Website Design Development India - Ongoing SEO Services (Delhi/ncr) India

Successful SEO Tactics: Off-Site Optimization

2011-09-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

The large majority of external factors that influence organic rankings fall within the classification oflink building. There have been great debates in recent months that the ranking impact that can be derived through social media signals falls outside of “traditional” link building. That is valid, and will continue to be debated.

It seems there are few topics within SEO or digital marketing that are as highly contested and controversial as link building. As the SEO Tactics chart was developed, it became obvious that off-site influences would be a core pillar.

This article focuses more on the strategies that surround link building as opposed to the tactics. The space is flooded with these tactics already, yet little attention is paid to the strategies that guide successful link building campaigns.

You are simply burning time and money when a thoughtful link building strategy is absent. Hopefully some of the concepts conveyed in this article will translate well into the programs you're managing.

Keywords, Anchor Text & the Value of Diversification

You absolutely must have a data-driven keyword strategy in place to drive results from your link building efforts. If you’re not driving revenue or leads then what’s the point?

Identify keywords that have the highest likelihood of driving incremental online conversions, and set those terms as your target. Here’s some good information on identifying the right keywords.

These keywords become the genesis of your anchor text, but don’t fall into the trap that many SEOs do. Here’s a common problem – I want to rank for “men’s jackets” and in doing so I’ve determined that all of the links that I will attain will be targeted with “men’s jackets” as the anchor text. This is a mistake. While you certainly need some focus on the primary keywords within your anchor text it’s equally as important to work with derivatives of that keyword.

Moderation and diversification are important principles in anchor text selection. Do your homework and identify a set of valuable derivates such as “men’s winter jackets” and “cheap men’s jackets.” Diversifying the keywords within your link profile will help it appear natural.

An anchor text usage rule of thumb that we’ve seen success with looks something like this:

50 percent containing the exact match keyword.
30 percent to 40 percent containing keyword derivatives.
10 percent to 20 percent containing brand terms/URL.

Diversification not only relates to the anchor text but to the proportion of “follow” and “nofollow” links within your profile. Many link builders make the mistake of acquiring an abundance of “follow” links to the point where it makes up nearly 100 percent of the profile. Does this look natural? No.

While the direct value of a “nofollow” link will be less than a “follow,” the indirect value of diversifying your overall link profile will make it well worth the time.

Aiming at the Right Target – Destination URL Selection

The link building components of an SEO campaign shouldn't occur in a vacuum. They should be complimenting a larger and more holistic approach to SEO. When determining the URL that you will be pointing to your anchor text, you should follow the same methodology that your internal linking structure follows.

This consistency is important and will help signal the engines as to which specific URL should rank for a given term. Mapping your keywords to specific URLs from the start is a worthwhile exercise and can be used as a guide for both internal and off-site linking. Here’s some good information related to keyword mapping and on-site optimization elements that should be considered as part of your holistic plan.

Avoid pointing links to the home page when link building to non-brand terms. Diversification again comes into play here and you want URLs that have the best chance of converting to be the page that ranks for a given term.

Strive for a healthy mix of links coming in at you category pages, sub-category pages, and product-level pages. If you are link building with the anchor text “men’s jackets” this should be pointing into your category level page that is optimized for “men’s jackets” with an internal linking structure that is supporting the URL for that keyword.

Sub-category-targeted link building can be quite successful within ecommerce sites. Utilizing a sub-category-specific derivative such as “men’s winter jackets” that is pointed to its mapped sub category URL can be beneficial for both that term and the head term that it is a derivative of. This is where the power of proper internal linking can benefit your link building efforts as weight can be transferred both upstream to the category page and downstream to product-level pages via site navigation, breadcrumbs, etc.

Penalized vs. Devalued – Panda Paranoia

It’s hard to have a discussion on link building without talking about Google’s Panda update. Plenty of ecommerce webmasters are afraid that Google is or will penalize their site because they have links coming in from what they believe is a low quality content site that has been penalized.

