Jon Clark is a Internet Marketing Consultant specializing in Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This search marketing blog serves as a backdrop for educational search marketing conversation as well as a resource for cutting edge (and free) Internet Marketing tools to make all of our lives as search marketers easier!
I’ve had numerous requests to post a synopsis of what makes organic search engine optimization the preferred route to go when building site traffic. While organic seo doesn’t easily lend itself to a quick description (the complexity is what sets it apart from antiquated SEO methods), I put together a brief description.
Organic SEO recognizes the fact that older SEO models don’t work anymore. Instead of aiming for an overnight (and temporary) boost, the organic model uses keyword analysis, strategic inbound linking, on page SEO and a campaign tailored to each client website in order to reach a high position within 90 days and have the site stabilized and firmly entrenched in its higher position within 180 days.
Google recently posted quick and easy tips for the holiday rush and, after reading back over it, I quickly realized, these tips aren't just for the holiday season nor should they be recommendations limited to Google search.
As a result, I have compiled a list of quick and simple tips for websites to increase traffic - whether it's to make the sale online or to increase foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar location, your web presence is a critical part of your business plan. The tips below are fast, free, and can make a big difference in your organic SEO! Best of all, they were inspired by Google:)
Verify that your site is indexed (and is returned in search results) Check your snippet content and page titles with the site: command [site:example.com] -- do they look accurate and descriptive for users? Ideally, each title and snippet should be unique in order to reflect that each URL contains unique content. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Google's Webmaster Tools. There you can see which URLs on your site show duplicate titles or meta descriptions. Label your images accurately Don't miss out on potential customers with poor or missing alt text. Good 'alt' text and descriptive filenames help search engines better understand images, make sure you change non-descriptive file names [001.jpg] to something more accurate [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search has the potential to send significant search traffic, so you should take advantage of it.
Know what the search engines know (about your site) Check for crawl errors and learn the top queries that bring traffic to your site through Webmaster Tools. You can use Google's diagnostics checklist or MSN's crawl issues tool to aid in this process.
Have a plan for expiring and temporary pages Make sure to serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you no longer sell a product, serve a 404. If you have changed a product page to a new URL, serve a 301 to redirect the old page to the new one. Keeping your site up-to-date can help bring more targeted traffic your way and provide an overall more useful visitor experience.
Increase foot traffic too If your website directs customers to a brick-and-mortar location, make sure you claim and double check your business listing in Google Local, Local.com, MSN's Local Listing and Yahoo Local.
Usability 101 Test the usability of your checkout process with various browswers and ensure the coding is valid. Ask yourself if a user can get from product page to checkout without assistance. Is your checkout button easy to find?
Tell the search engines where to find all of your web pages If you upload new products faster than the search engines crawl your site, make sure to submit a sitemap and include 'last modification' and change frequency' information. A Sitemap can point searchbots to your new or hard-to-find content. Both Google's webmaster tools, MSN webmaster central and Yahoo!'s Site Explorer allow for sitemap submissions. You can read a quick question and answer on Google sitemaps for more details. Additionally, be sure to utilize robots.txt to funnel the search bots to content you want crawled and content that should not be indexed.
So, that's all for now. I know there are many, many more tips but these should help capture some low hanging fruit. Have your own tips? Feel free to add them in the comments section!
During day 2 of SES Chicago, Sharad Verma, Senior Product Manager of Yahoo! Search Technology, broke down how Yahoo utilizes link building to determine your website's ranking, crawling & indexing in the Yahoo SERP. All of these relate to Inbound Links (IBL) to your site.
1) No Links to your site = NO Existence, Yahoo will Never find your site 2) Few Links to your site = Minor discovery, NO index 3) Some Links to your site = Crawl of your site, NO index 4) Some More Links to your site = Crawl of your site, Index of your site, NO Ranking in the SERP 5) Enough Links to your site = Ranking in the Top 10 of the Yahoo! SERP 6) LOTS of Links to your site – Helps you rank for the keywords and keywords found in the anchor text of your IBL in the Yahoo! SERP.
Now, I know the question everyone is asking themselves, but Sharad never got into the actual number of links that correspond with the above, however if you are an SEO or actively build links you can fully understand the value in the above items. The most important takeaway? There is no question of doubt if this is fact or fiction as the information came directly out of Sharad Verma with Yahoo! himself.
