In the world of SEO, you’re really only as good as the tools you use.
Those who take on DIY SEO with a firm intuitive stance do so at their
own risk. For most of us, what we assume folks will do to search and
find our business on the web doesn’t come close to hitting the mark. We
should never bank the success of our business on the instincts we have
about our customers – especially when there are plenty of tools to
validate and guide us.
The good news is, there are oodles of tools out there built to help
the DIY SEO marketer. The bad news is, it’s incredibly tough to filter
out the good from the bad. Let this article do the interviewing process –
these tools and services are tried, tested, and approved to actually
help you achieve and maintain ranking improvements.
Tools for Keyword Research
All SEO is built on a foundation of strategically selected keywords.
While your keywords may change over time, they truly do create the
structure from which all content, copy, and marketing directions are
based on. Therefore, it’s advisable to use a couple of different free or
paid tools to help you target the ideal keywords for your business.
Google AdWords
Google’s suite of products vary in efficiency and usefulness, but AdWords
is a slam dunk. This tool is beneficial not so much for actual hard
numbers, but as an analysis for how popular a given search term is in
the current market. Use it as a means of comparison for your top keyword
selections. AdWords is excellent at visually displaying what terms work
best. It’s also aces at inspiring you to branch out, and generating
additional keyword ideas you may not have yet considered.
SEO Book
Completely free and highly useful, SEO Book
has a slew of offerings to enjoy while you hunt for the perfect
keywords. Check out the keyword density analyzer, a PPC keyword wrapper,
page comparison tool – even a typo generator that displays the common
misspellings for selected keywords. Don’t move forward with your
keywords without first consulting this site for validation and
assistance.
Tools for Paid Search and Keyword Ranking
While organic tactics are absolutely necessary for long-term success,
some businesses choose to use paid search for a quick shot of ranking
adrenaline. Here are some tools and services that can aid in this
process.
SEMRush
SEMRush offers a few free tools
for the SEO practitioner, but their monthly subscription product is
really where the meat of their service lies. Use SEMRush to discover
what keywords your competitors are using for both organic and paid
search results (free accounts only see the top 10, whereas paid accounts
get the whole enchilada.) Paid accounts also have access to organic
rankings for any domain, search volume for keywords, total number of
search results, and many more informative parameters.
PPC Partners
Paid search is a challenging space to take on as a DIY-er, so this is
one area where you’re best served to enlist an expert. There are a lot
of pay-per-click (PPC) firms out there, and who you choose should be a
direct reflection of your business. For most small business owners,
hiring a reasonably priced, mid-sized firm is ideal. You’ll get personal
attention from experts who have bona fide experience. Since you’re
looking to invest real cash in this paid search, make sure to find one
that has testimonials to back up their claims.
Two examples of reputable, results-orientated PPC providers are Webrageous and JumpFly.
Both get high reviews for things like customer service, response,
innovation, and fair pricing structures, so they both represent a good
place to start your quest for stellar paid search results.
Tools to Monitor SEO Results
All the SEO efforts in the world are meaningless if you’re not
tracking the actual success or failure rates. It’s not always easy to
decipher the story that analytics are actually attempting to tell, so
it’s important to choose tools that help demystify the process, and
provide how-to guidance in reading each segment.
Authority Labs
Authority Labs keeps it
simple – enter a domain into their main interface, and you’re able to
track keyword rankings effortlessly. That’s the free portion of the
site. If you’re willing to pay for a Pro plan (or just enjoy the free 30
day trial), you can watch up to 50 domains and 1,000 keywords
(unlimited for higher subscriptions.) This is powerful stuff to gauge
how your keywords are truly performing.
Raven Tools
If you’re opting for a paid tool across the board, Raven Tools
is a sure bet. Built by an SEO agency for SEO experts, Raven covers
just about every aspect of SEO planning and tracking. Their metrics
tracking is absolutely stellar. It’s powerful in part because Raven
Tools draws data from a bevy of sources, including SEMoz, Google
Analytics and Webmaster Tools, and of course, Google AdWords. It’s a bit
like one-stop-shopping in the world of SEO. The interface is intuitive,
how-to guides are easy to read and very effective, and you’ll be
thrilled with the level of detail and variety of available tools and
assistance.
Via SPN
The Best Tools for Do-It-Yourself SEO
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Is SEO Still Standard Operating Procedure?
In this article I will discuss how search engine optimization has
evolved in order to become Search Engine Marketing (aka S.E.M.). I will
also provide you with information that will show you how you can improve
your search ranking. This includes techniques designed to insure a
strong ranking position. Best of all, you can accomplish all this
without resorting to tricks, gimmicks or deception that attempts to
hoodwink the search engine spiders.
Stop Acting Like it’s 1999
Before the turn of the century, achieving search ranking was relatively simple. You selected a keyword relevant to your business, created a website and added the desired keywords to your content. You made sure you included the keywords in Meta and Alt tags. Then you posted your web pages to the top 100 search engines and directories. Voila! If you chose your keywords carefully, you soon showed up on page one of Yahoo, AltaVista, Net Taxi and other search engines.
Today it isn’t so simple. The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are mostly concerned with quality content, delivered on a timely basis. Google has even admitted that it no longer even gives Meta Tags a second glance. This content needs to be diversified (web pages, blogs, social media, videos etc…) and it needs to be highly relevant to the keyword or phrases that are searched. Today if you meet these criteria you will do well in organic search, (assuming your competition is not better at it than you). If you ignore these items then your chances of showing up on page one are slim at best.
Is On-Site Optimization Dead?
I am often asked is web page optimization still important? My answer is yes. Google and all other search engines still prowl websites as part of their ranking algorithm. Today, on-site optimization only accounts for about 25% of the overall score. However, it is still very important. If this on-page information is incorrect, missing, or doesn’t match the content, search engines will either ignore or misinterpret your content and rank you low or not at all. Either way it means bad news for your website. Make sure your on-page information is formatted to match the content and desired keywords. Otherwise your quest to be on page one will end before it begins.
Is SEM Different than SEO?
Search Engine Marketing is much more comprehensive than Search Engine Optimization. It includes all your websites plus your blog posts, social network posts, any PR posts, all pod casts and video posts. In essence, S.E.M. encompasses all web postings of any kind. Yet it also means more than this. S.E.M. is also a methodology designed to meet the search content requirements that provide high ranking. In other words, your success or failure is predicated on doing what the search engines want, not trying to trick them into giving you better ranking. When trying to rank highly on Google, this point is even more critical.
What Does Google Want?
Google loves mixed media, which includes video, photos, podcasts, and more. The reason they do this is due to the fact that Google is looking to determine who is serving the public the best content for any specific search. The googlebots evaluate your content for relevancy, usefulness, quality, consistency, timeliness, connectedness, positive feedback and diversity of format (web pages, blogs, social media, videos etc…). These are some busy bots.
Game the System at Your Own Peril
Gone are the days when you could easily trick the search engines in order to get a high ranking. Google has employed a multi-tier approach to detect most chicanery. Their new algorithms penalize such practices as keyword stuffing, duplicate sites, backlink farms and many other patently deceptive practices. On top of that they have hired a hoard of website evaluators that physically check out your pages, posts and back links. If Google catches you cheating they will downgrade your ranking or remove you from search altogether. Cheating Google no long means just a slap on the wrist. It can mean banishment!
How Can Content Marketing Help You Gain the High Ground?
A decade ago posting a properly optimized websites was all it took to achieve ranking. Today’s internet audience is far more savvy and sophisticated. Today’s websurfers prefer video and photos to text, provided they can find it. If you have a video on page one above the fold, it has a high probability of being viewed and acted upon. We know that statistically, videos will receive 80% of all clicks if they are highly visible. However, videos are not the be all end all of search results. Blog posts can also garner strong position in Google rankings. The same is true for social media posts that that have a high sharing factor (gone viral). Google also loves web pages that receive lots of positive ratings (especially Google Local or Map pages with Google +1 ratings and four or more stars.
The bottom line is that while SEO is not dead, it has changed so radically in the past few years that the rules of the game have changed. If you want to win, you need to adjust your approach and start creating compelling content that both the search engine bots and the public want to view.
Via SPN
Is SEO Still Standard Operating Procedure?
Stop Acting Like it’s 1999
Before the turn of the century, achieving search ranking was relatively simple. You selected a keyword relevant to your business, created a website and added the desired keywords to your content. You made sure you included the keywords in Meta and Alt tags. Then you posted your web pages to the top 100 search engines and directories. Voila! If you chose your keywords carefully, you soon showed up on page one of Yahoo, AltaVista, Net Taxi and other search engines.
Today it isn’t so simple. The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are mostly concerned with quality content, delivered on a timely basis. Google has even admitted that it no longer even gives Meta Tags a second glance. This content needs to be diversified (web pages, blogs, social media, videos etc…) and it needs to be highly relevant to the keyword or phrases that are searched. Today if you meet these criteria you will do well in organic search, (assuming your competition is not better at it than you). If you ignore these items then your chances of showing up on page one are slim at best.
Is On-Site Optimization Dead?
I am often asked is web page optimization still important? My answer is yes. Google and all other search engines still prowl websites as part of their ranking algorithm. Today, on-site optimization only accounts for about 25% of the overall score. However, it is still very important. If this on-page information is incorrect, missing, or doesn’t match the content, search engines will either ignore or misinterpret your content and rank you low or not at all. Either way it means bad news for your website. Make sure your on-page information is formatted to match the content and desired keywords. Otherwise your quest to be on page one will end before it begins.
Is SEM Different than SEO?
Search Engine Marketing is much more comprehensive than Search Engine Optimization. It includes all your websites plus your blog posts, social network posts, any PR posts, all pod casts and video posts. In essence, S.E.M. encompasses all web postings of any kind. Yet it also means more than this. S.E.M. is also a methodology designed to meet the search content requirements that provide high ranking. In other words, your success or failure is predicated on doing what the search engines want, not trying to trick them into giving you better ranking. When trying to rank highly on Google, this point is even more critical.
What Does Google Want?
Google loves mixed media, which includes video, photos, podcasts, and more. The reason they do this is due to the fact that Google is looking to determine who is serving the public the best content for any specific search. The googlebots evaluate your content for relevancy, usefulness, quality, consistency, timeliness, connectedness, positive feedback and diversity of format (web pages, blogs, social media, videos etc…). These are some busy bots.
Game the System at Your Own Peril
Gone are the days when you could easily trick the search engines in order to get a high ranking. Google has employed a multi-tier approach to detect most chicanery. Their new algorithms penalize such practices as keyword stuffing, duplicate sites, backlink farms and many other patently deceptive practices. On top of that they have hired a hoard of website evaluators that physically check out your pages, posts and back links. If Google catches you cheating they will downgrade your ranking or remove you from search altogether. Cheating Google no long means just a slap on the wrist. It can mean banishment!
How Can Content Marketing Help You Gain the High Ground?
A decade ago posting a properly optimized websites was all it took to achieve ranking. Today’s internet audience is far more savvy and sophisticated. Today’s websurfers prefer video and photos to text, provided they can find it. If you have a video on page one above the fold, it has a high probability of being viewed and acted upon. We know that statistically, videos will receive 80% of all clicks if they are highly visible. However, videos are not the be all end all of search results. Blog posts can also garner strong position in Google rankings. The same is true for social media posts that that have a high sharing factor (gone viral). Google also loves web pages that receive lots of positive ratings (especially Google Local or Map pages with Google +1 ratings and four or more stars.
