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This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:48:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Real Link Wheel Secrets To Top Google Rankings]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:30:05 -0500 <![CDATA[How to upgrade your competitor analysis with Research Central]]> Taylor Pratt Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:00:07 -0500 <![CDATA[30 Hands On Google Search Plus SEO Techniques for Getting Personal]]>

Image above: I’m only ranking at #113 for [seo] in “people and pages” but some of my best friends are around me

While everybody was writing posts what the new Google personal search aka “Google Search Plus Your World” means for SEO I almost started to write one about what Google Search Plus means for SEO 2.0

Then I decided to be more conservative and just summarized a few common sense hands on SEO techniques for Google Search Plus and personal search results.

Neither personal search or social search is new to Google. It’s just a huge leap forward this time after it has been a bit neglected in recent years.

Google+ and +1 are part of the main motivation behind this new move. Also, the so called link economy where many webmasters are buying links to game Google is the target.

Google wants to know who you are and what you like in order to ensure that low quality web sites do not get the attention they sometimes mistakenly still get on Google search.

We have to understand first that Google Search Plus has a two tiered approach. You get still in a way organic results where personal/social search results are mixed in prominently and you can click on the “personal results” link below the search box to see solely your own search results nobody else sees in that way:

Everybody who is logged in into one of the manifold Google services will see the the new personal search results sooner or later. Logged out users will get some very broad suggestions too. They mainly see suggested profiles on the right of search results:

To really use this feature you at least need a Google Profile and a Google+ membership

if you ask me. Then you need to have some people connect to you via Google+ or other services you are using with the notable exception of Facebook it seems. These services have to be linked on your Google Profile to count.

 

What more can you do?

 

Google Profile

  • Connect other sites – Link all your other profiles and sites even less obvious ones like Friendfeed or WordPress.com
  • Describe yourself – Your short “Occupation” description on your profile matters a lot it seems. Also your latest “Employment” seems to have a big impact. Mention your keyword here.
  • Claim authorship – Use the new authorship markup by Google and link back to your Google Profile from your blog posts or respective bio below.

 

Images

  • Use images on your blog – Images on my blog that are properly tagged show up in image results. Michael Gray‘s images do perform even better, they come in second even when I’m logged in
  • Share images on Google+ – Images shared on Google+ rank as well quite obviously
  • Upload images to your profile using Picasa – Your profile image but also other images uploaded to Picasa perform very well
  • Practice image SEO – Consider common sense image SEO best practices like understandable file names instead of numbers.

 

Google+

  • Use on topic circles – Create topical circles on Google+ – I write mainly about SEO, blogging and social media thus I created these three circles for examples (and a few more).
  • Use Google+ actively and frequently – Activity counts, even feeding in Twitter updates automatically, pages and profiles by active people show up much higher
  • Encourage feedback – Feedback like comments and shares is very important, some profiles with more controversial posts with lots of comments show on top
  • Make many people add you to circles – The number of circles you are in counts, Danny Sullivan is in 300k circles so ends up being the suggested user for SEO despite listing at as only one topics he deals with
  • Make sure you’re in the right circles – The names of the circles you are in counts as well so when you are selling SEO use the term to describe yourself not many others
  • Let people link to you on profiles – The number of people who connect their profile to your site is  a factor thus make your employees link, this is one of the reasons the guys from Dejan SEO ranks so well.
  • Participate in social networking – Socialize with relevant people who are on your level. I don’t expect Danny Sullivan or Rand Fishkin to +1 my posts, I will +1 theirs from time, but I focus on people who are into SEO etc. and have enough time to read my posts as well.
  • Share circles – You can create and share circles with other people. They can add all of the people at once.

 

Blogging

  • Use buttons – Add a +1 button to your blog postings. I use the WordPress extension by Pleer SEO.
  • Write about Google+ – Blog about Google+ your profile, your page and what’s going on there.
  • Use a badge – Add a Google+ badge to add you to “your circles” in the sidebar for example.
  • Call to action – Ask people to +1 your postings with a little call to action in the last sentence and display the button below.
  • Check shares – Monitor who shares your postings on Google+ using Topsy and add these people to your circles.

 

Google +1

  • +1 quality and popular sites – Clicking +1 is a double edged sword. Your authority influences the things you vote up but also the sites you +1 are influencing your reputation. Vote up crap nobody else likes and you get less influential on Google as a whole not just Google+ They call it Agent Rank. I’m afraid by quality sites they mean mostly popular sites so you have to +1 main stream sources not only high quality niche sites.
  • +1 sites you often use – To see the sites you really like on top you simply have to +1 them. The more you +1 them the more likely they are to appear on top.
  • +1 your own sites – I don’t like this as I prefer other people to vote for me but it seems you have to vote for own sites and articles. It seems Google doesn’t dislike self-promotion unless of course your won sites are the only ones you push.
  • +1 what’s on top – To get more exposure on other people’s results it seems you have to +1 what’s already on top in organic search. A woman I follow on Twitter linked to the Wikipedia definition of SEO on her private blog and now I see her on top of my search results. I had to look up who she is, she doesn’t even follow me back.

 

Google+ Page

  • Add keyword to name – Use your keyword in the Google+ page description. Point Blank SEO ranks better than just Point Blank of course when it comes to [seo]. The Point Blank SEO team does not only rank because of the keyword, they have a hugely popular Google+ baiting post but it surely helps.
  • Update frequently – It’s crucial to update your page regularly. You know Google loves content, it’s their business model that you provide free content for them so they reward those who do provide it. Also people like me do not follow empty pages unless they trust the source already.
  • Socialize using your page – Companies can follow people on Google+ and +1 updates it seems. They can comment and share like any other user.

 

Other techniques

  • Use keywords in titles – It seems post titles with the keyword mentioned more than once rank better in personal results.
  • Use common words – You can optimize for common words again. When I search for car, house or even love I see personal results but most of them are not relevant, they keywords may match but in most cases the whole update may be completely irrelevant to me. So it’s good to provide a few updates using these simple terms if you care for them.
  • Share off-topic – Do not only share work related content. Google+ is not like Facebook, you don’t have to share baby and per photos all the time but some occasional beauty and humor is great to make people happy and encourage engagement I’ve noticed. It’s better than just talking about SEO.

Thanks Niall Mackenzie for screenshots he provided for this post

 

These are just common sense SEO techniques for Google+, the SEO 2.0 part of it starts when engaging with people. This is a bit tougher and can’t fit in short list items easily. I think I will elaborate on it in the near future. I’m still testing and trying to find out myself what’s it all about.

I’m looking forward to it. I’m glad that SEO 2.0 has become main stream finally. You can’t ignore it anymore. Social media participation and outreach from now directly affects search results. It’s about time. I’ve got used to it in 2008 already when I added StumbleUpon to my search results. Google+ integration is even better.

You can’t be a bot anymore.

Get personal now. +1 this post if you like it and join me on Google+!

Also please share more techniques on how to optimize for the new Google Search Plus Your World in the comments.

 

Related posts:

  1. 10 New Google Personal Search Blogging, Social Media & SEO Tactics
  2. 12 Effects Google Personal Search Will Have on SEO, Blogging, Social Media and the Web as Whole
  3. Image SEO for Photographers and Other Visual Artists

by Tadeusz Szewczyk
©2012 SEO 2.0. All Rights Reserved.Copyright SEO 2.0 at onreact.com
Related posts:
  1. 10 New Google Personal Search Blogging, Social Media & SEO Tactics
  2. 12 Effects Google Personal Search Will Have on SEO, Blogging, Social Media and the Web as Whole
  3. Image SEO for Photographers and Other Visual Artists
]]> Tadeusz Szewczyk Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:28:18 -0500 <![CDATA[3 comments]]>
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This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:22:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Lady Gaga on Google Plus]]> Search Engine Land have posted that Lady Gaga is on Google Plus – it really might be time to get on there, if you are not. Although – don’t try searching Google for it – at the moment anyway – well, I couldn’t find it. Ironic – but then again Google does get a kicking for manipulating [...]

Check out - Lady Gaga on Google Plus

This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners:

Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO Glasgow.

]]> Shaun Anderson Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:20:53 -0500 <![CDATA[Are You Making These 7 Panda-Punishing Content Mistakes?]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

]]> Neil Patel Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:00:44 -0500 <![CDATA[Grocery Store Marketing Ideas and Strategies]]> Brandignity Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:54:29 -0500 <![CDATA[CES Heralds TV-Digital Convergence: What Marketers Need to Know]]>

This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:35:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Newest International SEO Challenge: Hreflang & Canonical Tags]]> Michael Bonfils Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[[WTT] Link Exch. PR3 to PR5, Fiction, Novels, Magazines, Literature, Stories]]>

This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:39:00 -0500 <![CDATA[15 Comments]]>

This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:33:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Attempting a Guinness Book World Record for Social Media SEO Link Bait]]> Nick Stamoulis Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:00:38 -0500 <![CDATA[Using Google+ to Aid Your SEO]]>

Using Google+ to Aid Your SEO

January 16, 20121 Comment

Over the last few days Google have launched a potential game changer into the search world. ˜Search plus Your World™ has set up a firm foundation for Google to move into becoming a social search engine in an effort to make its search results more personalised and relevant to the individual user, allowing them to [...]


This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:25:00 -0500 <![CDATA[About 16 hours ago]]>
  • About 16 hours ago

This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:11:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Planning for Social " A Small Not For Profit Takes the Next Step with a Social Media Assessment Survey]]>
  • One small step for Google, a smaller step for Mankind
  • Google Offers Up a Step by Step Guide to Deal with “We do currently do not support this location”
  • Local Search Continues to Gain According to comScore
    • ]]>     Mike Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:00:38 -0500     <![CDATA[The Basics of Web Video File Formats and Video Containers]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:34:00 -0500     <![CDATA[21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012)]]> Posted by randfish

    It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.

    NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

    #1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

    When strategizing about who you're writiing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord (like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).

    A Blog's Target Audience

    If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

    #2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

    Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determing where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.

    Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's Ad Planner:

    Sites Also Visited via DoubleClick

    Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

    #3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

    Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, "SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:

    Daily Google Searches 2004-2011
    sources: Comscore + Google

    Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.

    SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

    Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

    #4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

    Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million.  Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.

    Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

    • If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
    • Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a signifcant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
    • Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry  luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:

    Followerwonk Search for "Seattle Chef"

    • Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
    • Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

    If you consistenly employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

    #5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

    At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits orignate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.

    Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:

    Traffic Sources to Everywhereist from Google Analytics

    As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits orirginate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).

    Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential. 

    #6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

    If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.

    When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.

    Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:

    Google's "Visually Similar" Search

    Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

    #7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

    Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.

    Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:

    Google AdWords Tool

    When you choose "exact match" AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."

    When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."

    Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

    #8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

    The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.

    Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

    #9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

    The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).

    Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.

    These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

    #10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

    When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.

    Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:

    • Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
    • Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
    • When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
    • Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.

    A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).

    MyBlogGuest

    Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.

    #11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

    The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower liklihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.

    Blog Design Inspiration
    These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration

    If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:

    • Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
    • Forrst - another excellent design profile community
    • Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
    • Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
    • 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)

    This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

    #12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

    As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.

    Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing. 

    Google Reader Subscriber Counts

    Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

    #13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

    Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.

    The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:

    • The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
    • The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
    • The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by

    I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!

    Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

    #14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

    If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.

    In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).

    RSS Feeds with Feedburner

    If you're using Wordpress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.

    Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

    #15 - Attend and Host Events

    Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.

    Lanyrd Suggested Events

    I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).

    The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

    #16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

    As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opporunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

    Email Footer Link

    I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

    #17 - Survey Your Readers

    Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

    #18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

    Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.

    You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.

    If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

    #19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

    Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:

    AdAge Power 150

    That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)

    Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.

    Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

    #20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

    Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.

    Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.

    If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.

    I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

    #21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

    If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.

    OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

    OpenSiteExplorer from Moz

    There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.

    Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically. 

    Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

    If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:

    Why Bloggers Give Up Traffic Graph

    The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.

    I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.

    When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.

    Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!

    Feel free to copy and re-post this content or the graphics, but please do link back (or reference SEOmoz if using the images offline). Thanks!


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     randfish Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:48:18 -0500     <![CDATA[36 comments]]>
    • 1173 posts
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:22:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Where You Should Invest Your Web Marketing Budget]]> by Mike Fleming

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

    -Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

    Beverly Hills Ninja.png

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

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

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

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:46:38 -0500     <![CDATA[Google +1's in Advertising: AdWords Ads Go Social]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:33:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Webinar number 1: Internet marketing, content, and all that jazz]]> Ian Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:23:44 -0500 <![CDATA[2012 Link Building Tools]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:43:00 -0500     <![CDATA[14 Comments]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:31:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Top Posts of 2011]]>
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  • 6+ Tips for Social, Search and Social Search Success (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – May 5, 2011) Search and social provide search marketers a match made in...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Tim Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:12:30 -0500     <![CDATA[What Has Blog SEO Got to Do With How Your Readers Feel?]]> Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
    DMS_468x60_LS_banner4.gif

    What Has Blog SEO Got to Do With How Your Readers Feel?

    ]]>     Guest Blogger Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:08:33 -0500     <![CDATA[Achieving Revenue Disruption Through SMarketing]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:00:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Searchmetrics Essentials¦ Wow!]]>

    Searchmetrics Essentials¦ Wow!

    When Steve Overton called me back in December 2011 to arrange a call for this month, I must admit I wasn™t looking forward to it. He said he wanted to show me some new features on Searchmetrics " to be honest I thought it would be one or two new things, but on the whole [...]

    • I wonder what effect me blocking people on g+ will have there must be an easier way not to have them show in personal results About 2 hours ago
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:58:00 -0500     <![CDATA[How To Blackout Your Site (For SOPA/PIPA) Without Hurting SEO]]> Matt McGee Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:39:18 -0500 <![CDATA[Opinion: TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via The Drum Magazine]]> TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via @thedrum hobo.im/xBQQzf " Shaun Anderson (@Hobo_Web) January 16, 2012   Man. I was so disappointed when I saw the Drum Magazine today – surely recognised as one of Scotland’s – and the UK’s –  top marketing and advertising publications – at least it used to be (or I had that impression) [...]

    Check out - Opinion: TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via The Drum Magazine

    This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners:

    Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO Glasgow.

    ]]>     Shaun Anderson Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:14:41 -0500     <![CDATA[Google œSearch Plus Your World And You!]]> Albert Gouyet Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:14:23 -0500 <![CDATA[When Google Thinks Your Title Tags Suck]]> read on »]]> Ninja Jen Van Iderstyne Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:30:35 -0500 <![CDATA[Loci 2011- Nyagoslav Zhekov]]>
  • Loci 2011 – Darren Shaw
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    • ]]>     Mike Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:10:52 -0500     <![CDATA[10 Search & Social Resolutions For A Very Mobile 2012]]> Brian Klais Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:25:09 -0500 <![CDATA[How To Edit Jump Cuts - Reel Video Producer Tips #14]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:13:00 -0500     <![CDATA[]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:43:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Why Every Marketer Now Needs a Google+ Strategy]]> Posted by randfish

    Last week, Google rolled out "Search Plus Your World," an update to Google's universally popular search engine that biases logged-in users to receive socially shared content and markup in the results. Danny Sullivan wrote two excellent must-read pieces on the topic - Google's Results Get More Personal and Real-Life Examples of How "Search Plus" Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy. Thank God for Danny. If it wasn't for his tireless coverage, I'd feel obligated to spend hours writing those pieces myself (and they probably wouldn't be as good).

    SEOmoz received a lot of requests for coverage, but typically we don't like to rush into writing about a new service/technology/change until we've got at least a few days of playing with it, watching the tech news cycles spin and evaluating how it might change practices for inbound marketers. To be honest, we still don't really know - our own accounts sometime get access to SPYW, and other times it seems to go missing (right now, for example, my Gmail account, which was showing SPYW results all last week, is suddenly back to regular, non-personalized Google). However, we felt that this was a momentous enough to shift to warrant a video on the changes and some discussion. 

     

    It's my opinion that if SPYW continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it's been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers. In 2009 and 2010, Google's integration with Twitter was remarkable - helping content get indexed in seconds, earning featured spots for logged-in users who were connected to each other on Twitter and showing up in all sorts of specially-marked-up results. Google's taken that much, much further with SPYW, and while I'm no particular fan of using your market power to force users onto a platform they may not want, I'm also a realist. When I see this:

    SEO Logged Out Search with Google SPYW Results

    I know that as a marketer, there's missed opportunity if I'm ignoring Google+ (the search above is done totally logged-out).

    BTW - if you liked the video above and Whiteboard Fridays in general, check out our SEOmoz Google+ page which features a few more and will continue to host some unique, interesting content that doesn't necessarily make it to the blog. Like everyone, we're still experimenting with G+, and suggestions are welcome!

     SEOmoz on Google+

    Look forward to your thoughts around the necessity of Google+ (and watch this space as we plan on having some more tips + tactics on that front soon).

    Video Transcription

    Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to a special edition of Whiteboard+. Today we're actually talking a little bit meta about Google+and Google Search Plus Your World, which is Google's new effort to take their social network, Google+, and involve it more in exceedingly intricate ways with your search results and with everyone's search results.

    I want to talk a little bit about what this means and why, in my opinion, every web marketer needs a Google+ strategy for their site, for their content. If you don't, I think you're going to be missing out very, very quickly. I think Google has really forced marketers' hands in this way, businesses in particular that have content on the Web. I'll show you what I mean by this.

    So I've got some reasons why I believe this. Number one, Google+ is in the search results like you have never seen before. Let me illustrate for you really briefly with some search results that I've drawn up here. I even made the little icon with my finger. So, when I perform a search, like "Rand Fishkin," and if you are connected to me on Google+, you'll actually see results remarkably similar to this where my Google+ profile outranks all my other content. There was a great rant from someone whom I'm not usually a big fan of because of his denial of the power of SEO, but Jason Calacanis actually had a nice rant on Google+ itself where he noted that his Google+ profile was outranking all the other content - his blog, his Twitter profile. My wife noticed the same thing for her Everwhereist account for her travel blog, how essentially Google+ had taken over the number one spot for a lot of brand names and personal names, obviously, with the intent of hoping that people will contribute more to Google+, that they'll keep their profiles updated because if you don't, it looks kind of bad.

    So what you see here is my Google profile. You'll actually see a photo of me. You see that I'm in Seattle, Washington. It's pulling some metadata in here, and then they'll give you some links to other places where I am on the Web that I've chosen for my Google+ profile. So obviously, this is almost like having to claim a LinkedIn profile so that people can find me on LinkedIn or a Facebook profile so that people can find me on Facebook. Google is really making this essential, and the way that they're doing it is through Google+.

    Now it's not just personal brand names and personal profiles. They do this for some pretty big sites too. In fact, you'll also see a ton of other Google+ stuff inside the search results. I'll show you what I mean here. So you can see obviously the +1, but they will often have a count of +1's that come from that. They'll also have people who in your network have +1'd or shared a particular result, and those are essentially almost rich snippets, rich data that you can't get any other way. There is no other way to get people in your network, whose profiles are connected. It's not like they're going to show you people who liked SEOmoz's Facebook page or people who follow SEOmoz on Twitter who you also follow. This, Google+ has become one of the only ways to get this social proof that you used to be able to get through all sorts of Google social search.

    Now, this being said, Matt Cutts did point out - Matt Cutts is one of the search quality engineers at Google, runs the web spam team there - he did point out that for a few other networks, Flikr, Quora, FriendFeed, which was bought by Facebook, and a couple of others sometimes those results can be in here as well. It's extremely rare. You can find it, but it's tough to see, and Google+ is clearly the best and easiest way to get into this type of markup, into these kinds of results. And remember this stuff, not only is it appearing, it's pushes results higher.

    So for example, if I am searching for something and let's say Kenny Martin from SEOmoz has shared something on Google+ or he's +1'd it, I am likely to see that higher in my search results because Kenny is in one of my circles on Google+. What this means, obviously, is that the size of your network, if my network on Google+ is quite small, the people that I follow are quite small, I'd better hope that one of them has done the sharing of the content that I care about. But what I'd really like to do is have a huge network. I'm not illustrating it well. A huge, huge, huge network that encompasses, hopefully, hundreds of thousands of people who are following me. You can see Danny Sullivan I think right now has something like 390,000 people who are in his circles. When you think about the power of that, everything that Danny has ever shared, ever +1'd, ever put on Google+ is going to appear in those hundreds of thousands of people's search results higher than it normally would. Right now Google is being extremely liberal about this, ranking things that may not even have the keywords in the title tag, maybe only have ancillary relevance to the keyword search that's going on. So they are really, really pushing this forward.

    Then in one of the most aggressive moves I've ever seen Google make they have a new box on the side of the search results. This box says, "People and Pages on Google+." So for example, I did a search, a logged out search for news, and I could see entities that have their Google+ pages featured over here with their pictures. There were no pictures over here. I was logged out. I wasn't getting any of the "so and so +1 this," but here I was getting suggestions of brands that I should be following on Google+. These weren't major brands. They were smaller brands - I didn't even recognize them - with a few hundred thousand people in their circles.

    Kenny was sitting next to me at the computer, side by side, here in the Whiteboard Friday room, and he did a search for "SEO" and up popped myself, Rand Fishkin, and Danny Sullivan. Think of the power of that. If you can have your brand, your personal brand on Google+ associated with a broad term like SEO, or web marketing, or surveys, or used cars, or whatever it is that you're selling or the idea that you're trying to promote, insanely powerful. This is one of the biggest reasons why I think Google+ is going to force its own success inside Google Search results.

    Remember, when we talk about the power of Facebook marketing, we're talking about 800, or so, million Facebook users. Google Search has literally billions of users performing billions of searches a day. So the user group for this is absolutely phenomenal, just tremendous. It's not just in the US, although Google Search Plus Your World is much more US focused right now. I suspect it will be rolling out in the weeks and months to come.

    So obviously, Google+ in search results, the personalization that we talked about where these results are ranking higher, you can see an example of that down here. Your images related to you, you'll see this little icon, this guy here. When you see that icon, that means it's being personalized. Google+ is essentially personalizing your results inside of Google Search to show you content that they think is either your content or content of people that you're connected to. Photos is one of the most obvious ones that they're showing right now. But they'll show you profiles, they'll show you links and URLs that have shared, that you've shared, that they think are part of your world. Fascinating stuff, but definitely a bias towards Google+ related content. If you're sharing on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, you're rarely ever going to see this here unless you have some very deep social connections, often through Google+ or through Quora, which is kind of how Google is accessing social data to Twitter and Facebook right now.

    Number Three, Google+ adoption. I think things like this, look at this, "Learn how you could appear here too." There's a link right there so for those searches, when CNN does a search for news and they go, "Where are we?" Well, "Learn how you can appear here too." "Oh, well we'd better get on that. We've got to get a campaign going. If we don't, we're going to be losing out," because they know people are going to be clicking on these results rather than on these results. The adoption of Google+, something over 60 million users right now, I would suspect that number rises to 100 million very fast, almost certainly by the end of this year.

    The richness of the snippets and mark up, you can see the visuals in here, the visuals on the side, the visuals with the personal elements, with the images, with the icons of people that you know and follow, and entities and brands that you know and follow on the service. It's going to be absolutely huge. Imagine having the ability to have endorsements of your brand from people that your customers already know. I think that's going to be a big one.

    Number Five, I see Google using this long term, perhaps even in the short term if they can get enough adoption, for web spam and search quality signals. Essentially saying, "Hey, this brand, this entity, this website, these URLs, they have no activity whatsoever in our social graph. They haven't been shared through any service that we can connect to, nor have they been shared on Google+ or +1'd. I'm not so sure that this website is of high quality. It just seems to have a bunch of links pointing to it. Perhaps we should be discounting some of that link graph unless there are social supporting elements." I think over time that's one of the ways that they intend to fight manipulative link spam. So definitely, people need to be thinking about that from a marketing perspective.

    Number Six, the biasing to social and Google+ in Search. For a long time, search results had, yeah you could do a search like this, you would see some social results. They'd generally be the one or two bottom results if there was something relevant. But nowadays, you're seeing that Google is essentially saying, "You know what? We are willing to forego a little bit of quality and relevance in favor of showing Google+ and social stuff in our results more heavily." I think that's them saying, "We're going all in, baby."

    Now this being said, I won't get into it, but I think there are certainly some risks for Google, that quality and relevancy stuff, there are a lot of examples out there on the Web, on blog posts, all over the place, on Mashable, on TechCrunch, on Paris Lemon's blog. Danny Sullivan wrote about it on Search Engine Land, that Google's not doing the best job with relevancy because they're biasing to this Google+ stuff. That being said, if they keep doing this, if they stick with it, I think marketers, and brands, and companies, and pages will embrace this and make sure that these results are good. Over time, Google can pull back and show the more and more relevant stuff as more stuff gets shared on Google+.

    So I think the only institutional risk that I see with this program that Google's rolled out is the governments of the world essentially saying, "Hey, you're doing monopolistic behavior using your vast market share advantage in Search to force people to use your social network." I don't want to comment on that. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a political expert, or anything like that, but what I can say is, as a marketer, Google's very, very clearly forcing our hand and making sure that we use Google+. If I were you I would be setting up a Google+ content strategy. I would be making sure that whatever social sharing I'm currently doing also applies to Google+. If you are tweeting it, you're Facebook sharing it, you're posting it to LinkedIn, you're putting it in your Pinterest board, for God's sake man, put it on Google+! You're losing out if you're not because the biasing is so heavy right now.

    All right, everyone, I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard+. I look forward to the comments, participating in those. We will certainly have more content coming soon around specific tactics and strategies for Google+. I hope you will join us again. Take care.

    Video transcription by Speechpad.com


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     randfish Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:16:03 -0500     <![CDATA[[WTS] Health Care,Fitness.Education $ Science,Mobiles,,food recipe]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:04:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest]]>

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:43:00 -0500     <![CDATA[A Linkbuilder's Gmail Productivity Setup (with Outreach Emails from 4 Industry Linkbuilders)]]> Posted by dohertyjf

    Because linkbuilding is hard, we all look for ways to make the process less painful and our outreach more effective. I constantly struggled with how to make my job more effective when working in-house, and since coming to Distilled I have had to become even more of a productivity ninja in order to keep up with the fast pace of an agency.

    The goal of today's post is to teach you some ninja ways that will markedly increase the speed of sending linkbuilding emails, as well as help you provide context to them with the goal of increasing your response rate.

    A quick note: These tips I am showing today apply to people who use Gmail as their email provider. There are probably similar tools available for other programs like Outlook. So take the principles applied here, suit them to your needs, and then share the knowledge!

    Gmail Tools and Tips

    Let's look at some Gmail tools, tips, and tricks that can improve your productivity.

    Gmail Shortcuts

    Gmail shortcuts are a linkbuilder or email productivity ninja's best friend. Once enabled in Labs, you have a whole wealth of shortcuts to use so that you never have to touch your mouse, unless you need to edit text or do something like inserting a canned response (see below). You'll find that shortcuts tend to eliminate many superfluous steps, and when used in combination with the other tools mentioned, you can drastically speed up your email processing time.

    The most important shortcuts are, in my opinion:

    • C - compose a new message
    • E - archive a message
    • G then I - return to inbox from a message
    • R - reply to a message
    • A - reply all to a message
    • F - forward the message
    • J - when in your inbox, move to the next message
    • K - when in your inbox, move to the previous message
    • X - when in your inbox, mark an email. Most useful when processing out emails that don't require any attention (such as daily emails).

    You should think about shortcuts as "recipes" of sorts. Use them in combination, like Tab+Enter for sending, J+X+E for archiving messages in your inbox, or R+message+tab+enter for responding to a message. String them together, and you'll be more awesome.

    For a complete list of Gmail shortcuts, go here

    Pro tip: Combine this with Send and Archive (mentioned below) to take your processing to the next level.

    Canned Responses

    Canned responses are something that our New York Sales Exec Ron Garrett recently introduced me to. Another Labs tool, it allows you to save email templates to use so that you are not constantly copying and pasting from one source to another, risking making a mistake.

    As you can see in the image below, it installs a "Canned Responses" button right under the Subject field. This is where you can save drafts of canned responses for quick access.

    Here is how a canned email might look if I was sending an email to Tom Critchlow:

    Pro tip: Highlight the text to change in yellow so that you make sure to insert all relevant information.

    Also, make sure you check out some example linkbuilding emails from some industry experts at the bottom of this post.

    Rapportive

    Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that I've been hyping recently, because it's so freakin awesome. The idea is simple, but the outcome is powerful.

    After you download it from Rapportive.com and install into Gmail, the box will appear on the right side of your screen when you go to compose a new email. The Rapportive feature that makes it so powerful for linkbuilding and connecting with others is the social features.

    You can see many different ways for you to connect with, or build rapport with (see what I did there?), your email contact. You can even connect with them, such as sending a LinkedIn invitation, directly from within Rapportive.

    BOOM.

    Check out all the options I get when I go to email Ross:

    Pro tip: Use Rapportive to help you find contact emails. If you are not sure of the combination of their company's email (john.doherty, john-doherty, jdoherty, dohertyj, for example), try different combinations. When you hit the right one, their information will appear :-)

    Boomerang

    Boomerang is a Gmail plugin that I found via Napoleon Suarez. After you install, a little "Boomerang" icon will appear in your Gmail screen and a Send Later button will appear on every email you go to send. When expanded, it looks like this:

    The really powerful features of Boomerang are:

    • Send emails at a designated time (ie you write an email at 2am on Saturday night. Set it to send at 9am on Monday so it doesn't look like you are working at 2am on Saturday night)
    • Send an email back to the top of your inbox at a later point in the day (I do this with emails that I want to respond to at a designated email time later in the day).
    • Send the message back to you if you don't hear back within a set amount of time (great for recontacting people you emailed about links).

    I'd love to hear other ways you find to use Boomerang as well!

    FYI - Boomerang is also available for Outlook! Also, you receive a certain number of Boomerangs per month, and then it moves to a paid service. If I was doing more link outreach, I definitely think the paid service would be worth the money, but at this point I have never hit my max.

    Undo Send

    Another awesome Labs tool that is handy to have around is Undo Send. What it does is allow you a time buffer (I believe 5 seconds) to recall an email before it sends.

    Once you send the email, you will be returned to your email but this little box will show up:

    Pro tip: To avoid sending an email early, even with this tool, don't put the recipient's name in the To: field until you're done. After you've completed your email, use the Shift+tab combination twice to return to the To: field. Insert the email, tab three times, and Send and Archive.

    Send and Archive

    The final Gmail productivity ninja tip I have for you is the Send and Archive Labs tool. Once installed, a Send and Archive button appears on your Compose screen. If you're an InboxZero nut (like most of Distilled), then you're already excited by this.

    Here's a screenshot of the button:

    Now, when you have finished composing an email and you are ready to send it, simply Tab from your message and press Enter.