I recently posted a useful SEO Flowchart that Aaron Wall over at SEO Book had put together. While folks found the SEO flowchart useful, it was more of a 'high level' look at the SEO process. The guys over at SEO Book have now put together a VERY useful keword research flowchart that digs down into the deepest of detail. You can see the chart below - and feel free to stop by the SEO Book site for a larger image and PDF download.
Perhaps a bit is lost in simplification, but I think Aaron Wall's SEO flowchart does a great job of conveying a lot of information in a limited space...as well as providing a good laugh! Check out the "Cry / Snitch on Competitors" LOL
With the Christmas holiday peaking around the corner, it still isn’t too late to tweak and optimize a dedicated holiday search marketing campaign. A few weeks ago I wrote about holiday retail PPC strategies as well as holiday ecommerce pay per click strategies. Today I wanted to focus on link building and local search optimization.
Link Building & Organic SEO - Ideally, you should well on your way to building links for the holiday season. While low level link building such as blog commenting and directory submissions provide good passive SEO, more active efforts such include:
Paid links - Directly bought, or through sponsorships and partners.
Widgets & Quizzes- Incorporate pop culture and symbols of the holiday season in to build links.
Good Ol’ Link bait - Get viral, and spread the season’s cheer over social networks such as facebook and twitter.
Local Search Optimization - Don’t ignore local search for online shopping queries and conversions. Some tips to follow include:
Change titles to reflect holiday shopping keywords such as New York Toy Store Christmas Gifts.
Ask for reviews in all holiday email campaigns with links to appropriate local business citation sources, in both the US and Canada.
Ask staff, family, and friends to leave reviews on Google Local and on other sources with context to Christmas and Christmas gifts.
Use Google Coupons to stand out from the rest of the listings. Especially in today's tough economic times, coupons can go a long way!
Complete all fields in the local business centre that many businesses leave blank: store hours, methods of payment, links, contact details etc.
Buy P.O Box addresses in cities or areas represented by your business, but where you do not have a physical location.
Insert keywords in your business name for core products and/or services. This can boost conversions
My new favorite blogger, Shimon Sandler has posted 8 methods you can use for tracking phone orders that were initiated by Search. This is a problem that plagues EVERY company involved in search. How do we get a true sense of the return on ad spend when phone orders or phone leads are not being taken into account? These 8 tips will make the tracking process MUCH, MUCH easier!
1) Create a unique landing page with a unique 800# for Google, Yahoo, MSN respectively.
2) Generate a unique “promo code” by placing all your keywords in a database and assign them an individual ID. Then when the user clicks on the Google url, it will attach a string to the URL like: keyword=12345. The unique ID can be the promo code that appears on the webpage.
3) By adding a unique customer reference code (promo code) on the page, and the reps on the phone can ask for that number. Train the sales reps to record and report the “lead source”.
4) The Landing page can encourage visitors to print a discount coupon, which can be redeemed at local stores. The Landing page could encourage prospects to find their local store and redeem their discount coupon.
5) Possibly utilize an 800# with an IVR phone system for tracking. Great Expectations, Inc. used an IVR system to track phone calls. The cost of their IVR was $.35 per minute. 3% of all their leads came from the IVR system.
6) Integrating your frontend/backend with your Conversion & Tracking software, and enabling an API to track the sales amount generated per keyword & the spend on that keyword.
I found myself using Matt McGee’s post How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes as a quick reference from time to time for my SEO efforts - basically a checklist of sorts to ensure I had covered all my bases. It was a great write-up that was very useful to many people judging from the comments and social buzz it recieved. I took the liberty of adding a few additional notes of my own, however, if there is anything I missed or overlooked please add it in the comments below. Contents SEO Checklist A: Homepage B: Site C: External SEO Checklist A1: Homepage - www.domain.com 1. Check for redirects and canonicalization issues 2. Choose http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com 3. Redirect domain.com/(index|main).(html|htm|php|cfm|asp) to domain.com
Apache redirects and editing .htaccess files: domain.com to www.domain.com Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc] rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
www.domain.com/index.php to www.domain.com RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.php [NC] RewriteRule . / [R=301,L] A2: Homepage – Navigation 1. Check for image, drop downs, javascript, image maps vs text navigation. Text is the best option. A3: Homepage – Content 1. How much text is present? The more the better. 2. Check for keyword density in homepage content http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html 3. Check for use of H2 tags and bold fonts (light/appropriate use is good on keywords) 4. There should be a sitemap present 5. Do a select all (ctrl + A) to find potentially hidden text 6. Check to see how search engines will view your site with SEO Browser. Make sure everything is crawlable.