The bottom line is that while SEO is not dead, it has changed so radically in the past few years that the rules of the game have changed. If you want to win, you need to adjust your approach and start creating compelling content that both the search engine bots and the public want to view.
Via SPN
Is SEO Still Standard Operating Procedure?
What Does Social Media Have to Do With SEO?
Nothing and Everything
In 2007 I wrote:
“My fear, with all the hype about social media marketing, is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.
It isn’t. Not by a long shot.”
And yet by 2008 I was writing:
“If you’re marketing websites, scary as it may sound, you need to learn about social media.”
So what changed?
Even before Panda and Penguin, how Google determined the relevancy of any given web page was changing. Traditionally, the main relevancy signals that search engines looked at were:
And this worked fairly well for quite a while.
But website owners being greedy and SEOs being…well…SEOs, links became a commodity to be bought and sold in order to provide higher rankings for web pages. One consequence of that was the scarcity of people linking to stuff they liked just because they liked it. Links pages that most websites used to have in order to provide additional resources for their site visitors are now thought of as “spammy” and rarely exist anymore. Sure, bloggers might still mention other sites that they like and even provide links to them, but many blog platforms automatically add the NoFollow attribute to those links, causing them to not be counted by Google. Plus, bloggers also understand the value of a link and don’t always disclose whether any money or gifts exchanged hands.
Beyond the gaming of links, however, the trouble with counting links as votes is that not everyone has a website or a blog. How do you count the votes of the average teenager or mom or business manager?
This is where social media comes into play.
It’s simple. Anyone can quickly and easily tweet, Facebook, Google+, Reddit, or Yelp their opinions about anything and everything.
With the ability to discuss news articles, blog posts, websites, business establishments, brands, universities, restaurants, and just life in general at the tip of the average person’s fingertips, it would be ridiculous for search engines not to pay attention.
While officially Google claims they’re not directly factoring social signals into their ranking algorithms, I don’t buy it for a second. They would be completely and utterly remiss not to, and they’re not that dumb. In fact, they’re pretty smart.
This is why my 2008 quote is even truer today than it was when I wrote it. If you’re marketing a business, having a strong social media presence is no longer optional. It is essential.
But just like links, not all social media signals or mentions are created equal. Don’t think that you can just create social media accounts, hook them up to the RSS feeds of your content and be done with it. The social media links back to your content (which generally have the NoFollow attribute on them) won’t provide any sort of signal to Google unless you truly participate.
If you want your “vote” to count in social media, here are a few tips you need to remember:
Be Selective in Whom You Follow
If you follow back everyone who follows you, your profiles will be less likely to be trusted. Just as Google’s PageRank algorithm can determine trustworthy pages based on who links to them, Google can also determine trustworthy social media accounts in the same way. If you’re following spambots, you’re not paying attention. And if you’re not paying attention, why should Google trust you?
Be Selective in What You Recommend
If you tweet or retweet low-quality content (be it your own or others’) it’s going to be noticed. Perhaps not by Google, but certainly by authority accounts who might otherwise have followed you. Which leads me to the next tip:
Your Accounts Must be Followed by Other Authorities in Your Space
Authorities don’t get to be authorities by following just anyone. They pick and choose based on who they themselves feel are qualified and trustworthy. Therefore, if other highly trustworthy people follow you, there’s a good chance you’re trustworthy as well.
Have a Byline and use Rel=Author on All Your Content
It’s imperative to associate a name and face with all of the content on your website these days, in order to ensure that Google knows it’s trustworthy. If you haven’t already, get your site up to speed with the Google Authorship program as soon as possible.
Install Twitter Card Code on Your Content Pages
If your target audience is on Twitter, you should definitely be participating there. And if you are, then you also need to add the Twitter Card code to your site. This adds more information and images to any content that you or others promote from your site. Right now, Twitter Cards give you a huge advantage over your competitors who aren’t yet using it (it’s fairly new). If you use WordPress, I highly recommend the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin for this feature as well as the Rel=Author attribute mentioned above (and lots of other features as well!).
While it can take a lot of time to build up trustworthy social media profiles, in the long run it will be well worth it. Think about it. If your profiles are considered trustworthy, then every piece of content you mention will surely have a better chance of being noticed by Google. Of course, your mention alone isn’t going to provide much weight, especially if you’re talking about your own content. But if other trustworthy social media profiles are also citing that same content, you can be certain that it will be a very strong signal to Google.
Now, I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that this is what Google is doing today. But if they’re not, surely they will be very soon. In fact, in Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts’ latest Webmaster Video, What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?, he said that they were “working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated link analysis.”
Feel free to draw your own conclusion as to what that means!
By Jill Whalen in SPN
What Does Social Media Have to Do With SEO?
In 2007 I wrote:
“My fear, with all the hype about social media marketing, is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.
It isn’t. Not by a long shot.”
And yet by 2008 I was writing:
“If you’re marketing websites, scary as it may sound, you need to learn about social media.”
So what changed?
Even before Panda and Penguin, how Google determined the relevancy of any given web page was changing. Traditionally, the main relevancy signals that search engines looked at were:
- On-page relevance
- Trust and authority
- Links
And this worked fairly well for quite a while.
But website owners being greedy and SEOs being…well…SEOs, links became a commodity to be bought and sold in order to provide higher rankings for web pages. One consequence of that was the scarcity of people linking to stuff they liked just because they liked it. Links pages that most websites used to have in order to provide additional resources for their site visitors are now thought of as “spammy” and rarely exist anymore. Sure, bloggers might still mention other sites that they like and even provide links to them, but many blog platforms automatically add the NoFollow attribute to those links, causing them to not be counted by Google. Plus, bloggers also understand the value of a link and don’t always disclose whether any money or gifts exchanged hands.
Beyond the gaming of links, however, the trouble with counting links as votes is that not everyone has a website or a blog. How do you count the votes of the average teenager or mom or business manager?
This is where social media comes into play.
It’s simple. Anyone can quickly and easily tweet, Facebook, Google+, Reddit, or Yelp their opinions about anything and everything.
With the ability to discuss news articles, blog posts, websites, business establishments, brands, universities, restaurants, and just life in general at the tip of the average person’s fingertips, it would be ridiculous for search engines not to pay attention.
While officially Google claims they’re not directly factoring social signals into their ranking algorithms, I don’t buy it for a second. They would be completely and utterly remiss not to, and they’re not that dumb. In fact, they’re pretty smart.
This is why my 2008 quote is even truer today than it was when I wrote it. If you’re marketing a business, having a strong social media presence is no longer optional. It is essential.
But just like links, not all social media signals or mentions are created equal. Don’t think that you can just create social media accounts, hook them up to the RSS feeds of your content and be done with it. The social media links back to your content (which generally have the NoFollow attribute on them) won’t provide any sort of signal to Google unless you truly participate.
If you want your “vote” to count in social media, here are a few tips you need to remember:
Be Selective in Whom You Follow
If you follow back everyone who follows you, your profiles will be less likely to be trusted. Just as Google’s PageRank algorithm can determine trustworthy pages based on who links to them, Google can also determine trustworthy social media accounts in the same way. If you’re following spambots, you’re not paying attention. And if you’re not paying attention, why should Google trust you?
Be Selective in What You Recommend
If you tweet or retweet low-quality content (be it your own or others’) it’s going to be noticed. Perhaps not by Google, but certainly by authority accounts who might otherwise have followed you. Which leads me to the next tip:
Your Accounts Must be Followed by Other Authorities in Your Space
Authorities don’t get to be authorities by following just anyone. They pick and choose based on who they themselves feel are qualified and trustworthy. Therefore, if other highly trustworthy people follow you, there’s a good chance you’re trustworthy as well.
Have a Byline and use Rel=Author on All Your Content
It’s imperative to associate a name and face with all of the content on your website these days, in order to ensure that Google knows it’s trustworthy. If you haven’t already, get your site up to speed with the Google Authorship program as soon as possible.
Install Twitter Card Code on Your Content Pages
If your target audience is on Twitter, you should definitely be participating there. And if you are, then you also need to add the Twitter Card code to your site. This adds more information and images to any content that you or others promote from your site. Right now, Twitter Cards give you a huge advantage over your competitors who aren’t yet using it (it’s fairly new). If you use WordPress, I highly recommend the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin for this feature as well as the Rel=Author attribute mentioned above (and lots of other features as well!).
While it can take a lot of time to build up trustworthy social media profiles, in the long run it will be well worth it. Think about it. If your profiles are considered trustworthy, then every piece of content you mention will surely have a better chance of being noticed by Google. Of course, your mention alone isn’t going to provide much weight, especially if you’re talking about your own content. But if other trustworthy social media profiles are also citing that same content, you can be certain that it will be a very strong signal to Google.
Now, I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that this is what Google is doing today. But if they’re not, surely they will be very soon. In fact, in Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts’ latest Webmaster Video, What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?, he said that they were “working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated link analysis.”
Feel free to draw your own conclusion as to what that means!
By Jill Whalen in SPN
What Does Social Media Have to Do With SEO?
New Google tool helps you boost your site search ranking ‘SEO Auditor’
You may have heard about a number of Google products being discontinued
recently (Google Reader, Google Alerts); the good news, however, is that
Google is releasing a number of new services including the
Evernote-beating ‘Google Keep’ and now ‘Google SEO Auditor’, due to be
released on May 27th.
‘Google SEO Auditor’ is unusual in that it is designed to help webmasters discover common reasons why their Google search result rankings may be suffering, that do not pertain to the external environment or the quality of the content itself. The new product came out a Google effort to redefine who their customers are: “we have always stressed that we want to provide the best user experience” says Google Webspam team leader Matt Cutts, “but we sometimes almost forget that the content providers are as much our customers as searchers are, and that Google could not function as a search engine without them”. This new approach is where ‘Google SEO Auditor’ was borne.
Note: this article was published as an April fools spoof meant as a critique of Google. The product and interview and everything else are not real.
“The point is”, Cutts continues, “
The audit tool will also have an A/B testing function with respect to site redesign. It will ‘capture’ and keep a snapshot of your site every month and will be able to tell you whether changes to your site and/or site redesign are helping your SEO standing or hindering it – irrespective of any other variables that may be affecting your actual SERP rankings. Says Cutts: “Webmasters see SERP variability and think it is because we changed the rules or because of something they did on the site”. “The truth is, so much of ranking variability has nothing to do with any of that, but rather on changes in the outside environment, such as new articles being published on the topic or a downward trend in searches on certain keywords that is resulting in less search traffic”. “SEO Auditor is designed to give insight on what you can do internally, with respect to site design and structure, so that webmasters know that their site has good SEO optimization, and that if they want to get a higher SERP ranking they need to focus on writing newer, more innovative, or more compelling content”.
When asked for more examples, Cutts says: “there are things that the tool can do right off the bat. For example, why shouldn’t a webmaster know their links on certain pages are diluting page rank, or that removing this or that link might have a x% likelihood of increasing his/her SERP ranking, or that moving an ad from its current position could have an x% positive effect, or that Google deems certain pages as duplicate content that, if removed, might have a certain probability of increasing search rankings? Why keep people guessing?”
But the tool will also provide some actionable SEO metrics on signals that Google cares about, that you cannot get anywhere else “such as the click-through rate and the bounce rate for each page as calculated by Google, which will make it easy for the tool to suggest improvements and for content creators to identify areas of opportunity right away”.