    Boom! Email sent and the message is now out of your inbox. You've just eliminated the step of archiving the message after the fact. Go and do something awesome.

    Pro tip: Just install and use it. Nothing more to be said.

    Linkbuilding Email Templates from Industry Linkbuilders

    I emailed some friends to ask for some examples of actual link request emails that they have sent to prospective link partners. The following are those examples. Please note that these are drafts, and emails should always be as customized as possible to the recipient.

    Broken Linkbuilding

    Ross Hudgens is the SEO Manager at Full Beaker, a lead-gen focused SEO company outside Seattle. Ross responded to my email with this gem of a broken link email that he sends to people when asking to be included on their list, but wants to provide them value by helping them out with some links broken on their site. Here's the email:

    Hello NAME, I was browsing through your site/links as a NICHE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION myself, and they're great. ONE/TWO SENTENCES TAILORED TO SAID WEBSITE.
    I'm contacting you specifically because I was looking through your links and I noticed a few broken ones - specifically to BROKEN LINK1, BROKENLINK2. Other than that you've got a great list!
    I have two more suggestions for sites that were extremely helpful to me as a NICHE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION might make good additions to your list - GREATRESOURCE and MYWEBSITE. GREATRESOURCE is a comprehenshive and entertaining resource and MYWEBSITE has some great tips for NICHESPECIFIC DETAIL. Just a thought.
    Anyways, just wanted to let you know and say thanks - have a great new year!
    Regards,
    EMAIL NAME

    Notice how he has put information to change in CAPS so as not to forget to change a field. Boom!

    Guest Posting

    This email comes from Distilled SEO Geoff Kenyon, who works in our Seattle office. Geoff has been killing it for his clients for a while now, so I asked him for an example of what he sends to people. He came back with this example of a templated email sent to people for guest posts.

    Hey NAME,
    I saw that you're the THEIR POSITION over at THEIR COMPANY and I wanted to get in touch. I've seen guest contributions before on the TOPIC blog and wanted to know if you were open to any more guest contributions. I am looking to write about something related to NICHE and thought that the topics I had in mind may go well on the TOPIC blog.
    I was thinking about the following subjects:
    • IDEA 1
    • IDEA 2
    • IDEA 3
    What do you think about these? If you're interested, I am happy to get something written up and sent over to you - or if you have another topic you'd like to see covered, I am more than happy to write on that.
    Thanks,
    NAME

    Note: Do not mass email a ton of people your content ideas, but customize them per person. Also, don't mass email. Send emails one at a time. It doesn't scale easily, but it's more effective. Also, don't send emails like this to high-level contacts. Those MUST be totally personalized.

    PR

    This next example comes from Paul May over at Buzzstream, which is a linkbuilding CRM tool that we use and love at Distilled. Paul sent me this example of an email they sent out during their most recent launch. I think it's a great mix of professional and personal with a lot of detail.

    I especially love the "Pick your poison ;)" part!

    Hi ,
    Don't know if you remember me, but I've commented on a number of your blog posts and we've written a couple of posts on the (YOUR COMPANY) blog that continued discussions you'd started (I think the TOPIC post was the most recent one). I wanted to reach out to you about YOUR COMPANY, the PR/SEO startup I co-founded.
    We're now preparing to launch (DATE) and I wanted to see if we could setup a time to brief you on it. QUICK BACKGROUND ABOUT YOUR COMPANY. WHY YOUR COMPANY IS GREAT.
    Here’s the gist. You can:
    • SELLING POINT 1
    • SELLING POINT 2
    • SELLING POINT 3
    Launch is happening DATE. We’d love to find some time to show the thing to you. Are you comfortable with an embargo until TIME a.m. ET on DAY, DATE (i.e. late Monday night PT)? If so, here are some suggested times...pick your poison ;)
    • TIME OPTION 1
    • TIME OPTION 2
    • TIME OPTION 3
    Thanks in advance.
    Regards, NAME

    Push Content

    This final example comes from Mike Essex at Koozai in the UK. Mike shared this example email that he sends to people when they are pushing out content that they have created, to help generate a buzz. In Mike's own words: "The first method I use is to find content that we have, which could be relevant to other websites and then I get in touch with them to ask them to link or continue to debate the issue. This works well as it gives them a reason to link, and an opportunity to add new content to their websites." Here's the example:

    Hi NAME,
    ONE OR TWO SENTENCES ABOUT THE PURPOSE OF THE EMAIL AND WHY YOU CREATED THE CONTENT. ALSO, WHY THEY SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE CONTENT.
    The guide can be found at LINK and I’d love if you could share this with your readers and help make them aware of THE POINT OF THE RESOURCE, and how they can help. If you need any further information please let me know.
    NAME

    Exchange for a link (but not a link exchange)

    This next email comes from Allie Brown at SEER Interactive. Linkbuilding used to be all about link exchanges. I give you a link, you give me a link, everyone's happy. Those days are over, so we either have to create content for people to link to, or you offer someone something in return (but not a link). That's what I like about this email from Allie.

    Hi NAME,
    My name is Allie and I work with [Client] online marketing team.
    First, I have to thank you for repeatedly featuring [Client] on [your blog name]. The [client] team truly loves it when their customers share their favorite looks with others on their personal blogs.
    Secondly, I wanted to see if you would be interested in linking to [Client] the next time you feature one of their products. I noticed that you often mention us in your "XYZ" posts and I want to propose an idea that I think we could both benefit from.
    In exchange for linking to [Client], we'd like to post a Tweet about your blog sometime within the next week. As you may know, we have over x followers, so the opportunity for exposure is pretty grand. You'd also be helping our team out by sending your readers directly to our site when they see a product they like.
    Let me know if you're interested in this idea, and hopefully we can find some way to work together!
    Thanks again for all your support and Happy New Year!

    Incentivized Reviews for Ecommerce

    This email template comes from Abbott Shea, also from SEER. This email proposes some free product in exchange for someone leaving a review. It provides a lot of detail and adds value to the recipient.

    Subject: Merrrrrrry Christmas! Wait, too early....?
    Body:
    Hi [Name],
    My name is Abbott, and I work with [client] web promotions team. I came across [blog name] and wanted to see if you were interested in working with us. Our site, [client] has over 48,000 custom [product] designs across 113 categories. We were inspired by [something about their site], and seeing as how you love the holidays just as much as we do we'd like to provide you with 5 free Christmas cards for a product review on [URL].
    You can either design these cards yourself with your own photos and text or select one from our already pre-designed cards - regardless we'll be crediting you with free shipping. Please let me know if you are interested in this idea or if you have any suggestions of how we can collaborate on something else. I look forward to hearing from you!
    Take care,
    Abbott

    I hope this post has been helpful to you! I'd love to hear any more email productivity tips that you have, especially for people using Outlook as that has not been talked about much in this post.

    Also, don't forget that Distilled is running our annual linkbuilding conference called Linklove in London and Boston in March and April. Don't miss it!

    Cheers!


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     dohertyjf Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:55:19 -0500     <![CDATA[Writing Better SEO Page Titles For SERPs]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:01:00 -0500     <![CDATA[13 Comments]]>

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:34:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The End of Link Building as We've Known and Loved it]]> Eric Enge Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[45 Days ago]]>
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 15 Jan 2012 07:57:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Ifttt " Automatically Post Blog Posts To Twitter, Linkedin & Facebook]]> IFTTT stands for If This, Then That, and the name is practically self-explanatory. If one of the several triggers you setup happens, then the service activates whatever multiple commands you designate When I publish a post on Hobo, ideally I want it to automatically be shared to the Hobo Facebook page, Linkedin, Google Plus and Twitter profiles. [...]

    Check out - Ifttt – Automatically Post Blog Posts To Twitter, Linkedin & Facebook

    This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners:

    Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO Glasgow.

    ]]>     Shaun Anderson Sun, 15 Jan 2012 07:51:35 -0500     <![CDATA[List of WebM Browsers and Media Players: Watch WebM VP8 Vide]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:52:00 -0500     <![CDATA[]]>

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:52:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Social Media (31)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:21:00 -0500     <![CDATA[video seo, all seo tips, best seo company, how to get clients for]]>
    video seo, all seo tips, best seo company, how to get clients for video marketing services, top seo companies, why are videos good for seo, why is video great for seo

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:20:00 -0500     <![CDATA[1 comment]]>
    • 482 posts
    • 287 posts
    • 894 posts

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:26:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Coca-Cola's New Tumblr Shares Happiness]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:06:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Editing: Is social media realtime or permanent?]]> by Mike Moran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


    Originally published on Biznology

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:42:31 -0500     <![CDATA[Editing: Is social media realtime or permanent?]]> by Mike Moran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


    Originally published on Biznology

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:42:31 -0500     <![CDATA[Branded Local Search Results: Google Vs. Bing]]>
  • 8 Tips to Maximize Your Branded Presence in the Google Local Search Results
  • New Universal Local Search Result Type: Branded Local OneBox
  • More Examples Of Plus Integrated Into Local Search Results
    • ]]>     Mike Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:52:20 -0500     <![CDATA[In internet marketing, be significant, or be roadkill]]> ian Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:40:30 -0500 <![CDATA[Hitler Hears About Google Search Plus Your World]]> Andrew Shotland Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:22:43 -0500 <![CDATA[01/13/2012 08:56 am]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:41:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Rank for Anything You Want on Google Search Plus Your World]]> Miranda Miller Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:35:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The Blogger Outreach Tactics Your SEO Team Wants You to Learn]]>

    The Blogger Outreach Tactics Your SEO Team Wants You to Learn

    January 13Kelsey Libert

    In an industry where content marketing is king, the most  successful blogger outreach establishes a mutual benefit: one that improves SEO for your client AND the blogger you reach out to. Effective Internet marketers ...


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:29:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Plus Friends Are The New Link]]> Andrew Shotland Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:31:01 -0500 <![CDATA[5 Ways Google Search Plus Your World Impacts SEO]]> I discuss the SEO impact of Google's Search Plus Your World which places heavy emphasis on Google+ and personalization of search results. There will be many far-reaching effects on both the Social and SEO games. I cover the top 5 things you will need to watch out for with Search Plus Your World in relation to SEO.

    Continue reading →
    Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

    ]]>     Jacob Stoops Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:17:02 -0500     <![CDATA[Sesame Seeds and SEO]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Ryan Jones Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:00:32 -0500     <![CDATA[11 Ways to Use Content to Build Online Authority]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:52:00 -0500     <![CDATA[@LordManley I have 4 ( not including the works van or my sisters car]]>
    • @LordManley I have 4 ( not including the works van or my sisters car lol ) About 31 seconds ago

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:51:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The 3-3-3 Online Marketing Investment Model]]> Stoney deGeyter Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Sharing Is More Real]]>

    Sharing Is More Real

    Eric BrownJanuary 12, 2012

    These are pretty crazy times that we are marketing, or attempting to market, in. And some are doing it better than others. As a kid growing up in mid-state Ohio, I worked part time at a œFilling Station. That is what gas stations were called back then, at least in my hometown. Part of the routine was to fill up the customer™s gas tank, check the oil and wash the windows, take their cash and count back the change.

    5

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:54:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The Different Styles of Link Building]]>

    This post, The Different Styles of Link Building, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

    ]]>     Wiep Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:49:12 -0500     <![CDATA[A Collection of 47 Helpful Google Search Operator Queries]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. A Collection of 47 Helpful Google Search Operator Queries

    Related posts:
    1. Introducing the new Verbatim search tool from Google
    2. SSL Search: What does Google dropping keyword data mean for SEOs?
    3. Google Test: Multiple Meta Descriptions Work as Expected, Social Search Does Not
    ]]>     Pak Hou Cheung Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:19:14 -0500     <![CDATA[30 SEO Resolutions for 2012]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 30 SEO Resolutions for 2012

    Related posts:
    1. 30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change
    2. UK Search Conference Calendar – 2012
    3. SEOptimise’s 58 most awesome blog posts of 2011
    ]]>     Tad Chef Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:05:14 -0500     <![CDATA[57 Days ago]]>
    57 Days ago

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:15:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Was Google Caught in a Sting Operation in Kenya?]]>

    Wow...this is pretty...um...transparent.

    According to this post, Google was caught scraping Mocality, calling the listed businesses, soliciting that they move to Google "Get Your Business Online", disparaged the directory they were scraping in the client call, and then lied about having the permission of the directory they were scraping to try to con businesses into working with Google.

    A few select quotes:

    There are absolutely no costs, and this will be agreed on before it™s put on¦ No one will come and tell you like Mocality used to do, someone tells you it™s free and then they come to ask for money. You know that Google doesn™t fool around here.
    ...
    Mocality used to charge people and many of the people who used to be in Mocality we have taken them and transferred them here. Didn™t we also find you on Mocality?
    ...
    Ai¦they used to¦but some people didn™t used to pay. They [Mocality] used to go and ask people to pay them around Ksh. 20,000 and people refused. It was things like that.)

    Google's business model *is* buying or building things that are free and then later pulling back features and/or sneaking costs in on them. Whether it be clubbing Android carriers with compatibility, saying search ads are evil then placing them everywhere, Google Maps API terms changes, terms changes on the Google AdWords API, Google hotel place listings with endless price ads, or keyword (not provided) in web analytics while trying to force you to register in Google Webmaster Tools to get any keyword data at all!

    As if that wasn't bad enough, when the fake business asked Google if Mocality was ok with this, this was the exchange:

    My question is does Mocality know that you™re getting their con¦our contacts from their directory?
    ~~~
    Yah. They know. They know that very well. They have agreed with Google when they were on that thing.

    I have long stated that the difference between spam and quality content is who is spamming. With the recent widely criticized over-promotion of Google+ in the search results and this sort of scrape, lie & disintermediate the source Google's true character is shining through.

    Facebook & Twitter are smart not to leave the barn door open for Google.

    All information wants to be free and wrapped in Google's ads. Or so the saying goes. But until they can be trusted it won't be. They have done A LOT of brand damage to themselves in the past couple months.

    Update: Google was mortified that they got caught doing this:

    We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality™s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We™ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We™re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we™ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:04:58 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Search is Changing in a Big Way]]> Brandignity Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:27:04 -0500 <![CDATA[How to Customize Your YouTube RSS Feeds - Reel Video Produce]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:39:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Loci 2011 " Darren Shaw]]>
  • Loci 2011: Ted Paff
  • Loci 2011- David Mihm
  • Loci 2011- Andrew Shotland
    • ]]>     Mike Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:00:03 -0500     <![CDATA[2 comments]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:36:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Applebee's: Facebook Bested Other Digital Ads]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:51:00 -0500     <![CDATA[WebmasterWorld Weekly Roundup January 12]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:02:00 -0500     <![CDATA[œReTweet or œretweet? The Grammar of Social Media]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:56:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Things you should avoid]]> As you go about working on your websites, optimizing things and managing your social media programs, it’s easy to lose track of information, or overlook something.  In this post we’ll take a look at some things you want to avoid doing.  It may also be worth taking a look through your site and your programs to make sure you’re not doing any of these things moving forward.

    Cloaking

    Cloaking is the process where you determine who the visitor is coming to your website, then show content depending on who that visitor is.  Typically, the system detects a search engine crawler, and swaps more search-friendly content in place for them.  Human visitors would then see a different content page.  Taken to the limit, the content is completely different.  This is an obvious problem for the engines, as we expect to see the same content as anyone else would.  Showing us one piece of content and other visitors a different piece of content is misleading.  You want to avoid this.

    Link buying

    It’s no secret that inbound links play a role in ranking.  It’s also no secret that we don’t want you buying links.  There are a lot of services out there pitching this service, and calling it anything but “link buying” these days.  The bottom line is this: you are taking a big risk if you are buying links.

    If we discover the link is purchased, at best we’ll simply ignore it and not pass any value, which is what happens in most cases.  This is still pretty bad for you, though, as you paid money for something that now gives you no value.  At worst, if it gets to be problematic for us, we’ll take action against the sites involved.

    Link farms

    Links to your content should grow organically.  Link farming essentially involves a network of sites which all link to your content.  On paper this would seem to create the impression that a bunch of sites now link to your content.  In reality, we see link farms and dismiss their value.  Again, you’ve paid money and will receive no value for it.  Given “link farms” are typically deemed to be more problematic than random buying of links across websites, you want to avoid associating your domain with these sorts of places.  Read more about building links the right way in this article.

    Three-way linking

    Site A links to Site B.  Site B links to Site C.  Site C links to Site A.  This may seem to be preferable to reciprocal linking, but it’s not, really.  Reciprocal linking can not only introduce us to your newest content or site, but can also deliver direct traffic to your website.  True, it doesn’t carry the same value as a straight one-way link, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

    Three-way linking is often an attempt to avoid being seen building reciprocal links.  Don’t sweat reciprocal links and avoid three-way linking.

    Duplicating content

    We recently wrote and in-depth post on article site sourced content.  Duplicating content is a pretty simple concept.  You’re posting content which already appears somewhere online.  Using articles from third-party sources, copying and pasting from another source and using standardized product descriptions for items you’re selling all fall into this category.  Your content should be unique and not appear anywhere else online.  Building unique content takes work.

    Another form of duplication can happen when you fail to manage permutations of your URLs.  When you attach a tracking code to your URL, for example, you create two versions of a URL, both of which will return the same content.  You can help guard against this by managing the issue through the use of the rel=canonical attribute.

    Like farms

    Like farms are similar to link farms.  In this instance, you’re essentially trying to manipulate the “likes” you receive by agreeing with others to like each other’s’ content.  These types of approaches are very obvious to a search engine, and we simply ignore the data we see.  It wastes your time and does nothing to help your rankings.  Read more here about like farms (and link farms, too).

    Auto-follows

    Using an auto-follow service to help grow the number of followers you have on Twitter is another dead end.  You essentially end up following as many people as follow yourself.  To Bing this looks non-authoritative.  If, however, you have 4,000 followers and follow only 100 people yourself, this reflects a situation that many people want to hear what you have to say; a sign of authority.  Learn more about what it takes to be an authority here, and how to grow your social following the correct way, here.
     
    The thin content approach

    Thin content can describe many approaches to producing content.  To help you understand what it is, we’ll explain how to produce content which is not “thin” in nature.  When producing content, your goal should be to provide deep details.  Enough information that anyone who arrives on your website would need no further sources to feel they have everything they need to understand what they were searching for.

    We covered how to build quality content in a previous article, so check that out for more information.  Just remember to avoid trying to take short cuts when you produce content.  The search engines need good quality content to return worthwhile results for searchers.  If you fail the quality content test, you simply won’t rank and drive traffic.

    ]]>     Duane Forrester Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:45:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing blog covers all of inbound]]>

    The HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing blog covers all of inbound marketing - SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing & management, and analytics. Join 51,557 others and subscribe now!


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:40:00 -0500     <![CDATA[@Dubtricks I think bobs power is OK, so maybe 2.0 litre for a better]]>
    • @Dubtricks I think bobs power is OK, so maybe 2.0 litre for a better motorway driving About 9 hours ago

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:38:00 -0500     <![CDATA[New Login Screen Makes Google Account Creation More Obvious]]>
  • Google Maps starts Newsletter and Account Updates Email
  • Yahoo Local makes me feel good
  • Google Maps: Bulk Upload now broken in LBC?
    • ]]>     Mike Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:16:14 -0500     <![CDATA[Yahoo! Site Explorer Is Dead " What Are the Alternatives?]]> Frank Reed Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:15:42 -0500 <![CDATA[10 Most Important SEO Patents: Part 7 " Sets, Semantic Closeness, Segmentation, and Webtables]]> Yesterday, I wrote about how Google may be looking at the semantics associated with HTML heading elements, and the content that they head, and how the search engine might be looking at such content with similar headings across the Web to determine how much weight to give words and phrases within those headings.

    That [...]]]> Bill Slawski Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:10:56 -0500 <![CDATA[43 Days ago]]>

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:30:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Tips For Developing A Tablet Device Marketing Strategy]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:07:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts]]>

    Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts

    When you are looking to build links and drive traffic, one of the time tested methods that continues to work is creating œhow to style posts. In this article, we™ll look at some examples and discuss how to get the most out of the tactic, how to take advantage of seasonal search/traffic volume, and some [...]

    Outbound Linking Can Boost Rankings

    Many of the poorly ranking websites that I am asked to fix share a common problem " they do not link out to any websites.  Apparently, some people still think this is a terrible idea and go to extremes to never link out to anyone. Taking any idea to an extreme is generally never a [...]

    Graywolf SEO Blog Jan 2012 is Powered by

    © 2004-2012


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:53:00 -0500     <![CDATA[More Bang for Your Buck: Maximize New Links on Old Pages - Whiteboard Friday]]> Posted by Cyrus Shepard

    We know that different links pass wildly different values for SEO purposes. Sometimes you build links that shoot your website to the top of the rankings, while other links are worse than worthless. The value of a link varies according to different factors, including:

    • Internal vs. External Links
    • Authority and Trust of the Linking Domain
    • Position of the Link on the Page
    • Alt Attributes vs. Text Links
    • ... and many other ranking factors.

    What happens when you build new links on old pages? Often when link prospecting, we SEOs look towards older, high-authority pages for link targets. Do these links pass the same value as links from brand new pages?  In this week's Whiteboard Friday, I discuss why Google may treat these links differently, and provide 3 solid strategies for maximizing the value of all your new links, on all types of pages.

     

    Video Transcription

    Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Cyrus. I'm an SEO Consultant. I'm also an associate here at the world-famous SEOmoz. Today we're talking about links. Now this is a little advanced SEO, but it's such a simple concept and so fundamental, it's going to change the way you look at your link prospecting in the future.

    Here's a situation. You're dying to get this link. You've got this new page and you want to get a link to it. So you've got this old page sitting around on your site. It's got plenty of authority. It's got high PageRank. It's perfect. It has a lot of incoming links. And so you just put a little link to your new page.

    You're really excited. You wait a few weeks and nothing really happened. You don't see the boost in traffic. It's kind of like you didn't even do anything.

    This works for external links as well. You've been link prospecting, and you find this great old page that you want to get a link from. The webmaster agrees and he puts a little link. Again, you wait and nothing really happens.

    I've noticed this over the years, and I've talked to other link builders who have noticed this phenomenon, that links from old pages don't always seem to have the oomph as a link from a brand-new page. We're wondering is there anything that you can do about this.

    A guy by the name of SEOWizz, Tim Grice, who is over in the U.K., did a study about this. I'll link to it in the post below. He built a bunch of old links on old pages, and he built a bunch of similar new links on new pages. He compared the two. He compared the boost in rankings between those two, and what he found was this exact same thing, that the old links that he built just didn't raise his rankings as much as the new links he built. He concluded that old links just weren't worth it anymore.

    SEOWizz: Old Content Links vs. New Content Links

    New Links in Old Content

    Source: Links In Old, Crawled Content Don’t Pass Weight

    What do we mean by an "old page" when we talk about these old pages? From a technical, Google definition point of view, we're talking about something that has been previously crawled and indexed by Google. Stale content, by stale we mean content that hasn't been updated in a long time. It was written and it just stayed that way. There are no new blog comments. It has just been for two or three years the same way it was written. And old links. So this old page, all of the links that it got, it got years ago or months ago, and there are no new links coming in. That's what we're talking about when we talk about an old page. If it doesn't meet these definitions, then it's a new page.

    Why would this happen? Why would Google care if it's an old page or a new page? We don't know exactly, but we do have some hints from some patent filings that Google has filed, specifically, Document Scoring Based on Document Content Update. It's been filed over and over again in different variations throughout the years. It's kind of like the manifesto of how Google runs its search engine. It's well worth a read. I'll also link to that in the content below.

    Basically, in there, there are a couple of paragraphs in that most recent patent filing that talk about scoring a document based on the amount of change in a document. What Google is trying to do here is ignore minor edits. If you are making just a small link on that page, that qualifies as a minor edit. Google wants to ignore that because that could look kind of fishy, kind of scammy, kind of like you are doing some link manipulation or maybe you're buying links.

    "In order to not update every link's freshness from a minor edit of a tiny unrelated part of a document, each updated document may be tested for significant changes... and a link's freshness may be updated (or not updated) accordingly. "

    - Google's US Patent Application

    What Google is looking for is not so much what changes, but how much changes and how many parts of the document change. This leads to a few solutions as to how we can address this problem of the old links in the new pages.

    Now, I want to be clear. These links still pass value. Should you be building these links? Absolutely, but we want to make sure that we're getting as much oomph out of them as completely possible.

    Let's look at some solutions to make sure that we're getting as much value out of these new links and old content as we possibly can. The first idea is that if you're going to update the link, it's a good policy to update the content around the link. Don't just change or add a little text link at the bottom of the page. Why are you adding that link? That's what Google is asking. Why is this changing? If you're changing the paragraph, the content, the surrounding text around that, that means this is new information, this is worth paying attention to, and Google is going to pass much more value from that link.

    While you're updating that, don't forget the title tag. If you're updating the content, this is a perfect time to re-eval your title tag. That's another freshness signal that Google is going to use in order to evaluate how important this change is and how significant it is.

    If you're building external links, this is on an old website, it used to be a broken link, and you convinced a webmaster to update it to point to your site, don't just have them update the link. Give them some information about your site. Give them as much content as you can to add to his content so that content gets updated as well. The more changes, the more significant the change, the fresher this is going to appear and the more that little link is going to count. It's going to start to look just like a fresh link in the eyes of the search engines.

    What if you can't control this? What if that webmaster says, "No, I'm just adding a link," and you can't really get him to update any of the content? Well, you still have some options. The main one you can do is take that old page that you don't control and start building new links towards it. That way, the link to your site is going to count a little bit more because that page is going to appear fresher in the eyes of the search engine. Just build some third-party links - they're called bank shots in the link building world - and that's going to pass more value. They do a tremendous job of helping that link seem more relevant.

    On the same token, social signals. If you start tweeting, sharing, getting this page shared in your social circles, those are going to be more freshness signals for Google to look at. It's going to appear more fresh.

    And D, all of the above. Do whatever you can to make this old page as fresh as it can be and get as much relevance out of that link that you possibly can.

    The final option would simply be to just build a new page. Get new pages and new links, diversify your link profile. Regardless, we want you to get as much value out of all the links that you build.

    That's it for today's Whiteboard Friday. If you're a link builder, if you have experience with this, please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you.

    Video transcription by Speechpad.com

    Next week on Whiteboard Friday: We'll be covering Google's "Search Plus Your World" and what it means for search marketers.


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     Cyrus Shepard Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:11:07 -0500     <![CDATA[1 comment]]>
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:59:00 -0500     <![CDATA[TV]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:29:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Adds Plus to Search Suggestions]]>
  • Google Maps Adds Personalized Suggestions; Where’s Personalization?
  • Google Mobile Instant Suggestions – Search Results Before You Search
    • ]]>     Mike Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:15:40 -0500     <![CDATA[It™s Alright Mike, I™m Only Bleeding]]> Andrew Shotland Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:20:19 -0500 <![CDATA[Search Industry Call to Arms: SOPA, Keyword Not Provided and Lying SEOs]]> Miranda Miller Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Unraveling Facebook Open Graph " Part 1]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:50:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Do Stock Images Affect Trust?]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Todd Bailey Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:00:32 -0500     <![CDATA[@Dubtricks any where you can think for turnkey engines for mollie]]>
    • @Dubtricks any where you can think for turnkey engines for mollie ? in time for march About 22 minutes ago

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:13:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Consumer Intent Modeling]]> Kent Yunk Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:00:59 -0500 <![CDATA[How to use remote workers to scale your marketing without killing your culture]]> Hugo Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:15:59 -0500 <![CDATA[Social Media and SERPS Your World will Rank]]> read on »]]> Ninja Melissa Ward Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:00:12 -0500 <![CDATA[Heading Elements and the Folly of SEO Expert Ranking Lists]]> I’ve seen arguments by people who write about and study search engines and SEO very closely, which often appear written up in “SEO Expert Ranking Lists,” that HTML heading elements (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) are very important, arguments that heading elements [...]]]> Bill Slawski Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:51:11 -0500 <![CDATA[HOW TO: Force Facebook to Grab the Best Image from Your Page (WordPress)]]>
  • How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People Optimize your images for search engines: Keywords in alt text,...
  • Testing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM Plugin If you are addicted to WordPress as much as I...
  • How Blocking Users on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus Works I am sure you have noticed that you have an...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Ann Smarty Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:58:59 -0500     <![CDATA[12]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:58:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Broken Link Building for Content Promotion]]> Garrett French Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Why Having an Intern Handle your SEO is a Bad Idea]]> Brandignity Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:42:04 -0500 <![CDATA[Better page titles in search results]]> Page titles are an important part of our search results: they™re the first line of each result and they™re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.

    We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.

    Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word "Home" is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website™s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.

    For more information about how you can write better titles and meta descriptions, and to learn more about the signals we use to generate alternative titles, we've recently updated the Help Center article on this topic. Also, we try to notify webmasters when we discover titles that can be improved on their websites through the HTML Suggestions feature in Webmaster Tools; you can find this feature in the Diagnostics section of the menu on the left hand side.

    As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the Webmaster Help Forum.

    Posted by , Webmaster Trends Analyst

    ]]>     Pierre Far Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:59:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Goodbye To An Old Friend: Marketplace]]> Posted by caseyhen

    The SEOmoz Marketplace, born in early 2007, passed away peacefully in January 2012. Cause of death: Old, out-dated code, 5 year old design, manual spam maintenance and was ridden with unfixable bugs. The Marketplace lived a very full life and helped many people find their perfect SEO job, while giving companies a place to show their stuff. Our dear Marketplace was loved by all and spammed by many.

    A service is being held in his honor today, here on the SEOmoz blog to bid farewell to our good pal. Please feel free to say a little something in the comments, and let Marketplace know just how much you cared.

    Wait... What?

    When it comes to our Marketplace, let's be honest, we haven't put our best foot forward lately. When it made its first appearance back in 2007 it was a great addition to our site and for our community. As we have grown, the Marketplace always seemed to be one area of our website that was neglected and as you can see from the screenshots below it's a few design revisions behind. Today we are announcing that the Marketplace will be closing its doors next week.

    But don't fret! We will be keeping our Recommend List (the most visited page in the Marketplace) and will give it a brand new look and feel. Over the past few weeks we've worked on puttiing together a comprehensive list of companies we recommend. There is some amazing talent out there! More details about getting on the recommend list will be included when the new list is released.

    A Look Back

    Over the years, the Marketplace did its job (hehe get it.. job.. ok nevermind) well but recently it has fallen into despair a bit. Not only is the design old, but it has put a strain on other systems, causing the site to slow down. The current Marketplace wasn't built to scale with the growth we have seen in the past couple years, and we're feeling the strain now. For example, there are pages that do not paginate, pages that don't cache, database queries that are not optimized, and additional pages that open our website to attacks. Take a peek at the amazing transormation it has seen in the past 4-5 years (aka none).


