked in Google Images. When doing this, make sure that your file name contains a concise clear description of the image and a keyword. Youtube videos have a great social following, and they will help increase the reach of your video and press release.

Completing the Circle

Don’t think that after you submit your release that you’re done. Press Releases, social media and other SEO strategies should all come together on a unified front. You should take the time to publish your press releases on your twitter feed, Facebook and other social platforms. After at least two weeks, do an analysis of your release and see the reach it achieved. PRWeb has a great analytical report you can download. If the press release site you use doesn’t have those statistics, an easy way to track your reach is to place quotes around the title and search it in Google. Pay attention to where your release ranks in search engines for certain keywords and your company name. Track how well it drives traffic and sales to your company’s website and how many views it receives. The goal is to get it picked up by as many reputable news organizations as possible so that your linked keywords point back to your page and boosts your SEO. Your press release will also have a chance of ranking in Google and Yahoo News for your keywords.

Don’t waste your time and money on sending out a release that is filled with jargon that no one wants to read; what you’ll get a few links from the same root domains, unnatural linking patterns and no social attributes.  If you follow these press release ideas you’ll be adding a special link building element to your SEO potion.

I’d love to hear about other tips and ideas that you use when writing press releases and some success stories where press releases have helped your SEO campaign. Please leave your comments below.

Of the many competitive research tools available, Open Site Explorer shines brightly above the alternatives. It’s very intuitive – first time users will find it incredibly easy to use. You simply enter your URL, along with up to 4 competitors, and you get lots of data to start analyzing.

Total External Links

External links are useful see how you compare to competitors in online conversation and presence, and will help you set goals in your SEO strategy.

Link building can be a numbers game, and this report will help you determine whether it’s quantity, or quality (meaning high value) links that you lack compared to other sites in your industry.

Total Linking Root Domains

The Total Linking Domains report gives you a look at the diversity of domains sending links to your competitor’s websites. If you see that they have a high number of links, but a low number of total linking root domains, you know that they are getting most of their links from the same domains. It is better to have both a high number of links as well as a high number of linking root domains.

Linking C Blocks

The Linking C Blocks (or C class IPs) report refers to the IP addresses of linking websites.

While very similar to the Linking Root Domains report, this isn’t the same thing. C Blocks are your way of identifying the true backlink diversity of any given website. Getting 500 links from 500 unique C Block IP addresses is more impressive to search engines than 500 links from 500 different domains that are hosted on the same IP (or even C Block IP), which may look suspiciously like a linking network.

It is always best to have both a high number of linking root domains and a high number of linking C blocks in your link portfolio.

Evaluating the ratio between C blocks and linking root domains is also a quick way to identify whether a particular competitor is using a network of links.

Back Link Portfolio

After we have looked through these stats and set some goals on what you want to accomplish in your strategy we can next pull the backlink portfolio and see exactly where the competitors are getting their links. It is always best to sort their link portfolio by highest to lowest by page authority. This way you can start with their highest authoritative links and analyze and see how they got their link on that site and figure out a way to get a link on that site as well, weather it is a directory that you can place a link or a blog that you can offer a guest post to. It helps to think outside the box and figure out a way to get a link on their site.

Hopefully these tips will help you the next time you analyze your competitors and you will be able to find some high quality links for your site.

Of the many competitive research tools available, Open Site Explorer shines brightly above the alternatives. It’s very intuitive – first time users will find it incredibly easy to use. You simply enter your URL, along with up to 4 competitors, and you get lots of data to start analyzing.

Total External Links

External links are useful see how you compare to competitors in online conversation and presence, and will help you set goals in your SEO strategy.

Link building can be a numbers game, and this report will help you determine whether it’s quantity, or quality (meaning high value) links that you lack compared to other sites in your industry.

Total Linking Root Domains

The Total Linking Domains report gives you a look at the diversity of domains sending links to your competitor’s websites. If you see that they have a high number of links, but a low number of total linking root domains, you know that they are getting most of their links from the same domains. It is better to have both a high number of links as well as a high number of linking root domains.

Linking C Blocks

The Linking C Blocks (or C class IPs) report refers to the IP addresses of linking websites.

While very similar to the Linking Root Domains report, this isn’t the same thing. C Blocks are your way of identifying the true backlink diversity of any given website. Getting 500 links from 500 unique C Block IP addresses is more impressive to search engines than 500 links from 500 different domains that are hosted on the same IP (or even C Block IP), which may look suspiciously like a linking network.

It is always best to have both a high number of linking root domains and a high number of linking C blocks in your link portfolio.

Evaluating the ratio between C blocks and linking root domains is also a quick way to identify whether a particular competitor is using a network of links.