A/B testing across time: Google SEO Auditor will have an inward focus: you will not be able to compare your sites to other sites, but you will be able to compare your site to previous snapshots of itself across time. “A lot of people report that their spiffy, new site redesign that may have won awards has caused a 20% loss of in search traffic or something like that. SEO Auditor will be able to measure this irrespective of outside variables, and shed light on why it may have happened. One site, for example, had a great looking redesign that inadvertently suppressed all the meta descriptions for their articles, which were previously generating excellent click-through. Things like this the tool will be able to identify easily”.
There will be restrictions, though: you will only be able to perform an audit once per month. Says Cutts: “this is so as not to overwhelm the API and to finesse the service, but also to limit any potential abusive use. Once we have more data on how people use the tool and where it can best add value, we will increase the number of monthly audits to two or possibly three”.
Most of the issues that the tool will help address are “well known to most good SEOs; there are no real secrets here. Sure, there’s always the risk that the tool will be used by black hat SEOs, but we will always be one or two steps ahead”.
But Cutts is mindful of the criticisms that are leveled at Panda: “In some cases people point to lower quality pages now being served while better articles have fallen off the page. I have seen many of these, but we consider it as evidence that Panda still has a long way to go”. He goes further: “I will admit there were a lot of unforeseen consequences. We did not set out to favor CPM ads – which can be placed anywhere on the page – over CPC ads, but that is in effect what happened, and it hurt some sites.” Taking this further, we asked Cutts about the idea that sites that already had a lot of traffic ended up with a major advantage over bloggers or smaller sites after Panda, and that Google created an environment where sideboobs and celebrities are what you need to survive on the internet, while serious or independent publishers are suffering. Cutts had the following to say: “what we are trying to do is look at the content first and foremost, not on the viability of a site’s business model. Perhaps that independent blogger shouldn’t have quit his job doing lead-gen marketing or whatever it is to publish his or her blog”.
“People said that Panda was too disruptive, that it was tantamount to doing medical experiments on live patients … that it killed many good sites … all that may be true, but our job is to look at the bigger picture, at how we can better serve our customers. We make mistakes like everyone else and we are not infallible. I am not sure why people don’t realize that in the end we are just a business and a lot of what we do is mere trial and error”.
On his hopes for the SEO Auditor tool, Matt was effusive: “going forward we hope that the tool can provide us with information that we currently don’t have, such as whether it can help shape better quality websites in the long term. But also, we would like it to evolve in such a way that content creators themselves can shape the Google algorithm in a legitimate and value added way. For example, we are not really equipped to know – definitively – whether the articles we serve for any given keyword are the best possible picks. Those who create the content are better placed to make this judgment, and we want to have a mechanism where they can give us this feedback, to say ‘hey, the articles for this keyword are not the best, and my article or other articles are better for the following reasons’. We want our technology to be able to take this feedback, sift through it, and learn from it.”
Posted in freewaregenius.com
New Google tool helps you boost your site search ranking ‘SEO Auditor’
‘Google SEO Auditor’ is unusual in that it is designed to help webmasters discover common reasons why their Google search result rankings may be suffering, that do not pertain to the external environment or the quality of the content itself. The new product came out a Google effort to redefine who their customers are: “we have always stressed that we want to provide the best user experience” says Google Webspam team leader Matt Cutts, “but we sometimes almost forget that the content providers are as much our customers as searchers are, and that Google could not function as a search engine without them”. This new approach is where ‘Google SEO Auditor’ was borne.
Note: this article was published as an April fools spoof meant as a critique of Google. The product and interview and everything else are not real.
How the project came to be:
Although the notion of a Google tool to help webmasters figure out how their sites can be more Google friendly will surprise many people, it will not be any sort of panacea that will answer all SEO related questions. Rather, Google has identified several different areas that webmasters – even those who purport to be SEO savvy and give SEO-related advice – frequently trip on. Says Cutts: “there are issues that we see over and over again, that constitute more than 80% of questions that we receive whenever we do a Q&A session, and that do not seem to go away”. He continues “our desire for a tool such as Google SEO Auditor came because we wanted to take the SEO conversation further. There is no reason to keep talking about the same things over and over with highly intelligent people when these subjects should not have been controversial in the first place – the tool can take care of these”.“The point is”, Cutts continues, “
The aim of ‘Google SEO Auditor’ is to take the burden of having to become SEO experts off the shoulders of writers and bloggerswe keep saying that content creators should focus on the content and leave the rest to us, but realistically that is impossible. The aim of ‘Google SEO Auditor’ is to take the burden of having to become SEO experts off the shoulders of writers and bloggers, and free them to do what they do best, which is to create content”.
The audit tool will also have an A/B testing function with respect to site redesign. It will ‘capture’ and keep a snapshot of your site every month and will be able to tell you whether changes to your site and/or site redesign are helping your SEO standing or hindering it – irrespective of any other variables that may be affecting your actual SERP rankings. Says Cutts: “Webmasters see SERP variability and think it is because we changed the rules or because of something they did on the site”. “The truth is, so much of ranking variability has nothing to do with any of that, but rather on changes in the outside environment, such as new articles being published on the topic or a downward trend in searches on certain keywords that is resulting in less search traffic”. “SEO Auditor is designed to give insight on what you can do internally, with respect to site design and structure, so that webmasters know that their site has good SEO optimization, and that if they want to get a higher SERP ranking they need to focus on writing newer, more innovative, or more compelling content”.
SEO Auditor: what it will and will not do
Google SEO Auditor was designed to provide an assessment tool for your site to test it across several parameters. It will provide simple suggestions based on probability, but will not provide any guarantees for SERP ranking performance. Per Cutts: “the tool can make probabilistic inferences, that noindexing taxonomy pages for example has a 1% or 2% probability or what have you on raising your SERP ranking. It does not guarantee any positive changes, because there are other variables as well, but will certainly help webmasters avoid common pitfalls”.When asked for more examples, Cutts says: “there are things that the tool can do right off the bat. For example, why shouldn’t a webmaster know their links on certain pages are diluting page rank, or that removing this or that link might have a x% likelihood of increasing his/her SERP ranking, or that moving an ad from its current position could have an x% positive effect, or that Google deems certain pages as duplicate content that, if removed, might have a certain probability of increasing search rankings? Why keep people guessing?”
But the tool will also provide some actionable SEO metrics on signals that Google cares about, that you cannot get anywhere else “such as the click-through rate and the bounce rate for each page as calculated by Google, which will make it easy for the tool to suggest improvements and for content creators to identify areas of opportunity right away”.
A/B testing across time: Google SEO Auditor will have an inward focus: you will not be able to compare your sites to other sites, but you will be able to compare your site to previous snapshots of itself across time. “A lot of people report that their spiffy, new site redesign that may have won awards has caused a 20% loss of in search traffic or something like that. SEO Auditor will be able to measure this irrespective of outside variables, and shed light on why it may have happened. One site, for example, had a great looking redesign that inadvertently suppressed all the meta descriptions for their articles, which were previously generating excellent click-through. Things like this the tool will be able to identify easily”.
Rollout: initially, by invitation only
If you can’t wait to get started with “Google SEO Auditor”, you might need to wait, because Google will start rolling it out at the end of May by invitation only. They will start by sending out 500,000 invites via Webmaster central accounts, randomly, to sites across a wide range of verticals. “For the first year our aim is to get 10 million sites using the service, before we open it up completely to everyone”.There will be restrictions, though: you will only be able to perform an audit once per month. Says Cutts: “this is so as not to overwhelm the API and to finesse the service, but also to limit any potential abusive use. Once we have more data on how people use the tool and where it can best add value, we will increase the number of monthly audits to two or possibly three”.
Will the Audit Tool make Google transparent, less opaque?
This tool is inward focused, designed to help webmasters improve the quality of their sites.When asked if this tool marks a departure for Google from its secretive stance with respect to its search algorithms, Cutts laughs: “not really. This tool is inward focused, designed to help webmasters improve the quality of their sites. There is so much more to SEO than this”.
Most of the issues that the tool will help address are “well known to most good SEOs; there are no real secrets here. Sure, there’s always the risk that the tool will be used by black hat SEOs, but we will always be one or two steps ahead”.
Matt Cutts on Panda, Penguin and his hopes for SEO Auditor
Want to know what Matt Cutts really thinks about the changes brought about by the so-called Panda and Penguin algorithm changes? “It’s been a remarkable success, I think. Look – there are millions of sites that get launched each year, and only 10 placements on that first page of results, so Google pages cannot be sclerotic, the SERPs have to be constantly changing in order to provide the best quality results for searchers”But Cutts is mindful of the criticisms that are leveled at Panda: “In some cases people point to lower quality pages now being served while better articles have fallen off the page. I have seen many of these, but we consider it as evidence that Panda still has a long way to go”. He goes further: “I will admit there were a lot of unforeseen consequences. We did not set out to favor CPM ads – which can be placed anywhere on the page – over CPC ads, but that is in effect what happened, and it hurt some sites.” Taking this further, we asked Cutts about the idea that sites that already had a lot of traffic ended up with a major advantage over bloggers or smaller sites after Panda, and that Google created an environment where sideboobs and celebrities are what you need to survive on the internet, while serious or independent publishers are suffering. Cutts had the following to say: “what we are trying to do is look at the content first and foremost, not on the viability of a site’s business model. Perhaps that independent blogger shouldn’t have quit his job doing lead-gen marketing or whatever it is to publish his or her blog”.
“People said that Panda was too disruptive, that it was tantamount to doing medical experiments on live patients … that it killed many good sites … all that may be true, but our job is to look at the bigger picture, at how we can better serve our customers. We make mistakes like everyone else and we are not infallible. I am not sure why people don’t realize that in the end we are just a business and a lot of what we do is mere trial and error”.
On his hopes for the SEO Auditor tool, Matt was effusive: “going forward we hope that the tool can provide us with information that we currently don’t have, such as whether it can help shape better quality websites in the long term. But also, we would like it to evolve in such a way that content creators themselves can shape the Google algorithm in a legitimate and value added way. For example, we are not really equipped to know – definitively – whether the articles we serve for any given keyword are the best possible picks. Those who create the content are better placed to make this judgment, and we want to have a mechanism where they can give us this feedback, to say ‘hey, the articles for this keyword are not the best, and my article or other articles are better for the following reasons’. We want our technology to be able to take this feedback, sift through it, and learn from it.”
There is the sense that our work is solipsistic and self-confirming. SEO Auditor is intended to counter this“Look – we have some of the smartest engineers and number crunchers in the world, but without some sort of legitimate feedback mechanism from both searchers and content creators, there is always the sense that we inhabit some sort of sensory depravation tank that is making us less effective and smart than we could be. There is the sense that our work is solipsistic and self-confirming. SEO Auditor is intended to counter this, to acknowledge that the content creators are our partners, and to provide a way to have a value added and mutually beneficial conversation with them in the future.”
Posted in freewaregenius.com
New Google tool helps you boost your site search ranking ‘SEO Auditor’
Google Takes Another Bite Out of SEO: First Links and Now Keywords
For search engine marketers — and the companies who depend on them —
things just got a little tougher. SEO companies, most still reeling from
the impact of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, aren’t going to like
what the CEO of LinkSmart reported in Forbes on Jan. 22.
It’s not just links that are taking a hit from Google — now keywords are in trouble too, according to Pete Sheinbaum, who was the CEO of Daily Candy before taking the helm at LinkSmart. Google put an end to the easy acquisition of links, which for more than a decade had been essential to search engine rankings.