    Marketplace 2007/2008


    Marketplace 2012

    Along with the design that hasn't changed, the code that powers the Marketplace is outdated and tired as well. The system has many bugs that cause things not to work and provide a poor user experience that we are not proud of. Currently our resources are strained building an amazing product for the community and sometimes things need to get cut. In the future we hope to add additional features into our user profiles that our users can use to promote themselves but we have yet to decide what will get done.

    The Marketplace was also a very well known place to spam and without a process of detecting that spam it became a very labor-intensive process that we have a problem keeping up with. Our Marketplace was meant for a place to list your internet marketing company but it seemed that one of our favorite many plumbers found it a great place to spam also.

    Alternatives

    In place of our Marketplace we are encouraging you to utilize Linkedin. Post your job on your company page and then you are welcome to share it in our SEOmoz group. 

    A Note About "Old" Q&A

    On another note, for those members who have been around for a while will remember our original Q&A system. We will also be making a change to the way that old system works. Currently those questions are all publicly available but will be removed from public view along with the Marketplace. The top viewed questions will be migrated over to our new system and the other questions will be removed in 6 months. If you are a long time member and have questions you would like to keep, please copy them into a safe place as they will be removed in 6 months. All of your old questions can be found here.

    Final Note

    We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the Marketplace and would love to hear any success stories that you have had there. Additionally, if you have other great resources that may help community members find work, please leave those suggestions in the comments.


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     caseyhen Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:45:29 -0500     <![CDATA[Loci 2011- Andrew Shotland]]>
  • Loci 2008 – Andrew Shotland’s Top Articles in Local
  • Loci 2011- David Mihm
  • Loci 2011: Ted Paff
    • ]]>     Mike Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:19:13 -0500     <![CDATA[Link Wheels " The Complete Guide to Creating a Killer Link Wheel]]> Link Wheels have been around for quite some time. It probably seems odd for anyone to do a post about something as old hat as link wheels when Google have just announced the next stage of social search, Search Plus your World. But there are some markets where the old ways still work. This post [...] Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
    1. How to Get Started with Your Link Building Campaign
    2. Reverse Engineer Spam to create some great Link Opportunities
    3. Buying High PR Sites to Get Some Link Juice
    ]]>     Kieran Flanagan Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:08:43 -0500     <![CDATA[Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World]]> Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

    Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World

    ]]>     Patrick Altoft Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:55:40 -0500     <![CDATA[2012 Is the End of the Beginning: SEO, Social, Search, Copywriting, Et All]]> Level343 Team Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:00:41 -0500 <![CDATA[Did ˜Google Plus™ Just Become A ˜Must-Have™ with the advent of ˜Google Plus Search™?]]> Google+ just became unavoidably relevant – maybe even – a must-have marketing tool for your business: Now here™s a different search, for cars. Again, I™m logged out, incognito-mode: Is there anyone out there who still wants to say that being on Google+ doesn™t matter? Anyone? Because when being on Google+ means that you potentially can have your Google+ page [...]

    Check out - Did ‘Google Plus’ Just Become A ‘Must-Have’ with the advent of ‘Google Plus Search’?

    This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners:

    Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO Glasgow.

    ]]>     Shaun Anderson Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:22:00 -0500     <![CDATA[20 Google Plus Brand Page Design Ideas From Google]]> It’s probably time to have a think about the design of your Google+ Brand page. Here’s some design inspiration – 20 examples from the very people who should know what they are doing….Google. The design of your Google+ brand page is – it seems – limited to a banner style format – made up of [...]

    Check out - 20 Google Plus Brand Page Design Ideas From Google

    This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners:

    Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO Glasgow.

    ]]>     Shaun Anderson Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:20:32 -0500     <![CDATA[Mozilla Firefox To Provide Extended Support Release]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:15:00 -0500     <![CDATA[15 Tenets of Proper Email Marketing Etiquette]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:35:00 -0500     <![CDATA[RT @rishil: How much do you know about your Backlink Data providers]]>
    • RT @rishil: How much do you know about your Backlink Data providers? Who does it best? Read it here: http://t.co/EfvSWMK6 (by @neyne ) About 10 hours ago

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:33:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Updated: Facebook & Twitter " Lucky To Be In Google At All]]> Facebook & Twitter have some of the worst landing pages on the web.

    At least if you look at it from a search engine perspective, who should assume that every visitor isn’t a member of the site they are referencing in the search engine.

    Read more on Updated: Facebook & Twitter – Lucky To Be In Google At All…

    Tags: , , , ,
    ]]>     Andy Beard Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:14:34 -0500     <![CDATA[Officials from Bing.com, Sundance Film Festival, SEO.com Will Speak at January Marketing Event in Salt Lake City]]> Read more]]> Pat Parkinson Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:02:17 -0500 <![CDATA[Google is not Evil. They just appear to be.]]>
  • Will Google+ Kill SEO? Google introduced Google+ yesterday. Does this mean the death of...
  • Google, ITA and the coming antitrust war Google wins a battle against antitrust concerns. But is the...
  • Google+ and the war on SEO Google+ may change SEO more than expected....
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Tim Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:09:18 -0500     <![CDATA[Top 2011 Moz Posts of 2011]]> Posted by Dr. Pete

    Don’t panic – it’s not what you think. Last fall, I did an analysis of 50 blog posts before and after Google+ to see what factors drove traffic. At the time, I really wanted to do more, but collecting the data posed multiple challenges. Rand suggested that 50 was ok, but 500 would be great. So, I set out to make it 1000, just to make the boss proud. Then, I thought, “Why not 2000?!”. Three months passed...

    Long story short, I built a crawler and not only expanded the 50-post analysis to 2011 posts, but added a chunk of variables for good measure. This analysis covers the top 2011 SEOmoz posts of 2011, ranked by Unique Pageviews (UPVs). These posts could be written at any time (some go back to 2005) – I’m just looking at which pages got traffic during 2011.

    Let’s See Those Numbers

    I could keep talking, or I could show you the numbers. The following graph shows Spearman correlations (r-values) for 13 variables with UPVs. Blue bars are social factors, green are community factors, and purple are content factors:

    Correlations with Unique Pageviews

    Most of the variables are self-explanatory, but a few that might need elaborating:

    • Words (Post) is the word count of the post’s content
    • Words (Title) is the word count of just the post’s title
    • Headers is the count of all header tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.)
    • Bold Tags is the count of all <b> and <strong> tags
    • Lists is the count of all <ol> and <ul> lists

    We use Spearman rank-order correlations because many of these variables tend to be skewed (for example, some posts get a ton of Tweets, whereas many get very few). As always, correlation does not imply causation. I originally captured both Pageview (PV) and Unique Pageview (UPV) data, but the correlation between them was very high (r = 0.998), so I decided to just keep it simple. Every cited r-value is significant at p < 0.01. Many thanks to our resident stats guru, Dr. Matt Peters, for helping me pull the numbers together.

    What Does It All Mean?

    First off, I’d better explain the “Post Age” data (in red). That’s actually a negative correlation with UPVs. In other words, the older the post, the less traffic it got. That may sound counterintuitive, but remember that the traffic data was only from 2011, whereas the posts could be written at any time. Naturally, posts written in 2011 tended to get more traffic in 2011. In retrospect, that seems obvious. Interestingly, thumbs up was also negatively correlated with post age (r = -0.76) – the other reality is that the community has just grown over time.

    Clearly, social factors had the strongest influence in this data set. Causality is a bit tough to pin down, as we do have a chicken-vs-egg problem. Likes, for example, may drive sharing and traffic, but posts with a lot of traffic will naturally get more clicks on the Like button. Which came first? Probably a little of both. As we saw in the smaller data set last year, there does seem to be “cross-talk” between the 3 social buttons. People that like a post will naturally +1 it. For reference, here are the inter-correlations between social factors:

    Social Factor Inter-Correlations

    As you can see, they’re pretty highly correlated with each other. It’s hard to separate why, at least from this data. It could be that (1) The best content attracts the most social signals and the most traffic, (2) People who regularly use social tend to use all 3 services, or (3) People use all 3 because the buttons are close to each other.

    Community factors are similarly tricky – posts with more traffic get more thumbs, all else being equal. Still, it seems that our community metrics have some validity – posts that get a lot of thumbs up and comments tend to also get a lot of traffic.

    The content factors are the weakest group, as a whole, but here the causality is at least clear. No post magically got longer or had more images in it because more people visited it. It does appear that longer posts tended to fare pretty well with our audience.

    Where Do We Go From Here?

    While we can’t predict the future of any given social network, and Google+ is still in its infancy (even by internet time), I think that 2011 was the year where social really made its mark. It’s clear that social is driving traffic, and the impact of social factors on SEO is growing fast.

    I think both studies suggest that you shouldn’t be afraid to use all 3 of the major social buttons. I wouldn’t go crazy (if you have 50 social buttons, you weaken them all), but the inter-correlations strongly suggest that, at worst, the 3 big buttons don’t hurt each other. People who regularly use social probably send multiple signals.

    It’s also interesting to me that long posts seem to do pretty well on SEOmoz. When I wrote my duplicate content mega-post, it was a bit of an experiment. We had talked about doing another guide for e-commerce SEO and opted to try a long-form post on one sub-topic instead. I don’t think that every post needs to be that long, but there’s certainly room for mega-posts when the topic merits them. To give credit where credit’s due, Oli’s mega-post made that point before mine did.

    Of course, every audience is different. I admit that I do these analyses as much for myself as anyone else – I’m really fascinated by trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Much like with SEO in general, though, “quality” is a complicated thing. If you write a long post just to fill up space, you’ll have a mountain of crap instead of a pile. Use the data wisely.


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     Dr. Pete Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:51:39 -0500     <![CDATA[The Debate on Rich Snippets and Their Future in the SERPS]]> read on »]]> Ninja Bonnie Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:01:56 -0500 <![CDATA[Three new ways to visualise your SEO performance]]>

    Three new ways to visualise your SEO performance

    SEO practitioners don™t typically share their operational methods. Our sector is reliant on gaining competitive advantage through hoarding methods and techniques for just long enough to benefit from them, and then sharing them to gain some love and respect as a bonus.

    This also extends to methods for displaying SEO data and visualising performance. For instance, search agencies never willingly allow their reports to be seen by their competitors.

    Therefore, I want to break rank somewhat and present three interesting ways to display SEO data and information, methods that I™ve not seen others use out there and that are increasingly becoming standards within my own companies.

    11 January 2012 11:30am by Andreas Pouros0 comments

    • 479 posts
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:21:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Death (and Linkbait) Becomes The PhoneBook]]> Andrew Shotland Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:58:01 -0500 <![CDATA[Your Name Is Fred " Please Use It]]> Michael Martinez Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:33:59 -0500 <![CDATA[6 Reasons 2012 is the Perfect Time for Social Media]]> by Jennifer Cario

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

    Reason #1 - Social Media has Reached a Saturation Point

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

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

    Reasons #2 - Social Sharing Continues to Rise

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

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

    Reason #3 - Social Media is Diversifying

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

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

    Reason #4 - Staffing is Easier to Come By

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

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

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

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

    Reason #6 - Offline and Online Experiences are Converging

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

    Do It, But Do It With a Goal

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

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

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:06:06 -0500     <![CDATA[Search & Social " you can™t get the cream out of the coffee]]> Yesterday, Google launched "Search plus your World", intermixing search and social and providing even more "personalized" results. There's a lot of outcry about some parts of this, with people saying they don't want "personalized" results. I actually think that normal users do want personalized results and that this is, for the most part, a good thing. [...]

    Search & Social – you can’t get the cream out of the coffee is a post by on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

    ]]>     Joost de Valk Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:47:03 -0500     <![CDATA[Ring in the New Year with New Moz Features!]]> Posted by Erica McGillivray

    Holy smokes, I don't think our product and development teams have slept since Thanksgiving; they're probably really dreaming of figgy pudding with all the new features they've been creating. These four features: universal search, historical link metrics, custom reports, and branded keywords are definitely squee-worthy. Plus, there's a bonus that you might've not heard about yet.

    I realize that for you die-hard Mozzers -- yes, those of you checking your RSS reader while everyone else watched shiny disco balls drop from the sky -- this may be a little bit of a repeat. This is more for those of you who are like me and spent most of your holiday break playing with your family's new puppy, eating pumpkin pie, and airing grievances at Festivus parties. (My cat swore he'd finally get a job in 2012, lazy bum.)

    Onto the features...

    Custom Automated Reports: Make the data talk for you.

    "I need that report..." You know what follows. Or you know the reminders that pop up on your calendar every Monday or every 1st of the month telling you it's time for reports.

    Boss Cat Doesnt Believes Ur Excuses

    Take a deep breath. SEOmoz reports now are customized and automated! Instead of logging in every week or month just to pull numbers for your boss, client, or other person-in-need, you can concentrate on making the perfect swirl of cream in your coffee or working on improving your site's SEO while being assured your report's arriving on time.

    Send up to 5 people .pdf reports of your keyword SERPs, crawl errors, and more. Make your boss happy and be a superhero. Learn how to set them up.

    Branded Keywords: Separate and track them as a group 

    One of the most important segmentation you can do in your SEO analytics is to look at the differences in rankings and traffic between your branded and non-branded keywords. By setting up some simple rules, you'll be able to automatically label which keywords are branded. (You can also add other labels for other groups your business may need.) You'll be able to filter to clearly see improvements or declines.
     
    Tip: Don't forget to set up your Google Analytics profile to your campaign so you can dive into traffic, in addition to your rankings. 
     

    Why is this important?

    To really dive deeply into SEO, you need to recognize differences in keywords. Different groupings have different needs -- sometimes even different customers! -- and need to be optimized differently.
     
    Your brand's name is generally a powerful signal. Typically, most companies find that branded keywords generate the majority of their organic traffic. But if your brand name's dropping that's a sign you need to work on some brand building and getting your name out there.
     
    Instead of setting up crazy filters in Google Analytics, you can now see both your rankings and your traffic as they change without pain. And it's so easy to set up!

    Manage your brand rules

    You want to gain insights into your groupings of keywords so you can give shape to your plans for SERP improvements. As I was filtering through my own analytics for this post, I found through this feature that my non-profit GeekGirlCon needs to spend some more time on non-branded keywords since 80%+ of our organic traffic's coming through via our brand! Group behavior helps you see keywords more clearly and come up with better actionable plans. More on this update.
     

    Universal Search: Holy local search SERP! 

    Fresh out of the Moz laboratories, we just launched our first venue into Universal Search yesterday. Like you, we've been closely monitoring the rise of Universal Search results and seeing Google's results serving up more personalized results. There's local, video, shopping, images, news, and more. Traditional organic rankings are being pushed further and further down the page. How's an SEO to keep up?

    search for "vegetarian food"
     

    We're working on making it easier for you to track your SERPs and know exactly where you stand in Universal Search.
     

    Why is this important?

    Rankings are more than just 10 SERPs these days, especially if people are looking for your business locally or a certain product you sell. The more relevant information -- whether it's location, hours, phone number, catalog, pictures of the outside of your shop -- that they can find the better.
     
    Plus, if you show up multiple times on the first page, you look like the authority over your competitors. Clearly, she who has the most SERPs wins. (Someone please make me that t-shirt.)
     
    Now when you start tracking keywords with local results too, we'll let you know where you are. And you'll also be able to figure out where you aren't if that keyword has local rankings, but just not for you.


    Local SERP hover

    Looking at how Google personalizes everyone's searches based on local gives you a different way of looking at your page optimization. You may realize that some terms are extremely important locally and other's not so much. You may find new competitors or that known competitors don't rank well for local.
     
    The more relevant you can be for Google's Universal Search, the more relevant you're going to be for your customers in the long-run. Which just translates into customer happiness. How-to dig into your local SERP rankings in PRO.
     

    Historical Link Metrics: Rock your data

    We now keep track of your historical link metrics. That's right, access information from your numbers going back to October 2011 or when you first set up your campaign, whichever came first. 
     
    Instead of digging back through spreadsheets that you downloaded, you can access this information right in SEOmoz's PRO app in your campaign. See your improvements in link building just jump right out at you. Or see where the competition is leaving you in the dust.
     
    Don't run around collecting old numbers when you can start investigating your site's link metrics' strengths and weaknesses today. Read more on accessing this invaluable resource.

    Mystery Solved!


    Bonus...New Link Directory

    Yes, we updated the Link Directory and rolled it in glitter just for you! Directory listings can still help your link juice a little bit. But you want to make sure those sites are quality ones, so the signal doesn't go the wrong way. Filter directories by category, DA, and MozRank and add your voice by thumbing them up or down. Start evaluating quality directories today.
     
    Roger 2012 New Year's Robot
     
    *beep beep* --> That's Roger Mozbot sharing in the excitement.
     
    Hope you enjoy all the New Year's gifts from us at SEOmoz and that they enhance your SEO reporting, planning, and execution. Like you, we have big goals for 2012, and our number one goal is to help you achieve your inbound marketing goals with the best analytics we can provide.
     

    Want more info? Join tomorrow's webinar!

    For more insights into these new features, tune into tomorrow's webinar at 10:30am PST (6:30pm GMT) for Upgrade Your SEO Reporting with Local Rankings, Historical Link Metrics, Branded Keywords, and Custom Reports. Join Mozzers Adam Feldstein, Karen Semyan, Samantha Britney, Miranda Rensch, and me as we walk you through SEOmoz latest PRO tool updates -- universal rank tracking for local search, historical link metrics, branded keywords, and custom reports -- and give you tips and tricks on how to make them work for your SEO and greater inbound marketing efforts. Bring your questions! Register today; it's free.
     
    Please let us know how you're enjoying these new features and how you're using them to make your site(s) even more awesome. If there's something you want to see added to these features or they make you think of another feature you'd love to have, don't be shy and leave us a feature request.

    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     Erica McGillivray Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:15:02 -0500     <![CDATA[Three Ways a Test Crawl Could Uncover Hidden SEO Dangers]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Glenn Gabe Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:00:31 -0500     <![CDATA[7 Quick Tips to Keep Your SEO On Track in 2012]]> Josh McCoy Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[How Search Engines Work]]> Mike Grehan Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Locai 2011 " Jim Moran]]>
  • Loci 2010 – Jim Moran of Yipit
  • Loci 2011- David Mihm
  • Loci 2011: Ted Paff
    • ]]>     Mike Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:00:46 -0500     <![CDATA[Sharing a search story]]> Matt Cutts Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:20:16 -0500 <![CDATA[41 Days ago]]>
    41 Days ago
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:07:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Google™s Search Plus Your World " Say That Ten Times Fast]]> Andrew Shotland Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:04:02 -0500 <![CDATA[Use freewriting to pump your verbal muscles]]> Ian Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:58:27 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Search With Personalised Results, Google+ , People and Pages]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:49:00 -0500     <![CDATA[on Wed, Sep 28, 2011 @ 09:09 AM]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:24:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Have You Ridden The QR Line Lately?]]> Andrew Shotland Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:43:54 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Gets More Personal with œSearch plus Your World]]> Read more...

    Google Gets More Personal with œSearch plus Your World is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

    ]]>     Reid Bandremer Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:57:57 -0500     <![CDATA[Scalable Link Outreach with Gmail and Boomerang]]>

    Sometimes it's the little things in life....Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook) is an incredibly useful, lightweight, powerful link outreach app.

    Link building has a special place in the SEO industry. Beyond being one of the harder skill-sets to master and acquire, link building is likely the most important element of an SEO campaign.

    Link building can also be the most difficult job to:

    • Scale internally and externally
    • Train someone to do efficiently
    • Outsource
    • Hire someone for

    How to hire link builders and how to train them are certainly worthy of their own (upcoming) blog posts but this post is going to sing the praises of a Gmail and Outlook plugin that is essential for my link building workflow.

    Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook)

    Outside of the really cool name this plugin makes my workflow much more streamlined and efficient.

    I don't use Outlook so I'll be focusing on the Gmail plug-in here. The Outlook plugin has most of the functionality of the Gmail edition (minus the Send On options) and you can check out the Outlook version here.

    The key benefits to using Boomerang (referencing the Gmail app going forward) are:

    • Schedule emails to be sent at a later date/time
    • Set reminders on emails so they pop back up at a specified time
    • Set email reminders from your smartphone

    Send Emails Later

    You can install Boomerang for Gmail here. You can use this for Gmail and Google apps and you'll need to use Firefox or Chrome.

    You'll manage Boomerang in two places; you can get to it in your Gmail toolbar:

    From here you can access your scheduled messages to make any changes and access various help and how-to's.

    The other area where you access Boomerang is in the email dialogue box. When you go to compose a new message or click to reply to one you'll see the Boomerang button and see all the options available for sending the message:

    If you click on anything other than the specific time option at the bottom, the message is scheduled straight away.

    If you need to access your Boomerang-ed messages, just go back to the top Gmail toolbar, click Boomerang, and click access Scheduled messages.

    The other cool option when composing a new message is listed right below the subject line. From here you can have Boomerang return the message to your Inbox if no one replies or even if they do (marked as unread, starred, etc; these options can be changed in the "access scheduled messages" option on the top Gmail/Boomerang toolbar option):

    You have the exact same option when replying to messages as well.

    This is incredibly useful for a variety of link building actions such as:

    • Tracking the effectiveness of email pitches
    • Scheduling a bunch of pitches to line up with various promotions and outreach campaigns, in one shot
    • Using in conjunction with Gmail's canned responses for scalable link outreach and management
    • Never forget about a link prospect
    • Make Gmail a self-contained link outreach system for staff members
    • Avoid awkward time zone issues on email deliveries if you have staff outside your targeted market's location

    Email Reminders

    While the Send On features are the most useful for link outreach, the Reminder functions can be useful as well.

    Boomerang has Gmail-like functionality in the way it auto-offers a solution. Here you can see I've got a Staples coupon that expires on January 16th. Boomerang is asking me if I'd like to return this to my inbox on that date:

    Outside of that functionality you can click the Boomerang reminder icon in the toolbar to get the reminder options available to you:

    So rather than setting something in your calendar or in your task management application, you can use Boomerang to re-populate the email when needed.

    You can add a condition to this and say that you only want to be reminded of the message at the selected time "IF" no one responds, simply by checking that option above. Otherwise, it will come back whether someone responds or not.

    You can also use your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android to set up a message for yourself to arrive in your inbox at a certain time with their mobile option.

    Privacy Concerns

    Letting an app access your data on mail.google.com shouldn't be taken lightly. Here is what they say about privacy:

    Why does Boomerang for Gmail need access to my email account?

    Like most other Gmail plugins, we need access to the full email data to be able to move and send messages. In our queries, we only store the headers of the message (subject, sender, time) so that we can uniquely ID the message you want to schedule. We don't store any message text.
    Does it mean you have my Gmail password?

    No, we don't have access to your Gmail password. You are authorizing through Google's official OpenID system.

    Sign Up for Boomerang

    You can get a full-featured pro account trial for free, for 30 days here. I am anxious for them to release the open/click tracking for even deeper link outreach analysis.

    If you are looking for a more enterprise level solution, with team-wide tracking and monitoring, please check out our reviews of Buzzstream and Raven Tools.

    ]]>     Eric Covino Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:42:20 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Flight Search Not a Monopolist Move]]> Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:30:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Outsmarting Your Competition in High-Stakes PPC Markets]]> Posted by TastyPlacement

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

    Are you competing in a high-stakes PPC market with bids in the $25 to $40 range? If you are, don't simply fight your competition head on; if you do, you'll end up paying premium prices for clicks you might capture for far less. There are several shrewd approaches you can employ to side-step your less-vigilant competitors. We've learned a few valuable tricks that can earn you valuable clicks for less-than-premium prices. The techniques begin with carefully monitoring PPC activity throughout the day to discover low-competition time slots in the PPC bidding and striking while your competition snoozes.

    Getting Started

    The types of campaigns for which these techniques will work will be high bid environments with smaller but determined competitors. You want to look for competitors bidding for terms in the $20-and-up range, but whose campaigns are not fully budgeted to run at the maximum number of available clicks. Specifically, we want to look for competitors' ads that don't appear consistently or whose ads disappear later in the day. Smaller competitors tend to fit this model fairly often. An illustrative keyword example we see in our local market of Austin Texas is "Personal Injury Lawyer". We know the bids in that space are $24 to $30 depending on the time of the day--but we see some advertisers drop out at various times of the day. For illustration, we'll examine Google's Adwords system, but these principles will apply to any PPC program.

    Identify Your Competitor's Ad Schedule

    Google's Adwords system has a scheduling feature that allows advertisers to run ads during particular times of the day, and even enter positive or negative bid adjustments based on times of the day.

    Here's the catch: the Adwords system only allows the scheduling to be made in increments of 15 minutes, as shown in the screenshot below.

    Adwords Scheduler in Action

    So, if your PPC competition is employing the ad scheduler, it become fairly easy to identify when they stop running ads by running test searches throughout the day at 15-minute intervals. Once you've identified a competitor using the ad scheduler, you've just found a soft spot--your bid competition will be lower during the times of the day when that competitor isn't bidding on ads. If you can identify more than one competitor, then you've found and even more favorable environment.

    Identifying Competitors' Under-Budgeted Campaigns

    There is another way to determine soft spots in PPC bidding: look for under-budgeted campaigns. You can identify your competition's under-budgeted campaigns fairly easily. An under-budgeted campaign is one where the advertisers daily budget will not supply the maximum number of clicks available to that advertiser. So, say a competitor is paying an average of $20 per click for a particular keyword; assume further that their daily budget is only $60--yet there are ten clicks available to that advertiser.

    That advertiser has only budgeted enough to purchase three clicks, so Google is forced to economize ad delivery--and it gives advertisers only two choices: standard delivery and accelerated delivery.

    Adwords Delivery Method

    Standard delivery means that Google will spread the ads throughout the day. In practice, Google might show an ad every third time a keyword is searched. Accelerated delivery means that Google will simply show an advertiser's ads every time they are triggered by a search query until the advertiser's daily budget is exhausted.

    There lies the opportunity: if your competitor is employing the accelerated delivery method with an under-budgeted campaign, that means their ads will eventually stop running at some point during the day. You'll know that your competitors are employing accelerated ad delivery if their ads show consistently in the morning (in 99% of cases, advertisers set their time zone correctly so a Google Adwords "day" begins in the morning) but their ads disappear at random times in the afternoon from day to day.

    Outsmarting the Under-Budgeted Competitor

    So, how can you capitalize on a competitor that employs accelerated ad delivery? Say your competitor is fighting hard for position one for a particular query and will not yield on their bid price in order to stay on top (that's a fool's approach, as we'll see). You can force your competitor to exhaust their budget more quickly by simply raising your bid as high as you can without dislodging the competitor from position one. Google's bid price calculation system takes care of the rest: Google adjusts the actual cost-per-click to be based on the dollar amount needed to exceed the "next ranked ad." If the next ranked ad (you) has a higher bid then the ad that got the click (your aggressive-bidding competitor) costs more. Thus, you can knock your competitor out earlier in the day while at the same time increasing their cost-per-click. Be warned though, you will, of course, be raising your bid, so you could potentially wind up paying more for clicks you do get.

    Now to Enjoy the Lighter Competition

    With your competitor's budget exhausted in the later hours of the day, the competitive bidding for a particular keyword/keywords thins significantly. If circumstances line up properly, you can lower your bids in the afternoon hours and enjoy far less expensive clicks, and better click-through rates (and, ultimately, higher quality scores). There are two ways to approach lowering your bids in the later part of the day.

    The first approach employs the advanced "bid adjustment" feature in the Adwords ad scheduler described above. To use the bid adjustment feature, log in to your Adwords account, click on a campaign, and then click the "Settings" tab. From there, scroll down to the Advanced Settings section and select "Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling" and then click on "Edit" in the "Ad scheduling" subsection. This will reveal the ad schedule pop-up window (shown below). At the top of the pop-up window, you want to click "Bid adjustment" mode. You can then set specific time periods on specific days and apply a percentage multiplier to lower your bid. In the screenshot below, we've adjusted our campaign from 4pm to 7:30pm to adjust our bids to 72% of the standard bid. At all other times, our bid prices stay at the standard bid prices we've selected. There it is, we've just adjusted our bids downward to enjoy the lighter competitive market we've identified that takes place during later hours of the day.

    Bid Adjustment

    There's a second approach to lowering bids later in the day that is a bit less elegant, but still effective. The second approach involves simply creating two ad campaigns: a first campaign scheduled to run during the earlier, more competitive hours of the day, and a second campaign with lower bid prices that is scheduled to run from say, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The advantage to this approach is that you'll have separate analytic data for the separate campaigns. We prefer this second technique for specifically this reason.

    We hope you've learned a bit from this article. While a bit Machiavellian, the techniques we've outline can help in competitive markets, and certainly the lessons here can be transposed into your daily PPC activities.


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     TastyPlacement Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:53:03 -0500     <![CDATA[Social Media (30)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:40:00 -0500     <![CDATA[After the SEO Audit: When SEO Gets Strangled]]> Lisa Barone Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:34:29 -0500 <![CDATA[The Art of Social Commerce]]> read on »]]> Ninja Melissa Ward Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:28:24 -0500 <![CDATA[The Stone Age of Blogging is Over " What™s Next?]]> *

    Lately many influential bloggers have written about the end of the golden age of tech blogging. They say “tech” but in a way they mean blogging in general it seems. Some people were furious and asked whether “over” is the new dead. I didn’t really care.

    Then over the recent weeks as I considered my own blogging “career” I realized that indeed an era is over. It’s the stone age of blogging that is over now. Also I recognized partially what replaced the Neanderthals of blogging and what’s next.

    I want to summarize what really happened in the first decade of blogging.

    Who am I to look back at a decade of blog history? I was quite late to blogging. I think I tried Blogger when it came out in 2001 but I was only reading blogs for two years when I finally started my first real blog in 2003. It was a private blog about art, design and activism. I had written it in German. I remember that at some point in 2004 I was even among the top 100 German blogs in two separate Technorati-like lists.

    I tried to convince my very first SEO client in 2004 to establish a blog and even started one for him. In 2005 I finally started to blog professionally aka for money and clients. One of the clients back then was the largest union of the world. I created a whole blogging portal with dozens of blogs for the youth organization of the union. Ironically I worked up to 80h a week for the union or the “agency” that actually paid me. This union is known for the “35h work week” demand.

    In 2006 I created my first full fledged blog for a personal client of mine. In 2007 I started this blog – SEO 2.0 and the rest is history.

    I’m still one of the most well known bloggers in the SEO industry, mostly due to my contribution over at SEOptimise. From 2008 to 2011 I have written hundreds of flagship blog articles for them and made them the best SEO blog in the UK, both by the number one ranking in Google.co.uk and by winning the UK Search Awards. Sadly I wasn’t even notified or invited to the ceremony. The SEOptimise team has received the price instead of mine. I only got an email a few weeks later that they don’t need me anymore in 2012.