Back Link Portfolio

After we have looked through these stats and set some goals on what you want to accomplish in your strategy we can next pull the backlink portfolio and see exactly where the competitors are getting their links. It is always best to sort their link portfolio by highest to lowest by page authority. This way you can start with their highest authoritative links and analyze and see how they got their link on that site and figure out a way to get a link on that site as well, weather it is a directory that you can place a link or a blog that you can offer a guest post to. It helps to think outside the box and figure out a way to get a link on their site.

Hopefully these tips will help you the next time you analyze your competitors and you will be able to find some high quality links for your site.

Of the many competitive research tools available, Open Site Explorer shines brightly above the alternatives. It’s very intuitive – first time users will find it incredibly easy to use. You simply enter your URL, along with up to 4 competitors, and you get lots of data to start analyzing.

Total External Links

External links are useful see how you compare to competitors in online conversation and presence, and will help you set goals in your SEO strategy.

Link building can be a numbers game, and this report will help you determine whether it’s quantity, or quality (meaning high value) links that you lack compared to other sites in your industry.

Total Linking Root Domains

The Total Linking Domains report gives you a look at the diversity of domains sending links to your competitor’s websites. If you see that they have a high number of links, but a low number of total linking root domains, you know that they are getting most of their links from the same domains. It is better to have both a high number of links as well as a high number of linking root domains.

Linking C Blocks

The Linking C Blocks (or C class IPs) report refers to the IP addresses of linking websites.

While very similar to the Linking Root Domains report, this isn’t the same thing. C Blocks are your way of identifying the true backlink diversity of any given website. Getting 500 links from 500 unique C Block IP addresses is more impressive to search engines than 500 links from 500 different domains that are hosted on the same IP (or even C Block IP), which may look suspiciously like a linking network.

It is always best to have both a high number of linking root domains and a high number of linking C blocks in your link portfolio.

Evaluating the ratio between C blocks and linking root domains is also a quick way to identify whether a particular competitor is using a network of links.

Back Link Portfolio

After we have looked through these stats and set some goals on what you want to accomplish in your strategy we can next pull the backlink portfolio and see exactly where the competitors are getting their links. It is always best to sort their link portfolio by highest to lowest by page authority. This way you can start with their highest authoritative links and analyze and see how they got their link on that site and figure out a way to get a link on that site as well, weather it is a directory that you can place a link or a blog that you can offer a guest post to. It helps to think outside the box and figure out a way to get a link on their site.

Hopefully these tips will help you the next time you analyze your competitors and you will be able to find some high quality links for your site.

It is hard to know how difficult achieving rankings with a new search engine optimization project will be because so many factors play into it and Google is always adjusting its algorithm. By understanding search engines you can help clients understand how difficult an SEO’s job is at times.

So how does Google’s algorithm work?

The Anatomy of a Search Engine:

This is a basic breakdown of a much more complex process.

• A URL Server sends over lists of URLs to be crawled.
• The crawlers download the web pages then send them to the store server. The store server compresses and stores the web pages.
• Every web page is given an associated ID number called a docID then sent to the indexer.
• The indexing function is performed by the indexer and the sorter.
• All of the documents (webpages) are converted into a set of word occurrences called hits. Each hit records the word, position in document and other variables.
• The indexer sends these hits into a set of “buckets”, creating a partial index.
• The indexer separates out all of the links in every web page and keeps important information about them in another file. This file contains information about where each link points from and to, and the text of the link.
• The links database is used to compute PageRanks for all the documents. The sorter takes the barrels, which are sorted by docID…., and resorts them by wordID to generate the inverted index…… The searcher is run by a web server and uses the inverted index and the PageRanks to answer queries.

A much more in depth process of this can be found at - http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

In laymen’s terms this is what it happens:

Say someone is looking for information about blu ray players. Google takes the billions of documents on the web and converts them into wordID’s. Then it looks for instances or patterns of the wordID’s across all of the documents and ranks the documents based on how often the wordID’s appear. For example,

Blu ray player

Based off of the table above you can see that document 134 shows up in every document making it the most relevant and thus potentially ranking very high in the search results. Google has to sort through millions of documents on the web that could be talking about Ray-Ban glasses that are blue, blue ray jackets, Tampa Devil Rays jerseys that are blue, Devil Ray players, Blue Apple players and so on. In addition to looking for wordID’s, links and other on-pages factors are taken into consideration when trying to rank a site. This gets very complex really quick.

Key Takeaway: Google has to create an “association” or see that your site is relevant for a given keyword out of billions of documents. That association could take months if not years to create and it becomes even more difficult to create as you move closer to the top 10 results. *We know Google has around 200 ranking factors so it would be a good idea for a client to implement as many on-page elements as possible, to send a clear message to Google as to what the page is about, since on-page elements tend to be easier to control then the link building aspect.