Links remain important, but their overall value has diminished. Worse for SEO specialists, quality links have to be earned. Google stripped sites of many links they deemed forced, purchased or otherwise tainted and now makes it harder for sites to gain links. Content marketing and social media marketing are usurping SEO’s dominance in link-building as Google now rates links based on perceived value — a link from an article published in a high-authority magazine or shared on Twitter — gets more Google love than links from ezines and directories.
Google Shields Search Results Data
And now, Sheinbaum says in Forbes, keywords are also losing their importance in marketing.
Google isn’t discounting keywords as it did links. But it’s making it harder for websites and advertisers to know what keywords drive traffic. Google is keeping much of that information to itself and may become increasingly stingy about releasing it in the future, Sheinbaum says.
If, for example, your marketing strategy revolves around keywords such as “how to make money online,” you may be paying a search engine company to put those keywords in anchor text and spending money on pay-per-click advertising based on the phrase “how to make money online.”
Google is not stopping you from spending money this way, but the company is making it harder to track results. You may not know if someone visited your site because of the keywords or because of some random reason.
What happened? Google used to freely pass along reports about keywords. But for any site that uses Google analytics — and about 57 percent do, according to study by Optify — Google keeps this information private. This is good for Google — it acquires information for its own advertising purposes — but bad for other companies who sell advertising based on traffic and keywords.
This means that marketers and advertisers are going to have a harder time analyzing traffic on their websites — and justifying their rates to website owners. Owners who want to get the most out of their marketing dollars — and SEO companies who want to keep earning their fees — will have to look beyond raw data and try to look deeper into the meaning of traffic rises and dips.
If traffic rises on a Tuesday, falls two days later and picks up five days after that, simple data will no longer provide the reason. It will be necessary to examine what changed on Tuesday — content was published on a high-authority site or a new ad campaign launch — what happened in the four days of slower traffic and on the fifth when traffic picked up.
New Strategies Needed
Todd Mumford , CEO of SEO Visions, says the information in the Forbes article should not alarm search engine specialists. For one thing, he says, Google started shielding keyword information months ago and savvy online marketers and company owners are already employing new strategies to test the strength of campaigns.
Mumford, interviewed for this article, cited three key ways to analyze traffic data despite Google’s attempts to keep the information to itself:
1. Google Webmaster Tools
These tools allow website owners to see statistics on daily average traffic, prominent search queries, ranking position and other statistics.
These tools do not, however, always provide accurate results. Google webmaster tools reports, for example that DavidAndersonWealth.com ranks at position 81 in the US, but it has rested in position 33 to 38 for several weeks.
2. Site Search
This tool helps owners and markets understand keywords relevant to a customer buy cycle — you can find out what keywords customers click on (or ignore) when they’re on your site and adjust accordingly. Mumford says websites can synchronize site search with Google to help synch up their data with Google’s.
3. Site Surveys
Mumford says site surveys can be a very effective way to collect data provided your website has a decent amount of daily traffic. Such surveys can be more valuable than Google analytics, he says, because they do a better job of capturing user intent. Questions, ratings and comments on your site tell you more about your customers — and how to market to them — than the keywords they click on.
When you understand your customers, you can match keywords to their intent without Google’s help. If, for example, your site visitors click more frequently on words such as “lose weight now” than “get healthy,” you can build your content and marketing accordingly.
Bottom Line
Traffic analysis requires more nuance — and more guessing — and companies may make more missteps than they’re used to until their tracking skills become better refined.
Google is growing up and forcing website owners and online marketers to grow up, too.
David Anderson, a post from SPN
Google Takes Another Bite Out of SEO: First Links and Now Keywords
It’s not just links that are taking a hit from Google — now keywords are in trouble too, according to Pete Sheinbaum, who was the CEO of Daily Candy before taking the helm at LinkSmart. Google put an end to the easy acquisition of links, which for more than a decade had been essential to search engine rankings.
Links remain important, but their overall value has diminished. Worse for SEO specialists, quality links have to be earned. Google stripped sites of many links they deemed forced, purchased or otherwise tainted and now makes it harder for sites to gain links. Content marketing and social media marketing are usurping SEO’s dominance in link-building as Google now rates links based on perceived value — a link from an article published in a high-authority magazine or shared on Twitter — gets more Google love than links from ezines and directories.
Google Shields Search Results Data
And now, Sheinbaum says in Forbes, keywords are also losing their importance in marketing.
Google isn’t discounting keywords as it did links. But it’s making it harder for websites and advertisers to know what keywords drive traffic. Google is keeping much of that information to itself and may become increasingly stingy about releasing it in the future, Sheinbaum says.
If, for example, your marketing strategy revolves around keywords such as “how to make money online,” you may be paying a search engine company to put those keywords in anchor text and spending money on pay-per-click advertising based on the phrase “how to make money online.”
Google is not stopping you from spending money this way, but the company is making it harder to track results. You may not know if someone visited your site because of the keywords or because of some random reason.
What happened? Google used to freely pass along reports about keywords. But for any site that uses Google analytics — and about 57 percent do, according to study by Optify — Google keeps this information private. This is good for Google — it acquires information for its own advertising purposes — but bad for other companies who sell advertising based on traffic and keywords.
This means that marketers and advertisers are going to have a harder time analyzing traffic on their websites — and justifying their rates to website owners. Owners who want to get the most out of their marketing dollars — and SEO companies who want to keep earning their fees — will have to look beyond raw data and try to look deeper into the meaning of traffic rises and dips.
If traffic rises on a Tuesday, falls two days later and picks up five days after that, simple data will no longer provide the reason. It will be necessary to examine what changed on Tuesday — content was published on a high-authority site or a new ad campaign launch — what happened in the four days of slower traffic and on the fifth when traffic picked up.
New Strategies Needed
Todd Mumford , CEO of SEO Visions, says the information in the Forbes article should not alarm search engine specialists. For one thing, he says, Google started shielding keyword information months ago and savvy online marketers and company owners are already employing new strategies to test the strength of campaigns.
Mumford, interviewed for this article, cited three key ways to analyze traffic data despite Google’s attempts to keep the information to itself:
1. Google Webmaster Tools
These tools allow website owners to see statistics on daily average traffic, prominent search queries, ranking position and other statistics.
These tools do not, however, always provide accurate results. Google webmaster tools reports, for example that DavidAndersonWealth.com ranks at position 81 in the US, but it has rested in position 33 to 38 for several weeks.
2. Site Search
This tool helps owners and markets understand keywords relevant to a customer buy cycle — you can find out what keywords customers click on (or ignore) when they’re on your site and adjust accordingly. Mumford says websites can synchronize site search with Google to help synch up their data with Google’s.
3. Site Surveys
Mumford says site surveys can be a very effective way to collect data provided your website has a decent amount of daily traffic. Such surveys can be more valuable than Google analytics, he says, because they do a better job of capturing user intent. Questions, ratings and comments on your site tell you more about your customers — and how to market to them — than the keywords they click on.
When you understand your customers, you can match keywords to their intent without Google’s help. If, for example, your site visitors click more frequently on words such as “lose weight now” than “get healthy,” you can build your content and marketing accordingly.
Bottom Line
Traffic analysis requires more nuance — and more guessing — and companies may make more missteps than they’re used to until their tracking skills become better refined.
Google is growing up and forcing website owners and online marketers to grow up, too.
David Anderson, a post from SPN
Google Takes Another Bite Out of SEO: First Links and Now Keywords
Critical Tips For SEO Improvement for Blogging
SEO or search engine optimization will increase your website’s
exposure on the internet. There are a variety of methods both basic and
complex within SEO. You may already know a few of the more basic
methods, so here we will supply SEO tips that will help you improve your
search engine optimization that is already in place.
- To begin you may need to work on your inbound links and outbound links. Google will rank your search engine based on the links you have, as well as keywords, new content, etc. It can be fairly easy to create external links. You find sites that have resource information regarding your website topic. Sites like .gov, .org, and even Wikipedia will not mind if you have an external link to their site. In fact most websites do not mind. What can be harder is getting the inbound links. This is where many website designers can truly improve their SEO. To get inbound links you have to show other websites why they want to link to you. More specifically you need to have content, keywords, and products or information other web designers will find useful. To get the links use social media sites, YouTube, and blogs. You can create your own inbound links from external blogging sites. You can use internal links as one way to increase your page rank. Google and other search engines will raise your values accordingly, especially if you have the relevant keywords in those links.
- Headlines and title tags are often an area that needs improving on a website. A good writer knows that the topic you discuss must be shown, and therefore the topic has to be discussed in headlines and titles. So your headlines and title tags must be keyword rich, but more than that you have to have the right placement. If your keyword is Malpractice Lawyer, then this keyword should appear in the first few words of your headline. You do not want to leave the keyword till the last word of the headline or even in the middle. It gets lost. Your rankings will be higher if the keyword is first.
- Anytime you add new content such as blog posts or articles to provide new content on your website you need to make sure the website addresses include keywords. It is not enough to have new content. You also have to make sure the URL is relevant. For example your domain name for your website is www.malpracticelawyer.com. So your blog should have www.malpracticelawyer.com/advice/obtaining_a_lawyer or something similar. You have the main keyword and then you state you are giving advice about lawyers.
- The last tip for you on improving SEO is about highlighting your best content on each page. Every time you have a point to make you need to use bullets, numbers, bold, italics, or another form of highlighting the best content. Consumers’ eyes will track this content and learn that your site is the best. It also helps gain the attention of the search engines for ranking.
How Google Views SEO
Google seems to be
making a real effort to increase its level of transparency for
webmasters and SEOs. Good thing, too – the natives have been getting
mighty restless over the last few years. Since Google’s upping its
transparency factor, by extension, Matt Cutts is, too. In fact, in a
series of recent Webmaster Help videos on YouTube, Cutts revealed that
both he and Big G have given SEO their blessings – as long as it adheres
to certain guidelines, of course.
The application will just change a little. SEO does have a negative connotation today, and it’s unfortunate that a few black hats have ruined it for the legit businesspeople out there. That’s why I’m in agreement with Cutts – perhaps renaming the industry would be in order at this point. Things are changing today. It’s time to start thinking bigger. Don’t think about simply “optimizing” your website – think about optimizing your brand.
This means creating a multi-pronged strategy across multiple platforms and networks, and making sure people in even the darkest corners of your niche know who you are. It’s about building bridges, forging friendships, and making connections that will propel you to the top of your industry.
Then, once you’re there, you’ll be surmised. You’ll begin to see your website ranking for keywords in your niche you didn’t even know existed. That’s when you’ll have truly pulled off the harrowing task of SEO – and you’ll have accomplished this feat without spending your days hunting for backlinks. Instead, they’ll start to come to you.