    Meanwhile I have established and written for two flagship blogs for German clients. One of them is profitable for more than 2.5 years now. The other is the top ranking cycling blog in Germany despite me not really having the time to take care of it a lot. Additionally I have started a blog about science fiction in 2011. Last but not least I update a private Tumblr blog for two years now.

     

    Internationally I have written for all kinds of SEO blogs and beyond like the Hubspot inbound marketing blog, Google Blogoscoped when it was in the top 30 of the most successful blogs worldwide. There many many more I can’t even remember. So indeed I know something about blogging despite being a late adopter.

    So what has actually changed in the last decade, the time I consider the stone age of blogging?

     

     

    The definition of a blog has changed itself

    When you look at the Technorati Top 100 blogs these days and compare it to those from just a few years ago you will wonder why there are almost no blogs on the list or in other words how a blog is defined now.  A blog seems to be a popular corporate news site with a team of writers who publish items almost every hour. Real blogs like BoingBoing or Kottke are the exception. Even they have transformed or lost in popularity.

     

    Blogging is a multimillion business not personal anymore

    In the early days blogs were not much more than personal diaries. Over time they become more and more like corporate media until corporate media swallowed them or outmatched them on their own turf. The CNN Political Ticker is the #11 most popular blog these days. Some blogs were bought and sold for many millions of dollars. Others earn millions of dollars or venture capital by the millions. I rarely see personal diary-like blogs of importance now anymore. People still care for opinion but not for the person behind it.

     

    Blogs are about topics and teams not bloggers

    I was really astounded when AOL bough the seemingly anti-corporate activist site Huffington Post. When they sacked Michael Arrington, the original founder of TechCrunch I was still somehow shocked but when it happened to myself on SEOptimise I wasn’t even surprised anymore. Blog readers today don’t care anymore who writes the stuff they read on their favorite “blog”. It’s just a site or news source like any other. The unthinkable, removing the main blogger from a blog, is not an issue by now. Bloggers get hired and fired. People read blogs not bloggers. The teams are interchangeable as long as the topic stays the same.

     

    Everybody blogs today but people do not consider it blogging

    What do people on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter? They blog. When I started blogging a blog posts was the size of the typical status update of today. A short sentence with a link was a perfect usual blog posting for years. The flagship blog post aka huge well written article is a relatively new phenomenon. So in a way most people have embraced blogging but without the attitude attached to it. Today companies like Facebook or Google own your updates and they can remove them any day. They even decide what you are allowed to write about or what “profile” picture you use.

     

    WordPress is a full fledged advanced CMS

    When I first used WordPress I was late again. I think I switched to WP when it was in version 1.2. It was clumsy and ugly back then but still it was the most advanced, user friendly and popular blogging tool at the time. I didn’t like the backend code of it but I was glad that I didn’t have to code everything myself. Yes, I have coded my websites by myself! Today WordPress is a full fledged CMS you rather use for your whole site where the blog is just part of it. Many people do not use the blog “module” at all. WordPress is really advanced when it comes to features, extensibility and customization.

     

    WordPress themes are high quality web design today

    In the early years I hated all WordPress themes. I’d take a theme and styled it completely new until it looked a bit better. As I’m not a designer I just stripped most styles. Over the years the themes got better and better but most of them still looked like diaries for teenage girls and poor poets. I’ve recently been looking around again for a great clean and minimalist theme and I was overwhelmed be the sheer number of highest quality themes that look a design for a few thousands of dollars. Many of the best are premium themes but you also get outstanding free themes.

     

    Blog writing is almost of journalistic length and depth

    As noted above blogging in the early days was often like tweeting or writing Facebook updates today. Short sentences with a link were quite common. Adding images or even videos did not happen a lot at first. I remember that I rarely added images in the first months of my blog in 2003. Blogging and journalism were like two opposite sides of the same coin, they never touched each other.

    Over the years not only journalists have embraced blogging but blogging itself has become more journalistic and in-depth. Some blog posts over at Search Engine Land are so long I rarely have the time to read them in their entirety. Also journalism itself has degenerated. Today most journalistic articles are just republished agency news reports from AP, Reuters or DPA. Blogs posts are often much better than actual newspaper articles.

     

    Blogs are interfaces and hubs in a social Web environment

    Without a blog a site is like a dead end. There is nothing really you can offer to make people used to social media engage with your  site unless you have at least a blog. Forums or communities are of course even better but a blog is the easiest one of them to set up and maintain. In a social Web environment people are not keen on reading your sales copy or pseudo-objective press releases and news articles. They want to know who you are and how you think. Blogs are interfaces between companies and customers. Journalists and readers. A site that doesn’t have such an interface is effectively dead. The blog is also a hub for all your media related endeavors. You cover or announce it on a blog. You get popular via your blog, the rest of the website is just the structure.

     

    There is no such thing as a blogosphere anymore

    I seldom hear the term blogosphere anymore. Do you know what it is? It was something I felt in the early days of blogging in Germany. The blogosphere was like a virtual family. Whenever you wrote a post you knew everybody else in that huge family will in some way relate to it, even by not reading or noticing it. When a post didn’t get linked by other bloggers, when it did not become part of the blogosphere everybody knew that it wasn’t really on point. When I started blogging in English around 2007 I didn’t feel really as a part of it but I felt that it was still there. Today I feel nothing. There are people who write for blogs they work for. There are many blogosphere if there are at all.

     

    Every niche and industry has its own blogosphere and rules

    Every niche, industry or topic seems to have a blogosphere of its own these days. When I started this blog I wanted to cover many topics at once, blogging, social media, SEO but also “make money online” topics or web design. Later I added usability, freelancing, self improvement. Today there is a whole sphere of blogs for each of these topics, some of them already imploded, for instance there are just a few good and active freelancing blogs left.

    On the other hand I can’t “compete” with all social media all the time blogs anymore. Web design blogs are filled to the brim with resources lists I can’t match either. Every topic requires a different kind of writing, strategy and even design it seems. Self improvement blogs are clean and sell ebooks. Architecture blogs show off building by architects all the time instead of writing about architecture. Web design blogs do now describe the practice of web design either but they list tools and resources on how to design for the Web yourself. Every niches has its own rules of blogging.

     

    Consolidation, a few blogs dominate each niche or topic

    Every blogging topic has one or a few blogs that dominate it. Search Engine Land dominates search blogging, SEOmoz does it for SEO, Mashable for social media and Social Media Examiner for social media marketing. TechCrunch still dominates tech blogging even though the founder is gone. Nobody needs him, his new blog is nowhere as popular as his old one. There are few other blogs who still try to compete but unless you have a team of dedicated bloggers you can’t really compete for attention with them.

    I follow people on social media who share SEOmoz articles every day it seems. I’ve followed those who did it with Mashable. I prefer to use an RSS reader for that purpose. I don’t need people to shove the most popular blog down my throat each day. Most other people seem to like it and use Twitter instead of RSS. So even a renowned figure like Arrington can’t compete with the giants anymore.

     

    Commercial blogs that use blog software and are full of ads abound

    There are not only the huge corporate blogs you have to compete with for attention these days. There also myriads of blogs that are technically blogs, as they use WordPress or Blogger but they are just a collection of keyword driven commercial content mixed with undisclosed affiliate links to lure  search engine users and make them click. Finding a real blog with a real human behind it gets more and more difficult. Either the authors are not really associated with that particular blog or you don’t even know who the “Admin” is.

     

    Blogging is the new normal, nothing to talk about

    What I have noticed about blogging in recent years that you don’t have to talk and write about it that much anymore. In the early years blogging was new, amazing and still unfolding. Right now blogs are the most common form of regularly updated publication on the Web. Corporations websites add blogs because people are used to read like that. Almost everything about blogging has been already said and written numerous times. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t even care for the “golden age of blogging” meme.

     

    Blogging is about personal branding not writing anonymously

    My first blog was anonymous in a way. I just didn’t mention my real name on it. It was like Tumblr today. Nobody cared for my name. Also I didn’t want people to expect certain kind of content and opinion beacuse I was a pole. Today blogging is personal branding. You are somebody if you blog. Or at least you should try to be somebody when you blog. Otherwise blogging will become frustrating quickly.

    People won’t trust you as much as they trust bloggers with real names. Even Google won’t rank you as high as an author who discloses who s/he is. These seems to contradict same of my former points when I wrote that people do not care about the bloggers abnymore. They indeed don’t unless you make them. You have to highlight the fact that you write and not “Admin”.

     

     

    These are the changes that came to my mind right now. I could write on for hours. What I want to stress is that as you see above some of the changes are rather positive, others can be viewed as negative, some are ambiguous. Overall they show that blogging  has evolved beyond the stone age.

    We do not live in cages anymore. Indeed a new WordPress with a modern theme is like a condo compared to a cage of WP from a few years ago. I welcome this change.

    On the other hand I do not consider AOL or CNN to be bloggers thus I don’t have to identify or even compete with them. It’s a bit sad that the categorization of weblog is a bit meaningless these days. It can mean anything and everything.

    • So what’s next?
    • Will only corporations blog?
    • Will we just “blog” for corporations like Facebook or Google?

    Remember that some things haven’t changed. What I have learned over the years is that bloggers care for other bloggers. Not all of them some will actually attack you just to position themselves in a better light but overall blogging connects.

    I may not be a particularly gifted writer but people who like me, other bloggers, tell their friends and followers and thus my blog posts get shared. It’s as simple as that. I read and share postings by other whenever I can.

    Half a year ago I wrote about what I called then “smart mob SEO“. The smart mobs of the early blogging era are still there. They might occupy public places but they also can form and support bloggers. Often when other bloggers link to me or I link to them we outrank huge corporate sites. So it’s possible. Real people are always better than mindless corporate drones or just employees who happen to blog.

    I don’t want to return to my cage but I still like sitting occasionally around the virtual fireplace

    and convene with other bloggers to change the world. Facebook and Google are not replacements for blogs, they just parrot them without the inherent meaning. For real bloggers Facebook and Google are only tools to promote their own blogs.

    You can still or now more than ever create your audience. You won’t get as much traffic as the AOL blogs but you don’t need that much. You want a small but dedicated audience. The 1000 true fans who can feed you are not a myth.

     

    * CC image by Roger Smith.

     

     

    Related posts:

    1. 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
    2. SEO 2.0 Basics: WordPress URL Design
    3. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks

    by Tadeusz Szewczyk
    ©2012 SEO 2.0. All Rights Reserved.Copyright SEO 2.0 at onreact.com
    Related posts:
    1. 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
    2. SEO 2.0 Basics: WordPress URL Design
    3. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
    ]]>     Tadeusz Szewczyk Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:47:04 -0500     <![CDATA[7 comments]]>
    • 26 comments
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:42:00 -0500     <![CDATA[8 Alternative Ways To Use Screaming Frog for SEO]]> more >]]> Craig Bradford Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:33:16 -0500 <![CDATA[How we Identified and Rectified Malicious Linking]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. How we Identified and Rectified Malicious Linking

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    ]]>     Matthew Taylor Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:06:59 -0500     <![CDATA[Loci 2011: Ted Paff]]>
  • Loci 2010 – Ted Paff
  • Loci 2011- David Mihm
  • Loci 2011: Important Trends in local
    • ]]>     Mike Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:05:39 -0500     <![CDATA[Top 5 Over-Optimization Mistakes to Avoid]]> Sujan Patel Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:52:02 -0500 <![CDATA[Links In IFrames Pass Value In Google]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:08:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Is it Time to Ditch Your SEO Partner?]]> Nick Stamoulis Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:00:10 -0500 <![CDATA[Why Attract the Linkerati]]>

    Why Attract the Linkerati

    January 10, 2012Leave a Comment

    If you want links, it is the Linkerati you need to get the attention of. Who are the Linkerarti? The Linkerati are those who link They are distinctive from your customers or your clients or the other people you would like to impress, but do not have the power to link to you. There are [...]


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:47:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Universal Search Results in PRO - Part 1: Local Results]]> Posted by adamf

    Now that the holidays have passed, we’re back in full swing at SEOmoz. I’m happy to offer another product announcement for PRO members. We’ve just shipped phase one of our support for Universal Search results, which includes data about local (a.k.a. places) results in Google search results. Whether it's a 7-pack or a blended result, if you care about local SERP results, it's often a pain to find out where you stand. We aim to help.

    If you're not sure why visibility in blended or enhanced results are important, I highly recommend reading Dr. Pete's eye tracking study. His experiments nicely show that universal results that break up the page or results with enhanced elements can draw people's focus, even from strong organic results at the top of the page.

    As I noted, this first phase rolls out local results for Google. In the coming weeks we plan to add other types of results, including video, images, shopping, news. We are also looking to incorporate site links (1-box results) at some point. We debated whether to wait until we had the other types of universal results in place before launching, but decided to ship in this limited fashion so we can get some feedback from all of you to help us make it better as we build more capabilities.

    Here’s a quick rundown of what we've added:

    See Which of Your Keywords Contain Local Results in the SERP

    The first change you may notice is on the Ranking Overview page. If we saw a 7-pack or blended local result in the SERP for one of your keywords, you'll now see a small pushpin icons just below your ranking for that engine. There are two different states of the icon. If you are not in the universal result, you will just see the pushpin, but if you are included in the result, it will appear with happy little lines above it:

    Ranking Overview with local results

    If you are in the competitive rankings view, you will see the vertical result show up in the column with your site's ranking. 

    A Quick Look at the Details

    While in the overview, you can learn more about what is contained in the local result by hovering over the icon. This will offer up information including where the vertical is on the page, how many results it contains, and also a list of the results shown in the order presented:

    Ranking Overview Local Tooltip

    More Information on the Rankings Detail Page

    To see even more detail, click on the keyword or the "view ranking history for more details" link in the tooltip. Here, on the ranking details page, you will see universal results added to the ranking history graph, so you can see where universal results have been included over time and in which position (sorry, I don't yet have historical data for this sample campaign):

    Local Universal Result on Ranking History Graph

    If you scroll further down, you will find the SERP overview, which includes blended and enhanced results alongside the organic results we saw in the SERP. As with organic results, your and your competitors' results will also be highlighted in color, so it's easy to get a feel for the overall visibility of you and your competitors on a search engine results page.

    Here you can see a result where the local 7-pack pushes down what would normally look like a really strong #3 organic result below the fold:

    Local 7-Pack in Ranking Detail SERP Detail

    Conversely, you can also see when you are dominant at the top of a SERP, which is common for branded terms:

    Local Results in Branded SERP Detail

    For reference, here's what this looked like in the original SERP:

    Pagliacci Seattle SERP

    What's Up Next?

    Our plans going forward are to push out support for more universal search types. Our order of priority at the moment is:

    • Video
    • Images
    • Shopping
    • News
    • Site Links

    We'd love to hear from you if you think this is out of order, or if there is a different type of result that you think is more important than the rest of these.

    I’ll publish a quick follow-up post when new result types are added.

    Please Let Us Know What You Think

    As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have thoughts about how this could be better, please share a comment in the post or add a request in our feature request forum.


    Do you like this post? Yes No

    ]]>     adamf Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:58:49 -0500     <![CDATA[18]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:03:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Managing Oneself]]> Ross Hudgens Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:00:55 -0500 <![CDATA[40 Days ago]]>
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:50:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay™s Analysis]]> Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay’s Analysis was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

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

    ]]>     Virginia Nussey Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:56:22 -0500     <![CDATA[1 comment]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:24:00 -0500     <![CDATA[50% Discount Code for AppNation Enterprise San Francisco Conference]]> Andrew Shotland Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:07:39 -0500 <![CDATA[on Wed, Sep 28, 2011 @ 09:09]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:12:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The Duplicate Product Description Quagmire]]> read on »]]> Ninja Jen Van Iderstyne Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:28:43 -0500 <![CDATA[Loci 2011- David Mihm]]>
  • Loci 2010 – David Mihm
  • Will David Mihm get lost in the Big Apple?
  • SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday: David Mihm Part II
    • ]]>     Mike Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:53:06 -0500     <![CDATA[The YP.com Free API is Here!]]> Andrew Shotland Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:35:57 -0500 <![CDATA[Hawthorne Search: New Ad Experiment]]> Andrew Shotland Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:18:43 -0500 <![CDATA[6 Mobile Search Optimization Trends For 2012]]> Bryson Meunier Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:05:31 -0500 <![CDATA[Google™s [Not Provided]: Assessing 2.5 Months of Analytics Damage]]> The dust has settled a bit on Google’s decision to stop passing keyword referral data from searchers that are logged in to their Google accounts and using encrypted search by default. That began in mid-October and then ramped up a couple weeks later. At first, [not provided] represented a small percentage of overall traffic to [...]

    This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

    Google’s [Not Provided]: Assessing 2.5 Months of Analytics Damage

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:52:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Transparency vs Asymmetrical Information]]>

    "All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche

    Everyone Except Me Should be Open

    Being labeled as open or transparent is a great public relations strategy. Executed effectively it gets ditto heads to feel like they are part of a movement and spread your propaganda.

    However actually being transparent is often a poor business strategy.

    When WordAds opened up someone in the comments suggested that they should win by being open like Google. I read that and laughed. Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum & destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm.

    A few examples & comparisons:

    • Claiming to run an open auction, while running obfuscated quality metrics that price gouge advertisers.
    • At the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).
    • When planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google's blessings. Then, after he wrote the book, Google revoked permission to publish it!
    • Nuking affiliate links of some websites & then investing in Viglink, a network that automatically turns links into affiliate links.
    • Burning some networks of websites for being doorway pages & then investing in the Whaleshark Media roll up & launching Google Places.
    • Nuking some UK financial comparison sites for link buying & then buying BeatThatQuote.
    • Suggesting 60 or 90 days of penalty is a reasonable penalty for sketchy links & allowing BeatThatQuote to rank 2 weeks after penalizing it without cleaning up any of the paid links.
    • Android is open but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.
    • Not sharing revenue share stats with AdSense partners for a half-decade.
    • When websites are nuked they are frequently given no explanation. Worse yet, their content often re-appears in the search results on some other domain that stole it, in many cases while being wrapped in AdSense ads.
    • Arbitrarily making it hard to export AdWords campaigns to other services (& making it against the TOS to do same via the API).
    • The Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled & YouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year!
    • In spite of not having permission to do so, Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn't be used against them.

    Judge, Jury, Executioner

    Calls for "transparency" in SEO may sound great on their face, but once you peal back the covers the absurdity is laughable. If Google didn't discriminate against certain types of players & if Google didn't compete in the very markets that it judges then perhaps transparency would be a good idea.

    However Google is perhaps the single biggest direct competitor in many markets, so to be fully transparent with them when they are the opposite with you is a naive business strategy:

    I also disagree that outing each other would make the industry less like a mafia, because SEOs aren't the mafia. SEO is a symbiotic marketing channel reliant on Google, until the next big search engine/method comes along. In a mafioso analogy, Google would be the mafia - as they control the market. Removing all webspam wouldn't necessarily create better search results or a fairer market, as Google still decides who wins and who loses. The biggest winner being Google itself, the next level being their friends.

    Secrecy is also the cornerstone of all marketing channels. Social Media for instance works in a similar way to SEO, except they have secret voting methods rather than secret linking methods. You don't see major social media companies outing a rival's voting methods, as it would shine a torch on their own methods. Even outside of marketing, McDonalds probably worked out KFC's magic blend of herbs and spices decades ago, but it's not in their best interest to tell everybody.

    Outing webspam helps an SEO blog to keep their UVs up and their VCs happy. It helps a failing newspaper to appear modern and edgy, whilst allowing the contributor to launch a protection racket off the back of another company's misery.

    Do You Want SEOs to Seem More Professional?

    How often do you see tier-1 public relations firms marketing themselves by smearing other PR firms?

    You don't.

    You might see a company like Google hire a PR firm to push a bogus study to smear the security of a competitor, but you rarely (if ever) will see one PR firm smear another in the media.

    While some of the more intellectually challenged members of the SEO industry associate search spam with molesting children (talk to Google about that after their recent Chrome fiasco), those with a bit of intelligence and/or experience realize that many of the issues are gray and murky. What one person considers as spam one day they later sell as "advanced" months or years down the road. The ecosystem isn't some static black & white code:

    The question is less whether black hat and webspam are a good thing or not, but if Google is the unbiased and benevolent instance who shall make the rules. Google is a business and persuits its very own interestes, since it is aware of its market power with a lot of arrogance, aggresivity and obviously double standards. That was also Aaron's point, but seomoz has been missing the point completly in the last time.

    I expect an SEO portal/community to focus on how stuff actually works/can work, not to propagate how the monopolist does it want to work. It is their risk of doing business if they decide for an algorithm, not ours. It is our risk however, to decide whether to stick to the rules or not. And it's not only about ethics but has several practical implications...

    Full Disclosure Required, Except From Us

    On paid links Google claims to require machine AND human readable disclosure. Then on their own site they use an ad color background that literally fades to white on many monitors. Maybe it is legitimate that they are only able to fool some of the users some of the time. But some of their ad initiatives have 0 disclosure at all. None.

    That is now part of the "organic" search results, but is that a paid ad?

    You wouldn't know by looking at it, but according to the WSJ it is: "Google lists booking links to the airlines as advertisements, but the company declined to comment on how much money it makes from the arrangement."

    There is no disclosure that you are in a paid ad funnel until the very last click. And those who fail to pay are either unlisted, listed last, or have a broken booking process where their brand is arbitraged in an attempt to flip the click to somewhere else. According to Leocha, œGoogle and the airlines have a sweetheart deal with each other, and the consumers are getting screwed.

    In the hotel market Google is also testing comparison ads & price ads.

    Notice how little they care about relevancy so long as they keep the click on Google or are paid for the referral. They rank the car rental company Avis as a top Las Vegas hotel! And even the ad links that are sold off of that do not line up. Priceline pushes the Plazzo Luxury Suites & Booking.com pushes the Venitian.

    Retarding Investment in the Search Ecosystem

    What do you suppose the above behavior does to cash flow & multiples of websites in that vertical? Of course it contracts them & retards investment. Who wants to start a new hotel website at this point? What other verticals have investment held back by the fear of Google's eventual entry?

    If you only had to manage competing against other market competitors & staying inside Google's editorial guidelines then investment isn't that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google's guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters & destroys the market it is far more difficult.

    Skimming the Cream

    At any time Google can enter any market and skim off the cream: "An independent study from Leads360 showed consumers using Google™s comparison ads converted better than any other lead provider."

    Other affiliate networks which do not own the search channel have to fight through quality issues if they try to build similar scale.

    A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On

    When Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, use predatory pricing, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, violate IP, scrape 3rd party content, work with sketchy advertisers & publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above.

    They are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as "a beta" and "just a test." They promise to "act appropriately" & you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it.

    Web Scrape Plus+ (Now With More Scraping)

    When the +1 button & Google+ launched, Google highlighted how they would use the + button usage as a "relevancy" signal. Google recently started inserting + pages directly into the search results for brands & right from the very start they were using it as a scraper website that would outrank the original content source.

    Google used the buy in from their promised relevancy signal to create a badge-based incentivized system which acts as a glorified PageRank funnel to further juice the rankings of these new pages on a domain name that already had a PageRank 10.

    I recently read a blog post about how anyone could do the above & the opportunity is open to everyone. But the truth is, I can't state that something will become a relevancy signal that manipulates the search results in order to get buy in. Or, if I did something which actually had the same net effect, Google would likely chop my legs off for promoting a link scheme.

    Recently the topic of Google+ as a scraper site came up yet again via Read Write Web & on Hacker News a Googler stated that it was "childish" to place any of the blame on Google!!!!!!

    Google determines how much information is shown near each listing & can create "relevancy" signals in ways that things tied to Google get over-represented (look at the +1 count here). When they do that & it destroys other business models *of course* Google deserves 100% of the blame.

    It may be more profitable for Google to squeeze out some of the players, but if Google's quest for free content manages to destroy business models & the ecosystem as a whole, then they are not "doing what is best for the user."

    Things We Do Not Approve...

    Google can bundle themselves into markets, but when others do the same it is a big no no:

    A Google spokesman said "applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users' experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole."

    Google's founding research highlighted how bad ad-driven search engines were & then Google's core revenue engine of paid search was built on their violation of Overture's patent. They keep buying swaths of patents to protect against their other violations.

    The business model of "violate & then buy protection" has helped lead to a protection-racket styled marketplace in patents that makes the risk of innovation for smaller players so expensive that it drives them under.

    Where Google has gained a dominant position in a marketplace they can begin misdirecting for profit. Let's say you link to your own location on Google Maps to drive traffic to Google & help your users locate your office. Well in some cases they then reciprocate by confusing users by putting an ad in your location bubble.

    Once again, you are forced to buy your own brand unless you teach your customers (and prospective customers) to avoid Google products.

    Sure I May Have Failed, But at Least That Failure Was Transparent...

    If you are fully transparent against an arbitrary set of guidelines when the company that judges you also competes against you & brushes up against the limits of the DOJ & FTC then you might lose for no reason other than being transparent. And not only are you competing directly against Google, but the algorithms are biased toward certain players.

    Creating a Two-tier Web

    In 2006 Google's Eric Schmidt admonished others for attempting to create a 2-tier web:

    Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody " no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional " has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can™t pay.

    But when Google launched their Panda algorithm they did the same thing.

    Their "quality content" thesis could have come across as being honest if they weren't still pre-paying Demand Media to upload "content" to YouTube.

    You might get smoked by a Panda update or have your accounts arbitrarily frozen while operating at a 7 out of 10 level, and then you see Ask is Google's biggest advertiser, their arbitrage gets a pass, & that feed even monetizes misspelled searches for Google's brand. ;)

    Risks

    Risk is needed for adaptation, so some amount of risk is good, but...

    If the old established corporate competition needs to be as good as you to compete then there is little risk to being transparent if the competition is doing nothing beyond following you around. But if the playing field is tilted and the competition only needs to be 5% as good as you are to beat you (and can easily come from behind to copy any success you have) then full on transparency brings much more risk than potential profits.

    You Are the Ad

    We are moving into a media world where the content becomes ads & even how people interact with the ads and content becomes a part of the ad.

    Further Google uses their data advantage to create other asymmetrical advantages. While credit card companies sell personalized ads in network, Google is creating a marketplace to buy and sell user data.

    Every time you view a page and click an ad (or even don't click an ad) you are feeding highly personal data back to Google. And they will use it as they wish. Here they are saying thousands of people like eBay, which is of course plenty reasonable, except for the fact they claim the people voted for that specific page rather than the site as a whole.

    What's worse is that sometimes they will put your picture next to a listing and claim that YOU PERSONALLY voted for a specific page & use that to market that item to your friends and contacts. The problem with this is that:

    • even after you remove the vote for a site they still keep showing it
    • you may vote for site A & they will show your image as voting for site B
    • when they show your picture they claim you voted specifically for the page being advertised (even if that page is promoting a scam or something else you wouldn't endorse)

    Once again, I will highlight that they use the votes against the wrong sites & pages and that they keep showing the votes even weeks after you remove them.

    Where is the transparency in that deceptive crap?

    Others Are Just as Bad, But Are Not Monopolies

    But Aaron, you are just being hard on Google, why don't you ever mention Ask or Yahoo! or Bing?

    I did mention Ask above. ;)

    Bing has done numerous self-serving things, including some that are flat out sketchy.

    Yahoo! offers a useless "buying guide" for fish tanks that is nothing more than a paid pointer to Overstock.com.

    If you click on their coupons tab on that fish tanks search Yahoo! shows you coupons for tank tops, which is pretty idiotic.

    Why is this Yahoo! Shopping & Yahoo! Deals product so ugly? They outsourced it years ago. So it is a non-product & thus the integration can't be anything but crappy.

    Why do Yahoo! & Bing typically get a pass? They own a fairly low search marketshare. Missing traffic from either or both of those is certainly significant enough to be felt, however even when they are combined it is still less than half of what Google controls in most markets. Market leaders are expected to operate in less conflicted & less self-serving ways than also ran players in their market do. If Microsoft would have had 10% or 15% marketshare for their operating system then it is unlikely their browser bundling would have come under such scrutiny.

    Transparency in The Real World

    In the past I highlighted how every form of media is manipulated in Why Outing is Bad, but I thought it would be fun to run through some other markets and highlight how transparency often exists only as an illusion (to lure in punters so they can be rooked).

    TrueCar aimed to make that market more transparent by giving consumers pricing data online to remove some of the asymmetrical advantage dealers have & makes the sales process smoother for consumers. How does the automotive market respond? Honda issued threats to their dealers & now TrueCar has a hate video ranking for their brand.

    This nontransparency is not something new, but rather the way it has always been.

    It exists at every level of society. Countries spy on one another & companies may chose to show different views of the world to different markets.

    And what they do internally doesn't match the story they share publicly. Look no further than the News of the World's hacking scandal:

    News International™s leading profit centre, the News of the World, was dependent on a very ugly culture of lawbreaking, hacking and impunity. This freewheeling, ask-no-questions attitude spread to other parts of the organisation, such as the Times and the Sunday Times, both of which used have used illegal or unethical techniques. Even more troubling, when senior News International management were confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, the company made false statements and took actions which prevented key evidence from reaching the public domain.

    The same company has not only been accused of hacking at some of its other news outlets (by its own employees no less) but was also accused of similar in other lines of business:

    Both cases involve News America Marketing, an obscure but lucrative division of the News Corporation that is a big player in the business of retail marketing, including newspaper coupon inserts and in-store promotions. The company has come under scrutiny for a pattern of conduct that includes below-cost pricing, paying customers not to do business with competitors and accusations of computer hacking.

    Were The Robber Barons Transparent?

    Going back into history it is sort of hard to pick a starting point (one can go to the spice trade & orders that are unsealed at sea, or likely earlier than that) but to pick a somewhat recent starting point, we could look at the railroads:

    So how did unnecessary, inefficient railroads get built? Because of government subsidies. In short, the federal government paid to build the railroads through massive financing subsidies and also gave them ample land grants. The trick to building a railroad was not knowing anything about railroads or even about business; it was having friends in Washington who could give you the right financing and land subsidies.

    Even then, the railroads lost money. Not only was there insufficient demand for their services, but they were run by people who were generally incompetent. (For one thing, they didn™t even know their own costs of doing business.) Yet the people who owned the railroads made fabulous amounts of money (of which Stanford University is one symbol). The main way to do this was simple. The people who controlled a railroad (generally by putting up very little of their own money, thanks to the government subsidies) would also wholly own a construction company. They would cause the railroad to overpay the construction company to build the railroad"in effect transferring wealth from railroad stockholders and creditors into their own pockets

    What did the Robber Barons invest in? In large part government, media & educational institutions so that they could help "educate" society on how to behave much more civilly than they have.