Knowing the basic process is good but how much information does Google have to sort through in order to find the most relevant webpage for a search query?

What Does It Take To Get a List of Results?

• More than 1 million computing hours have gone into preparing Google’s index
• More than 1 billion searches are performed on Google every day
• More than 1,000 man years have been spent on developing Google’s algorithm
• Google’s Caffeine index contains over 100 million gigabytes
• In July of 2008 Google processed 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs. What does that equate to: That is the equivalent of, “fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.” Google computes this every day.
• Google’s database of indexed pages is 5 million terabytes – A stack of DVDs holding Google’s index would be as tall as 3,192 Empire State buildings.

This is the task of an SEO, to try and help Google effectively sort through all of the web pages and then to help a client rank for a certain search query. This is why it takes time to potentially rank for a given keyword. As SEO’s optimize pages and build links Google is sorting through the tremendous amounts of data every day in order to better understand which pages should rank in the top positions.

As you can see a lot of time and energy has been spent by Google in order to bring back relevant results to users. It does not stop there. Since new web pages are being created daily, Google has to keep up with all of this new information. Because of that Google and other search engines need to be efficient and effective in how they manage all of this information.

Google is Always Changing

Even if a client has everything in place and is able to get to the first page of the search results, Google is always changing and tweaking its algorithm so it is an uphill battle.

Google made over 500 changes to their algorithm last year and Matt Cutts has stated,

“Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites……This change is just one of the over 500improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.”

The news came on January 19th when Google announced another algorithm change.

While the majority of these changes are small, a number of big changes took place last year that affected nearly 50% of all search queries.

For an up to date timeline of Google’s changes over the years check out SEOmoz.org. Since Google is always changing the way they rank sites it makes an SEO’s job that much more difficult. Keeping up to date on the latest changes and industry news is never ending for an SEO.

Obviously there are many more factors to consider when getting into an SEO campaign but I have found that helping clients recognize how much work it takes to get sites to rank can improve the overall relationship in a positive way.

Stats above can be found at:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/underthehood.html

http://adam-thompson.me/2011/02/03/google-how-big/

It is hard to know how difficult achieving rankings with a new search engine optimization project will be because so many factors play into it and Google is always adjusting its algorithm. By understanding search engines you can help clients understand how difficult an SEO’s job is at times.

So how does Google’s algorithm work?

The Anatomy of a Search Engine:

This is a basic breakdown of a much more complex process.

• A URL Server sends over lists of URLs to be crawled.
• The crawlers download the web pages then send them to the store server. The store server compresses and stores the web pages.
• Every web page is given an associated ID number called a docID then sent to the indexer.
• The indexing function is performed by the indexer and the sorter.
• All of the documents (webpages) are converted into a set of word occurrences called hits. Each hit records the word, position in document and other variables.
• The indexer sends these hits into a set of “buckets”, creating a partial index.
• The indexer separates out all of the links in every web page and keeps important information about them in another file. This file contains information about where each link points from and to, and the text of the link.
• The links database is used to compute PageRanks for all the documents. The sorter takes the barrels, which are sorted by docID…., and resorts them by wordID to generate the inverted index…… The searcher is run by a web server and uses the inverted index and the PageRanks to answer queries.

A much more in depth process of this can be found at - http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

In laymen’s terms this is what it happens:

Say someone is looking for information about blu ray players. Google takes the billions of documents on the web and converts them into wordID’s. Then it looks for instances or patterns of the wordID’s across all of the documents and ranks the documents based on how often the wordID’s appear. For example,

Blu ray player

Based off of the table above you can see that document 134 shows up in every document making it the most relevant and thus potentially ranking very high in the search results. Google has to sort through millions of documents on the web that could be talking about Ray-Ban glasses that are blue, blue ray jackets, Tampa Devil Rays jerseys that are blue, Devil Ray players, Blue Apple players and so on. In addition to looking for wordID’s, links and other on-pages factors are taken into consideration when trying to rank a site. This gets very complex really quick.

Key Takeaway: Google has to create an “association” or see that your site is relevant for a given keyword out of billions of documents. That association could take months if not years to create and it becomes even more difficult to create as you move closer to the top 10 results. *We know Google has around 200 ranking factors so it would be a good idea for a client to implement as many on-page elements as possible, to send a clear message to Google as to what the page is about, since on-page elements tend to be easier to control then the link building aspect.

Knowing the basic process is good but how much information does Google have to sort through in order to find the most relevant webpage for a search query?

What Does It Take To Get a List of Results?