Unless you're creating massive amounts of low quality content on your own site, the chances of you receiving stiff penalties from Google because of a few inbound links is quite low (although a small degree of paranoia is a good thing when it comes to SEO). However, it's quite likely those inbound links will be devalued. This is a much different scenario than your site being penalized though - so keep things in perspective.

source by:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2107974/Successful-SEO-Tactics-Off-Site-Optimization

10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock

2011-09-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

1. Shared Count

Why it Rocks - Introduced to us by Tom Critchlow, Shared Count has a permanent place on my bookmarks bar. Not only does it track the social sharing statistics of any page you desire, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and raw Twitter counts. In addition, Shared Count has an open API, so you can build your own tools on top of it.

2. IETester

Why it Rocks - Whenever you check cross browser compatibility, 9 times out of 10 Internet Explorer throws you for a loop. IETester is a free, downloadable web browser that allows you to render different versions of IE in side-by-side windows and check for errors. There’s also a cool debugging option to root out tough-to-find problems.

3. Blogscape

Why it Rocks - The hidden gem of the SEOmoz toolset, Blogscape allows you to monitor the popularity of any keyword, brand or url on a daily basis. Simply enter a term or domain and see a list of all mentions of that phrase taken from a list of 1000s of RSS feeds and more.

In addition, advanced query operators allow you to track only posts containing a link to a specific domain –great for tracking new link discovery. We use it in-house at SEOmoz weekly to help measure the success of our SEO efforts.

4. URI Valet

Why It Rocks - URI Valet combines over 10 structural tools in one to perform technical audits, site reviews and more. You can see behind the scenes of any web page by checking server headers, text to HTML ratio, download speed, object details and quick links to W3C Validators. One of my favorite features not only lists all the internal and external links on a page, but validates them as well.

5-6. Robots.txt Checkers

http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check

Why They Rock - I couldn’t decide which of these tools I liked more - it’s good to bookmark them both. When I worked on the help team at SEOmoz, these tools were essential for finding hidden problems with robots.txt files, even when no error was visible. They even account for hidden code in your files that can trip up your average search spider. I guarantee at least 1 out of 5 readers will discover robots.txt errors they never knew existed.

7. Wayback Machine

Why it Rocks - The Wayback Machine has a giant archive of website pages going back 15 years. If you want to research older links that may have disappeared or track website modifications that resulted in traffic changes, the Wayback machine lets you peer into the past, sometimes with dramatic results. It’s hard to believe this is what SEOmoz looked like just 2 years ago.

Some grey hat SEOs buy expired domains, then reconstruct the previously existing website page-by-page from the Machine’s archives. By doing so they hope to preserve the allusion of continuity to Google. (In my opinion, the jury’s still out.)

8. SEO Browser

Why it Rocks - Quickly see all of a webpage’s important SEO structure in one view, starting with the title tag and working your way down. Does the page have a robots.txt file? How about analytics installed? Often I use the SEO Toolbar for a quick look at page structure information, but the SEO Browser is an old favorite and great when I want to see the entire text copy laid out on a single, readable page.

9. Rank Checker

Why it Rocks - Sometimes you want to check a bunch of rankings…. fast. The Rank Checker from SEObook runs on your browser so you don’t have to wait for a third party to check your rankings for you. Beware, because it runs on your browser it’s much harder to control for the effects of localization and other mitigating factors, but it’s still handy when speed is more important than absolute accuracy.

10. Xenu’s Link Sleuth

Why it Rocks - While Screaming Frog is winning over the hearts and minds of many SEOs, Xenu’s Link Sleuth takes the award as the original ugly SEO tool that rocks. Most think of it as a link checker that runs on your desktop, but its dead simple interface and easy-to-understand reporting makes it a must have when running quick site audits. It’s also brilliant when mining for link opportunities.

source by: - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-tools-that-rock

5 Simple Ways to Make Your Blog Links Better

2011-09-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

Blog links can be amazing. Links from real, powerful blogs that have a strong subscriber base and an active community are worth their weight in gold. Not just in the usual way links are useful, but they are great for increasing brand awareness and industry authority.