    Corporate Advocacy

    There are tons of marketing campaigns designed to "educate" society about the impacts of various companies. BP now markets the gulf coast economy they plundered.

    AT&T's astroturfing campaign to acquire T-Mobile was so over the top that it actually backfired.

    "Get the facts" styled campaigns are rarely about promoting a complete worldview.

    Remember the $500 million fine for Google from them pushing ads selling overseas Viagra in the US? Now they promote scaremongering ads against fakes from filthy labs.

    Coca-cola runs The Beverage Institute & has "doctors" highlight how healthy soda is.

    At the same time, when Pepsi was sued over an alleged rat being in a can of Mountain Dew. Pepsi's defense claimed: "the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it" turning the mouse into a 'jelly-like' substance. But don't worry folks, it's healthy. :D

    At least we still have water.

    When they are not busy making it illegal to collect rainwater, Bechtel wants you to follow them on Twitter.

    It is hard to know what is in our food & those who label things as organic have to fill out more paperwork than those who manufacture frankenfood. Then there are the baseline chemicals sold as biodegradable which are not. ;)

    Oh well, at least we have insurance.

    State Farm is the #1 ranked bad faith insurance company, but at least they upload & advertise irrelevant funny videos to YouTube to create brand signal for Google.

    Transparency in Everyday Life

    Of course some of the worst affiliate offers, the most aggressive sales calls & other scams are designed to prey on ignorance of small print & rebilling, but even generally good businesses practice in asymmetrical skimming.

    A few recent examples:

    Is Our Financial System Transparent?

    When one looks at the field of finance it is story after story of deception, nontransparency & lawlessness. It is a constant reminder that there is no such thing as business ethics.

    • Wachovia laundered $3.84 billion in drug money for violent drug cartels. As if that wasn't bad enough, we also sold them weapons that wound up at murder scenes with our own border patrol dead & the Koch brothers sold weapons to states that we brand as "rogue."
    • Bank of New York Mellon ripped off their clients with unsavory Forex rates: "As investigators sought to determine whether the bank overcharged clients to execute their currency trades, a senior BNY Mellon executive nicknamed "Rambo" urged traders not to tell clients how much money they made on trading, according to the informant."
    • A former Federal Reserve member writes about the Fed: "No matter the legalistic interpretation, the Fed is, working through the ECB, bailing out European banks and, indirectly, spendthrift European governments. It is difficult to count the number of things wrong with this arrangement."
    • Bank of America recently had to pay $335 million to settle a discrimination lawsuit against minorities, due to Countrywide (who is NOT on your side) charging juiced interest rates. Bank of America had to pay an $8.5 billion settlement to investors who bought some of the junk mortgages out the other end.
    • "What™s happened is that, almost overnight, we™ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it." - Christopher Peterson
    • The financial markets are becoming glorified crack houses: "Frankly, I am concerned that Wall Street is becoming little more than a glorified crack house. Day after day, the sole focus of Wall Street is on more sugar, stronger sugar, Big Bazookas of sugar, unlimited sugar, and anything that will get somebody to deliver the sugar faster. This is like offering a lollipop to quiet down a 2-year old throwing a tantrum, and expecting that the result will be fewer tantrums. What we have increasingly observed over the past decade is nothing but the gradual destruction of the ability of the financial markets to allocate capital for the benefit of future growth. By preventing the natural discipline of the markets to impose losses on poor stewards of capital, and to impose interest rates high enough to force debtors to allocate the capital usefully, the world's policy makers are increasingly wrecking the prospects for long-term economic growth."
    • Companies are often brought private, leveraged up on debt & have their pension programs destroyed to make "profits" for private equity investors: "Nowadays private-equity firms often spend hundreds of millions of their own money on an acquisition (BW -- Feb. 27). Just as often, though, they load up the companies with debt and use the money to pay themselves special dividends and other fees that allow them to profit even if the company itself struggles. Then the backers take the company public, often pocketing the lion's share of the offering."
    • Individuals who put in extra hours of work because they are sold on the promise of their options may also find those disappear: "Taking away the value of options that are vested means that the concept of vesting becomes bogus. It doesn't matter whether the employee understood if this was the deal or not, it's a scummy practice, and it's ultimately self-defeating (both for the company and the industry as a whole). Who would go to work for Skype (or any PE-backed company) in the future? "
    • Limitless fraud before the courts & dancing on the graves of the newly homeless: "Court records show that the firm angered state court judges for alleged false statements and filing suspect documents. Arthur Schack, a state court judge in Brooklyn, in a 2010 ruling said that pleadings by the Baum firm on behalf of HSBC Bank, a unit of London-based HSBC Holdings, in a foreclosure case were "so incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous that they should have been authorized by the late Rod Serling, creator of the famous science-fiction television series, The Twilight Zone."
      ...
      The law firm said it would shut down after New York Times columnist Joe Nocera in November published photographs of a 2010 Baum firm Halloween party in which employees dressed up as homeless people. Another showed part of Baum's office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed houses."
    • That theft of physical property is ongoing: "Also announced over the weekend was the jaw-dropping, yet illuminating fact that the MF Global bankruptcy was fraudulently, nefariously and illegally drawn up as a Chapter 7 BK for a SECURITIES DEALER and NOT a commodity brokerage as it should have been. Look, MF Global was the second-largest non-bank FCM in the United States next to NewEdge which is the old FIMAT. If MF Global wasn™t an FCM, then there are no FCMs. Of course it was an FCM. It had $7.2 billion in customer seg funds as of August 31, 2011. And yet MF Global was immediately, from the get-go, put into Chapter 7 BK as a SECURITIES FIRM. This is fraud. MF Global™s BK should have OBVIOUSLY been established under Subchapter IV of the Chapter 7 code as a COMMODITY BROKERAGE."
    • And as banking criminals literally steal money, destroy lives & undermine the rule of law to grow their "profits" sleazeballs like Jamie Dimon think that the reason people hate them is envy.

    The above makes no mention of helping Greece hide governmental debt, bid-rigging bribes in Jefferson County, robosigning bogus foreclosure documents, and a host of other crimes. But one thing in common with all the above crimes is this: no jailtime for the banksters.

    Since there is nothing stopping those criminals they keep up their crimes:

    Big banks represent the ultimate in concentrated economic power in today™s economies. They are able to resist all meaningful reform that could really change their compensation schemes. Their executives want to get all the upside while facing none of the true downside.

    But capitalism without the prospect of failure is not any kind of market economy. We are running a large-scale, nontransparent, and dangerous government subsidy scheme for the benefit primarily of a very few, extremely wealthy people.

    The actions of the financial cartel are both obvious & predictable. And the damage they do is felt worldwide:

    Credit-financed economic booms, by turns in private then public credit as one ratchets up the other over a series of booms and busts, are as irresistible to politicians as hookers and maids.
    ...
    The failures of American FIRE Economy policies are behind the movements in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, as reflation measures, from quantitative easing to currency depreciation, steal purchasing power from low income families world wide, acting as the most regressive tax imaginable. Simmering hatreds are exacerbated by the developing global crisis over oil supplies and costs.
    ...
    The so-called debate about debt ceilings, spending cuts, and entitlements reductions is a red herring. The public debt crisis arose from the 2007 - 2008 private credit market crisis, not the government liabilities that have been building for decades. The mistake of both the left and the right is thinking that we can escape an output gap without facing up to the politically unpopular task of demanding that creditors take a loss on loans taken out during the credit bubble era.

    A creditor that makes bad loans deserves to go out of business. Their outsized compensation can't be justified unless they are also made to eat their losses. But rather than holding them accountable for their own actions, societies the world over absorb that pain.

    "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"- Benito Mussolini

    Slavery, Debt & Freedom

    There are currently more slaves alive than at any point in history. And many people who are not slaves are still being enslaved by crushing debt:

    Money is a human construct. The fact that our money is now backed by nothing more than our collective future ability to "produce" relegates us to that of slaves.

    Money=paper=blood hours.

    Blood hours are a finite measure. Heartbeats.

    What's in your wallet? Is it the new debt slavery card: "A personal bankruptcy is supposed to cut borrowers loose from lenders and debt collectors, but Capital One Financial Corp."one of the nation's largest credit-card issuers"sometimes doesn't want to let go."

    Citigroup has an "effective" strategy they employ in some 3rd world countries to deal with those who can't pay:

    After dropping his younger daughter at school, Octa walked into Citibank™s credit card collection department on the fifth floor of the Jamsostek tower just after 10 a.m. Four hours later, he left the 25-story building slumped motionless in a wheelchair -- a victim of what police allege was a violent assault by debt collectors. Driven to a nearby hospital in a Citibank car, Octa was pronounced dead on arrival.

    Unfortunately, even if you stay out of debt, you are forced to support banking scams:

    before being bailed out by governments, banks had never made any return in their history, assuming that their assets are properly marked to market. Nor should they produce any return in the long run, as their business model remains identical to what it was before, with only cosmetic modifications concerning trading risks.

    So the facts are clear. But, as individual taxpayers, we are helpless, because we do not control outcomes, owing to the concerted efforts of lobbyists, or, worse, economic policymakers. Our subsidizing of bank managers and executives is completely involuntary.

    In the US the reason the government debt outlook is so bad is in part due to overpaying for "assets" owned by the likes of Citibank:

    The way the banks make money now is by hiding their losers off balance-sheet, or by forcing them on the taxpayers, and after having themselves declared "systemically important," adjusting their on balance-sheet exposures accordingly, crashing the system and cashing out on their leveraged derivative bets, also at the taxpayers' expense.

    In real life, if there is such a thing anymore, all of the major banks are arguably insolvent. So, in reality, they're not making any money at all, they are merely having it transferred to them by their political operatives in Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank. This, after all, is the modern purpose of the Congress, and has always been the purpose of the Federal Reserve System.

    Even as they destroy savings, kill jobs & undermine the competitiveness of the economy, why does the government continue to support such scams? Without the scams & cost-shifting those in government wouldn't have as much wealth, power & influence. It is debt & cost-shifting that fuels them:

    government and banks are stuck together like a couple of dogs screwing and we don't know which is on top. Here, Republicans need government to finance war and Democrats need it to finance social programs. Both need it to finance both, as that is how government attempts to maintain power and influence over the people this day and time.

    The congress literally sells insider tips to hedge funds:

    When Senate Democrats finally brokered a compromise over the proposed health-care law, a group of hedge funds were let in on the deal, learning details hours before a public announcement on Dec. 8, 2009.

    The news was potentially worth millions of dollars to the investors, though none would publicly divulge how they used the information. They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill.

    Since most money comes into circulation as debt (and due to the compounding nature of debt interest), if those at the top are not allowed to fail then those at the bottom will fall hard:

    In the past, periods dominated by virtual credit money have also been periods where there have been social protections for debtors. Once you recognize that money is just a social construct, a credit, an IOU, then first of all what is to stop people from generating it endlessly? And how do you prevent the poor from falling into debt traps and becoming effectively enslaved to the rich? That™s why you had Mesopotamian clean slates, Biblical Jubilees, Medieval laws against usury in both Christianity and Islam and so on and so forth.

    Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.

    Well, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster.

    And, I might add, if Aristotle were around today, I very much doubt he would think that the distinction between renting yourself or members of your family out to work and selling yourself or members of your family to work was more than a legal nicety. He™d probably conclude that most Americans were, for all intents and purposes, slaves.
    ...
    Clearly any pretence that markets maintain themselves, that debts always have to be honored, went by the boards in 2008. That™s one of the reasons I think you see the beginnings of a reaction in a remarkably similar form to what we saw during the heyday of the ˜Third World debt crisis™ " what got called, rather weirdly, the ˜anti-globalization movement™. This movement called for genuine democracy and actually tried to practice forms of direct, horizontal democracy. In the face of this there was the insidious alliance between financial elites and global bureaucrats (whether the IMF, World Bank, WTO, now EU, or what-have-you).


    Those who have the least often give the most. Excessive income inequality (especially when driven by fraud) leads to a moral and cultural rot. Financial cartels & governments can only enslave people in so much debt & hand out so much soma before they either revolt or simply lose faith.

    (On a related note, December saw record gun sales.)

    State actors have repeatedly use violence to try to encourage a similar response. Instead they created a viral meme & the movement lives on.

    Of course there are "opposition research" hacks willing to dig up dirt on anyone with wide reach who opposes the state-sponsored fraud: "It will be vital, the memo says, œto understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.

    The state has long manipulated mainstream media and has tools for spying on social networks, hacking accounts & astroturfing online, but sock puppets can only go so far against reality.

    Who Does 100% Marketing Transparency Help & Who Does it Hurt?

    We have an SEC that shreds over a decade of evidence (and engages in other illegal behaviors), a government that bails out the criminal enterprises & a court system that broadly makes it nearly impossible to win a financial fraud lawsuit.

    The biggest companies & the biggest people in business at this point are simply above the rule of law & are not held accountable for their actions. Worse yet, the corrupt system has global influence.

    • In 2004 the FBI warned that there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud and that it would create a crisis.
    • "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks," the president told them.
    • And, in spite of the FBI highlighting the massive mortgage fraud, and the above quote, the president (who is a horrible human being) aims to keep the population misinformed & ignorant, publicly stating that what Wall St did wasn't illegal!

    Henry Kissinger has a famous quote about power: "Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ˜The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.™ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I™m afraid to say things like that." Since then government officials have become much more evasive & smooth talking. Unfortunately, freedom of the press only goes so far:

    this is how the much-lauded "freedom of the press" myth in the US actually works. If you perform the job of an actual journalist, telling truth to power, forget about attending press conferences at the White House, Pentagon or State Department. You won't even be admitted in the building.

    When you ask for total market transparency it changes nothing with the criminality at the top, but it does create a juicy data source for criminals while harming personal civil liberties & unpeople with limited power:

    The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. œReal names policies aren™t empowering; they™re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:08:01 -0500     <![CDATA[40 Days ago]]>
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:05:00 -0500     <![CDATA[UK Search Conference Calendar " 2012]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. UK Search Conference Calendar – 2012

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    ]]>     Kevin Gibbons Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:11:52 -0500     <![CDATA[7 Expert Tips for Launching Location-Based Promotions]]>

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    Would you buy a link for the Price of a Mars Bar?

    January 5, 2012Leave a Comment

    Can a link, retailing at 55p be both profitable for the link builder and effective for the linked to? A while back I came across a link building scheme that was effectively selling links for 90c, or about 55p. Which is the price of a Mars bar. As I offer a link building service I [...]

    Copyright © 2012


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:06:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Report: Social Media Spending Threatens To Overtake Paid Search Among SMBs]]> Greg Sterling Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:01:22 -0500 <![CDATA[5 Ways a Client Can Sabotage SEO]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 5 Ways a Client Can Sabotage SEO

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    How Much Does SEO Cost- Infographic!

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:48:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Your Local SEO Checklist For 2012!]]> by Miriam Ellis

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

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

    1. Invest Real Money In Your Website

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

    2. Read The Google Places Quality Guidelines

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

    3. Read The Google Places Review Guidelines

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

    4. Follow The Guidelines To The Letter

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

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

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

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

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

    6 Don't Forget All Those Non-Google Opportunities

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

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

    7. Read Mike Blumenthal's Blog

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

    8. Be Sociable

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

    9. Realize You've Gone Into The Publishing Business

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

    10. Do Something Not On This List

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

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

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:35:30 -0500     <![CDATA[Educational Viral Content]]> Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:00:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Open Video To Google " Please Reinstate Chrome]]> Dear Google

    Your recent decision to invoke a manual penalty on the download page for Google Chrome will have lasting ramifications for the whole of online marketing, whether display advertising, affiliate marketing, and other performance marketing such as CPA models, making many such business models unworkable.

    Read more on Open Video To Google – Please Reinstate Chrome…

    Tags: , , , ,
    ]]>     Andy Beard Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:29:31 -0500     <![CDATA[Social Media Helps Small Business Boost Sales, Keep Customers]]> Lee Odden Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:59:10 -0500 <![CDATA[What is Neuromarketing and how does it relate to SEO?]]> more >]]> David Sottimano Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:53:35 -0500 <![CDATA[Optimizing Your Website for Local Search]]> Nick Stamoulis Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:00:33 -0500 <![CDATA[Making cats into turnips: Using Google Webmaster Tools query data]]> ian Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:11:30 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Affiliate Marketing Infographic]]>

    Sharing is caring!

    Please share :)

    Embed code is here.

    Google Hates Affiliates.

    You can embed the above graphic on your website here.

    Have feedback? Please contribute in the comments.

    ]]>     Aaron Wall Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:22:49 -0500     <![CDATA[Did Google Break its Own Terms of Service?]]> Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:30:04 -0500 <![CDATA[Google™s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For œBrowser After Sponsored Post Penalty]]> Danny Sullivan Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:32:31 -0500 <![CDATA[Search Engines Are Winning the War on Content Farms [STUDY]]]> Miranda Miller Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:10:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Google: Yes, Sponsored Post Campaign Was Ours But Not What We Signed-Up For]]> Danny Sullivan Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:02:31 -0500 <![CDATA[What the SEF is Your SEO Doing?]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Stoney G deGeyter Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:00:42 -0500     <![CDATA[Build SEO Momentum in 2012, Not Resolutions]]> Lisa Barone Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:15:13 -0500 <![CDATA[Don™t Fall Into The Made-For-SEO Website Trap]]> Eric Enge Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:34:48 -0500 <![CDATA[The Secret to SEO Realized Over Holiday Break?]]> briand Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:46:23 -0500 <![CDATA[Google™s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome]]> Danny Sullivan Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:38:29 -0500 <![CDATA[I Learned Everything I Know About SEO From Spammers]]> Michael Martinez Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:44:36 -0500 <![CDATA[This Post is Sponsored by Google]]>

    That is what they say, typically at the bottom of the posts, in blog posts that equate Google Chrome to being the Internet & spread misinformation about how Chrome is good for small business.

    • some of those sites are paid posts and have live links in them to Google Chrome without using nofollow & talk about SEO in the same post as well!
    • some of those posts link to the example businesses Google was paying to have covered
    • and all the posts are effectively "buying YouTube video views" for this video youtube.com/watch?v=QFLP7HD1s7k

    You can say they didn't require the links, that the links were incidental, that leaving nofollow off was an accident, etc. ... but does Google presume the same level of innocence when torching webmasters? They certainly did not to the bloggers who reviewed K-Mart & the Google reconsideration request form states:

    œIn general, sites that directly profit from traffic (e.g. search engine optimizers, affiliate programs, etc.) may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reconsidered.

    The Orwellian things about Google using the above strategy to market Chrome are:

    • Google has a clear pro-corporate big brand bias to their algorithms & layout (Vince & Panda updates + the part near the top of the SERPs for some searches that says "brands" as a filter type).
    • The more usage data Google collects the more stupid hoops it forces smaller businesses to jump through in order to compete, thereby further driving them under. (If small business owners didn't have enough time & resources for SEO, do they now also have time to get reviews, get local citations, deal with social stuff on Twitter + Facebook + Youtube + Google+ and a bit of SEO?)
    • Google polices how small businesses can even make income online. When K-Mart paid some small business bloggers to do sponsored posts Matt Cutts wrote a post (mattcutts.com/blog/sponsored-conversations/) about how he torched those small bloggers (while doing nothing to K-Mart) & equated that exercise to selling links that promote bogus brain cancer solutions. Yet Google Japan was already dinged for this sort of paid post activity & now Google is doing the same thing again.

    The fact that Google is paying to spread that sort of misinformation about how their browser is helping small businesses is sort of like BP buying ads about doing tourism in the gulf. Only since Google destroying smaller businesses is something more abstract on virtual lands the PR propaganda campaign is much more effective, because (unlike oil washing ashore) people do not see what is not there. (The birds still die, but the black oil covered carcass isn't rotting on the beach).

    Should you follow Google & buy ads on these sites? Are they christened & beyond reproach? I would sort of be afraid to buy exposure on the blogs where Google is buying coverage...if that latent public relations disaster eventually blows up in their face, they may assume others are as guilty as Google is & burn down the whole forest.

    Google the dictator meet Google the marketer. You guys are going to get on well together!

    Update: Danny highlighted how Google's Chrome ad buy created a lot of the low-quality filler pablum content that the Panda update was alleged to discourage.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:40:45 -0500     <![CDATA[How To Improve Mobile Commerce SEO Using JQM]]> Sherwood Stranieri Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:32:20 -0500 <![CDATA[Mike Wilton]]>
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    © Further Search Marketing 2012

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:14:00 -0500     <![CDATA[2 Comments]]>

    Copyright © 2012 ·


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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:28:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Tips on How To Improve Your Website " Checklist]]>

    Tips on How To Improve Your Website " Checklist

    At the dawn of the internet websites were created without much thought as to what changes, if any, would need be made in the future. To keep your website relevant, gaining new links, keeping users satisfied and getting traffic from search engines, you need to have a maintenance plan. As with any maintenance plan small [...]


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:33:00 -0500     <![CDATA[How Google Might Identify Transient Content on Webpages]]> Back in 2007, I wrote about a Yahoo patent describing how Yahoo! might crawl a webpage, and then recrawl the same page around a minute later to see if any of the links on the page had changed. It might do that to try to identify what it called “Transient Links,” or links that [...]]]> Bill Slawski Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:57:27 -0500 <![CDATA[Do you like the new version of Google Analytics? [POLL]]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Melissa Fach Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:00:08 -0500     <![CDATA[Kathryn Parsons]]>
    Kathryn Parsons

    Communicating Your SEO Agenda

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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:12:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Where Search Engine Optimization May Go in 2012]]> Michael Martinez Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:00:14 -0500 <![CDATA[Best Practical SEO post of 2011]]> ]]> Zarko Zivkovic Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:42:54 -0500 <![CDATA[300+ Internet marketing predictions for 2012]]> Courtney Seiter Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:00:32 -0500 <![CDATA[Viral Content Ideas that Appeal to Emotions]]> Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:00:07 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Panda Update: Say Goodbye to Low-Quality Link Building]]> Kristi Hines Thu, 29 Dec 2011 07:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Ocean Marketing™s Shady SEO Practices Exposed]]> Nick Stamoulis Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:00:45 -0500 <![CDATA[Thursday, 29 December 2011]]>
    Thursday, 29 December 2011
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    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:35:00 -0500     <![CDATA[439]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:50:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Detected Unnatural Links Notice From Google]]> Ryan Clark Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:17:46 -0500 <![CDATA[Website Auditor Review: A Full-Featured On-Page Optimization Tool]]>

    website-auditor-enter-url

    Website Auditor is one of the 4 tools found in Link-Assistant's SEO Power Suite. Website Auditor is Link-Assistant's on-page optimization tool.

    We recently reviewed 2 of their other tools, SEO Spyglass and Rank Tracker. You can check out the review of SEO Spyglass here and Rank Tracker here.

    What Does Website Auditor Do?

    Website Auditor crawls your entire site (or any site you want to research) and gives you a variety of on-page SEO data points to help you analyze the site you are researching.

    We are reviewing the Enterprise version here, some options may not be available if you are using the Professional version.

    In order to give you a thorough overview of a tool we think it's best to look at all the options available. You can compare versions here.

    Getting Started with Website Auditor

    To get started, just enter the URL of the site you want to research:

    website-auditor-enter-url

    I always like to enable the expert options so I can see everything available to me. Next step is to select the "page ranking factors:

    wa-select-page-factors

    Here, you have the ability to get the following data points from the tool on a per-page basis:

    • HTTP status codes
    • Page titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords
    • Total links on the page
    • Links on the page to external sites
    • Robots.Txt instructions
    • W3C validation errors
    • CSS validation errors
    • Any canonical URL's associated with the page
    • HTML Code Size
    • Links on the page with the no-follow attribute

    Your next option is to select the crawl depth. For deep analysis you can certainly select no crawl limit and click the option to find unlinked to pages in the index.

    wa-step-3

    If you want to go nuts with the crawl depth frequently, I'd suggest looking into a VPS to house the application so you can run it remotely. Deep, deep crawls can take quite awhile.

    I know HostGator's VPS's as well as a Rackspace Cloud Server can be used with this and I'm sure most VPS hosting options will allow for this as well.

    I'm just going to run 2 clicks deep here for demonstration purposes.

    Next up is filtering options. Maybe you only want to crawl a certain section or sections of a site. For example, maybe I'm just interested in the auto insurance section of the Geico site for competitive research purposes.

    Also, for E-commerce sites you may want to exclude certain parameters in the URL to avoid mucked up results (or any site for that matter). Though there is an option (see below) where you can have Website Auditor treat pages that are similar but might have odd parameters as the same page.

    Another option I like to use is pulling up just the blog section of a site to look for popular posts link-wise and social media wise. Whatever you want to do in this respect, you do it here:

    wa-step-4-filtering-options

    So here, I'm included all the normal file extensions and extension-less files to include in the report and I'm looking for all the stuff under their quote section (as I'm researching the insurance quote market).

    The upfront filtering is one of my favorite features because I exclude unnecessary pages from the crawl and only get exactly what I'm looking for, quickly. Now, click next and the report starts:

    wa-step-5-searching

    Working With the Results

    Another thing I like about Link-Assistant Products is the familiar interface between all 4 of their products. If you saw are other reviews, you are familiar with the results pane below.

    Before that, Website Auditor will ask you about getting more factors. When I do the initial crawl I do not include stuff that will cause captchas or require proxies, like cache dates and PR. But here, you can update and add more factors if you wish:

    wa-more-factors

    Once you click that, you are brought to the settings page and give the option to add more factors, I've specifically highlighted the social ones:

    wa-social-factors

    I'll skip these for now and go back to the initial results section. This displays your initial results and I've also highlighted all the available options with colored arrows:

    wa-results-pane-large

    Your arrow legend is as follows:)

    • Orange - You can save the current project or all projects, start a new project, close the project, or open another project
    • Green - you can build an white-labeled Optimization report (with crawl, domain, link, and popularity metrics plugged in), Analyze a single page for on-page optimization, Update a workspace or selected pages or the entire project for selected factors, Rebuild the report with the same pages but different factors, or create an XML sitemap for selected webpages.
    • Yellow - Search for specific words inside the report (I use this for narrowing down to a topic)
    • Red - Create and update Workspaces to customize the results view
    • Purple - Flip between the results pane, the white-label report, or with specific webpages for metric updates

    Workspaces for Customizing Results

    The Workspaces tab allows you to edit current Workspaces (add/remove metrics) or create new ones that you can rename whatever you want and which will show up in the Workspaces drop-down:

    wa-workspaces

    Simply click on the Workspaces icon to get to the Workspaces preference option:

    wa-workspaces-options

    You can create new workspaces, edit or remove old ones, and also set specific filtering conditions relative to the metrics available to you:

    wa-eric-workspace

    Spending some time upfront playing around with the Workspace options can save you loads of time on the backend with respect to drilling down to either specific page types, specific metrics, or a combination of both.

    Analyzing a Page

    When you go to export a Website Auditor file (you can also just control/command + a to select everything in the results pane and copy/paste to a spreadsheet) you'll see 2 options:

    • Page Ranking Factors (the data in the results pane)
    • Page Content Data

    You can analyze a page's content (or multiple pages at once) for on-page optimization factors relative to a keyword you select.

    There are 2 ways you can do this. You can highlight a page in the Workspace, right click and select analyze page content. Or, you can click on the Webpages button above the filter box then click the Analyze button in the upper left. Here is the dialog box for the second option:

    wa-analyze-page-content

    The items with the red X's next to them denote which pages can be analyzed (the pages just need to have content, often you see duplicates for /page and /page/)

    So I want to see how the boat page looks, highlight it and click next to get to the area where you can enter your keywords:

    wa-keywords-content-analysis

    Enter the keywords you want to evaluate the page against (I entered boat insurance and boat insurance quotes) then select what engine you want to evaluate the page against (this pulls competition data in from the selected engine).

    wa-choose-engines

    The results pane here shows you a variety of options related to the keywords you entered and the page you selected:

    wa-analysis-results

    You have the option to view the results by a single keyword (insurance) or multi-word keywords (boat insurance) or both. Usually I'm looking at multi-word keyphrases so that's what I typically select and the report tells you the percentage the keyword makes up of a specific on-page factor.

    The on-page factors are:

    • Total page copy
    • Body
    • Title tag, meta description, and meta keywords
    • H1 and H2-H6 (H2-H6 are grouped)
    • Link anchor text
    • % in bold and in italics
    • Image text

    Website Auditor takes all that to spit out a custom Score metric which is mean to illustrate what keyword is most prominent, on average, across the board.

    You can create a white-label report off of this as well, in addition to being able to export the data the same way as the Page Factor data described above (CSV, HTML, XML, SQL, Cut and Paste).

    Custom Settings and Reports

    You have the option to set both global and per project preferences inside of Website Auditor.

    Per Project Preferences:

    • Customer information for the reports
    • Search filters (extensions, words/characters in the URL, etc)
    • Customizing Workspace defaults for the Website reports and the Web page report
    • Setting up custom tags
    • Selecting default Page Ranking Factors
    • Setting up Domain factors (which appear on the report) like social metrics, traffic metrics from Compete and Alexa, age and ip, and factors similar to the Page Factors but for the domain)
    • XML publishing information

    Your Global preferences cover all the application specific stuff like:

    • Proxy settings
    • Emulation settings and Captcha settings
    • Company information for reports
    • Preferred search engines and API keys
    • Scheduling
    • Publishing options (ftp, email, html, etc)

    Website Auditor also offers detailed reporting options (all of which can be customized in the Preferences area of the application). You can get customized reports for both Page Factor metrics and Page Content Metrics.

    I would like to see them improve the reporting access a bit. The reports look nice and are helpful but customizing the text, or inputting your own narratives is accessed via a somewhat arcane dialog blog, where it makes it hard to fix if you screw up the code.

    Give Website Auditor a Try

    There are other desktop on-page/crawling tools on the market and some of them are quite good. I like some of the features inside of Website Auditor (report outputting, custom crawl parameters, social aspects) enough to continue using it in 2012.

    I've asked for clarification on this but I believe their Live Plan (which you get free for the first 6 months) must be renewed in order for the application to interact with a search engine.

    I do hope they consider changing that. I understand that some features won't work once a search engine changes something, and that is worthy of a charge, but tasks like pulling a ranking report or executing a site crawl shouldn't be lumped in with that.

    Nonetheless, I would still recommend the product as it's a good product and the support is solid but I think it's important to understand the pricing upfront. You can find pricing details here for both their product fees and their Live Plan fees.

    ]]>     Eric Covino Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:11:59 -0500     <![CDATA[Why Local Businesses Should Use Facebook]]> Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:00:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Most Epic Distilled Content of 2011]]> more >]]> John Doherty Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:00:51 -0500 <![CDATA[Top Online Marketing Books for 2012]]> AHall Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:34:20 -0500 <![CDATA[SEO Lemons]]>

    Sharing is caring!