• More than 1 million computing hours have gone into preparing Google’s index
• More than 1 billion searches are performed on Google every day
• More than 1,000 man years have been spent on developing Google’s algorithm
• Google’s Caffeine index contains over 100 million gigabytes
• In July of 2008 Google processed 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs. What does that equate to: That is the equivalent of, “fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.” Google computes this every day.
• Google’s database of indexed pages is 5 million terabytes – A stack of DVDs holding Google’s index would be as tall as 3,192 Empire State buildings.

This is the task of an SEO, to try and help Google effectively sort through all of the web pages and then to help a client rank for a certain search query. This is why it takes time to potentially rank for a given keyword. As SEO’s optimize pages and build links Google is sorting through the tremendous amounts of data every day in order to better understand which pages should rank in the top positions.

As you can see a lot of time and energy has been spent by Google in order to bring back relevant results to users. It does not stop there. Since new web pages are being created daily, Google has to keep up with all of this new information. Because of that Google and other search engines need to be efficient and effective in how they manage all of this information.

Google is Always Changing

Even if a client has everything in place and is able to get to the first page of the search results, Google is always changing and tweaking its algorithm so it is an uphill battle.

Google made over 500 changes to their algorithm last year and Matt Cutts has stated,

Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites……This change is just one of the over 500 improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.

The news came on January 19th when Google announced another algorithm change.

While the majority of these changes are small, a number of big changes took place last year that affected nearly 50% of all search queries.

For an up to date timeline of Google’s changes over the years check out SEOmoz.org. Since Google is always changing the way they rank sites it makes an SEO’s job that much more difficult. Keeping up to date on the latest changes and industry news is never ending for an SEO.

Obviously there are many more factors to consider when getting into an SEO campaign but I have found that helping clients recognize how much work it takes to get sites to rank can improve the overall relationship in a positive way.

Stats above can be found at:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/underthehood.html

http://adam-thompson.me/2011/02/03/google-how-big/

הבלוגר ביל סלווסקי (SEO By the sea) חושף הערב כי חברת גוגל רכשה מספר פטנטים אשר היו שייכים בעבר למנוע החיפוש Cuil אשר נסגר לפני כשנה וחצי.

Cuil,  מנוע חיפוש שאפתני אשר הוקם ע"י 2 עובדי גוגל ו-IBM לשעבר, יצר באז גדול ברשת בעת הקמתו בשנת 2008 וטען כי ברשותו אינדקס אתרים הגדול פי 3 מזה שברשות גוגל (כ- 120 מיליארד דפים בזמנו).

כיצד עלול להשתנות עמוד התוצאות?

הפטנטים שנרכשו, אינם מכילים כל קניין רוחני או  אלגוריתמי חיפוש, אלא רובם עוסקים בשיפור ממשק המשתמש ושיפור תצוגת תוצאות החיפוש. בחלק מהפטנטים שנרכשו ניתן למצוא:

• שיטה ומנגנון להצגת תוצאות חיפוש עם מגוון רחב של פרדיגמות תצוגה
• מנגנון להצגת תוצאות חיפוש באמצעות טאבים
• מנגנון להצגת תוצאות חיפוש עם עמודות הניתנות לשינוי ועריכה
• מנגנון להצגת תוצאות חיפוש עם אפשרויות שונות של מיקום שטחי פרסום
• מנגנון להצגת תוצאות חיפוש עם תפריט נפתח לעדכון\שיפור והצעות נוספות של מונחי חיפוש

מבט על עיצוב עימוד תוצאות החיפוש ע"פ Cuil

בשנים האחרונות גוגל הרחיבה את דף תוצאות החיפוש האוניברסלי והכניסה לתוכו תמונות, סרטונים, השוואות מחירים והחידוש האחרון: הצעות לאנשים הנמצאים ברשת החברתית Google+ הקשורים לביטוי החיפוש שלך (גם אם אתה לא מחובר לחשבון).

נדמה כי לאור התחרות הגוברת מצד פייסבוק ומנועי חיפוש נוספים (דוגמת בינג) גוגל איננה קופאת על השמרים ומנסה עדיין לשנות את כללי המשחק ולהעשיר את מגוון תוצאות החיפוש אשר היא מחזירה למשתמשים שלה. יהיה מעניין לראות כיצד, אם בכלל, ישתלבו אלמנטים אלו בתוצאות החיפוש של גוגל.

מה דעתך?

נושאים נוספים שאולי יעניינו אותך:

• 23 בספטמבר 2006 -- גודל מודעה חדש בגוגל אדסנס
• 10 בנובמבר 2005 -- עדכון ג’אגר מגיע לסיומו
• 12 בינואר 2007 -- אפשר להגיש אתרים אל דמוז
• 17 בנובמבר 2005 -- מהיום Google print הופך ל-Google Book Search
• 6 במאי 2009 -- גוגל אדוורדס משנים מדיניות בנושא trademarks?