But sometimes the natural format of a blog can dampen their power.

For example, over time blog posts move deeper into a site. They fall off the homepage and they get pushed out of category main pages as newer posts take their place. This natural progression results in most blog posts having limited internal linking from archive pages.

Sure there are plenty of add-ons and plug-ins to help keep posts interlinked and out of archive obscurity. There are plug-ins to help with interlinking and related posts plug-ins. But not every blogger utilizes these tools and you can’t twist their arm to make their blog more SEO friendly for you.

What you can do though is use a few proactive and preventative measures to help fight the natural dampening of link velocity from blog links.

Recommend Some Good Plug-Ins

If you have a link from a blog, and especially if you had a hand in making it happen, why not make a recommendation? If you asked for this link, or wrote for this link then you have an existing relationship. If a blogger isn’t interlinking their blog posts in any significant way, a little friendly advice might be warranted.

Try not to talk about SEO though. Instead suggest that interlinking could help their readers stay more engaged. Sure if they know about SEO they might appreciate the sentiment. But if they don’t, you might find yourself teaching a 101 via email.

Keep it simple and focused on the one thing every blogger cares about: their readers.

Build Links

Like it’s not hard enough to get links, now you have to build links to your links? Hey I didn’t invent the system, I just make observations.

If your blog post link doesn’t get some external link attention it’s not going to give you as much benefit as it could. Whether you wrote a guest post or got mentioned in a collection of useful links, if that page only has internal links, then it’s a minor league player in your profile. But if that page picks up a few outside links then at least it becomes Double-A.

Don’t leave the social media just up to the blog owner who hosts your link. They have tomorrow’s post to think about. Make sure you pitch in on the social promotion and help the post containing your link gain as much traction as possible. And when it comes to building links getting people to link to someone else’s content, that already links to you, is often easier than begging for links to your landing pages.

Title Tags

Optimizing title tags is a big part of on-page SEO work. But sometimes it can be useful in off-page SEO too.

If you’re doing content placement, or you’re featured in an interview or review, then you may be able to impact the title tag of the blog post holding your link. Do you want that blog post to rank for your keywords? Not necessarily. But a targeted title tag can add a bit of extra contextual relevance to the blog post and your link.

If your link has keyword anchor text and the page title contains relevant keywords as well, that’s a great combination. You’re sending a double whammy of signals to search engines about what this page is about, and also what your site is about. And those signals are incredibly important when Google or any other engine is trying to figure out who should rank for what.

Vary Your Bios

Guest posting is becoming a highly popular way to build links. If you’re doing it right you spend a fair amount of time pitching bloggers and creating content.

Obviously getting your link right in the content of the post is a little better than just having a bio link. But not everyone is game for that and you have to play by the rules.

Fortunately, the bio link is pretty standard on the guest posting circuit; you can at least impact that. Mix up the pages you target, the keywords you use and the text of your bio. These kinds of links are an excellent opportunity to target sub-pages which don’t get a lot of love and not using a boilerplate bio on every post helps keep each guest post free of any duplicate content.

Skip the Bad Blogs

Seriously, the best way to make your blog links more powerful is to be more selective about which blogs you get links from. You can’t control the links you pick up at random without asking. But if you’re going to actively pursue blog links through guest posting, outreach, or reviews, make it truly worth your while.

Settling for the bottom of the barrel links is almost as bad as not getting links at all. Why not really invest the time and talent to score placement on a truly great blog?

Getting a review for your electronics site on a blog that reviews everything from cheap office furniture to the best credit card offers isn’t really all that useful. Be honest with yourself, will the blog in question review anyone or publish anything? Does anyone even read these posts let alone comment on them or share them? If not, skip it. Ten of those links aren’t as good as 1 link from a blog that genuinely takes pride in its content and community.