    Please share :)

    Embed code is here.

    SEO Market for Lemons.

    You can embed the above graphic on your website here.

    Have feedback? Please contribute in the comments.

    Thanks to John Andrews for highlighting the above industry trend.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:11:05 -0500     <![CDATA[3 comments]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:49:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Detect Mobile Devices? Are You Cloaking Your Way To Bad Usability]]>

    Detect Mobile Devices? Are You Cloaking Your Way To Bad Usability?

    Gab Goldenberg wrote the Beginner™s Guide to Remote Usability Testing and about the mobile usability of text fields for Usability Post.


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:00 -0500     <![CDATA[5 Tips for Content Marketers on Google Places Optimization]]> Ashley Zeckman Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:14:23 -0500 <![CDATA[Tapping Popularity for Your Site`s Content]]> Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:00:10 -0500 <![CDATA[3 Ways to Make Your Blog More SEO Friendly]]> Nick Stamoulis Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:00:36 -0500 <![CDATA[The Potential Pitfalls of Competitor Analysis]]> more >]]> Hannah Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:00:16 -0500 <![CDATA[The Most Popular SEO Theory Articles of 2011]]> Michael Martinez Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:00:05 -0500 <![CDATA[Will Profile Links Work in 2012? It™s not what you think, honestly!]]> ]]> Zarko Zivkovic Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:00:02 -0500 <![CDATA[Top 5 Google Panda Update SEO Survival Tips]]> Garry Przyklenk Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Words that Damage Trust in Your Blog]]> These words may be correct English but nonetheless they make you appear like an idiot when you use them on your blog. Why? They have obviously negative or hidden meaning that influences your readers. Thus they damage trust in you and your blog or site.

     

    1. if – If this is true I’m probably not lying. Sentences starting with “if” sound awful but the “if” makes you sound strange even in the middle of a sentence. Why? Saying “if” means that you do not trust yourself. You are not writing the truth. You are not sure. The rest of the text only applies if…
    2. tips – Did you mean ideas, techniques or advice? Tips means only shallow advice, low quality techniques and stale ideas everybody knows already. Why not being specific? Tips are for waiters not bloggers.
    3. insane – What’s even more amazing than awesome? It’s insane! More and more bloggers try to outperform their peers by adding superlatives to their post headlines. Who wants to read about insane web design? Not me. When it’s great, outstanding or fantastic say it but don’t act crazy and call it “insane” just to sound better. Insanity is nothing to be proud of.
    4. basic/s – Whenever you cover the basics or write about the basic this or that it’s either an excuse for not being an expert yet or just proof that you don’t believe in yourself. Telling your audience that something is only basic means half of them won’t read it at all. Nobody wants to share basics on the social Web. People you target with your basics would prefer to read “advanced blogging techniques” instead of “basic blog tips”.
    5. daily – Do you really plan to blog daily, 7 times a week, even on holidays? Then don’t call your blog Daily something. Otherwise the first day you don’t publish a post you out yourself as a liar or at least unreliable.
    6. Amazon – Many people on the Web do not notice but I and other Web savvy readers do, whenever you add a link to Amazon in a post I know that you are trying to sell something to me and the link is an affiliate link you earn money on.
    7. Wikipedia – In a recent post someone on TechCrunch has written “according to Wikipedia”. Wikipedia is no source you can cite. Wikipedia is just the lazy bloggers’ source. Also, even in case the cited article is worth being cited, next week someone might have already changed it. Moreover it shows that you have no clue about that topic and had to look up Wikipedia. At least when googling do not click the first result and find another more reputable source.
    8. expert – Do you consider yourself an expert? Maybe you write that you are a social media or SEO expert. In most cases you aren’t. When you have to proclaim yourself that you are you most probably aren’t one. Don’t call yourself guru, star or genius either.

    Are there more words that damage trust? Tell me about them. I might add them to the post and will credit you as the source.

     

    Related posts:

    1. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
    2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
    3. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts

    by Tadeusz Szewczyk
    ©2012 SEO 2.0. All Rights Reserved.Copyright SEO 2.0 at onreact.com
    Related posts:
    1. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
    2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
    3. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts
    ]]>     Tadeusz Szewczyk Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:18:21 -0500     <![CDATA[Giving Away Gifts For Links With Rand]]> Ryan Clark Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:40:12 -0500 <![CDATA[We wished you a Tacky Christmas...And you obliged!]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:34:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The Link Between Web Design And Conversion]]> ]]> Noel Addison Agnote Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:00:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Five Quick Actions to Get Your SEO on the Right Track for 2012]]> tomm Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[SEO, optimize thyself: Get more results for your effort]]> ian Fri, 23 Dec 2011 02:22:15 -0500 <![CDATA[Forget the Sale. Focus on the Customer]]> by Stoney deGeyter

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

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

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

    Your website is a pre-sell channel

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


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

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

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

    Content: Enter stage right

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

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

    Your website is a sales channel

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

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

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

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

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

    Your website is a post-sales channel

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

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

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

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

    Social Media: Enter stage left

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

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

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

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

    Follow at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:56:58 -0500     <![CDATA[6 Offline Marketing Tips You Should Consider For Your Online Business]]> Bhardwaj Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:38:16 -0500 <![CDATA[Yahoo Backing Off of Asian Interests?]]> Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:00:07 -0500 <![CDATA[What's Up With Bing Changing My Searches?]]> Jaime Rigopoulos Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:49:09 -0500 <![CDATA[Social Media (27)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:38:00 -0500     <![CDATA[The Future of Search & Social]]> Ever wonder what’s behind the merging of social signals into search?  Not too long ago, all SEOs had to worry about were the old standbys: title tags, links, content, etc.  Today, and in the future, social signals play a larger part in ranking, so what’s an SEO to do?

    Why it’s happening

    This is fairly easy to explain.  While most folks like to point to the rise of Facebook and Twitter (and other social sources) and say their growth has forced search to integrate social signals, the deeper answer is based in more mundane science.  Psychology.

    Most savvy marketers are keen observers of human nature and behavior.  The search engines are no different.  We watch what people do and see if those behaviors will lead us to understand search patterns on a deeper level.  With so many people sharing so much about themselves socially, it was inevitable that we’d be able to use this data to help us refine search results.

    Look further, though, and you’ll see that beyond sharing more about themselves, people use social connectivity to help them make decisions.  Most people, for example, will hold off on making an online purchase until they’ve “talked to a friend”.  Think of your own actions.  When finding a great deal on something online, do you immediately take out your credit card, or do you bounce the idea off someone first?  While the answer is largely dependent on a bunch of factors, larger purchases fall into the category of “bouncing off a friend”.

    Now, what if, while you’re performing those searchers, and finding the results, your friends were along for the ride?  What if you could see in real time their thoughts on the subject?  This is part of the reason why you see Facebook results inside the Bing SERP results.  Helping you complete your task faster means bringing your friends along while you search, effectively giving you their vote on any topic in real time.  This can have a big impact on whether you purchase something now, or wait until talking with someone.

    Keep in mind these examples tend to work when generalized across many, many searchers.  There will always be exceptions to this thinking, and I’ll submit that most in the search industry fall into the exception category.  We tend to search differently than your average citizen.

    Another example of social supporting search is the refinement of crowd-sourced opinions.  Today it’s much easier to see the accumulated results of “likes” and “tweets” as they pile up the numbers, indicating a kind of popularity.  Even those new to a topic can see that an article with 100,000 likes must have something going for it.

    And while the obvious, visual signals of this popularity may come and go in the SERP results, the effect of those gains in exposure certainly can influence how an item ranks.  Given no other signals for a new piece of content, a strong social signal can help your item get noticed and possibly take an early lead in rankings, allowing other signals to accumulate and either support or refute the assigned rankings.  That’s right, just like a big hit of social exposure can help you rank, a lackluster result can leave us wondering if you should be ranking. 

    This doesn’t mean you need to panic if every tweet or post doesn’t suddenly go viral.  There’s also the long term effect of interacting with your followers, the links they spread on your behalf, the consistency you show and so on.  And let’s not forget that there are still a ton of other factors to weight in before you’re ranked, so don’t sweat the slow starters.

    What to do

    Be engaged.  Easy to say; time consuming, all-encompassing and life altering to put into action.  The simple truth is that if you want to get the most out of social and the benefits it can have on search, you need to invest in it.  You need to build a relationship with followers where you deliver quality items to them, and they remain loyal to you because you’re the best.  No easy task, as you’re going to need to experiment with topics, post types, link structure, time of day, day of week, tone, the type of hook you use and so on (ego, humor, controversy, etc.).

    This is not something that happens overnight, so as you’ve heard so many times, create a plan.  Execute that plan and stick to it for a while.  If you are diligent, you will build a social following and become a resource to those following you.  What a good example of how to get it right?  Guy Kawasaki nails it time and again.  Short, simple, catchy tweets.  Each with a link to highly interesting, useful items.  He runs an 8 hour cycle, ensuring 3 tweets a day for each item, which means pretty much everyone has a chance to see his posts at least once.  He has a team that helps him manage this, but the path is pretty clear and the results speak for themselves.

    The benefits are many

    It’s easy to rat-hole and get stuck thinking SEO, 24/7.  How does social benefit my SEO work?  It’s important work, though you should approach social with a broader view.  Social can help the engines find your content; it can spread links to your content widely.  It can encourage followers to build actual links to your content, which directly helps your SEO efforts.  And beyond all of that, let’s not forget that social can drive a lot of direct traffic to your website under the right circumstances.

    On top of all that, there’s the longer term, more subtle benefits of how you or your business is perceived.  As you grow that social footprint and prove to followers that you are a go-to resource that word spreads to others who may never have heard of you.  Friends love to tell friends about cool, new, useful things they find online.  Get your social program right and that cool, new, useful thing they share could just be you.

    It’s easy to see why social factors into the world of search so heavily.  And this trend will continue as the next generation of socially-savvy users are poised to share even more information online that we ever did.  This will lead to more refined search results, greater personal relevancy and searchers finding what they want faster.  Social is here to stay for all the right reasons.

    ]]>     Duane Forrester Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:13:06 -0500     <![CDATA[Download search queries data using Python]]>
    For all the developers who have expressed interest in getting programmatic access to the search queries data for their sites in Webmaster Tools, we've got some good news. You can now get access to your search queries data in CSV format using a open source Python script from the webmaster-tools-downloads project. Search queries data is not currently available via the Webmaster Tools API, which has been a common API user request that we're considering for the next API update. For those of you who need access to search queries data right now, let's look at an example of how the search queries downloader Python script can be used to download your search queries data and upload it to a Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs.

    Example usage of the search queries downloader Python script
    1) If Python is not already installed on your machine, download and install Python.
    2) Download and install the Google Data APIs Python Client Library.
    3) Create a folder and add the downloader.py script to the newly created folder.
    4) Copy the example-create-spreadsheet.py script to the same folder as downloader.py and edit it to replace the example values for œwebsite, œemail and œpassword with valid values for your Webmaster Tools verified site.
    5) Open a Terminal window and run the example-create-spreadsheet.py script by entering "python example-create-spreadsheet.py" at the Terminal window command line:
    python example-create-spreadsheet.py
    6) Visit Google Docs to see a new spreadsheet containing your search queries data.


    If you just want to download your search queries data in a .csv file without uploading the data to a Google spreadsheet use example-simple-download.py instead of example-create-spreadsheet.py in the example above.

    You could easily configure these scripts to be run daily or monthly to archive and view your search queries data across larger date ranges than the current one month of data that is available in Webmaster Tools, for example, by setting up a cron job or using Windows Task Scheduler.

    An important point to note is that this script example includes user name and password credentials within the script itself. If you plan to run this in a production environment you should follow security best practices like using encrypted user credentials retrieved from a secure data storage source. The script itself uses HTTPS to communicate with the API to protect these credentials.

    Take a look at the search queries downloader script and start using search queries data in your own scripts or tools. Let us know if you have questions or feedback in the Webmaster Help Forum.

    Written by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst
    ]]>     Jonathan Simon Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:01:00 -0500     <![CDATA[How to Implement PDF SEO Techniques]]> Sujan Patel Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:16:22 -0500 <![CDATA[Brand Google+ Pages Showing up in Search Results (SERPs)]]> Miranda Miller Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[11 Pipers Piping: An Introduction to Regular Expressions and Pipes]]> Joe Schaefer Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:37:31 -0500 <![CDATA[SEO Spyglass Review: A Brand New Link Source]]>

    SEO Spyglass is one of the 4 tools Link-Assistant sells (individually) and as a part of their SEO Power Suite.

    We did a review of their Rank Tracker application a few months ago and we plan to review their other 2 tools in upcoming blog posts.

    Key Features of SEO Spyglass

    The core features of SEO Spyglass are:

    • Link Research
    • White Label Reporting
    • Historical Link Tracking

    As with most software tools there are features you can and cannot access, or limits you'll hit, depending on the version you choose. You can see the comparison here.

    Perhaps the biggest feature is their newest feature. They recently launched their own link database, a couple of months early in beta, as the tool had been largely dependent on the now dead Yahoo! Site Explorer.

    The launch of a third or fourth-ish link database (Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, A-Href's rounding out the others) is a win for link researchers. It still needs a bit of work, as we'll discuss below, but hopefully they plan on taking the some of the better features of the other tools and incorporating them into their tool.

    After all, good artists copy and great artists steal :)

    Setting Up a Project for a Specific Keyword

    One of my pet peeves with software is feature bloat which in turn creates a rough user experience. Link-Assistant's tools are incredibly easy to use in my experience.

    Once you fire up SEO Spyglass you can choose to research links from a competing website or links based off of a keyword.

    Most of the time I use the competitor's URL when doing link research but SEO Spyglass doubles as a link prospecting tool as well, so here I'll pick a keyword I might want to target "Seo Training".

    The next screen is where you'll choose the search engine that is most relevant to where you want to compete. They have support for a bunch of different countries and search engines and you can see the break down on their site.

    So if you are competing in the US you can pull data the top ranking site off of the following engines (only one at a time):

    • Google
    • Google Blog Search
    • Google Groups
    • Google Images
    • Google Mobile
    • YouTube
    • Bing
    • Yahoo! (similar to Bing of course)
    • AOL
    • Alexa
    • Blekko
    • And some other smaller web properties

    I'll select Google and the next screen is where you select the sources you want Spyglass to use for grabbing the links of the competing site it will find off of the preceding screen:

    So SEO Spyglass will grab the top competitor from your chosen SERP will run multiple link sources off of that site (would love to see some API integration with Majestic and Open Site Explorer here).

    This is where you'll see their own Backlink Explorer for the first time.

    Next you can choose unlimited backlinks (Enterprise Edition only) or you can limit it by
    Project or Search Engine. For the sake of speed I'm going to limit it to 100 links per search engine (that we selected in a previous screen) and exclude duplicates (links found in one engine and another) just to get the most accurate, usable data possible:

    When you start pinging engines, specifically Google in this example, you routinely will get captcha's like this:

    On this small project I entered about 8 of them and the project found 442 backlinks (here is what you'll see after the project is completed):

    One way around captchas is to either pay someone to run this tool for you and manually do it, but for large projects that is not ideal as captcha's will pile up and you could get the IP temporarily banned.

    Link-Assistant offers an Anti-Captcha plan to combat this issue, you can see the pricing here.

    Given the size of the results pane it is hard to see everything but you are initially returned with:

    • an icon of what search engine the link was found in
    • the backlinking page
    • the backlinking domain

    Spyglass will then ask you if you want to update the factors associated with these links.

    Your options by default are:

    • domain age
    • domain ip
    • domain PR
    • Alexa Rank
    • Dmoz Listing
    • Yahoo! Directory Listing
    • On-page info (title, meta description, meta keywords)
    • Total links to the page
    • External links to other sites from the page
    • Page rank of the page itself

    You can add more factors by clicking the Add More button. You're taken to the Spyglass Preferences pane where you can add more factors:

    You can add a ton of social media stuff here including popularity on Facebook, Google +, Page-level Twitter mentions and so on.

    You can also pick up bookmarking data and various cache dates. Keep in mind that the more you select, especially with stuff like cache date, you are likely to run into captcha's.

    SEO Spyglass also offers Search Safety Settings (inside of the preferences pane, middle of the left column in the above screenshot) where you can update human emulation settings and proxies to both speed up the application and to help avoid search engine bans.

    I've used Trusted Proxies with Link-Assistant and they have worked quite well.

    You can't control the factors globally, you have to do it for each project but you can update Spyglass to only offer you specific backlink sources.

    I'm going to deselect PageRank here to speed up the project (you can always update later or use other tools for PageRank scrapes).

    Working With the Results

    When the data comes back you can do number of things with it. You can:

    • Build a custom report
    • Rebuild it if you want to add link sources or backlink factors
    • Update the saved project later on
    • Analyze the links within the application
    • Update and add custom workspaces

    These options are all available within the results screen (again, this application is incredibly easy to use):

    I've blurred out the site information as I see little reason to highlight the site here. But you can see where the data has populated for the factors I selected.

    In the upper left hand corner of the applications is where you can build the report, analyze the data from within the application, update the project, or rebuild it with new factors:

    All the way to the right is where you can filter the data inside the application and create a
    new workspace:

    Your filtering options are seen to the left of the workspaces here. It's not full blown filtering and sorting but if you are looking for some quick information on specific link queries, it can be helpful.

    Each item listed there is a Workspace. You can create your own or edit one of the existing ones. Whatever factors you include in the Workspace is what will show in the results pane as factors

    So think of Workspaces as your filtering options. Your available metrics/columns are

    • Domain Name
    • Search Engine (where the link was found)
    • Last Found Date (for updates)
    • Status of Backlink (active, inactive, etc)
    • Country
    • Page Title
    • Links Back (does the link found by the search engine actually link to the site? This is a good way of identifying short term, spammy link bursts)
    • Anchor Text
    • Link Value (essentially based on the original PageRank formula)
    • Notes (notes you've left on the particular link). This is very limited and is essentially a single Excel-type row
    • Domain Age/IP/PR
    • Alexa Rank
    • Dmoz
    • Yahoo! Directory Listing
    • Total Links to page/domain
    • External links
    • Page-level PR

    Most of the data is useful. I think the link value is overvalued a bit based on my experience finding links that often had 0 link value in the tool but clearly benefited the site it ended up linking to.

    PageRank queries in bulk will cause lots of captcha's and given how out of date PR can be it isn't a metric I typically include on large reports.

    Analyzing the Data

    When you click on the Analyze tab in the upper left you can analyze in multiple ways:

    • All backlinks found for the project
    • Only backlinks you highlight inside the application
    • Only backlinks in the selected Workspace

    The Analyze tab is a separate window overlaying the report:

    You can't export from this window but if you just do a control/command-a you can copy and paste to a spreadsheet.

    Your options here:

    • Keywords - keywords and ratios of specific keywords in the title and anchor text of backlinks
    • Anchor Text - anchor text distribution of links
    • Anchor URL - pages being linked to on the site and the percentages of link distribution (good for evaluating deep link distribution and pages targeted by the competing site as well as popular pages on the site...content ideas :) )
    • Webpage PR
    • Domain PR
    • Domains linking to the competing site and the percentage
    • TLD - percentage of links coming from .com, net, org, info, uk, and so on
    • IP address - links coming from IP's and the percentages
    • Country breakdown
    • Dmoz- backlinks that are in Dmoz and ones that are not
    • Yahoo! - same as Dmoz
    • Links Back - percentages of links found that actually link to the site in question

    Updating and Rebuilding

    Updating is pretty self-explanatory. Click the Update tab and select whether or not to update all the links, the selected links, or the Workspace specific links:

    (It's the same dialog box as when you actually set up the project)

    Rebuilding the report is similar to updating except updating doesn't allow you to change the specified search engine.

    When you Rebuild the report you can select a new search engine. This is helpful when comparing what is ranking in Google versus Bing.

    Click Rebuild and update the search engine plus add/remove backlink factors.

    Reporting

    There are 2 ways to get to the reporting data inside of Spyglass

    There is a quick SEO Report Tab and the Custom Report Builder:

    Much like the Workspaces in the prior example, there are reporting template options on the right side of the navigation:

    It functions the same way as Workspaces do in terms of being able to completely customize the report and data. You can access your Company Profile (your company's information and logo), Publishing Profiles (delivery methods like email, FTP, and so on), as well as Report Templates in the settings option:

    You can't edit the ones that are there now except for playing around with the code used to generate the report. It's kind of an arcane way to do reporting as you can really hose up the code (below the variables in red is all the HTML):

    You can create your own template with the following reporting options:

    • Custom introduction
    • All the stats described earlier on this report as available backlink factors
    • Top 30 anchor URLs
    • Top 30 anchor texts
    • Top 30 links by "link value"
    • Top 30 domains by "link value"
    • Conclusion (where you can add your own text and images)

    Overall the reporting options are solid and offer lots of data. It's a little more work to customize the reports but you do have lots of granular customization options and once they are set up you can save them as global preferences.

    As with other software tools you can set up scheduled checks and report generation.

    Researching a URL

    The process for researching a URL is the same as described above, except you already know the URL rather than having SEO Spyglass find the top competing site for it.

    You have the same deep reporting and data options as you do with a keyword search. It will be interesting to watch how their database grows because, for now, you can (with the Enterprise version) research an unlimited number of backlinks.

    SEO Spyglass in Practice

    Overall, I would recommend trying this tool out. If nothing else, it is another source of backlinks which pulls from other search engines as well (Google, Blekko, Bing, etc).

    The reporting is good and you have a lot of options with respect to customizing specific link data parameters for your reports.

    I would like to see more exclusionary options when researching a domain. Like the ability to filter redirects and sub-domain links. It doesn't do much good if we want a quick, competitive report but a quarter or more of the report is from something like a subdomain of the site you are researching.

    SEO Spyglass's pricing is as follows:

    • Purchase a professional option or an enterprise option (comparison)
    • 6 months of their Live Plan for free
    • Purchase of a Live Plan required after 6 months to continue using the tool's link research functionality.
    • Pricing for all editions and Live Plans can be found here

    In running a couple of comparisons against Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO it was clear that Spyglass has a decent database but needs more filtering options (sub-domains mainly). It's not as robust as OSE or Majestic yet, but it's to be expected. I still found a variety of unique links from its database that I did not see on other tools across the board.

    You can get a pretty big discount if you purchase their suite of tools as a bundle rather than individually

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Eric Covino Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:09:57 -0500     <![CDATA[How to get in the habit of social media engagement]]> Hugo Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:05:03 -0500 <![CDATA[Meet MBG Tracker: The Simplest and Cheapest Way to Monitor Your Backlinks]]>
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    facebook memes 2011Audience: SEOs and Internet marketers Estimated reading time: 3 minutes It's the end of the year, and you can count on one thing. Or maybe ten things. Or possibly five things. You know, the list of top X - trends, memes, lessons of the past year or year to come. Yes, content of this variety is entertaining link bait, luring us to laugh, scratch our heads and pass it along. But more importantly, these posts give us pause to evaluate our successes of the past and opportunities for the future, knowledge that ensures next year will be even better than the last. It™s with that perspective that we bring you the top of the top lists. Just like mom was always teaching you new things, here is the mother of all end-of-the-year posts of interest to online marketers. Read more of The Mother of All End-of-Year Posts for Marketers.

    ]]>     Virginia Nussey Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:00:26 -0500     <![CDATA[Hidden Costs of Search Engine Optimization]]> Michael Martinez Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:00:50 -0500 <![CDATA[The Past Three and a Half Years Were Crap]]> Chrissy Buckley Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:59:07 -0500 <![CDATA[Should You Do SEO and PPC Together? [Video FAQ Series]]]> Read more]]> Suzanne Sanchez Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:40:46 -0500 <![CDATA[]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:29:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Matt Cutts talks SEO and Content]]> Brandignity Wed, 21 Dec 2011 08:05:53 -0500 <![CDATA[Website user research and testing on the cheap]]>
    As the team responsible for tens of thousands of Google™s informational web pages, the Webmaster Team is here to offer tips and advice based on their experiences as hands-on webmasters.

    If you™ve never tested or analyzed usage of your website, ask yourself if you really know whether your site is useful for your target audience. If you™re unsure, why not find out? For example, did you know that on average users scroll down 5.9 times as often as they scroll up, meaning that often once page content is scrolled past, it is œlost? (See Jakob Nielsen™s findings on scrolling, where he advises that users don™t mind scrolling, but within limits.)

    Also, check your analytics"are you curious about high bounce rates from any of your pages, or very short time-on-page metrics?

    First, think about your user


    The start of a web project"whether it™s completely new or a revamp of an existing site"is a great time to ask questions like:

    • How might users access your site"home, office, on-the-go?
    • How tech-savvy are your visitors?
    • How familiar are users with the subject matter of your website?

    The answers to some of these questions can be valuable when making initial design decisions.

    For instance, if the user is likely to be on the road, they might be short on time to find the information they need from your site, or be in a distracting environment and have a slow data connection"so a simple layout with single purpose would work best. Additionally, if you™re providing content for a less technical audience, make sure it™s not too difficult to access content"animation might provide a œwow factor, but only if your user appreciates it and it™s not too difficult to get to the content.

    Even without testing, building a basic user profile (or œpersona) can help shape your designs for the benefit of the user"this doesn™t have to be an exhaustive biography, but just some basic considerations of your user™s behavior patterns.

    Simple testing


    Testing doesn™t have to be a costly operation " friends and family can be a great resource. Some pointers:

    • Sample size: Just five people can be a large enough number of users to find common problems in your layouts and navigation (see Jakob Nielsen™s article on why using a small sample size is sufficient).
    • Choosing your testers: A range of different technical ability can be useful, but be sure to only focus on trends"for example, if more than 50% of your testers have the same usability issue, it™s likely a real problem"rather than individual issues encountered.
    • Testing location: If possible, visit the user in their home and watch how they use the site"observe how he/she normally navigates the web when relaxed and in their natural environment. Remote testing is also a possibility if you can™t make it in person"we™ve heard that Google+ hangouts can be used effectively for this (find out more about using Google+ hangouts).
    • How to test: Based on your site™s goals, define 4 or 5 simple tasks to do on your website, and let the user try to complete the tasks. Ask your testers to speak aloud so you can better understand their experiences and thought processes.
    • What to test: Basic prototypes in clickable image or document format (for example, PDF) or HTML can be used to test the basic interactions, without having to build out a full site for testing. This way, you can test out different options for navigation and layouts to see how they perform before implementing them.
    • What not to test: Focus on functionality rather than graphic design elements; viewpoints are often subjective. You would only get useful feedback on design from quantitative testing with large (200+) numbers of users (unless, for example, the colors you use on your site make the content unreadable, which would be good feedback!). One format for getting some useful feedback on the design can be to offer 5-6 descriptive keywords and ask your user to choose the most representative ones.
    Overall, basic testing is most useful for seeing how your website™s functionality is working"the ease of finding information and common site interactions.

    Lessons learned


    In case you™re still wondering whether it™s really worth research and testing, here are a few simple things we confirmed from actual users that we wouldn™t have known if we hadn™t sat with actual users and watched them use our pages, or analyzed our web traffic.

    • Take care when using layouts that hide/show content: We found when using scripts to expand and collapse long text passages, the user often didn™t realize the extra content was available"effectively œhiding the JavaScript-rendered content when the user searches within the page (for example, using Control + F, which we™ve seen often).


      Wireframe of layout tested, showing œzipped
      content on the bottom left


      Final page design showing anchor links in the top
      and content laid out in the main body of the page

    • Check your language: Headings, link and button text are what catches the user™s eye the most when scanning the page. Avoid using œLearn more¦ in link text"users seem averse to clicking on a link which implies they will need to learn something. Instead, just try to use a literal description of what content the user will get behind the link"and make sure link text makes sense and is easy to understand out of context, because that is often how it will be scanned. Be mindful about language and try to make button text descriptive, inviting and interesting.
    • Test pages on a slower connection: Try out your pages using different networks (for example, try browsing your website using the wifi at your local coffee shop or a friend™s house), especially if your target users are likely to be viewing your pages from a home connection that™s not as fast as your office network. We found a considerable improvement in CTR and time-on-site metrics in some cases when we made scripted animations much simpler and faster (hint: use Google™s Page Speed Online to check performance if you don™t have access to a slower Internet connection).
    So if you™re caught up in a seemingly never-ending redevelopment cycle, save yourself some time in the future by investing a little up front through user profiling and basic testing, so that you™re more likely to choose the right approach for your site layout and architecture.

    We™d love to hear from you in the comments: have you tried out website usability testing? If so, how did you get on, and what are your favorite simple and low-cost tricks to get the most out of it?
    ]]>     Kathryn Cullen Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:51:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Anti-Trust Investigation One Step Closer]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:07 -0500 <![CDATA[A Final Thought on Subdirectories and SEO]]>
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    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Tim Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:04:13 -0500     <![CDATA[SEO as Website Dramaturgy]]> more >]]> phil-nottingham Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:38:23 -0500 <![CDATA[Social Media (26)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:16:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Ladies (and Gents), Get Your Google Dance On]]> Rhea Drysdale Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:44:34 -0500 <![CDATA[AdWords Extends to Include Offers]]> Francis Shovlin Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:39:08 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Creates Rich Resource for Rich Snippets]]> Frank Reed Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:12:22 -0500 <![CDATA[SEO Christmas Wish List]]> Simon Heseltine Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[A Winning Framework for SEO Reporting]]> Frank Reed Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:56:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Places 101 " A Guide for Local Businesses]]> Read more...

    Google Places 101 – A Guide for Local Businesses is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

    ]]>     Travis Loncar Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:00:17 -0500     <![CDATA[Now is NOT the Time to Ease Off Your SEO!]]> Nick Stamoulis Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:00:03 -0500 <![CDATA[Engaging Ideas for Viral Content]]> Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:30:07 -0500 <![CDATA[How Undecided Populations are Transformed into Majorities and Minorities]]> Michael Martinez Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:00:32 -0500 <![CDATA[A peek into how I do link building in a boring industry]]> Wil Reynolds Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:34:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Getting More From Your SEO Agency: Eight Maids a™Milking]]> Michelle Lowery Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:50:23 -0500 <![CDATA[Link Building Tip #7 " Link Building with StumbleUpon]]> ]]> Zarko Zivkovic Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:01:42 -0500 <![CDATA[Social SEO " Facebook & Twitter Best Practices]]> Eli Goodman Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The Power of Persuasion: Storytelling & Personas in Content Marketing]]> Lee Odden Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:15:40 -0500 <![CDATA[10 Most Important SEO Patents, Part 5 " Phrase Based Indexing]]> The builder of the largest search engine in the World during the first decade of the 21st century joined Google shortly after building that search engine, and possibly licensed the technology behind it to Google. She worked for Google for a number of years, creating a way of indexing pages based upon the meaningful [...]]]> Bill Slawski Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:44:25 -0500 <![CDATA[Buzzstream Review: How Does it Measure Up?]]>

    Buzzstream recently rolled out a beautiful UI update and I've been impressed with their offering for awhile now.