By: Nell Terry
Cutts on the Mindset of a Site Owner
Google’s most recent Webmaster Help video features Matt Cutts talking about his own experiences with blogging. The question posed to Cutts asked how his own blog shaped his views on SEO as a whole. He said his greatest takeaway from the experience has been understanding the “mindset of the site owner” (yes, his own words). He went on to insist that – contrary to popular belief – wanting to rank higher in search engines is not inherently bad. Moreover (and more surprisingly), Cutts mentioned that doing things to rank higher in the SERPs is not spam, either. Shocked? So was I. He even offered up some tips for webmasters, such as capitalizing on the appeal of “list posts” (i.e. “Top 5 Reasons for…” or “3 Things that…”) and making use of keywords correctly and prominently. This, to me, was very refreshing. It means that Google appreciates the guidance when it comes to ranking a website properly even though there’s no guarantee it will rank the site highly. Obviously, this hinges upon using only white-hat tactics to rank as opposed to shady, underhanded, black-had techniques. Cutts also recommends shooting for high-traffic keywords along with lesser-searched terms. Why not? Even if you have no chance of competing for a few terms you select right now, if you keep plugging away and building your website, then one day it may be big enough to fight with the big guns for a top spot in the SERPs. Finally, Cutts ends the video by pointing out that Google is aware there’s lots of great stuff out there. It doesn’t want to leave your website in the dust if you’ve got a lot to offer, which is why using SEO techniques to help your site “get found” whould be a shrewd move on your part.Should We Rename “SEO”?
Cutts put out another recent video that tacked the issue of the SEO industry’s bad rap. He noted at the outset that he was aware search engine optimization suffered somewhat of a negative spin in the media. This, he says, is due to a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. Black-hat SEOs who use methods such as spamming, link blasting, and hacking make a bad name for everyone in the industry – and this is indeed very unfortunate. Cutts says that people who hear the term “SEO” tend to immediately associate it with “linkbuilding”. It’s so much more than that, and he points out that this is such a gross misrepresentation of the industry that it merits rebranding SEO altogether. Cutts offers up a new name for search engine optimization – he moves that we instead call the practice “search experience optimization”. Catchy, no? After all, he notes, webmasters are responsible for so much more than linkbuilding. They must build their site correctly, make it crawlable, and organize their content in a way so it’s easily accessible. Then, there’s the entire task of marketing your website – and this is much bigger than linkbulding. It’s about creating an entire brand around your web presence.The Future of SEO
So, what does the future hold for SEO? There’s a lot of speculation out there. Many people say SEO is dead (or, at the very least, will be dead in five years). I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. As long as people are searching the ‘net for what they need, SEO will prevail.The application will just change a little. SEO does have a negative connotation today, and it’s unfortunate that a few black hats have ruined it for the legit businesspeople out there. That’s why I’m in agreement with Cutts – perhaps renaming the industry would be in order at this point. Things are changing today. It’s time to start thinking bigger. Don’t think about simply “optimizing” your website – think about optimizing your brand.
This means creating a multi-pronged strategy across multiple platforms and networks, and making sure people in even the darkest corners of your niche know who you are. It’s about building bridges, forging friendships, and making connections that will propel you to the top of your industry.
Then, once you’re there, you’ll be surmised. You’ll begin to see your website ranking for keywords in your niche you didn’t even know existed. That’s when you’ll have truly pulled off the harrowing task of SEO – and you’ll have accomplished this feat without spending your days hunting for backlinks. Instead, they’ll start to come to you.
By: Nell Terry
The Importance of Being First in Niche Blogging
The ones who do something first usually get the most credit. Be that
in business, innovation, creative work. In some cases, it is due to
satisfying the audience even before they realize they have the need. In
other cases this can even translate into being the first who answers an
already apparent need, something already missing. However, for the most
part it’s mainly due to serving the curiosity which is ever growing.
The thing is, that answering this need, being the first who provides the content, is as good a place to start as any when wanting to establish yourself as an authority within your niche, as well as capture a bigger market by leveraging random affinities and going viral.
Don’t let me bother you with flowery prose, and let’s delve deeper into why is it that you should always stay on top of what is new in your niche.
You see, even if the material you create is new in the sense of never repeating what you already have on your site, it’s probably talked about many times before, on sites that share the similar theme.
Now this is not that bad of a thing, don’t get me wrong. You definitely have contributed with presenting it in a slightly different fashion, from a different perspective, having it connected with other information, thus making it unique (have you?).
But it is still not something entirely new, you see.
By staying on top of what is happening in your niche, you can have something brand new to say to your readers. And not only them, but the whole audience interested in your niche- the potential audience, that is.
In short, it means that sometimes chasing the event keywords or trying to predict the search volume of new trends beats already popular keywords by a huge margin.
I recently wrote a huge review about the Insanity workout. The thing is that it became quite popular in the world of fitness. The workout, that is. So, targeting an audience that resembles the workout potential buyer, I figured that it’s a great thing for me to cover. However, I did this a little bit too later.
Granted, I rank well with the review, have some conversion and sales going on, tons of visitors on a monthly basis. But, had I decided to go for creating the review the moment this workout was out of the oven, things would have been entirely different. You get the picture, right? If I stayed on top of what is happening in the niche, I would have made a fortune by now. But alas, we learn, and that’s a good thing.
Sometimes try and even predict what will be going on in your niche. Take for example people who build sites around event keywords before they even happen. Like creating a site for, let’s say the Olympics. Sounding familiar? Darren Rowse did this once. Way back, with the games in Athens, 2004 was it?
Since then many others tried to duplicate this approach, creating sites around things that they predicted would be talked about. The epilogue? Some had huge success with it, that’s for sure.
Now here is the thing; Not only they made a site centering the main keyword, they also tried to predict things like lack of available hotel rooms, traffic jam, incidents… You know, things that happen constantly on such events. In short, the result was great. Whenever some of these happened for real, they already ranked pretty well. And that’s a lot of traffic if you ask me.
The reason why I’m not putting link bait in the same basket with the SEO aspect, is because I refer to it more in terms of Internet Marketing.
You see, being the first to create content about what is new and trendy in your niche, the content itself becomes what SEO’s know as link bait. In short, content that is very likely to be linked. And regardless the form, be that in text, video, podcast, it buys you a lot of links either way. The reason being, because it covers what’s new and trendy, and we already discussed that people have the intrinsic need for such things.
But creating the content would not suffice all by itself. It has to either be a valuable resource (like those huge articles that Glen from ViperChill makes), present things in a certain entertaining fashion, make connections with other niche related aspects – random affinities (this term is coined by Ian Laurie from the SEOmoz community, and basically means an existing connection between two topics only in terms of having a common audience).
Your content can cover one of these, and classify as link bait.
It won’t be that much longer before people turn to your brand, and start looking for exclusive content that can rarely be found other places.
Of course you will have to stay innovative and create content that satisfies those needs. Creating random affinities is as good a place to start as any. But I digress…
The thing is, be the one sharing the new going on in your niche, and you will see that people see you in an entirely different light authority wise.
If you bother to ask, many bloggers will tell you that they made most of their connections this way.
Knowing what is going on in your niche can give you the upper hand in captivating and wooing your audience as well as opening to a new one, earning those links and Search engines love, thus ranking for those keywords as well. You will also make countless of connections, build authority while at it, and even expand your area of interest niche wise by leveraging the random affinities in connection to what is new.
The thing is, that answering this need, being the first who provides the content, is as good a place to start as any when wanting to establish yourself as an authority within your niche, as well as capture a bigger market by leveraging random affinities and going viral.
Don’t let me bother you with flowery prose, and let’s delve deeper into why is it that you should always stay on top of what is new in your niche.
1. New things to write about
Even if sounding way too naive, this holds sense. You always have something new to write about, right? Think again. You will realize that on a second thought that’s almost a no. How come?You see, even if the material you create is new in the sense of never repeating what you already have on your site, it’s probably talked about many times before, on sites that share the similar theme.
Now this is not that bad of a thing, don’t get me wrong. You definitely have contributed with presenting it in a slightly different fashion, from a different perspective, having it connected with other information, thus making it unique (have you?).
But it is still not something entirely new, you see.
By staying on top of what is happening in your niche, you can have something brand new to say to your readers. And not only them, but the whole audience interested in your niche- the potential audience, that is.
2. SEO candy
Realizing that every day billions of searches constantly happen, and that one third of those has never been typed into the search query box before, you should already get the picture about what this means.In short, it means that sometimes chasing the event keywords or trying to predict the search volume of new trends beats already popular keywords by a huge margin.
I recently wrote a huge review about the Insanity workout. The thing is that it became quite popular in the world of fitness. The workout, that is. So, targeting an audience that resembles the workout potential buyer, I figured that it’s a great thing for me to cover. However, I did this a little bit too later.
Granted, I rank well with the review, have some conversion and sales going on, tons of visitors on a monthly basis. But, had I decided to go for creating the review the moment this workout was out of the oven, things would have been entirely different. You get the picture, right? If I stayed on top of what is happening in the niche, I would have made a fortune by now. But alas, we learn, and that’s a good thing.
Sometimes try and even predict what will be going on in your niche. Take for example people who build sites around event keywords before they even happen. Like creating a site for, let’s say the Olympics. Sounding familiar? Darren Rowse did this once. Way back, with the games in Athens, 2004 was it?
Since then many others tried to duplicate this approach, creating sites around things that they predicted would be talked about. The epilogue? Some had huge success with it, that’s for sure.
Now here is the thing; Not only they made a site centering the main keyword, they also tried to predict things like lack of available hotel rooms, traffic jam, incidents… You know, things that happen constantly on such events. In short, the result was great. Whenever some of these happened for real, they already ranked pretty well. And that’s a lot of traffic if you ask me.
3. Link bait
We slightly went off-course with the previous one. I hope you don’t mind. Let’s get specific again, shall we?The reason why I’m not putting link bait in the same basket with the SEO aspect, is because I refer to it more in terms of Internet Marketing.
You see, being the first to create content about what is new and trendy in your niche, the content itself becomes what SEO’s know as link bait. In short, content that is very likely to be linked. And regardless the form, be that in text, video, podcast, it buys you a lot of links either way. The reason being, because it covers what’s new and trendy, and we already discussed that people have the intrinsic need for such things.
But creating the content would not suffice all by itself. It has to either be a valuable resource (like those huge articles that Glen from ViperChill makes), present things in a certain entertaining fashion, make connections with other niche related aspects – random affinities (this term is coined by Ian Laurie from the SEOmoz community, and basically means an existing connection between two topics only in terms of having a common audience).
Your content can cover one of these, and classify as link bait.
4. Becoming authority within the niche
How long do you reckon before people start to notice you in the sense of always being the one who brings the new right on the table? News travel pretty fast on the Internet. Go viral with one story, and you already caught the attention of the biggest part of your potential audience.It won’t be that much longer before people turn to your brand, and start looking for exclusive content that can rarely be found other places.
Of course you will have to stay innovative and create content that satisfies those needs. Creating random affinities is as good a place to start as any. But I digress…
The thing is, be the one sharing the new going on in your niche, and you will see that people see you in an entirely different light authority wise.
5. Making connections
This one is very tightly connected with the one above. Mostly in the sense of big players noticing you. They will cite you, maybe even ask you for advice or interview. Even linking to your work, they will make an effort to contact you, since it’s clear that you are an up-and-coming player in their niche now.If you bother to ask, many bloggers will tell you that they made most of their connections this way.
Knowing what is going on in your niche can give you the upper hand in captivating and wooing your audience as well as opening to a new one, earning those links and Search engines love, thus ranking for those keywords as well. You will also make countless of connections, build authority while at it, and even expand your area of interest niche wise by leveraging the random affinities in connection to what is new.
12 Ways to Improve SEO and Traffic Through Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the fastest ways to get top listings
in the search engines for your keywords. YouTube, DailyMotion,
and Metacafe videos seem to shoot to the top of the SERPS. Often
the thumbnails are conspicuously displayed directly in the
natural search listings which seem to jump out at searchers
pushing viewers to click.