Source by:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2106492/5-Simple-Ways-to-Make-Your-Blog-Links-Better

5 Ways SEOs Can Work with Social Media Managers

2011-09-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

As social media gets widely adopted across organizations of all sizes we’re starting to see social media and search marketing teams operating in silos. That is already the case in many organizations. It isn’t unusual to have a 5:1 ratio where there are five community managers for every search marketer.

Due to nature of daily social media management, it’s natural that social media teams will outnumber small search teams (including one man teams!). This puts the onus on SEOs to reach out to their social media counterparts and ensure SEO is part of social media process as well.

An in-house SEO invests a lot of their time into creating an enterprise-wide process to work with developers, IT, and other important stakeholders. SEOs should also create a process for social media teams since they create a huge amount of content on a daily basis.

One of the first steps to get SEO integrated into any existing process is SEO training. But there are additional ways SEOs can work with social media team on an ongoing basis to ensure that even social media team members integrate SEO and leverage their daily community management efforts. Let’s jump in into what I think are the top 5 ways SEO’s can work with their social media counterparts:

1. Train Social Media Managers on SEO Essentials

SEO, especially in-house SEO, is a lot about demystifying the SEO myths across the organization and to me that starts with a ground level SEO training. I like to call this “Essential SEO Training” as the goal here is not to make SEO experts out of your social media managers but just enough to ensure that SEO is built into the social media process (most importantly not missed out on).

Many community managers come from a non-technical background so if you start with technical jargons like server response codes, faceted navigation, etc. then you will lose them. Instead, focus more on meta tags, H1 tags, alt text, page titles, and so on.

It is also assumed that you as an SEO would be working with IT or developers on the technical side of SEO so better to keep it simple for social media team members. Reaching out and offering to train them can be a good icebreaker of sorts and is also a great way to make an impression with the social media group.

Remember, most of the times blogging responsibilities also fall under social media team. Training them on how to write optimized blog posts can benefit your SEO performance a great deal.

2. Show Them the “Whys” and “Hows” of Keyword Research

Search marketers understand that keywords are the cornerstone of SEO. But not everyone understands that, so driving that point across to social media team members should be your goal.

Besides the obvious importance of keywords, you can show them how to use the various keyword tools.

One common mistake people make is picking keywords with highest number of searches. Instead, you want to train them on why that may not be the right approach.

It’s important that they learn how various keyword tools employ different data collection methodology. The other advantage of empowering them with tools is they are self-sufficient thus allowing you to focus on more strategic initiatives.

3. Optimizing Tweets For Visibility

As engines start integrating more tweets in their SERPs, we’ll see an increasing number of tweets show up for normal keyword queries. Twitter too is constantly updating their internal search engine, so getting found inside Twitter searches becomes critical as well.

Inserting one good keyword in each tweet is a good tip to share with social media managers. Think about the search impact social media managers can create if they target the same keyword while writing a blog post, creating few tweets, posting on Facebook fan page all the while using the same keyword.

I’m always amazed at the amount of content a social media team ends up creating on a daily basis. It is not just the original tweets but the retweets, mentions, etc. that makes up the lifecycle of a tweet.

Think of the SEO opportunity if you can take that content and house it in your domain – something to the effect that Zappos has done at twitter.zappos.com. I talked about this last year during SES Chicago in one of my in-house SEO panel. Again, SEOs are well suited for this kind of initiatives.

4. Optimizing Facebook Fan Page

A tremendous amount of time and resources are poured into building a company’s Facebook community that it makes sense if we start optimizing that content on fan pages for SEO.

Jeff Widman and team at PageLever recently did an interesting study on the referral traffic that search engines send to Facebook fan pages. They looked at almost 1,000 Facebook fan pages and found that almost one-third of external traffic is sent by search engines.

The key takeaway here: optimize your Facebook page just like you would any web property. It would be a hard battle convincing social media managers to allow you to make changes on Fan pages (it’s their baby!) but looking at back end analytics (Facebook insights for starters) and then making an “SEO case” can help you win this battle.

You can customize your training session to tackle Facebook posts while keeping your SEO process transparent. This way social media team can integrate SEO on an ongoing basis without you being involved.