    We like to review products which we ourselves use , as well as products that we feel are impressive. For me, Buzzstream fits both of those characteristics.

    Buzzstream is a tool that I am fully adding to my toolset for 2012 and I think you should give it a shot as well.

    What is Buzzstream?

    Buzzstream has two products:

    • Buzzstream for Link Building
    • Buzzstream for Social Media

    We will be focusing on the link building tool in this post. Buzzstream for Link Building focuses solely on link building functionality from soup (prospecting) to nuts (tracking, reporting, relationship management).

    One of my favorite aspects of this tool is it's dedicated nature. It focuses on making link building more collaborative, more scalable, and more effective. It does all three quite well and reinforces the belief that sometimes a dedicated tool is the answer.

    Why Buzzstream for Link Building?

    Link building has come so far in recent years with respect to things like degree of difficulty, requirements of quality, as well as the need to track links and manage relationships.

    Link building is such a key piece of an online marketing campaign (not just passing link juice but bringing in targeted, quality traffic and building up brand equity) to the point where I think having a robust tool for it makes a lot of sense; especially when you can use a tool like Buzzstream for it.

    Here are some of the key features of Buzzstream that we'll be covering here:

    • Link Prospecting
    • Link Reporting and Tracking
    • Contact Management
    • IMAP Email Integration
    • Buzzmarker - Link Bookmarking Tool

    Buzzstream Dashboard

    The dashboard gives you a good, high-level overview of your account's history and tasks.

    You can filter the history by:

    • Showing complete history (notes, emails, twitter, logged calls, blog comments)
    • One of the above mentioned history fields
    • Show for all projects or a specific project
    • All items for/from a user or for/from a specific user

    The filtering capabilities are solid and make project spot checks very easy. For a quick export of your history, in .csv format just click on the folder to the left of the task area (in the right column).

    Here is what the dashboard looks like:

    To the right of the history pane is the task pane as well as recently viewed link prospects. The task pane also offers some good filtering capabilities:

    I like the clean, visual look of the dashboard as well as the quick and helpful filtering capabilities. If you are running multiple campaigns with multiple members involved then I think you'll quickly appreciate the way Buzzstream has structured their dashboard.

    Link Prospecting

    To begin your link prospecting search, you can go to the Websites link and jump right in.

    Then click on the Prospects icon to start your research. Here, you will need to set up a profile and up to 20 keywords and keyphrases for the search. I usually name the search after the main keyword I'm looking for, so in this case we'll rock SEO Tools and I'll throw in a couple more specific keywords for the search function.

    In addition to prospecting you can specifically search the following countries:

    • USA
    • Canada
    • France
    • Germany
    • Ireland
    • Israel
    • Japan
    • Mexico
    • Netherlands
    • South Africa
    • Sweden
    • Spain
    • UK

    You also have your choice between website results, news results, and blog results under the Search Type option.

    Also, you can have this auto-run daily for new results (which is a great feature!) as well as have notifications sent to a specific person (you or a team member or contractor) when new results arrive.

    If you no longer wish to receive results but want to save the search for later, just click the inactive button and reactivate when needed.

    Another cool feature here is the blacklist feature. Dump in sites you wish to exclude from your searches on a per project or account-level basis. This is extremely helpful for streamlining new prospecting searches across your entire account. Block out competitors, your other properties, sites you know you'll never get a link from, etc).

    Working With Link Prospects

    When you open the profile again you are presented with the results.

    The results come with default columns but you can click the Columns icon to play with tons and tons of additional, useful options

    Click on that and get all these column options:

    Buzzstream Data

    • Website
    • Assigned To
    • About
    • Most Recent Activity
    • Primary Contact
    • Job Title
    • Tags
    • Relationship Stage
    • RSS Feed
    • Links
    • Type

    Dates

    • Date Added
    • Date Added To Project
    • Last Modified (any project)
    • Last Modified (this project)
    • Last Viewed (any project)
    • Last Viewed (this project)
    • Last Communication Date

    Metrics

    • Followers (twitter)
    • Following (twitter)
    • Updates (twitter)
    • PageRank
    • Compete (UV/mo)
    • Inbound Links - SeoMoz
    • MozRank
    • Juice Passing Links
    • Domain Age
    • Overall Rating
    • Domain Authority

    Address

    • Address Type
    • Address Line1
    • Address Line2
    • City
      State
      Zip
    • Country

    Social Networks

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Google Plus

    Contact Info

    • Preferred Contact Method
    • Email
    • Phone
    • "Contact Us" URL
    • Suggested Profile Info

    Prospecting Metrics (for keywords in your search)

    • Highest SERP Position
    • Average SERP Position
    • SERP Count - Top 10
    • SERP Count - Top 20

    Buzzstream does a good job here of giving you control over so many different options. The other nice thing here is you can add a bunch of metrics or customize whatever you want, do a quick export, and set everything back to normal if you don't want or need all these metrics every time.

    Here's a snippet of what the results look like with no filtering:

    From here you can do all sorts of filtering with just about all of the options I outlined above. You can also click on a specific link and manage it at any point:

    From here you can do just about anything:

    • Add a task, tag or note
    • Assign it to someone
    • Update the relationship stage
    • Rate the link
    • Put your own custom field in there
    • Copy or move it to another project (love this feature)
    • Remove it from the project
    • Check the WhoIS information
    • Approve it for the project
    • Add to your block list

    Also, you can see the Twitter, FB, email, and phone icons next to each link. Buzzstream will pull those in when available. You can also add a site yourself but clicking the Add Site button where you can add as much or as little info as you have or want:

    What I like to do is update the search with all the SEO related metrics and then filter (not looking for addresses or anything at this point, just SEO metrics).

    Here are the filtering options:

    The options pretty much cover everything you can add as a metric to their prospect results page. You can also create a specific filter and save it for future use (a big time saver for ongoing prospect research).

    Once you are done filtering out the junk you can begin to work the prospect list by:

    • Assigning it to an employee or contractor or yourself :)
    • Updating the contact history by adding notes about contact history
    • Update the relationship stage

    Once the link is secured you can simply add it to the tracking and reporting component by clicking on the link and selecting "approve".

    There are so many filtering options and editing options, as mentioned above, that I really encourage you to get in there and play around with it. You can customize it to fit your specific link building needs (big or small) which is a really nice feature to have (a tool that can scale up or down with you and your business).

    Link Reporting and Tracking

    I went ahead and approved the link-assistant.com domain as being a link I recently secured. To work with approved links you just need to move on over to the Links tab:

    Again, you have a ton of filtering options here:

    Buzzstream, via the Column tab, gives you lots of helpful data on a per link basis to help with overall link management and reporting:

    You can also import all your links by clicking the import tab (Buzzstream gives you a template to use for this right from the import dialog box)

    From here the next logical step is to set up link tracking to automatically notify you of any changes to links you are tracking.

    Link Tracking

    Buzzstream offers automated and manual link tracking. Buzzstream will let you track the following link data types via their automated backlink checker (this runs every 2 weeks) and manual link checker:

    • Newly verified links
    • Links that have changed (anchor text, no-follow, and so on)
    • Links that have been removed
    • Previous linking pages that are 404's
    • Cache Date

    You can select who receives this report, and the manual report via email. Manual reports can be completed by going to the links tab and clicking on the Run Backlink Checker Icon:

    The report is then delivered to the specified email address (can be changed in project settings) in short order (longer for bigger checks of course).

    I would recommend targeting the more important links here. There is a lot of churn on the web and link tracking tools, that are cloud based, do have tracking limits (Buzzstream comes in at 500 links for the basic plan, 25,000 for their Plus, and 100,000 for their Premium Plan). They also have a solo plan for 1 user and up to 1,500 tracked links.

    They offer custom plans as well.

    Link Reporting

    The link reporting is good and is one area where I think they can use some improvement (ability to spit out anchor text distribution reports, upload logos,
    automated report emailing, etc).

    To generate a report you click on the pie (mmmmm pie) icon on the Links page:

    Once you click there you get 2 options:

    Link Report - reporting on link opportunities and completed links

    Spend Report - reporting on the cost of links that cost money

    Here is the dialog box for the Links Report:

    Export options are PDF, HTML, and XML for Word and Excel.

    The Spend Report is clean and simple to read, here is the dialog box for that:

    The reports are quick to generate and clean. I think if they add some more customization options it will be a homerun; it's still better than most reporting options out there.

    Keeping Up with Contacts

    You can store, add, and access key contacts and their contact information within the People tab

    Buzzstream People Tab

    As with their other options there is a wide variety of filtering and column customization capability to help you slice, dice, and keep track of key contacts within a specific project (or through an entire account).

    You can add in pertinent contact info like their name, numbers, associated websites, social network information, and so on. You can also keep a history of calls, notes, and emails (more on emails in a minute) right inside the contact's information center:

    Buzzstream Contact Dialgo

    IMAP Email Integration for Conversation Tracking

    This is one of my favorite features. You can configure Buzzstream to automatically populate contact history on your link outreach campaigns:

    Buzzstream Email Feature

    If you are managing a team, or just your own link campaign really, this is a great feature to have. In addition to the other contact management features I mentioned above, this feature adds another layer of helpful contact management. Having CRM functionality inside of a link building tool is quite helpful when we talk about things like scaling link building campaigns and managing teams

    When you add your email account you can also send email from Buzzstream. You can select any number of "People" or contacts that you want and work through them one by one by creating an email template (see below) and quickly customizing it to the specific person you are targeting

    Using canned responses in Gmail is similar but the difference here is the integration with Buzzstream and the ease of going right through a selected list of contacts (and having it saved in their contact history automatically).

    Buzzstream Outreach

    Lots of people use BuzzStream as a database of all their prospects/partners and then slice and dice them for campaigns. So, for example, suppose you are trying to secure guest posts. You go to All Contacts (contacts for your whole account, not just one project) and select everything tagged "finance" that's a "guest post" type and that's linked to you in the past.

    After that, you take those contacts of known finance guest post opportunities, copy them to a new project and then work that list. You cover a lot of this in your filter descriptions. Essentially, use the tagging and filtering system to build your own database for rinse and repeat solutions.

    You can also track Twitter stuff (which can get out of hand quickly in terms of back and forth contact, real time) and works the same way as Buzzstream's IMAP integration.

    For the Twitter tracking you can basically import a bunch of twitter lists into BuzzStream, start retweeting their content and then filter to find everyone you've retweeted three days ago (filter by: Communication History=tweet, contact modified=3 days ago).

    Save this filter and you have a list of people to follow up with on a regular basis. You can then send a template-based email that refers to the retweet and use that as a quick in to perhaps securing a link opportunity.

    The Buzzmarker

    Buzzstreams' Buzzmarker gives you the ability to save a prospect's information from any browser. To set up the Buzzmarker you just go into your settings and drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar :D

    Buzzstream Outreach

    Here is a snippet of the Buzzmarker dialog box:

    Buzzstream Outreach

    Anytime you come across news stories, blog posts, and Twitter feeds that you want to store for future work inside of Buzzstream all you do is click on the Buzzmarker

    The Buzzmarker pulls in lots of information and gives you options to do a variety of things like:

    • Add a task for the clipping
    • The ability to gather and note link information like acquistion method and link type, also checks to see if the site is linking to you already
    • Add contact info and social media profiles
    • Links through to contact info search in Google, Pipl, as well as Twitter and Linkedin Profile search via Google, Twellow, and Linkedin

    Give Buzzstream a Shot

    If you are looking for a strong link building tool which incorporates any of the features below, you should give Buzzstream a try:

    • Built in Link Prospecting
    • CRM Functionality
    • Scalability
    • Ease of Use
    • Permission and Access Control for Teams
    • Link Tracking and Reporting

    Buzzstream is a quality link building and link management tool that is certainly worth trying out if you are engaged in link building activity. The reporting is stronger than most other options out there but I think they can do even better with it after seeing what they've done on the inside. If you do try them out let us know what you think in the comments!

    Take it for spin, they have free trials available over at Buzzstream.Com.

    ]]>     Eric Covino Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Creating Win-Win Link Building Scenarios]]> John Lynch Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Rewriting an Article 47 Times is Digital Puke]]> Brandignity Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:00:17 -0500 <![CDATA[Are Spammy Sites Ranking Better Than Yours? [VIDEO]]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Melissa Fach Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:00:05 -0500     <![CDATA[Rich Snippets Instructional Videos]]>
    When users come to Google, they have a pretty good idea of what they™re looking for, but they need help deciding which result might have the information that best suits their needs. So, the challenge for Google is to make it very clear to our users what content exists on a page in both a useful and concise manner. That™s why we have rich snippets.


    Essentially, rich snippets provide you with the ability to help Google highlight aspects of your page. Whether your site contains information about products, recipes, events or apps, a few simple additions to your markup can result in more engagement with your content -- and potentially more traffic to your site.

    To help you get started or fine tune your rich snippets, we™ve put together a series of tutorial videos for webmasters of all experience levels. These videos provide guidance as you mark up your site so that Google is better able to understand your content. We can use that content to power the rich snippets we display for your pages. Check out the videos below to get started:



    For more information on how to use rich snippets markup for your site, visit our Help Center.

    Posted by , Product Manager
    ]]>     Maile Ohye Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:59:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Social Media (25)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:26:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Biznology: 2 Huge Search Marketing Risks in 2012"And What To Do About Them]]>
  • Searching for Search Success? 5 Great Search Marketing Articles to Point the Way Search marketing continues to be the most important online marketing...
  • Google, ITA and the coming antitrust war Google wins a battle against antitrust concerns. But is the...
  • Social and search and… steaks? (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – June 3, 2011) Social begets search which often begets social. And what does...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Tim Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:59:11 -0500     <![CDATA[Digital timelines will force people (and brands) to think before they act]]> Hugo Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:30:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Does your marketing have "readability"?]]> by Mike Moran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Originally published on Biznology

    Enhanced by Zemanta

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:23:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Skills that Companies that Employ SEO™s are Looking For]]> Phillip Russell Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:00:59 -0500 <![CDATA[8 Comments »]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:46:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Personalized Social Search Still Years Away]]> Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:00:05 -0500 <![CDATA[Subdomains and Subdirectories for Branding]]>
  • Subdomains vs. subdirectories for SEO Should you use a subdomain or a subdirectory to get...
  • Web marketing is more integrated than you think (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – October 7, 2011) Interested in integrated marketing on the web. We are too....
  • Searching for Search Success? 5 Great Search Marketing Articles to Point the Way Search marketing continues to be the most important online marketing...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Tim Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:53:07 -0500     <![CDATA[I™m sorry, what?]]> ian Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:30:43 -0500 <![CDATA[GoDaddy™s spammy link building techniques]]> Over the last few months, I've seen GoDaddy rise up in the rankings for a lot of hosting related terms. At first I suspected they were finally using their very strong domain in a smart way, but then I noticed they ranked for terms I know you can't rank for without a lot of external links, no [...]

    GoDaddy’s spammy link building techniques is a post by on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

    ]]>     Joost de Valk Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:47:04 -0500     <![CDATA[Introducing smartphone Googlebot-Mobile]]> Webmaster level: All

    With the number of smartphone users rapidly rising, we™re seeing more and more websites providing content specifically designed to be browsed on smartphones. Today we are happy to announce that Googlebot-Mobile now crawls with a smartphone user-agent in addition to its previous feature phone user-agents. This is to increase our coverage of smartphone content and to provide a better search experience for smartphone users.

    Here are the main user-agent strings that Googlebot-Mobile now uses:

    • Feature phones Googlebot-Mobile:

      • SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
      • DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

    • Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile:

      • Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

    The content crawled by smartphone Googlebot-Mobile will be used primarily to improve the user experience on mobile search. For example, the new crawler may discover content specifically optimized to be browsed on smartphones as well as smartphone-specific redirects.

    One new feature we™re also launching that uses these signals is Skip Redirect for Smartphone-Optimized Pages. When we discover a URL in our search results that redirects smartphone users to another URL serving smartphone-optimized content, we change the link target shown in the search results to point directly to the final destination URL. This removes the extra latency the redirect introduces leading to a saving of 0.5-1 seconds on average when visiting landing page for such search results.

    Since all Googlebot-Mobile user-agents identify themselves as a specific kind of mobile, please treat each Googlebot-Mobile request as you would a human user with the same phone user-agent. This, and other guidelines are described in our previous blog post and they still apply, except for those referring to smartphones which we are updating today. If your site has treated Googlebot-Mobile specially based on the fact that it only crawls with feature phone user-agents, we strongly recommend reviewing this policy and serving the appropriate content based on the Googlebot-Mobile™s user-agent, so that both your feature phone and smartphone content will be indexed properly.

    If you have more questions, please ask on our Webmaster Help forums.

    Posted by Yoshikiyo Kato, Software Engineer

    ]]>     Pierre Far Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:20:00 -0500     <![CDATA[A Web Marketer™s Guide to Reddit]]> more >]]> Jacob Klein Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:45:42 -0500 <![CDATA[Tips for Ajax for SEO]]>

    Tips for Ajax for SEO

    Whenever Ajax enter the conversation for an SEO or internet marketer, chances are good there will always be a deep sigh or an œugh face. While it is true that search engines are getting better at indexing this type of content, we still aren™t at the point that you can realistically rely on them to [...]

    When is Using Microsites a Good Idea

    Microsites are often abused and looked down on as a tactic in the SEO world. They get used for the wrong situations, the wrong reasons, and to solve the wrong types of problems. In this post, I™ll talk about some of the bad ways Microsites get used and some of the ways you could use [...]

    Graywolf SEO Blog Dec 2011 is Powered by


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:23:00 -0500     <![CDATA[]]>


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:12:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Clicks and impressions for authors]]> (Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog)

    With the latest improvements to the way authorship annotations look in search and the addition of authorship to Google News, authors have been really excited about getting more visibility, and users benefit from seeing the name, photo, and way to connect with the person who created the content.

    Authors have also been giving us a lot of feedback on what else they'd like to see, so today we're introducing œAuthor Stats in Webmaster Tools that shows you how often your content is showing up on the Google search results page. If you associate your content with your Google Profile either via e-mail verification or a simple link, you can visit Webmaster Tools to see how many impressions and clicks your content got on the Google search results page. Check out what Matt Cutts would see for his content:

    To see your information, go to google.com/webmasters and login with the same username you use for your Google+ Profile. On the left hand panel, you can see œAuthor Stats under the œLabs section. This is an experimental feature so we™re continuing to iterate and improve, but we wanted to get early feedback from you. You can e-mail us at authorship-pilot@google.com if you run into any issues or have feedback.

    If you™re a content creator interested in learning more about authorship, check out our Help Center.

    Posted by Javier Tordable, Software Engineer
    ]]>     Jonathan Simon Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:36:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Is Google Making us Illiterate?]]>
  • My Google’s Addiction : Sorry Guys, but I Do Love Google Search Recently it occurred to me that I not only use...
  • How to Ghost-Google: Searching Google without Google to Know about You There can be several reasons why a search marketing professional...
  • Tracking Google Keyword Position (SEJ) I have just posted another article at Search Engine Journal...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Guest Author Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:51:23 -0500     <![CDATA[Problem solving with pants on]]> ian Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:33:09 -0500 <![CDATA[It Should Be Harder To Rank In Google™s Universal Results Than This]]> It’s no secret that well-optimized videos can be a great way to increase visibility, especially in Google’s universal/blended results. Forrester Research did a well-known blog post a couple years ago, which estimated that videos are 50 times more likely to rank on page one in Google than regular, text-based content. The article was called “The [...]

    This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

    It Should Be Harder To Rank In Google’s Universal Results Than This

    ]]>     Matt McGee Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:17:41 -0500     <![CDATA["Define An English Person" C-Word Easter Egg or Google F-Bomb?]]> Jonathan Allen Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:05:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Could Quick Backlinks Tool Replace Yahoo Search Explorer?]]> Rob Chant Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[5 Golden Links for Link Building and Beyond]]> Joe Schaefer Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:45:44 -0500 <![CDATA[3 Tips & Tools To Help You Become a Better SEO Project Manager]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 3 Tips & Tools To Help You Become a Better SEO Project Manager

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    ]]>     Gillian Cook Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:18:40 -0500     <![CDATA[10 Most Important SEO Patents: Part 4 " PageRank Meets the Reasonable Surfer]]> PageRank is a measure that stands for a probability that if someone starts out any page on the Web, and randomly clicks on links they find on pages, or gets bored every so often and teleports (yes, that is official technical search engineer jargon) to a random page, that eventually they will end up [...]]]> Bill Slawski Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:10:41 -0500 <![CDATA[10 Ways to Create and Optimize Your Video for YouTube]]> Jen Carroll Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Rich Snippets showing up everywhere]]> Google seems to have taken out the whitelisting process for several types rich snippets, most importantly the review and review-aggregate types. In the process they have also made some changes to how combined author / rich snippets are shown. Let me run you through what I've seen over the last few days. Review snippets for [...]

    Rich Snippets showing up everywhere is a post by on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

    ]]>     Joost de Valk Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:28:35 -0500     <![CDATA[The Greatest SEO Services Call To Action I™ve Ever Seen]]> Ross Hudgens Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:44:47 -0500 <![CDATA[Mobile SEO Not So Different After All]]> Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:00:12 -0500 <![CDATA[Article Marketing Robot Causes Link Penalty]]> Ryan Clark Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:23:18 -0500 <![CDATA[12 Days of Christmas Internet Marketing Roundup]]> Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

    ]]>     Jordan Kasteler Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:08:42 -0500     <![CDATA[On-Page Optimization Not Dead: Long-Tail Keywords Increase Rankings, Conversions [STUDY]]]> Miranda Miller Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[7 Comments »]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:36:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Improve Content Creation with Linkable Asset Classes]]> Ross Hudgens Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:58:43 -0500 <![CDATA[Social Monitor and Research Central: A powerful 1-2 link building punch]]> Taylor Pratt Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:00:21 -0500 <![CDATA[What SEOs REALLY Do¦]]> Stoney deGeyter Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:00:14 -0500 <![CDATA[In-House SEO: Top 3 SEO Initiatives Before the Year End Freeze]]> Bob Tripathi Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[12 Must Read Blog Posts That I Always Refer Back To]]> more >]]> Paddy Moogan Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:16:13 -0500 <![CDATA[Social Media (24)]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:15:00 -0500     <![CDATA[List-Worthy Approaches to Viral Content for SEO]]> Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:30:04 -0500 <![CDATA[How Did You Boost In-House Marketing This Year? (Part 2) 2011 Recap on Tactics]]> How Did You Boost In-House Marketing This Year? (Part 2) 2011 Recap on Tactics was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

    UpAudience: In-house marketers Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Recently, I asked how you boosted your in-house Web marketing this year. It was a follow up question to the post I wrote in January 2011 on tactics to apply for the coming year. This week, we™ll cover the second part of the original January post, œ3 Ways to Boost Your In House Marketing in 2011: Part 2. First, we™ll do a recap of some of the tips I offered for 2011 in the areas of local, social and conversion optimization. Then, I™ll provide a compilation of some of the resources we™ve offered over the year to help you in those areas. Read more of How Did You Boost In-House Marketing This Year? (Part 2) 2011 Recap on Tactics.

    ]]>     Jessica Lee Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:23:33 -0500     <![CDATA[What is Original Content? [Video FAQ Series]]]> Read more]]> Lauren Jacobson Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:50:03 -0500 <![CDATA[10 Most Important SEO Patents: Part 3 " Classifying Web Blocks with Linguistic Features]]> In earlier days of SEO, many search engine optimization consultants stressed placing important and valuable content towards tops of HTML code on pages, based upon the idea that search engines would weigh prominent content more heavily if it appeared early on in documents. There are still very well known SEO consultants who include information [...]]]> Bill Slawski Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:42:47 -0500 <![CDATA[International SEO: Three French Hens]]> Danika Atkins Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:45:03 -0500 <![CDATA[The Number 1 Mistake New SEO Consultants Make]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:24:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Organic Links Devalued [infographic]]]> Brandignity Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:17:52 -0500 <![CDATA[4 Step Content Marketing Framework for Start-Ups]]> Lee Odden Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:39:17 -0500 <![CDATA[Beware of fake Matts leaving comments]]> Matt Cutts Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:20:58 -0500 <![CDATA[10 Most Important SEO Patents: Part 2 " The Original Historical Data Patent Filing and its Children]]> Imagine gathering together 10 extremely knowledgeable search engineers, locking them into a room for a couple of days with walls filled with whiteboards, with the intent of having them brainstorm ways to limit stale content and web spam from ranking highly in search results. Add to their challenge that the methods they come up [...]]]> Bill Slawski Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:58:12 -0500 <![CDATA[Google+ Brand Pages " Are We Using Them Correctly?]]> Google+ ContentAt this stage the majority of us have a good understanding of Google+ brand pages and the advantages they could have. Many of the initial benefits are were pretty much expected aside a few cool new features like circles and of course the Hangouts. At this early stage we are still learning and discovering how best to [...] Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
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    2. How to Use Google+ Brand Pages and What Advantages Could they Have?
    3. It’s all About the Brand for Google
    ]]>     colmflanagan Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:11:37 -0500     <![CDATA[Creating Different Types of Viral Content]]> Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:00:05 -0500 <![CDATA[Looking back on 2011]]> 2011 is almost in the history books, so now seems like a great time to take a look back over the year and remember what we’ve been up to here at Bing Webmaster Tools.  First hand it’s easy to see how quickly a year can slip by.  Being inside a search engine is an amazing place, and this year saw solid growth for our Webmaster program.  We covered a lot of ground attending conferences all around the US, met a ton of folks face to face and brought an entirely new depth to our Webmaster tools.  Let’s take a look at some of the work, improvements and new tools launched this year.

    Traffic Reports Depth

    Early in the year saw us adding more information in the Traffic reports. This includes the new detailed traffic stats feature.  We are showing much more information to the webmasters including:

    • Average impression and click positions for their top 100 queries
    • The specific pages showing up for a particular query, including their impressions, clicks, CTR, average impression and click positions, and position details.
    • Their top 100 pages including their impressions, clicks, CTR, and average impression and click positions.
    • The specific queries showing up for a particular page, including their impressions, clicks, CTR, average impression and click positions, and position details.
    • Trending over time for their top 100 queries.

    These additions made it easier for Webmasters to see which phrases were driving traffic, and to which pages on their websites that traffic was going.

    HTML5

    Around this same time, maybe a little earlier, we addressed the need to install Silverlight to view the reports by moving the tools to HTML5.  With this move, we made it easier for users to interact with our reports and saw report load times slightly improve as well.  This move meant our reports were now viewable in all modern browsers and on smart phones as well.

    Crawler control

    Users asked loud and clear for ways to control the crawler, so in addition to the usual avenue open via your robots.txt, we built a tool that allows you to easily drag and drop a graph to set the crawl rate specific to your website.  It’s as simple as creating the crawl patter you want.  This means it’s easy to tailor our crawling efforts to times when your bandwidth is least affected.  Telling us to stay away during peak business hours, and visit when everyone is asleep is as easy as clicking your mouse.  We added a checkbox for you to let us know if we’d encounter AJAX URLs along the way, and there is an option to simply let us figure it all out for you.

    The times shown were all GMT, so we added a layer to display your server time relative to GMT, hopefully making it easier to understand when your peak business hours hit, and allowing you to build a control graph around those hours.

    Index Tracker

    Our Index Tracker tool received a thorough backend rewrite, improving coverage, performance, depth and latency.  When these improvements released, even brand new websites saw all of their data as the Bing index held it.  No longer having to wait 48+ hours meant Webmasters could understand what Bing was actually indexing and how it was performing much faster.

    User Permissions

    We introduced user controls and permissions.  Site owners could now grant admin, read / write, or read-only access to other users for their site using their existing verification code.  This made it much easier for businesses to manage their accounts, share access and control who could turn the knobs and pull the levers.  This layer of control allowed businesses to manage account ownership and access at a new level, ensuring, as employees moved around, access and control of these tools remained in hand.

    Sitemaps

    We enhanced the Sitemap UX by showing not only user submitted sitemaps, but all sitemaps we know of.  We also expanded the types of feeds we accept enabling folks to submit Atom, RSS and xml.

    User Experience & Communications

    Working to make it easier to navigate inside the tools, we added a second layer to the tabbed navigation, which you see when logged in.

    In an effort to improve communications, we enabled the ability to tell us where to email you and what to email you.  If there was an alert appearing inside your account for malware, as an example, you can now opt to receive an email alert to the address of your choice.  This made it much easier to know when something was happening.

    Block URLs

    Our “Block URLs” feature got a backend overhaul to include more built-in safeguards, helping to protect webmasters from accidently blocking large numbers of URLs.  While the control is still in your hands, there are added layers of checks on our end that prompt confirmations before actions take place.

    Improved speed

    We did some work on how we cache all of your website data, as well, resulting in a dramatic drop in latency from, in some cases 5 seconds for a report to load, to 400 milliseconds for the same report now.  That dramatically improved the performance of reporting.

    Know more, faster

    Later in the year, we expanded user email communication preferences and controls.  It’s easy to stay up to date on the latest announcements and alerts applied to your account.  You can set frequency preferences, select options on which alerts you want notifications for and set a dedicated email and contact number.

    Expanded Crawl Details

    The expansion of Crawl Details meant you would now see all URLs attributed to header codes and notations made.  This was a great step forward to understanding which URLs Bing was having issues accessing, and makes it much easier to understand if any high value URLs are being seen by us in ways you’d like to change.

    URL Normalization

    To help you manage parameters in a more in depth manner, we expanded the number of parameters you could assign us to manage from 25 items to 50.  This made it easier for larger and older sites to manage legacy URLs.

    Webmaster Account Verification

    This was one folks were asking for all year, and we managed to get it in with one of our Fall releases.  Being able to verify a website via a DNS change.  Past choices included adding a snippet to your <head> code or uploading a dedicated XML file to the root of your site, and both options remain as valid ways to verify your domains. This third option will allowed you to place a discrete CNAME record to your DNS to validate a domain as well.

    adCenter CPC Integration

    In an effort to help businesses understand how they can easily expand their inbound traffic, we began showing CPC data from adCenter inside your Webmaster accounts.  When looking at Traffic data, to the left of the keywords you now see CPC amounts associated with those keywords in adCenter.  This is an excellent way to understand the practical cost of driving more traffic through paid search, and can help in targeting keywords you perform well for in organic search, thereby increasing your business’s footprint on the search results page.

    We met with thousands of people face-to-face, and we’ve spent time with everyone from single person businesses, to startups and large brand names.  It’s been a solid year of gathering feedback and working to improve our products.  We’re looking forward to more of the same in 2012, with you telling us what you need most from us.