Many times relevant YouTube videos will outrank your main website for your keywords because YouTube has such authority in search. If you are ignoring video marketing you are ignoring a major traffic source for your website.
Here are some tips to maximize both the SEO and traffic potential of your website through video marketing:
1. Create Quality Engaging Content
Ok, this seems obvious. However, sometimes in our haste to get our videos listed in search we skimp on quality. Make the content relevant and useful to those in your niche. The videos do not have to be long. In fact, it is better to make videos that get right to the point and deliver high quality information quickly. Video marketing starts with a good video. If people like your video they are more likely to share and comment which will bring even more visitors to your video and to your website.
2. Embed Your Videos on Your Blog and Websites
Of course if you embed your videos on busy blogs and websites you will get more traffic to your video. However, there is something new going on in search with videos. Google is now indexing videos embedded on websites and sending traffic directly to the websites where the video is embedded.
This is important because previously if you had a video hosted on YouTube and someone found it in a Google search he/she would be re-directed to the video hosted on YouTube not to the blog or website where the video was embedded. To reach your website, searchers had to click the link in the description associated with the YouTube video or type out the URL provided in the video.
The moral of the story is that you want to start embedding videos in your blog posts and websites because you want Google to index the video and to send the traffic directly to your website from the video found in search.
For an example of this do a Google search for “videos sitepronews.” Then click the “videos” link on the left. Most of the videos that you will see are YouTube videos but, if you click on the links, the traffic is sent to videos.sitepronews.com not to YouTube. Here is an article which explains how Google is indexing embedded YouTube videos on websites.
3. Put Your Keywords in the Title – Fully Optimize Your Description and Tags
Google will look first for the keywords in the title. The title is the most important SEO information for search. Make sure you have your keywords right in your title. You should also try to make your title as catchy as possible. I know this is not easy to do, but this is the goal.
You might want to make several versions of your videos to upload to different accounts. Use variations of the keywords in the titles to see what works best. Sometimes I notice it can work very well to simply pick the keywords alone in the title. Experiment.
You should also fully optimize your description and tags. If you are embedding your video on a blog or website make sure you have plenty of quality content surrounding the video. Likewise for your descriptions on YouTube and other video hosting sites make sure you have unique, quality relevant content in the descriptions. Do not overdo it or stuff keywords. Keep it real, unique relevant and engaging.
You can also change the filename of your video to your keywords. Every little bit helps!
On YouTube and most video hosting sites there is a place for keywords or tags. Just add relevant appropriate keywords. Do not try to rank for every keyword on the planet. Keep focused on one phrase or basic set of keywords. It might not be a bad idea to use the YouTube keyword tool to do a little keyword research for your video.
Here is another optimization tip. Use the word “video” as much as possible in your description, tags, title and html surrounding your video. You want to make sure Google knows you have a video there. You want to give them every reasonable indication on how to index your video.
4. Create a Video Sitemap
Your videos can get indexed by Google without a video sitemap, but you want every edge you can get on your competition. I use a very easy to use tool called A1 Sitemap Generator to create a video sitemap as well as all my other sitemaps for my websites. Here is a short to the point video tutorial on how to use A1 Sitemap Generator to create a video sitemap. Matt Cutts says it is a very, very good idea to use video sitemaps. Here is a video where Matt Cutts talks about video sitemaps. If Matt Cutts says it is important, and it only takes a few minutes to set up, count me in.
5. Place a Link to Your Website Prominently at the Beginning of the Description of Your Video
The whole idea of all this SEO stuff is to get traffic to your website. If people cannot find your website, they will click away and never visit your site even if they liked the video! The best place to put your website link with most video hosting sites is right at the beginning of the description. This way they see your link immediately. Remember to include the “<http://www.>” On most websites the link will automatically hyperlink making visitors just one click away from your website.
6. Start Your Own Specific Tube Site On Your Domain Specific to Your Niche
Take a look at videos.sitepronews.com. The smart folks at SiteProNews have set up their own video directory on a sub-domain called “videos.” (Remember, I said to use the word “videos” as much as possible? This includes naming the directory where you host your self-hosted videos.) The end result is that their videos are getting indexed like crazy on Google and better yet when you click on the thumbnails you go directly to their site rather than to YouTube.
The software they use is called “Clip Share.” Why not consider setting up your own “Tube” site just for your niche. Do not try to compete with YouTube. Specialize. You should seek to target your niche. Open the video section of your site up for user generated videos but be picky. Only accept relevant informative videos in your niche. Imagine 1000s of keyword targeted videos being indexed in Google for your keywords and all of them sending direct traffic to your website! Not a bad problem to have at all.
7. Create Transcripts to go With Your Videos
You can now upload transcripts with your YouTube videos. Google is known to crawl these transcripts as well as your meta data. The more help you give Google the better. If you have keyword transcripts, and other videos do not, you will have an SEO edge over your competitors.
8. Don’t Just Upload Your Videos to YouTube – Upload Them to All the Major Video Hosting Sites
There are a number of high traffic, highly ranked video hosting sites besides YouTube. DailyMotion has an Alexa rank of 106! This means that there are only 105 sites out there with more traffic. Why not upload your videos to DailyMotion as well? Plus many of the other video hosting sites have major search engine juice. Now, not all of these sites have do follow links, but they can still drive traffic to your website. Here is a list of 35 video hosting sites where I actually submit my videos.
9. Know What the Goal of Your Video is and Tell People What You Want Them to Do
What action do you want viewers to take when they view your video? Do you want them to go to your website? Do you want them to embed the video on their blog? Do you want them to share the video on Facebook? Do you want them to visit your website or call you? Do not assume they are going to visit your website or magically do what you want them to do. You have to tell them very directly what you want them to do. If you want them to go to your website, then tell them very directly in your video to go to your website. You can do this by a title clip at the end, by a footer running at the bottom of the video or by actually telling people in the video to go to your site. You can even give people incentives to go to your site.
10. Promote Your Video and get Backlinks to it Like Any Other Webpage
Promote your videos like any other web property. Send an email to your list. Ask them to share, comment, and like your video. Of course, submit your videos to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. You can even consider using automation tools such as Contentbuzz to submit your videos. Contentbuzz is a network of users who use the system to automatically share each other’s videos on their social media pages.
You can even ping the RSS feed to your YouTube channel with pingler.com.
Your channel on YouTube has an RSS feed. Here it is:
<http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/YOUTUBE-USERNAME/videos.rss>
Just add your username where it says YOUTUBE-USERNAME and ping your YouTube video channel using pingler.com
11. Make Good Thumbnails – First, Last and Middle Frames
The first thing people will see when searching for videos on Google is your thumbnail. When you are creating your videos you might want to keep this in mind. If you are hosting your own videos, generally the first or last frames are picked up as thumbnails. On YouTube, it generally is the frame right in the middle of the video. It can be tricky to place attractive, relevant thumbnails in the right spot. However, an attractive thumbnail can be the difference between somebody clicking on your video or on the other guy’s video.
12. Allow Video Responses to be Automatically Approved and Use Your Videos for Video Responses
Video responses are when people comment on your video using a video instead of an actual text comment. You want to make sure video responses are automatically approved on your videos. I know this goes against the common wisdom but the more video responses the better. You see every time somebody leaves a video response on your video there is a link below their video back to your video saying “This video is a response to..your video link.”
You can get some nice traffic if people respond to your video from all these links back to your video. In addition you should use your video to respond to other relevant videos. Then a small link to your video will appear as a comment beneath their video. Check out the rap videos of Chris Brown and other artists. Their videos get millions of views. They know what they are doing. Most of them allow for automatically approved video responses.
I hope these tips help give you some ideas on how to use video to improve your SEO and traffic. If you have more tips to add or just some comments, please let me know in the comments area.
Matthew Meyer
Many times relevant YouTube videos will outrank your main website for your keywords because YouTube has such authority in search. If you are ignoring video marketing you are ignoring a major traffic source for your website.
Here are some tips to maximize both the SEO and traffic potential of your website through video marketing:
1. Create Quality Engaging Content
Ok, this seems obvious. However, sometimes in our haste to get our videos listed in search we skimp on quality. Make the content relevant and useful to those in your niche. The videos do not have to be long. In fact, it is better to make videos that get right to the point and deliver high quality information quickly. Video marketing starts with a good video. If people like your video they are more likely to share and comment which will bring even more visitors to your video and to your website.
2. Embed Your Videos on Your Blog and Websites
Of course if you embed your videos on busy blogs and websites you will get more traffic to your video. However, there is something new going on in search with videos. Google is now indexing videos embedded on websites and sending traffic directly to the websites where the video is embedded.
This is important because previously if you had a video hosted on YouTube and someone found it in a Google search he/she would be re-directed to the video hosted on YouTube not to the blog or website where the video was embedded. To reach your website, searchers had to click the link in the description associated with the YouTube video or type out the URL provided in the video.
The moral of the story is that you want to start embedding videos in your blog posts and websites because you want Google to index the video and to send the traffic directly to your website from the video found in search.
For an example of this do a Google search for “videos sitepronews.” Then click the “videos” link on the left. Most of the videos that you will see are YouTube videos but, if you click on the links, the traffic is sent to videos.sitepronews.com not to YouTube. Here is an article which explains how Google is indexing embedded YouTube videos on websites.
3. Put Your Keywords in the Title – Fully Optimize Your Description and Tags
Google will look first for the keywords in the title. The title is the most important SEO information for search. Make sure you have your keywords right in your title. You should also try to make your title as catchy as possible. I know this is not easy to do, but this is the goal.
You might want to make several versions of your videos to upload to different accounts. Use variations of the keywords in the titles to see what works best. Sometimes I notice it can work very well to simply pick the keywords alone in the title. Experiment.
You should also fully optimize your description and tags. If you are embedding your video on a blog or website make sure you have plenty of quality content surrounding the video. Likewise for your descriptions on YouTube and other video hosting sites make sure you have unique, quality relevant content in the descriptions. Do not overdo it or stuff keywords. Keep it real, unique relevant and engaging.
You can also change the filename of your video to your keywords. Every little bit helps!
On YouTube and most video hosting sites there is a place for keywords or tags. Just add relevant appropriate keywords. Do not try to rank for every keyword on the planet. Keep focused on one phrase or basic set of keywords. It might not be a bad idea to use the YouTube keyword tool to do a little keyword research for your video.
Here is another optimization tip. Use the word “video” as much as possible in your description, tags, title and html surrounding your video. You want to make sure Google knows you have a video there. You want to give them every reasonable indication on how to index your video.
4. Create a Video Sitemap
Your videos can get indexed by Google without a video sitemap, but you want every edge you can get on your competition. I use a very easy to use tool called A1 Sitemap Generator to create a video sitemap as well as all my other sitemaps for my websites. Here is a short to the point video tutorial on how to use A1 Sitemap Generator to create a video sitemap. Matt Cutts says it is a very, very good idea to use video sitemaps. Here is a video where Matt Cutts talks about video sitemaps. If Matt Cutts says it is important, and it only takes a few minutes to set up, count me in.
5. Place a Link to Your Website Prominently at the Beginning of the Description of Your Video
The whole idea of all this SEO stuff is to get traffic to your website. If people cannot find your website, they will click away and never visit your site even if they liked the video! The best place to put your website link with most video hosting sites is right at the beginning of the description. This way they see your link immediately. Remember to include the “<http://www.>” On most websites the link will automatically hyperlink making visitors just one click away from your website.