This is another social media property where so much content (and engagement) is created that it makes perfect sense to leverage it for SEO. This can also be another source by which SEO can attribute the gains to their performance.

5. Teach Them the Importance of Conversion Metrics

The science of measuring conversion metrics like a search marketer doesn’t come naturally to “many” social media managers. Most of the time, search marketers create campaigns with end conversions in mind. They launch campaigns only if the ROI makes sense.

Not so with social media as collectively we are still in the “figuring out mode.” On top of that, the social media customer conversion funnel is slightly longer with more emphasis on fan engagement.

It’s easy to get carried away with the “coolness factor” of social media like number of fans, followers, design, apps, and so on that folks forget the purpose of a business is to create customers, as Peter Drucker said.

True, direct marketers can get little disappointed with social media as there is no straightforward “input X amount of dollars to get Y number of customers” ratio on social media. This is where SEO’s can help social media team understand common performance metrics the “search world” follows.

Search marketers should realize the engagement factor of social media so search marketers can also do with some unlearning of their own. Collaborating and coming up with common set of metrics is the way forward.

Source by:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109664/5-Ways-SEOs-Can-Work-with-Social-Media-Managers

Regent Lighting Worldwide Contact

2011-09-05T01:40:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Regent Lighting Asia

2011-08-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

Business Guide to Facebook Launches

2011-07-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

Facebook has launched Facebook for Business, a new resource hub dedicated to helping businesses get started and optimize their brand on Facebook. The new resource center presents preexisting features in a way that will make businesses understand what Facebook features and properties are available and relevant to utilize.

Launched Tuesday, Facebook for Business attempts to lay out a clear, concise, and easy-to-follow guide for businesses, making the problem of over-optimizing a thing of the past. The resource center brings value to business owners, employees tasked to handle social media, and marketers looking for science and statistics to sell and educate regarding Facebook services.

Facebook for Business goes offers a simplistic but useful guide to its various resources, including:

Fan Pages, along with a conversation calendar resource, Facebook Pages Optimization Guide, and Facebook Insights Guide.
Claiming Your Place, something every business should do.
Making Your Website Social – open graph, plugins, and widgets.
Engagement, including resources for learning how to #win on Facebook
Advertising, with many resources to ad optimization, targeting, and insights.
Sponsored Stories, also offering a sponsored story guide.
Best Practices Guide
Success Stories
Personalized Mobile Experience
Facebook Credits

Resource by: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2097810/Business-Guide-to-Facebook-Launches

SEO Tips to Increase Ranking in SERP

2011-07-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

General Rules in Search Engine Optimization:

Make blogs or websites for people, not search engines.
Make websites that convert to your end goal...not just rank for keywords.
Build a brand around a community. One that loves you and will fight for you because they love your services. Don't shut them off.
Make your brand so big that search engines need you.
Don't focus on just one keyword. Do a proper keyword research to find out what people seeking your products and services are actually using.
Don't forget to read Google's SEO Starter Guide

Make sure your title tag includes your keyword
A compelling call-to-action might help you get a better click-through rate in Google search engine results pages.
Make title tag unique on each page. [Use Google Webmaster Tools to detect problems with title tags]
Avoid keyword stuffing in your page title.

SEO Tips on the Use of Headings (H1, H2 and H3):
Headings (h1) and sub-headings (h2, h3) are texts that are written between those heading tags.

Avoid keyword stuffing in any of heading tags because it will do more harm than good.
Using your Keyword in H1 or H2 can give some minor positive effects on SEO.
H1 is the most important heading - Use it only once or twice per document and include your keyword there if it fits naturally.

SEO Tips Regarding the Body Text: Body text is the text from your web page without all the HTML tags and code.