B1: Site – Meta Tags 1. Check Title tags. Are they using keywords and are formatted correctly?
Brand authority formatting: Brand Name or Domain | Keyword, Keyword & Keyword
Non brand authority formatting Keyword, Keyword & Keyword | Brand Name or Domain
2. Check Descriptions for keywords and composition. Make sure the description gets to the point and speaks to the purpose/content on its respective page in the first couple sentences.
3. Make sure the keyword tag contains around 5 – 10 keywords. No more or less is really necessary.
4. Make sure there are no duplicate meta tags anywhere, site wide.
B2: Site – URL Formatting 1. Check url formatting. Dynamic URLs are bad. URLs that are too long will be truncated in Google SERPs. 2. URLs should contain keywords separated by hyphens. 3. Hyphens are more preferable than underscores 4. Keywords in URLs should match the content contained within the page they are leading to.
B3: Analytics 1. Make sure you have some sort of analytics installed. It doesn’t have to be Google analytics but do remember that every page within the site should contain the analytic tracking code. B4: Site – Links 1. Links should contain keywords 2. Links should contain titles utilizing keywords 3. Anchor text, link keywords, link title, and page being linked to should be relevant to one another. 4. Site linking structure should be cyclical. There should be no dangling pages. 5. Use Xenu Link Sleuth to check for broken links
B5: Site – nofollows (advanced) 1. nofollow TOS, Privacy Policy, or other pages that don’t contribute to your site’s ranking. 2. If you know how to link funnel correctly this should be done. I haven’t written anything on this yet but you can consult Slightly Shady SEO or Andy Beard B6: Site – Robots.txt 1. Check for robots.txt file. Does one exist? 2. See what’s being blocked and what’s not. 3. Make sure it’s written correctly (consult Sebastian’s Pamphlets for best advice) B7: Site – Duplicate Content 1. Make sure there is no duplicate content within your site 2. Make sure there is no duplicate content on other domains. You can use CopyScape to check for dupe content.
B8: Site – PDF files 1. Does this site contain PDF files? If so these can be optimized with new titles, keywords, and comments. Use Adobe Acrobat Professional to edit PDFs.
B9: Site – Images 1. Images can have ALT tags. Make sure to utilize these appropriately with keywords. When implemented, your site may gain traffic from image search engines like Google Image Search. C1: External – Indexation 1. Perform a site:domain.com search on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Compare what’s being indexed and what isn’t. *Install FireFox Extension Search Status by Craig Raw You’ll be able to easily perform this operative plus many other functions with the Search Status plugin. C2: External – Backlinks 1. Perform a backlink count with the Search Status plugin. 2. You may also want to install Joost de Valk’s backlink checker plugin for FireFox to check the anchor text of your Backlinks within Yahoo Site Explorer or Google’s Webmaster tools.
So that’s about all I can think of for the time being. If I forgot anything please submit your additions to this checklist in the comments below.
So much discussion in the SEO community today centers around social media because of its potential to drive traffic, increase awareness, and build links. The challenge of this new medium, though, is to marry social media tactics with real business goals.
Today's infographic over at Search Engine Land explores some ways that a business can leverage specific social sites to achieve departmental goals:
Graphic by Elliance, an eMarketing firm specializing in results-driven search engine marketing, web site design, and outbound eMarketing campaigns.
In this algorithmic age every search marketer charged with boosting rankings on the organic SERPs knows, with fearful certainty, that building inbound links is essential. Utilizing social media communities to do so is a front-and-center tactic for many.
However, there are hundreds of social communities other than the biggies. These niche' player-communities can be terrific venues to engage readers of similar likes, make friends, drive focused micro-busts of traffic, and build links. Some communities are junk. This post offers niche' social site examples and provides links to lists which index and profile dozens of useful ones. First, lets tackle the primary topic of discussion when 'social networking' arises.