6. Start Your Own Specific Tube Site On Your Domain Specific to Your Niche
Take a look at videos.sitepronews.com. The smart folks at SiteProNews have set up their own video directory on a sub-domain called “videos.” (Remember, I said to use the word “videos” as much as possible? This includes naming the directory where you host your self-hosted videos.) The end result is that their videos are getting indexed like crazy on Google and better yet when you click on the thumbnails you go directly to their site rather than to YouTube.
The software they use is called “Clip Share.” Why not consider setting up your own “Tube” site just for your niche. Do not try to compete with YouTube. Specialize. You should seek to target your niche. Open the video section of your site up for user generated videos but be picky. Only accept relevant informative videos in your niche. Imagine 1000s of keyword targeted videos being indexed in Google for your keywords and all of them sending direct traffic to your website! Not a bad problem to have at all.
7. Create Transcripts to go With Your Videos
You can now upload transcripts with your YouTube videos. Google is known to crawl these transcripts as well as your meta data. The more help you give Google the better. If you have keyword transcripts, and other videos do not, you will have an SEO edge over your competitors.
8. Don’t Just Upload Your Videos to YouTube – Upload Them to All the Major Video Hosting Sites
There are a number of high traffic, highly ranked video hosting sites besides YouTube. DailyMotion has an Alexa rank of 106! This means that there are only 105 sites out there with more traffic. Why not upload your videos to DailyMotion as well? Plus many of the other video hosting sites have major search engine juice. Now, not all of these sites have do follow links, but they can still drive traffic to your website. Here is a list of 35 video hosting sites where I actually submit my videos.
9. Know What the Goal of Your Video is and Tell People What You Want Them to Do
What action do you want viewers to take when they view your video? Do you want them to go to your website? Do you want them to embed the video on their blog? Do you want them to share the video on Facebook? Do you want them to visit your website or call you? Do not assume they are going to visit your website or magically do what you want them to do. You have to tell them very directly what you want them to do. If you want them to go to your website, then tell them very directly in your video to go to your website. You can do this by a title clip at the end, by a footer running at the bottom of the video or by actually telling people in the video to go to your site. You can even give people incentives to go to your site.
10. Promote Your Video and get Backlinks to it Like Any Other Webpage
Promote your videos like any other web property. Send an email to your list. Ask them to share, comment, and like your video. Of course, submit your videos to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. You can even consider using automation tools such as Contentbuzz to submit your videos. Contentbuzz is a network of users who use the system to automatically share each other’s videos on their social media pages.
You can even ping the RSS feed to your YouTube channel with pingler.com.
Your channel on YouTube has an RSS feed. Here it is:
<http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/YOUTUBE-USERNAME/videos.rss>
Just add your username where it says YOUTUBE-USERNAME and ping your YouTube video channel using pingler.com
11. Make Good Thumbnails – First, Last and Middle Frames
The first thing people will see when searching for videos on Google is your thumbnail. When you are creating your videos you might want to keep this in mind. If you are hosting your own videos, generally the first or last frames are picked up as thumbnails. On YouTube, it generally is the frame right in the middle of the video. It can be tricky to place attractive, relevant thumbnails in the right spot. However, an attractive thumbnail can be the difference between somebody clicking on your video or on the other guy’s video.
12. Allow Video Responses to be Automatically Approved and Use Your Videos for Video Responses
Video responses are when people comment on your video using a video instead of an actual text comment. You want to make sure video responses are automatically approved on your videos. I know this goes against the common wisdom but the more video responses the better. You see every time somebody leaves a video response on your video there is a link below their video back to your video saying “This video is a response to..your video link.”
You can get some nice traffic if people respond to your video from all these links back to your video. In addition you should use your video to respond to other relevant videos. Then a small link to your video will appear as a comment beneath their video. Check out the rap videos of Chris Brown and other artists. Their videos get millions of views. They know what they are doing. Most of them allow for automatically approved video responses.
I hope these tips help give you some ideas on how to use video to improve your SEO and traffic. If you have more tips to add or just some comments, please let me know in the comments area.
Matthew Meyer
How to Really Grow Your Blog Traffic
Firstly, a few words about other guides, blog posts, and entire blogs on blog growth. Forget about them.
Chances are they’ve been full of fluff and haven’t gotten you where you want to be.
I’ll start by telling you two tips to blog growth. They’ll make all your efforts more worth it, meaning everything non-blog-growth related you do with be more worth it. If you don’t read the whole post, you’ll at least benefit from these.
Tip 1: Social media is next to nothing. Your growth doesn’t depend on Twitter, or Facebook. Unless you have a massive following and use a media platform to tweet your messages 500 times a day, it’s not worth it. Facebook marketing, if you haven’t noticed, is a bag of hot air waiting to burst. It’s leaking as you read this.
Tip 2: Loyal readers grow blogs. Excited, loyal readers will do more for your blog than you can and will. They’ll comment, share, like, and buy from you all while you’re not even blogging. That’s the holy grail of blogging and what you’ve probably tasted, at least to some extent.
I specialize in keeping readers on blogs for longer. Bounce rates, retention, interaction, and the like. Why? It’s actually just the area of blogging I chose to specialize in. College lets you choose your major, and in my opinion, so does blogging. Darren Rowse focuses on digital photography, and Glen Allsop covers SEO. It’s really wherever your heart is.
Keeping readers on your blog and building relationships is the key to growth. If you’re not succeeding at this, your work might be phenomenal but it’s not going anywhere big. That’s sort of the bad news. The good news, is that you can improve. Surpringly enough, you can retain readers and grow your blog more by changing the most simple things.
Take a look below. I’ve focused on 5 parts of a blog that make or break it. I’ve also included slight modficiations you should make to keep your blog airtight. Do all of this and you’ll win over readers, and once their on your side your work will truly take off. Note: I focused on these 5 techniques this past summer, and by summer’s end my pageviews and subscribers had more than doubled.
The general criteria for great titles are: challenge, relate, and explain.
My post “How Playboy Helps your Blog” airing soon on ProBlogger.net relates in a unique way. When you pose a statement that relates unrelated things, you catch the reader’s attention, and from there all you need is a good intro. The Blog Tyrant writes gripping posts, like “Why Your Post Style and Structure is Killing Your Blog.” These titles evoke emotions and get clicks because of it. Excited yet?
Place as much emphasis on your images as your text. If you do a clever job relating images to text, even in an abstract way, you’ll tell readers you know what you’re talking about.
That’s 5 solid tips to make your content gripping, win over readers and encourage them to click through and share your content. Do you think readers share boring content, or things they’ve seen 10 times already? No, and they’re not sharing your content if it looks that way. These are things the bigger blogs do as second nature that help them remain at the top of blogging. Stop wondering, start doing, and always savor the small gains in blogging.
Greg hold two advanced degrees in social sciences and blogs at Dear Blogger, where you can ask him any question on blogging.
Post from: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-to-really-grow-your-blog-traffic/
Chances are they’ve been full of fluff and haven’t gotten you where you want to be.
I’ll start by telling you two tips to blog growth. They’ll make all your efforts more worth it, meaning everything non-blog-growth related you do with be more worth it. If you don’t read the whole post, you’ll at least benefit from these.
Tip 1: Social media is next to nothing. Your growth doesn’t depend on Twitter, or Facebook. Unless you have a massive following and use a media platform to tweet your messages 500 times a day, it’s not worth it. Facebook marketing, if you haven’t noticed, is a bag of hot air waiting to burst. It’s leaking as you read this.
Tip 2: Loyal readers grow blogs. Excited, loyal readers will do more for your blog than you can and will. They’ll comment, share, like, and buy from you all while you’re not even blogging. That’s the holy grail of blogging and what you’ve probably tasted, at least to some extent.
I specialize in keeping readers on blogs for longer. Bounce rates, retention, interaction, and the like. Why? It’s actually just the area of blogging I chose to specialize in. College lets you choose your major, and in my opinion, so does blogging. Darren Rowse focuses on digital photography, and Glen Allsop covers SEO. It’s really wherever your heart is.
Keeping readers on your blog and building relationships is the key to growth. If you’re not succeeding at this, your work might be phenomenal but it’s not going anywhere big. That’s sort of the bad news. The good news, is that you can improve. Surpringly enough, you can retain readers and grow your blog more by changing the most simple things.
Take a look below. I’ve focused on 5 parts of a blog that make or break it. I’ve also included slight modficiations you should make to keep your blog airtight. Do all of this and you’ll win over readers, and once their on your side your work will truly take off. Note: I focused on these 5 techniques this past summer, and by summer’s end my pageviews and subscribers had more than doubled.
Titles
Don’t sell yourself short with boring post titles. Do you spend three hours writing and editing a post, then slap a generic title on it? It should be the opposite. Your titles should pop, and make people click. Erase a few posts titles, and convert them to statements that challenge your reader’s beliefs, or relate two seemingly unrelated things.The general criteria for great titles are: challenge, relate, and explain.
My post “How Playboy Helps your Blog” airing soon on ProBlogger.net relates in a unique way. When you pose a statement that relates unrelated things, you catch the reader’s attention, and from there all you need is a good intro. The Blog Tyrant writes gripping posts, like “Why Your Post Style and Structure is Killing Your Blog.” These titles evoke emotions and get clicks because of it. Excited yet?
Tone
You must sell yourself through writing. Hate to say it, but it’s not enough to write good information and it never has been. If you don’t boost yourself, talk about your own expertise, and show some social validation, how the heck are people supposed to know you’re a legitimate source? Your quality advice, research and information literally sails off the face of the interwebs if you fail to insert statements on your own knowledge. Build your tone up with bold statements, and again, challenge readers. Look at what major bloggers with strong personalities do. They’ll begin with bold statements, end sentences with questions, and include little “notes” of how their techniques have worked.Images
Are your images random, irrelevant or things only you find funny? I’ve got two words for you. Delete them. Images are ONLY useful if they clarify a point or create curiosity. Those are the criteria I’ve lived by since day 1 and I’m doing alright. Or, just roll without images and let users focus on your text. See how DailyBlogTips doesn’t use many images? That’s a good thing. It’s a subtle way of telling readers what’s important, and where to focus.Place as much emphasis on your images as your text. If you do a clever job relating images to text, even in an abstract way, you’ll tell readers you know what you’re talking about.
Diversify
Show that you know your topic, and hit users from a lot of angles. Now I know this is a broad statement, but it’s actually easy. Diversification in blog posts can be quick and painless. If you’re an online marketer, insert a case study into a post. If you’re an artist, show a crafty coloration you did with someone semi-famous. Even things like tweets, quotes, or charts from Google Analytics can be inserted in your posts to show readers you really know your topic. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot and hide your knowledge into with huge blocks of text. Not even your mom will read that.Links (my best point)
You want people to click your links, right? Especially if they go to related posts, or better, to affiliates you’ve setup deals with. So make your links clickable. Place links around action verbs. I pitch premium themes on my blog from Theme Junkie, because that’s what I myself use. I generate clicks with words like “browse beautiful themes”, “upgrade your look”, and “go pro today”. I’d get a lot less clicks with link-text like “check these out” or “click here” that people are sick of. Another trick? Make your links pleasing. Give them a hover color, so users feel like their grabbing the link instead of just floating on it. Just a subtle trick that works. Google “hover link color” to begin.That’s 5 solid tips to make your content gripping, win over readers and encourage them to click through and share your content. Do you think readers share boring content, or things they’ve seen 10 times already? No, and they’re not sharing your content if it looks that way. These are things the bigger blogs do as second nature that help them remain at the top of blogging. Stop wondering, start doing, and always savor the small gains in blogging.