Make sure that the keyword you are targeting with this page really is in your body text.
Avoid keyword stuffing in body text. Take note - each page should be targeted to different keywords.
Put main keyword closer to the top of the document.
Don't hide text through color by blending text color with background color.
Avoid too high keyword density (>10%) as it may lead to penalty (use synonyms, related words and LSI words)

SEO Tips on Using URL:
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URL is the address of your web page.
Suggestions for Domain Name

If possible, put your main keyword in the domain name.
For SEO it seems that there is no difference between delimiting words in domain name or writing them together. From marketing standpoint it's better not to delimit words in domain name with dashes because of word of mouth marketing.

Suggestions for URL

Make user-friendly URL ; put your keywords there and leave out stop words like "I", "a", and "an" etc. Also avoid special characters like "&", "?", "=", "$", "%". "^" in the URL
Avoid keyword stuffing in URLs and try to keep them in reasonable length.
Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs.

SEO Tips on the Use of Sitemap
Sitemap is a file (or multiple files) that list URLs for a site.

It is important to submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
It is important to include a link to sitemap file in your robots.txt file
If you want to put sitemap on different domain you must put a link to it in your robots.txt file
All information about sitemaps - http://www.sitemaps.org/
You can also submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools
If you don't have a sitemap, try sitemap generators

SEO Suggestions about Links:
Internal linking and links in general are very important from SEO standpoint. Search engine algorithms use anchor texts extensively.

Follow Google's suggestions on URL structure: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&hl=en
For internal linking - put nofollow attribute on links to unimportant pages (from SEO standpoint - like "Privacy Policy", "Contact us" and other pages)
Put keywords in anchor texts
If link anchor is an image then put anchor text in image's "alt" attribute
Avoid keyword stuffing in anchor texts
Avoid using un-related phrases like "click here" or "more..." in anchor texts
Linking to similar external sites will help search engines to determine your site's theme
Use the list above to check your anchor texts and nofollow attributes

SEO Suggestions on HTML Code and Page Load Time:

100% Valid code is great but most of the time search engine spiders can process invalid code as well.
Using less table tags may result in faster page load
Having smaller HTML will result in faster page load
Avoid broken images on your site as it slows down page load (click on the "Load time" link to get list of broken images on site)
Put CSS in external files. If you can combine all CSS information into one file it will make your page load faster
Put JavaScript code in external files. If you can combine all JavaScript code information into one file it will make your page load faster
If you are using common JS libraries (like jquery, prototype, moo tools and others) use Google Ajax Libraries API (more info here)
SEO Tips in Dealing With Images
For SEO purposes it is usefull to analyze filenames and "alt" texts of images on your site.
Use "alt" texts to describe the image - for accessibility and SEO reasons
Don't overuse "alt" texts, for example, don't add them to spacer images or layout of images
Put keywords in "alt" texts if they make sense in the context
You can also use keywords in filenames (write keywords together or seperate them with dashes)
Avoid keyword stuffing in "alt" texts or filenames
SEO Tips in Using Meta Keywords:
Meta keywords are keywords related to your site. They are coded in HTML and don't appear on the web page. Search engines do NOT care about meta keywords AT ALL and there's no reason to have them. But you can get new keyword ideas by looking at your competitor's keywords!

resource by http://www.scolexportal.info/2010/12/50-seo-tips-to-increase-search-engine.html

Tips to Increase Search Engine Ranking and Website Traffic And Visitors

2011-07-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

resource by http://realtrafficsource.com/targeted-traffic/tips-increase-search-engine-ranking-website-traffic-visitors/

5 Steps to Strategically Managing Your SEO Provider

2011-07-02T04:24:00.000-07:00

The truth is that trusting any part of your marketing to a third-party poses some serious challenges. While a search marketing agency can offer you a level of skill and expertise that you don’t have in-house, the wrong choice can end up costing you rankings, revenues, and profits.

But a bad SEO agency experience can often be avoided by being a smart, organized, and efficient SEO client. Specifically, there are five steps you can take to manage the relations you have with your SEO provider, while protecting your investment and your rankings.

1. Educate Your SEO Provider
Make sure your SEO agency understands your business – both your business model and your business goals.