    It has been an incredibly busy year for the small team here at Bing Webmaster Tools.  We’re excited for 2012 and meeting even more folks at the shows.  Keep your eyes open for more updates and new tools as we make our way through 2012.  Above all, thank you for supporting Bing Webmaster Tools as we continue to grow and improve.

    ]]>     Duane Forrester Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:48:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Reconsideration Requests: The True Turtle Dove]]> Rhea Drysdale Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:20:09 -0500 <![CDATA[Google on Trust and SEO]]> Unless you’re really new around here, you should know that trust is a big deal to me. I’ve written about it on several occasions and continue to believe it’s the best strategy for achieving long-term business success — both online and offline. So it was with some interest that I watched this recent Google video [...]

    This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

    Google on Trust and SEO

    ]]>     Matt McGee Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:13:01 -0500     <![CDATA[Content Scam Alert: Using Foreign Characters to Make the Piece Look Unique]]>
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  • Blatant Content Plagiarism – Am I To Thank You? Today I’ve been struck by the most blatant content plagiarism...
  • HOW TO: Re-package Your Best Content for More Exposure (and Links) A couple of weeks ago I did an article at...
    • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>     Ann Smarty Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:26:48 -0500     <![CDATA[A secret weapon for ecommerce sites looking to engage with social influencers]]> Hugo Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:20:02 -0500 <![CDATA[What Does Google Mean by œTrust [video]]]> Brandignity Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:31:26 -0500 <![CDATA[Keyword Rich Anchored Links Everywhere Or Building Authority With More Natural Looking Links]]> ]]> Zarko Zivkovic Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:51:06 -0500 <![CDATA[The Decline of Organic Links Infographic]]>

    Sharing is caring!

    Please share :)

    Embed code is here.

    How Google Hit Organic Links.

    For many years it was true that SEO = links, but due to the rise of rel=nofollow, fearmongering & social media, organic links have lost much of their relative importance in many verticals.

    Links are still valuable in some areas of course, but where the search results are full of listings from Google.com, pushed below the fold from larger AdWords ads and/or heavily skewed by things like brand bias there is much less value in link building in numerous big money markets. After all, few care who ranks #1 if #1 is below the fold!

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:56:21 -0500     <![CDATA[3 Reasons Why Your Company Should be Blogging]]> Jason Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:12:32 -0500 <![CDATA[E-Commerce Challenges: Indexation Issues]]> more >]]> Stephanie Chang Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:10:09 -0500 <![CDATA[CRO: The Partridge In Your SEO Tree]]> Elf Emily Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:00:06 -0500 <![CDATA[Google Admits 'Organic Results' Are Filler To Pump Deceptive Ads at Consumers]]>

    Some of Google's new search results look quite alarming in terms of every single link above the fold is either a paid ad, or links to yet another Google page wrapped in ads.

    I have a huge monitor & it is impossible for me to click *anywhere* above the fold on some search results without going through Google's toll booth or clicking off to yet another Google ad wrapped page.


    (click on the image for the full sized view)

    Some people have given Google the benefit of the doubt "well this is just vertical search" and "this is just for the consumer" but we see that in many cases it harms consumers by limiting choice:

    Charlie Leocha, the director of the Consumer Travel Alliance, says Google Flight Search is œlimiting consumers™ knowledge. He explains, œthis is a situation where Google is trusted as a ˜search engine™ that goes across the whole Web, but it is only going to a small select group of airlines and including them in Flight Search.

    The bottom line?

    According to Leocha, œGoogle and the airlines have a sweetheart deal with each other, and the consumers are getting screwed.

    Those who coddled Google & gave Google the benefit of the doubt now have egg on their face, and the industry as a whole is poorer for their poor judgement & lack of stewardship.

    As absurd as the above behavior is, it gets worse. When Google acquired DoubleClick, Larry Page wanted to keep Performics (an SEO/SEM company). But since it would have been a flagrant violation of law for him to run an SEO company, they now decide that nobody should run an SEO company...telling consumers to simply forget about SEO even when they specifically search out information about SEO!

    Google recently ran AdWords ads with the following copy when consumers searched Google for SEO information:

    œForget about SEO. To be visible in Google today, try Adwords

    You know Google's slogan: "maybe the best ads are just answers." And sometimes they are misdirection or scams that quite literally kill people.

    You can't be 100% certain which is which until long AFTER you click. And by then Google's cash register has already rang & it is off to dupe the next person.

    Comments turned off, as this is a conversation that NEEDS TO SPREAD. If you run a blog about SEO, you owe it to your readers & your industry to cover this topic. If this topic doesn't get broad coverage then pretty soon your career might be over & you will deserve it too.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:13:12 -0500     <![CDATA[Using Cornerstone Content to make your Site Rank]]> The most common question we answer in our website reviews is "how do I make my site rank for keyword X?". What most people don't realize is that they're asking the wrong question. You see, sites don't rank: pages rank. If you want to rank for a keyword, you'll need to determine which page is [...]

    Using Cornerstone Content to make your Site Rank is a post by on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

    ]]>     Joost de Valk Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:08:30 -0500     <![CDATA[SEOptimise™s 58 most awesome blog posts of 2011]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. SEOptimise’s 58 most awesome blog posts of 2011

    Related posts:
    1. 154 Awesome Pubcon 2011 Takeaways, Tips & Tweets
    2. Top SEOptimise posts in September…
    3. SEOptimise Wins Best Blog at the UK Search Awards 2011
    ]]>     Matthew Taylor Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:32:20 -0500     <![CDATA[3 Comments »]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:39:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Content Cycles " Make your Business Famous by Reinventing the Wheel [Guest Post]]]> more >]]> simon-penson Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:01 -0500 <![CDATA[Are Category Keywords in the URL a Significant Ranking Signal Now?]]>

    Above: Not personalized search results for the query [content strategy mistakes]. I rank at #7. Look who ranks at #2 and #4.

    While trying to assess the impact of stolen and otherwise copied content on my rankings here on the SEO 2.0 blog I’ve found an anomaly in the Google results I want to share with you.

    A post from a popular web design blog, indeed a blog I like very much, Six Revisions outranks other far more relevant search results.

    How does it do it? It succeeds by a single keyword mention below the posting:

    and most importantly a category named after part of the keyphrase in question: “content strategy”:

    http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/5-common-seo-mistakes-with-web-page-titles/

    So the most significant onpage ranking factor seems to be the category keywords in the URL.

    The site has lots of backlinks, the post itself as well. There are no incoming links with the keyword combination in the anchor text according to Blekko though:

    Above: Blekko showing the inbound link anchor texts. None of them contain the term “content strategy”

    Still it outranks other pages that really deal with content strategy mistakes while itself the post does only cover SEO mistakes.

    What do you think? Is this an exception from the rule? Are category keywords in the URL a significant ranking signal now or does Google favor authority sites so much these days hat they need only slightly relevant content to outrank the competition that covers the topic at stake directly?

    You may wonder why I rank so bad in this example. My blog has been “pandalized” recently during a minor Panda update with the number 2.5.2. I have been removed from the top 10 for all two word keyphrases I have been ranking in the top 10 for years. You won’t find my blog  anymore for phrases like

    • [seo blog]
    • [image seo]
    • [advanced seo]
    • [url seo]

    anymore. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t rank higher for [content strategy mistakes]. I only rank for some very long long tail queries now.

     

    Also take note that an aggregator called Scoop.it curated by a friend mine, Gabriella of Level 343 who cites my posts ranks higher than the post on SEO 2.0 itself. I have asked on Twitter whether other SEO people can confirm that keyword mentions in categories are an important ranking factor these days.

    I know that the impact of keywords in URLs beyond the domains has been negligible over the recent years. Has Google changed this? Two SEO experts, Shark SEO and Mark of Guava have weighed in that there might be different reasons but were as well surprised by this example. What do you think?

    P.S.: I didn’t link out to any of the sites or pages involved here in order not to skew the results.

     

    Related posts:

    1. Google Filters: Exact Match Anchor Text Links Are the New Meta Keywords
    2. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
    3. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)

    by Tadeusz Szewczyk
    ©2012 SEO 2.0. All Rights Reserved.Copyright SEO 2.0 at onreact.com
    Related posts:
    1. Google Filters: Exact Match Anchor Text Links Are the New Meta Keywords
    2. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
    3. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)
    ]]>     Tadeusz Szewczyk Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:56:06 -0500     <![CDATA[Introducing the 12 Days of SEO]]> Lisa Barone Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:30:27 -0500 <![CDATA[SEO Link Bait Tactics are here to Rescue Your Blog]]> Jeff Gross Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:00:50 -0500 <![CDATA[The Ultimate Guide to Securing a Job in Social Media, SEO & PPC]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. The Ultimate Guide to Securing a Job in Social Media, SEO & PPC

    Related posts:
    1. 30 Ways to Use Social Media for Business People
    2. Using Social Media for SEO Benefit – Travel Presentation @ SAScon 2011
    3. Social Media – Why an SEO background is better than PR!
    ]]>     Shaad Hamid Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:01:19 -0500     <![CDATA[2 Comments »]]>

    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:55:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Are Echo Chambers in Social Media Simply an Echo of ˜Real Life™?]]> ]]> Lianne Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:48:07 -0500 <![CDATA[Things Google Should Do: Recommendations From a Blackhat]]>

    There™s been quite a few posts by Aaron lately about the things Google is doing wrong, so I figured I™d help Google out and give my boys running the most dominant tech company on Earth a couple of ideas on some things I™d love to do. Who am I? I™m just an anonymous blackhat with too many ideas. You see, I lack the scale and lobbyist army to pull off giant game-changing feats, so rather than just waste a fantasy I think Google could turn them into blackhat realities.

    1. Sell illegal drugs. There™s a reason people sell drugs: money, and lots of it. Rather than do the usual narcotics though, I think Google could specialize in flinging massive amounts of pharmaceutical grade contraband¦you know, the kind of stuff you need to see three doctors, a pharmacist, and a priest for. And the best part is, if they continually sidestepped large pharma companies by pushing the product via misspellings of the brand name drugs, they could get away with it for like 5 years. No one would ever know! Oh, they did that? Yikes, the DOJ? Ok, moving on.
    2. I™ll just chalk that up to them getting pinched for selling a legitimate product, a big brand turf war if you will. If that™s the case, Google should invest in figuring out all the top ecommerce KWs and give the list away to oversees peddlers of counterfeit goods. It isn™t drugs, but that Gucci knock-off at close to Gucci prices sure has a good margin on it when you™re artificially inflating CPC bids with phony quality score demotions. They should get right on that. Man, I am behind the curve again! Don™t worry G-men, I™ll wink and nod while you œaggressively crack down on these searches that take less than 5 seconds to find.
    3. Well, ok. They sold drugs and fake goods already. I suppose they could always profit from their Adwords customers multiple ways by interrupting the landing page destination process a few percentage points of the time and¦I GOT IT¦they could somehow use their ridiculously ubiquitous toolbar base to provide a œfeature that invites the end user to compare the price of the product the advertiser worked so hard to attract and paid Google directly for. Man these guys are good¦er¦bad. I™m getting jealous here. This is like Goldman Sachs execs in the extreme north 1% making a ton of money advising a client like Greece (the Adwords customer in this case) and then actively profit in the demise of that client by shorting its bonds (by using Google Related to earn that secondary revenue stream). HAHAHA. Oh man, the only way they could have done that any more beautifully is if the recommended pages were somehow funded by Google Ventures and crammed full of Adsense and Viglink.
    4. Speaking of toolbars, I don™t think they are leveraging that toolbar install base enough. Yeah yeah, it is a browser extension or plug-in technically, and is governed by a fairly narrow permissible use TOS. But still, wouldn™t it be cool if they used it to hijack an install process onto various OS? That way they could push out all sorts of malware, spyware, and adware and maybe even circumvent the OS itself to push people into Chrome OS. Holy crap, that™s so awesome " take that Apple!
    5. Come on, like Apple is a saint. We were all thinking of doing it. An OS is nothing though; what really turned Apple around as a company is its iPhone. If Google could have gotten advanced knowledge of its development behind a string of NDAs and a maybe a seat on Apple™s board in order to quickly produce a near identical product; that would be something. Oh. My. Schmidt. What™s even classier is refuting a dead man™s words and calling his final dying passion a lie. Siri, get me a lawyer. LOL
    6. Eric Schmidt and the crew do make awesome spies; I can™t compete with that. I™m concerned that they aren™t spying enough though. Hey, wouldn™t it be swell if Google used those fancy street map cars that take naked pictures of me in the front yard and do something really special? I™m thinking grab EVERYTHING within signal range; the best way to make sure someone is using Google is to grab their router login, hack the logs, and check. My friends, I am in awe of your blackhatishness. Nmap is pretty cool huh G-men? Did you install some warez bots too while you™re in there?
    7. Warez and crackz shouldn™t be scoffed at. Lots of traffic volume from China and Eastern Europe are from people looking for these things. Who cares if its illegal; if the first 6 things listed didn™t stop my law-skirting buddies at Google, I don™t think silly little copyright laws should slow them down.
    8. And nothing should slow down the progress of making our kids literate, for a nice cut of the profits of course. The way I see it, Google is good at getting other peoples™ content; what if they just took all the books in the world and copied them? I bet the authors wouldn™t even blink an eye, since they just want their works discovered anyhow. Wahhh, you stole something I worked on for 3 years and put it on the web for œfree until ads are wrapped around it and I™m completely cut out of the process. Wahhh.
    9. If the author™s guild didn™t even put a chink in the armor, Google™s Wolfram and Hart trained biz dev team may as well get more aggressive. Clearly no one has the teeth to make them obey any sort of law. Killing search dissenters is probably a little early in the game plan (table that for 2014), so why not just kill business models instead. Coupons? Nuke Groupon by launching your own product that uses Adwords data from Groupon™s campaign to fuel offer intelligence. That isn™t good enough though; what if they took a huge information repository, flat out scraped it, served it up as their own, and then penalized the guys they took it for with a duplicate content penalty. Wow man that™d be hilarious. Well, Matt Cutts did say roughly 40% of the DMCA complaints are phony. That™s probably just the case. ;)
    10. DMCA got me thinking. All us SEOs are saying video is the next big wave of spam, so what Google really needs to do is pirate the video web in order to get ahead of the curve. Well then, surf™s up.
    11. Killing is probably still out and coveting other people™s oxen seems kind of low margin, so maybe they could just steal some more stuff. Scraping has been done to death, but maybe they could steal software from others, sell it as their own, and hope they don™t notice. Too bad you got caught, but then ˜oracle™ does sort of imply they could see it happening in advance.

     
    You know what¦Google is doing way better than I ever could, mainly because being a blackhat mostly means doing boring things like buying links, not engaging in the kinds of criminal activities listed above. Kudos my dark arts brethren; you™ve taken this to a level that would leave me behind bars, and yet you STILL have people believing you are the stand against all that is evil. You truly are masters of deception; here, I have new logo for you.
    The Original Troll

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Blackhat Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:43:39 -0500     <![CDATA[Google Biz Dev Beats the Google Engineers Again]]>

    Since Panda has happened I (and others) have highlighted how brands have ranked doorway pages, ranked scraped 3rd party content, padded out crap "content farm" content to suck in search traffic, took their market leading position & used it to deliver inferior experiences, bought out bankrupt competitors & redirected the PageRank, engaged in off-topic affiliate extension (Barnes & Noble, Overstock, Overstock AND Barnes & Noble), etc etc etc

    At the same time, independent webmasters face greater uncertainty than ever (legal, personal property rights, and from alleged "quality" algorithms like Panda & editorial crackdowns from Google engineers).

    If you are not operating at scale, you are an inefficiency which must be expunged from the marketplace.

    I have maintained that Panda was a joke & a diversion to re-frame the quality debate as Google dialed up on inserting their own vertical results in the search results, allowing them to monetize the "organic" search results.

    Such a view may have been seen as cynical, but it is something that more people are realizing as true. Read this great article from Tom Foremski on ZDNet.

    Google's percent of downstream traffic to YouTube has more than doubled since Panda.

    You know how John Stewart or George Carlin have to present reality as a joke to express it? Well watch the above video & then read this article:

    œEvery single leading company is waiting for user-generated content or is licensing content in order to reach advertisers, Rosenblatt said. œYouTube was tired of waiting. They told us that they needed a home and garden channel, a pets channel and a health/Livestrong channel. They are paying us up front, plus a rev share. This is the beginning of them funding professional content creators.

    I have mentioned Demand Media's video "efforts" before.

    But my opinion doesn't matter.

    As a monopoly, only Google's does.

    And they decided to subsidize Demand Media while torching your site.

    Categories: 
    ]]>     Aaron Wall Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:42:46 -0500     <![CDATA[SEO Basics: Conversions Rely on Content & Usability]]> Read more...

    SEO Basics: Conversions Rely on Content & Usability is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

    ]]>     Leslie Anderson Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:38:27 -0500     <![CDATA[Compare your AdWords account to others--for free]]> by Mike Moran

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

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

    WordStream AdWords Grader bad accountWordStream AdWords Grader good account

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Originally published on Biznology

    Enhanced by Zemanta

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:08:07 -0500     <![CDATA[Tips for hosting providers and webmasters]]> Webmaster level: All

    Some webmasters on our forums ask about hosting-related issues affecting their sites. To help both hosting providers and webmasters recognize, diagnose, and fix such problems, we™d like to share with you some of the common problems we™ve seen and suggest how you can fix them.

    • Blocking of Googlebot crawling. This is a very common issue usually due to a misconfiguration in a firewall or DoS protection system and sometimes due to the content management system the site runs. Protection systems are an important part of good hosting and are often configured to block unusually high levels of server requests, sometimes automatically. Because, however, Googlebot often performs more requests than a human user, these protection systems may decide to block Googlebot and prevent it from crawling your website. To check for this kind of problem, use the Fetch as Googlebot function in Webmaster Tools, and check for other crawl errors shown in Webmaster Tools.

      We offer several tools to webmasters and hosting providers who want more control over Googlebot™s crawling, and to improve crawling efficiency:

      We have more information in our crawling and indexing FAQ.

    • Availability issues. A related type of problem we see is websites being unavailable when Googlebot (and users) attempt to access the site. This includes DNS issues, overloaded servers leading to timeouts and refused connections, misconfigured content distribution networks (CDNs), and many other kinds of errors. When Googlebot encounters such issues, we report them in Webmaster Tools as either URL unreachable errors or crawl errors.

    • Invalid SSL certificates. For SSL certificates to be valid for your website, they need to match the name of the site. Common problems include expired SSL certificates and servers misconfigured such that all websites on that server use the same certificate. Most web browsers will try warn users in these situations, and Google tries to alert webmasters of this issue by sending a message via Webmaster Tools. The fix for these problems is to make sure to use SSL certificates that are valid for all your website™s domains and subdomains your users will interact with.

    • Wildcard DNS. Websites can be configured to respond to all subdomain requests. For example, the website at example.com can be configured to respond to requests to foo.example.com, made-up-name.example.com and all other subdomains.

      In some cases this is desirable to have; for example, a user-generated content website may choose to give each account its own subdomain. However, in some cases, the webmaster may not wish to have this behavior as it may cause content to be duplicated unnecessarily across different hostnames and it may also affect Googlebot™s crawling.

      To minimize problems in wildcard DNS setups, either configure your website to not use them, or configure your server to not respond successfully to non-existent hostnames, either by refusing the connection or by returning an HTTP 404 header.

    • Misconfigured virtual hosting. The symptom of this problem is that multiple hosts and/or domain names hosted on the same server always return the contents of only one site. To rephrase, although the server hosts multiple sites, it returns only one site regardless of what is being requested. To diagnose the issue, you need to check that the server responds correctly to the Host HTTP header.

    • Content duplication through hosting-specific URLs. Many hosts helpfully offer URLs for your website for testing/development purposes. For example, if you™re hosting the website http://a.com/ on the hosting provider example.com, the host may offer access to your site through a URL like http://a.example.com/ or http://example.com/~a/. Our recommendation is to have these hosting-specific URLs not publicly accessible (by password protecting them); and even if these URLs are accessible, our algorithms usually pick the URL webmasters intend. If our algorithms select the hosting-specific URLs, you can influence our algorithms to pick your preferred URLs by implementing canonicalization techniques correctly.

    • Soft error pages. Some hosting providers show error pages using an HTTP 200 status code (meaning œSuccess) instead of an HTTP error status code. For example, a œPage not found error page could return HTTP 200 instead of 404, making it a soft 404 page; or a œWebsite temporarily unavailable message might return a 200 instead of correctly returning a 503 HTTP status code. We try hard to detect soft error pages, but when our algorithms fail to detect a web host™s soft error pages, these pages may get indexed with the error content. This may cause ranking or cross-domain URL selection issues.

      It™s easy to check the status code returned: simply check the HTTP headers the server returns using any one of a number of tools, such as Fetch as Googlebot. If an error page is returning HTTP 200, change the configuration to return the correct HTTP error status code. Also, keep an eye out for soft 404 reports in Webmaster Tools, on the Crawl errors page in the Diagnostics section.

    • Content modification and frames. Webmasters may be surprised to see their page contents modified by hosting providers, typically by injecting scripts or images into the page. Web hosts may also serve your content by embedding it in other pages using frames or iframes. To check whether a web host is changing your content in unexpected ways, simply check the source code of the page as served by the host and compare it to the code you uploaded.

      Note that some server-side code modifications may be very useful. For example, a server using Google™s mod_pagespeed Apache module or other tools may be returning your code minified for page speed optimization.

    • Spam and malware. We™ve seen some web hosts and bulk subdomain services become major sources of malware and spam. We try hard to be granular in our actions when protecting our users and search quality, but if we see a very large fraction of sites on a specific web host that are spammy or are distributing malware, we may be forced to take action on the web host as a whole. To help you keep on top of malware, we offer:

    We hope this list helps both hosting providers and webmasters diagnose and fix these issues. Beyond this list, also think about the qualitative aspects of hosting like quality of service and the helpfulness of support. As always, if you have questions or need more help, please ask in our Webmaster Help Forum.

    Written by , Webmaster Trends Analyst

    ]]>     Pierre Far Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:39:00 -0500     <![CDATA[SEO.com named as one of the top 20 e-commerce Businesses in Utah]]> Read more]]> SEO.com Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:19:16 -0500 <![CDATA[Using Google™s GL Parameter to Beat Geo-Targeting]]> Alesia Krush Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:15:25 -0500 <![CDATA[A New Type of Places Listing?]]> Has anyone seen this type of search listing before? it’s new to me but isn’t it a cracker! For a company search, I get a map, it’s precise location, a selection of their products, opening hours and the nearest subway. How cool is this? I can think of loads of benefits from an SEO and CRO perspective. [...]

    A New Type of Places Listing? is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

    ]]>     Fabian Alvares Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:29:46 -0500     <![CDATA[What™s Been the Most Significant Change in Search During 2011?]]> © SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. What’s Been the Most Significant Change in Search During 2011?

    Related posts:
    1. 30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change
    2. Think Visibility Voted #1 UK Search Conference by SEOs
    3. Significant Traffic Sources You Probably Miss Unless You Blog
    ]]>     Kevin Gibbons Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:16:08 -0500     <![CDATA[SEO Industry Survey Results [Infographic]]]>

    SEO Industry Survey Results [Infographic]

    On December 6th, 2011 Adam wrote on the subject of Industry News

    A few weeks ago we asked a few folks on Twitter to complete a short (okay, maybe not that short) 22 question survey, looking specifically at the business side to working in SEO. We asked the all important questions, including:

    1. Where are you based?
    2. What kind of business are you?
    3. How many people work in the business?
    4. What other services do you offer besides SEO?
    5. How many clients do you currently manage?
    6. Do you contract your clients for a set period of time?
    7. What is your usual client contract arrangement (i.e. how do you charge for your work)?
    8. Your average charge per month for SEO services?
    9. Typical client retention period?
    10. Biggest issues facing your business today?
    11. Biggest barrier to sales?
    12. Biggest source of leads?
    13. What activities are included in a typical campaign?
    14. Link building tactics- what tactics do you employ for the majority of your campaigns?
    15. Do you buy links? (what SEO survey would be complete without this question?
    16. What 3rd party tools do you subscribe to?
    17. What keyword tools do you use primarily?
    18. How long on average do you spend reporting to a single client?
    19. What metrics do you include in your standard reports?
    20. How did you get into SEO?
    21. What skills do you consider to be the most important skills for an SEO?
    22. Have you ever had a site penalised?

    The results of the survey are pretty interesting- take a look for yourself below:

    Click to enlarge

    Embed this: We™ll be releasing the source data as promised in the next few days. Let us know how your company compares to these averages in the comments below!

    Industry News


    This post has been generated by Page2RSS ]]>     Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:19:00 -0500     <![CDATA[Last Minute Marketing for the Holiday Season]]> Last Minute Marketing for the Holiday Season was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

    future of online holiday shoppingAudience: DIY marketers at small and medium-sized B2C businesses Estimated reading time: 4 minutes I™ve got good news and bad news. I™m four chocolates into my Advent calendar. Yum! I™ve got four fewer days to shop for holiday presents. Yikes! For businesses that means 20 days left to draw in customers and beef up the 2011 bottom line. If you want to attract sales over the next few week, think about these fascinating facts from an infographic on the Future of Online Holiday Shopping (based on 2010 trends)... Read more of Last Minute Marketing for the Holiday Season.

    ]]>     Virginia Nussey Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:59:39 -0500     <![CDATA[New markup for multilingual content]]> explicit annotations for web pages rendering the same content with different language templates.
    Today we're going further with our support for multilingual content with improved handling for these two scenarios:
    • Multiregional websites using substantially the same content. Example: English webpages for Australia, Canada and USA, differing only in price
    • Multiregional websites using fully translated content, or substantially different monolingual content targeting different regions. Example: a product webpage in German, English and French

    Specifying language and location

    We've expanded our support of the rel="alternate" hreflang link element to handle content that is translated or provided for multiple geographic regions. The hreflang attribute can specify the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content. By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs can be on the same site or on another domain.

    Annotating pages as substantially similar content

    Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are targeted at multiple countries, you may use the rel="canonical" link element to specify your preferred version. We™ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

    Example usage

    To explain how it works, let™s look at some example URLs:
    • http://www.example.com/ - contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish
    • http://es-es.example.com/ - is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish
    • http://es-mx.example.com/ - is the version for users in Mexico, in Spanish
    • http://en.example.com/ - is the generic English language version
    On all of these pages, we could use the following markup to specify language and optionally the region:
    
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="http://es-es.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-MX" href="http://es-mx.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" />
    If you specify a regional subtag, we™ll assume that you want to target that region.
    Keep in mind that all of these annotations are to be used on a per-URL basis. You should take care to use the specific URL, not the homepage, for both of these link elements.

    More help

    As always, if you need more help correctly implementing multiregional and multilingual websites, please see our Help Center article about this topic, or ask in our Webmaster Help Forum.
    Written by , Software Engineer, Search Infrastructure, Google Switzerland
    ]]>     Pierre Far Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:07:00 -0500     <![CDATA[5 Reasons To Fire Your SEO]]> Brandignity Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:45:32 -0500 <![CDATA[Outreach Tips and Tricks to Increase Efficiency & Effectiveness]]> Nico Miceli Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:54:37 -0500 <![CDATA[Why Fresh Blog Content is Now 35% More Important]]> Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
    DMS_468x60_LS_banner4.gif

    Why Fresh Blog Content is Now 35% More Important

    ]]>     Guest Blogger Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:09:09 -0500     <![CDATA[Unexpected Business Advice at The Airport]]> brettalan Sun, 04 Dec 2011 04:40:36 -0500 <![CDATA[Infographic: Is it Time to Consider SEO Automation?]]> Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
    DMS_468x60_LS_banner4.gif

    Infographic: Is it Time to Consider SEO Automation?

    ]]>     Guest Blogger Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:02:06 -0500     <![CDATA[BrightEdge Weekly Search Recap " 12/2]]> SG Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:57:11 -0500 <![CDATA[Web Marketing Tactics: Google+ Business Pages, 2011 Algorithm Updates, Mobile Site Design & More!]]> Web Marketing Tactics: Google+ Business Pages, 2011 Algorithm Updates, Mobile Site Design & More! was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

    Read the SEO NewsletterInterested in understanding and optimizing the new Google+ business pages? How about a recap of Google™s big-news algorithm changes of 2011 and how to tackle them? Or what about a tutorial on writing calls to action, or best practices for mobile website design? All this and more is in this month™s SEO Newsletter, published today. This post dives into the highlights of December™s issue. Don't miss the tips for this months trends in Web marketing plus foundational concepts in our SEO Newsletter this month. Read more of Web Marketing Tactics: Google+ Business Pages, 2011 Algorithm Updates, Mobile Site Design & More!.

    ]]>     Jessica Lee Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:56:08 -0500     <![CDATA[Flawed SEO Approaches]]> Brandignity Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:36:30 -0500 <![CDATA[How to Have a Lifetime of Happiness on Your Website]]> by Mike Fleming

    ...you need to drastically rethink what it means to use data on the web...there is a lot of data, but there are fundamental barriers to making intelligent decisions...because clickstream data is great at the what, but not at the why...it's important to know what happened, but it is even more critical to know why people do the things they do on your site...and the what else, which is perhaps the most underappreciated data on the web...your web analytics tool can report only what it can record...if you marry the what with the why and the what else, you'll have a lifetime of happiness...

    -Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

     

    Happy Buddha.png


    You've got enough work to do, right?  All you want is a report.  You just want to see that all of that hard work you are doing for your website is paying off.  You want to see that blue line go up and to the right.  It makes you feel good.  Hey, I know the feeling.  The problem is that if you stop there, you will fall behind.  Likely way behind.  The web 2.0 world that we live in requires more than getting more visitors to your site.

    Although those reports make you feel good, they don't tell you what to do next.  They don't tell you what your competitors are doing and how you can and should react.  Yes, there is value in feeling good.  But feeling good doesn't grow your business.  It doesn't give you insights that will push you ahead into the future.  In fact, looking at a visitor line in your web analytics that goes up and to the right doesn't do much of anything at all.  It just means more people found your site.  Unless they're buying, more visitors mean nothing.

    What will push you ahead, on the other hand, is information about your customers that your competitors don't know, information about your competitors that they don't know about you, and the ability to turn that information into experiments and apply what you learn.

    Be sure and visit our small business news site.


    ]]>     Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:50:59 -0500     <![CDATA[Will Google be your new credit card?]]> by Mike Moran

    Mastercard and VISA certainly hope not, but Larry Page wants to be in your wallet. Well, not exactly--he wants to replace your wallet. Last month, when I talked about Google's new strategy--we do everything--I mentioned that Google is working hard to unseat PayPal, the online payments leader, but I think that I undersold Google's ambitions.  Google wants to be the leading form of payments anywhere, not just online.

    So, how might they do that? Let me count the ways:

    • Near F