Greg hold two advanced degrees in social sciences and blogs at Dear Blogger, where you can ask him any question on blogging.
Post from: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-to-really-grow-your-blog-traffic/
Tricks to Get a Google of Links
Whether you like it or not SEO is still pretty much about links. Good link profile can make up for almost any lack of optimized content and other onpage flaws. Love or hate, the best thing you can do about it is embrace the fact and run with it.
So let’s go through some tricks that will enable you to look deeper into your competition’s link profile granting you access to the restricted areas: their locker room, dirty laundry and even the briefing hall where they plan their link building strategies.
Let’s talk competitive link research
Finding out where your competitors’ links come from is not all that hard. You just go to Yahoo! or Google and type in
link:www.your-competitor.com to get a list of inbound links to the site.Yahoo’s much better in that respect as it tends to give more extensive and accurate data. The problem here is that there’s a limit of 1,000 links per website which is often not enough as the fattest link sources get left behind the limit fence. Here’re some tips to break through to the other side.
Note: If you’re lazy like me skip to the end of the article where I’ll share a tool that does it all much quicker.
Trick 1: Search for links to particular web pages of a competing site
Alongside with
link:www.your-competitor.com search for link:www.your-competitor.com/products.html or link:www.your-competitor.com/services.html and so on.Trick 2: Exclude internal links
You may examine the internal linking structure of your competition if you want to gain some insight on their navigation and marketing steps. But as we want to find more external links, let’s exclude the internal ones.
You can do this by adding
-site:site.com operator to your search query. Type in link:http://www.your-competitor.com -site:your-competitor.com or linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com -site:your-competitor.com“and you’ll get a list of external backlinks only.
There’s a dropdown option in Yahoo! site explorer that does the same.
Trick 3: Exclude links coming from certain domains
The
-site: modifier lets you exclude links coming from
specific sites. So, whenever you see a large chunk of links coming from
same domain add -site:thisdomain.com modifier to your query and the links from this site will get replaced with new ones.You can add
-site: multiple times in one query so that you have something like this:Trick 4: Check links coming from certain TLDs
This is a little known trick. The
site: modifier
actually lets you get a list of links coming from domains with certain
TLDs: .com, .org, .edu, .co.uk and so on. Just type in link:http://www.your-competitor.com site:.gov or linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com site:.gov and you’ll get a list of .gov sites linking to your rival. Note: Do this in Yahoo! regular search, not site explorer
Trick 5: Exclude links coming from certain TLDs
This is an even lesser known trick. You can exclude certain tlds from the results with the
-site:.tld modifier. Usually the biggest chunk of links comes from .com’s so add a -site.com modifier and you’ll get lots of new link data.Trick 6: Use different combinations of the first 5 tricks
Try
link:http://www.your-competitor.com/page.html
-site:your-competitor.com -site:.comOr
link:http://www.your-competitor.com site:.org -site:wikipedia.orgGive it a thought and I’m sure you’ll come up with lots of your own. Feel free to share your findings in the comments
Trick 7: Use the above 6 tricks in different search engines
Don’t limit your searches to Yahoo! and Google, go to AltaVista, Alexa, (Bing doesn’t give you link data, so forget about it) but then there’re Exalead, Excite and tons of regional search engines. Search them, remove the duplicates and you’ll have a goooooooooooooooogol of competitor’s links to study.
Note: Some search engines have a different set of operator so you’ll need to type
domain: instead of link:.Getting it all done fast
This sure seems like a lot of work and it is. Moreover, getting the links list is only the beginning and the easy part of competitive link research. Once you get the list you need to analyze each link, weed out poor quality sites and only leave the ones you can get a link from. Now THAT’s a lot of work.
I’m too lazy to do this all by hand, besides I value my time too much to waste it on such kind of work. That’s why I use SEO SpyGlass an advanced link analysis tool that employs all the tricks described in this article (plus some more advanced ones I don’t even know) to get up to 25,000 links per domain, which is much, much more than any other tool can get.
SEO SpyGlass also finds all the data I need to analyze the links:
> Google PR of the domain and linking page
> The URL and title of the linking page
> The anchor text and description
> Whether the link is still on the page (sometimes the link gets removed but search engines will think it’s there till they reindex the page).
> Whether the link is no-follow or dofollow
> How many other links are on the page
> How much link value the link passes
> And some other data like TLDs, domain age, country, etc.
If you want to do competitive link research seriously I’d strongly recommend trying SEO SpyGlass out. And of course you can always use my tricks whenever you want to run a quick background check on that new guy on your block.
Simple SEO Tips That Will Help Your Search Engine Rankings
With so much
SEO advice being dispensed nowadays, it’s hard to know what you should or
shouldn’t believe. It can be especially difficult for Internet Marketing
newbies to separate the wheat from the chaff, however, there ARE proven SEO
tips and techniques that virtually every SEO expert agrees work and are very
effective.
Following
are 7 simple SEO tips that will help your search engine rankings:
1. Have
Fast-Loading Pages
You may not
be aware of this, but page load-speed is now one of the more than 200 signals
Google uses to determine the ranking of web pages in the search results. As a
result, it is more important than ever that your pages load quickly. Slow
loading pages are annoying to searchers and affect their ability to access
content quickly. This is viewed as a negative user-experience by Google and can
have an adverse effect on your rankings.
You can
quickly check your page speed at Page Speed Online, a free web application
offered by Googlelabs. This tool tests the speed of your page and gives it a score from 1-100, based on the performance of your page. The Page Speed Score indicates how much faster a page could be. A high score indicates little room for improvement, while a lower score indicates more room for improvement. In other words, the higher the score, the better. The Page Speed Score does not measure the time it takes for a page to load – just whether or not it loads quickly. Here are some things you can do to speed up your pages:
offered by Googlelabs. This tool tests the speed of your page and gives it a score from 1-100, based on the performance of your page. The Page Speed Score indicates how much faster a page could be. A high score indicates little room for improvement, while a lower score indicates more room for improvement. In other words, the higher the score, the better. The Page Speed Score does not measure the time it takes for a page to load – just whether or not it loads quickly. Here are some things you can do to speed up your pages:
o Avoid Redirects – a common redirect that many
designers use is unintentional – they leave off the trailing slash on a URL
which forces a redirect to the directory name with the slash. Redirects also
happen when you move a page or site – change the URL to point to the new
location when you link to a redirected page.
o Avoid
404’s – while a
useful 404 page is important for your customers’ experience on your site, you
don’t want to link to them, as they generate another HTTP request that provides
no value. This is especially important with images on your page.
o Optimize
Images – keep the
images small. (Source: How to Speed Up Web Pages)
2. The Trust
Factor
Believe it
or not, the trustworthiness of your site – or lack thereof, has an effect on
your rankings. So the more things you can do to make your site appear
trustworthy, the better. Some steps you can take to improve the trustworthiness
of your site include having a clear privacy policy if you collect personal
information. Tell people what you’re going to do with their information. They
have a right to know.
Also, at the
very least, provide an e-mail address on your site for customers to contact
you. In addition, create an “About Us” page. Provide the names of the owner(s)
and employees, if you have any. Be sure to include pictures and brief
biographies. The worst thing you can do is give the appearance you want to be
anonymous, which obviously generates suspicion.
And don’t
underestimate the power of testimonials. Just make sure they’re legitimate and
verifiable. Otherwise, you risk getting into trouble with the FTC.
3. Create an
Effective Title-Tag
The title
tag is a critically important factor in achieving high search engine rankings.
For those of you who don’t know what a title-tag is, it’s the words displayed
at the top of your browser. It is also used as the title of your website in the
SERP’s (search engine results pages). Therefore, you should put plenty of
thought into writing your title tag – to make sure it’s as effective as
possible. Your title-tag should also
contain specific keyword phrases, in addition to the name of your company.
For example,
suppose your company name is “ABC Home Remodeling,” a home remodeling company
in New York, you would want your company’s website to appear in the search
engine results for searches on phrases such as “New York home remodeling” and
“home remodeling in New York.” If you prefer to work with homeowners only in
the Albany area, you would need to be geographically specific in your
title-tag. For example, “Albany home remodeling.”
What about
meta-tags? Aren’t they important too? Opinions vary on the importance of
meta-tags, but in my opinion, they’re not as important as they once were. They
won’t have a significant impact on your rankings one way or the other. But if
you want to use them, it certainly won’t hurt anything – provided you don’t
abuse them (i.e. keyword stuffing).
4. Publish
Quality, Relevant Content
In case you
haven’t heard, sites like EzineArticles, Buzzle and Associated Content got
absolutely hammered by the recent Panda update. But why? Those sites have been
around for years, and have a ton of quality content. Unfortunately, much of
their content is also low-quality. When explaining the Panda update, Google
said it was important for high-quality sites to be rewarded. By punishing the
titans of article directories, Google sent a powerful message about quality.
But it’s not
enough to just publish quality content. Your content also needs to be relevant
to the overall theme of your site. Google places a tremendous amount of value
on relevancy. So do everything you can to make sure your pages are as relevant
as possible and accurately reflect your site’s actual content.
5. Syndicate
Your Content
Content
syndication is a simple, effective and proven SEO method. When I say content
syndication, I’m referring to two types of syndication in particular: RSS feeds
and article submission. RSS (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication)
syndicates your web content, making it easily accessible to other sites and
helps build inbound links, making RSS an extremely powerful SEO strategy.
If you use
any of the popular blogging platform like Blogger or Wordpress, you already
have a built-in RSS feed. If your website doesn’t have a built-in RSS feed and
you’re technically savvy, you can create your own by following the instructions
in Anatomy of an RSS File. Or, if you’re technically
challenged like I am, you can use a service like RapidFeeds.com.
Article
submission is the second type of content syndication I referred to. Basically,
there are two ways you can submit your articles. 1. To article directories and
2. Directly to publishers. I prefer to submit my articles directly to
publishers because it gives me control over where my articles are published.
If you
submit to article directories, there’s a good chance your article will get
buried among the thousands of other article submissions. In addition, once
submitted, your articles are available to be published by anyone. That means
your articles have the very real potential of being published by low-quality
sites, which could effectively damage your site’s reputation with the search
engines.
6.
Authority, Authority, Authority
Authority
sites are considered authoritative for a reason. It’s because people trust
their content. That’s why authority sites rank so highly in Google’s SERP’s.
So what
exactly is an authority site?
Definitions
vary, but my own personal definition of an authority site is “a site that is
linked to and respected by thousands of people who often reference its
material.”
Authority
sites have quality content and consistently show keyword to content relevancy.
If you write articles, instead of submitting them to article directories which
have diminishing link value, instead, submit them to top authority sites like
Problogger, SiteProNews, WebProNews, PromotionWorld, Copyblogger,
SearchEngineJournal and others. And while it might be considerably more
difficult to get your articles accepted and published by those sites, the fact
that Google places such high value on links from authority sites makes it worth
the effort.
7. Social
Networking Matters
While only Google knows for sure how much of an
impact social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others
actually have on search results, the fact that it’s providing real-time social
sharing is an indication that Google takes participation in social networking
sites seriously. And if Google takes social networking seriously, then, common
sense suggests, social networking participation will help your SEO efforts.
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