Your business might seem obvious to you, but that's because you live, eat, and breathe it. Conversely, SEO agencies live, eat, and breathe SEO – that’s what they specialize in. Take the time to make sure your agency understands your revenue model and the particular strategy that you’ve chosen.

Similarly, make sure that you explain your business goals to your SEO provider. After all, there's a big difference between "cornering your market" and "dominating your niche." Your SEO agency needs to be aware of your particular goals so that they can devise an SEO strategy that fits best with your business.

2. Define Your SEO KPIs in Advance
Work with your SEO firm to set KPIs that fit with your business goals. After all, there are many ways to measure SEO efforts (i.e., rankings, traffic, conversions, and any blend of these). Both you and your agency should agree in advance on what combination of KPIs to work toward.

For starters, this will enable your SEO agency to develop a strategy around your expectations and business needs. But more importantly, it will put you in a position to evaluate the work they’re doing, as well as measure the SEO ROI.

3. Appoint an SEO Gatekeeper
It's important to appoint an SEO gatekeeper. Ideally, this person would have been involved in the KPI process, and will fulfill two key roles as a kind of SEO project manager:

Operation Level: The SEO gatekeeper will manage any bottlenecks – whether they’re on your side or the agency side. Essentially, by having one person monitoring all SEO projects, it will be easier to map their progress and push them through on a consistent and steady basis.
Strategic Level: The SEO gatekeeper will help facilitate cohesion between various projects. By directing all SEO inquiries through a single point of contact, both you and your agency can be sure that the proverbial left and right hands are always working in tandem. For example, your SEO agency will know about new pages, products, and site that your company is creating, and can work them into their strategy.
4. Know Your SEO Stakeholders
Your appointed SEO gatekeeper must now identify all the relevant SEO stakeholders within your organization and establish processes for dealing with them. After all, the SEO gatekeeper will be responsible for ensuring that all strategy decisions are communicated to your agency, so they need to have access to decision makers and be aware of any internal developments that can affect any SEO projects that your agency is working on.

Some of these stakeholders will include:

SEO Director: This is the stakeholder who will need to take the lead on aligning all internal efforts. They will need to ensure that SEO is involved early on and for the duration of all web projects, and will provide guidance/direction to your AOR and all local agencies.
Execs & Upper Management: This level of decision-makers is ultimately responsible for the results of any marketing initiative, including SEO. Consequently, these stakeholders are critical for holding people account for working properly with SEO, and shouldn't let things move forward if SEO isn't involved.
Sales, Marketing, & PR: While the sales team needs the leads generated by SEO, marketing knows that SEO will be its number one acquisition tactic. Similarly, PR is responsible for global messaging, and SEO should be a key part of that strategy.
Usability/Design: These stakeholders will be integral for creating SEO friend users experiences for all countries/brands, and optimized information architecture for all your sites. Consequently, usability/design in each office needs to be in close contact with local and/or global SEO staff.
IT/Dev: This layer of your organization is needed to develop multilingual, SEO friendly technologies and test every release of every site for SEO best practices. Having your SEO team closely involved in their development cycle, then, is critical.
Editorial/Content: One reason "content is king" is because of its importance in SEO. Your content team, then, needs to adapt content production according to search trends/volumes in each country, as well as ensure that there's a steady flow of local content across all your properties.
Legal: Your legal department will be important for developing a worldwide policy on SEO (i.e., whether you pursue certain practices). This is particularly important so that they don't become a roadblock. For example, you don't every piece of onsite or offsite content to get caught up in legal and slow your SEO momentum. So work out clear processes with them in advance.
With all the stakeholders identified, it’s important that your SEO gatekeeper has access to decision makers within your organization. Sometimes a small change in internal priorities can bottleneck an SEO projects in a big way. Your SEO gatekeeper needs to be able to communicate the opportunity costs of delaying certain SEO projects to those who can influence internal priorities.

5. Protect & Maintain SEO Momentum
As an SEO client, it’s important to understand and maintain SEO momentum. You can't put SEO on hold and then pick up where you left off a few months later.