Dofollow and Nofollow We have all heard the arguments both for and against. Most blogs (and many communities) these days attempt to discourage spam by removing "link-juice" passed on links dropped in discussion threads. That's called "Nofollow." (Wikipedia is a classic example of Nofollow.) Nofollow links deliver traffic but there's no SEO benefit (from Google anyway). If you view the source code of this page, you'll see that some of the social site links are Nofollow and therefore do not pass energy.
Every search marketing professional knows that garnering good quality, relevant, and "natural" inbound links to your site or blog is critical to drive your SEO ranking efforts. Honest participation in niche' social communities, relevant to your product & services, is the tactic that many savvy SEMs reach for to build their site's inbound link-profile. In addition to the community site links themselves, posts that turn hot can result in feed subscriptions, increased readership, and links from other relevant and valuable sites.
Fark is a social news site in which moderators approve user link-submissions and post them to the homepage. The links are Nofollow but can drive noticeable traffic.
Slashdot is a community where techno-heads hang out and geek-jam. However, users submit stories about entertainment, politics, and other fun stuff. If editors approve a submission and it's promoted the homepage, measurable traffic can result. Also, links in the body of each post are Dofollow and pass juice.
Metafilter is a moderated community, both by site administers and users, in which participants share interesting web content. Links are Dofollow.
Mixx is widely regarded as an up-and-comer in the social news world. A potentially mainstream Digg replacement site, many SEM folks had early-adopter Mixx profiles for fun and future marketing bang. Oh yes, they forget to turn off Dofollow so the links pass juice.
Hugg is a smaller community engaged in dialog surrounding environmental issues. There's social exchanges about technology, politics, and science as well. Links are Dofollow.
Sk*rt is a Dofollow PR 5 fashion, food, and technology community, primarily comprised of females.
Stirr'dup is a smaller NoFollow social news site which categorizes news as technology, entertainment, news and politics.
Linkinn is a PR5 site specializing in offbeat video and pictures. Links are DoFollow and pass juice.
Below are a couple of additional social news and bookmarking resources that will hopefully aid you in your social campaigns. Previous Social Bookmarking Posts:
Starting a new company is extremely hard, which is probably why most businesses fail within the first couple of years.
Challenges such as marketing and hiring the right staff are some of the major issues that even good managers struggle with.
Beyond that, starting a website is no small challenge either! It can be just as hard or even harder! As if things weren't difficult enough, Google gives people an extra hurdle which is sometimes called the "sandbox".
When you launch a new site, Google doesn't trust it at all. Even if the BBC launched a new site it would start off without any trust and would receive very little traffic.
As the site attracts links from other sites, it gradually earns enough trust to start ranking for some long tail search terms. Think of links as 'votes' that tell the Search Engines what your site is about and that it is trustworthy.
If the site gains enough trusted links it may start to rank highly for competitive keywords (ie keywords with lots of PPC advertisers) but this can take up to 24 months.
You are probably thinking that this is a harsh move by Google, but with the sheer volume of sites being launched it needs to have some method of making sure only the really good ones reach the top.
Luckily e-consultancy put together a couple of simple initial rules to follow to ensure your new website gets off on the right foot and reach the top quicker.
1. Your first links When you launch your brand new site the first few links can make all the difference. Linking to it from other trusted sites right out of the gate can dramatically shorten the time it takes to build trust. Conversely, starting a site off with low quality links is suicide.
Submit to a couple of trusted directories such as Business.com and the Yahoo! Directory and maybe link to the site from some of your other company's websites (link from the news sections to appear more natural).
2. Spin-off sites Sometimes a new site is a spin-off from a particular section of an existing site. For example, a car insurance site might have a caravan insurance section but then decide to launch a dedicated caravan insurance website.
In this case, the best method would be to create the new site on the new domain and not allow Google to access it. Then once the site was ready you would 301 redirect the old pages to the new pages and hope that the rankings and trust from the old domain passed across.
3. Building trust Most people try to get relevant links to their sites, which are great for improving rankings in a particular niche but not quite as good for building trust. The ideal links for building trust are from major blogs and news sites.
These can also be quite relevant as usually the article linking to you is related to your niche - even though the rest of the site isn't.
Sites that receive a lot of attention from the mainstream press almost always start ranking a lot more quickly than sites that don't have the benefit of a large PR budget.