Rankings change constantly. If your SEO initiatives get held up, your rankings will slip while your competitors’ increase.

Maintaining SEO momentum is probably where your SEO gatekeeper will play their most important role. In addition to managing internal bottlenecks (IT, legal, etc.) they should also implement procedures to address unforeseen variables.

For instance, if a key IT resource leaves your company, there should have a policy/procedure in place to assuage any potential bottleneck. Similarly, internal SEO deliverables should be planned well in advance of their deadline so that you have breathing room if a sudden internal priority arises.

Most importantly, any change in SEO service provider should be a pre-planned and measured on. After the decision to change is made, a new SEO agency should be selected before you fire your old one, and then your SEO gatekeeper should plan and manage a transition of responsibilities from one agency to the next.

Basically, you should never just fire your SEO firm without there being an alternative in place to follow current SEO projects through to the end, and having additional projects planned and scoped in advance.

Any interruption in your SEO efforts can end up setting you back months or years, and that can not only mean having to reinvest in SEO all over again, but losing the SEO equity you’ve built to date.

Managing Relationships, Rankings, and Your Bottom Line
Every business relationship is a two way street. After all, it takes two to tango. So it's important to take responsibility for your side of the relationship.

Granted, it’s tempting to think “well, I’m the client, and the customer is always right,” but that’s reckless and irresponsible – especially when future revenues are on the line.

As business goals and priorities change, make sure to keep your SEO agency (and any other marketing service provider) in the loop, because these are changes they need to know about and understand. And make sure you understand what their strategy for you is, and why they chose that route. This will help you get the most out of your investment with them, both in the short and long term.

Source By http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2082871/5-Steps-to-Strategically-Managing-Your-SEO-Provider

How Google Works

2011-07-02T04:22:00.000-07:00

1. Googlebot, Google’s Web Crawler
Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.

Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.

Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.

When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.

Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.

To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

2. Google’s Indexer
Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.

To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

3. Google’s Query Processor
The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.

Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.

Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).

Source by http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

Google Places combined with SEO can help your business

2011-07-02T04:21:00.000-07:00

How does one create organic rankings by using mapping? The most effective ways are by being honest about the service you are offering, by encouraging real reviews, and by combining your SEO organic strategy with Google Maps.
Here are some pointers: there are many things on Google Places which can help you to appear on page one.
Firstly, use searchable keywords in your company’s name whilst including your brand’s name. Avoid over doing things and always include a listing or description.
Secondly, use the correct categories and make sure that they’ll be helpful to the searcher.
Thirdly, reviews and testimonials from your customers are absolutely priceless, especially if they have your keyword in them.
Your fourth step is to get these reviews posted on as many sites as possible, such as Qype. Lastly, always cross-link your website to your Google Places listing and vice versa.
The advantages for most businesses when it comes to using Google Places are endless. For one, your telephone number, address, description, reviews are clearly visible. This offers you a huge advantage over other organic results in Google’s listings, as the user no longer needs to navigate to your website to find contact information. Google is allowing regional businesses to gain advantage over rankings. Why? Because business done directly via regions is healthy for search marketing. Promoting actual brick-and-mortar businesses as apposed to online portal sites is essential.

Source by memeburn.com

Google's Panda Update changed the old SEO method

2011-07-02T04:16:00.000-07:00

Forget about the old Search Optimization Engine (SEO) rules. Google had changed the method that had been applied for over ten years now. Google Panda will replace the Page Rank rules and if you want higher position in the search engine enumeration, the site has to be a high quality one.

This is how Google chose to avoid the fake traffic on the websites and with this method to be better placed into the search engine qualification. Google Panda has an additional quality upgrade.The ranking methods will be based more on the way the people are searching for one site’s content than the links from other sites that was the old method that hadn’t had best results for a while now, because the costumers found out several ways to trick the Google’s ratings.

The company’s officials announced that Google Panda is here to replace the old Page Rank method that had a lot of complaints. It will matter less the way other sites are sending traffic than the way one user uses the site.It will matter most the time that one user is spending on the site, the pages that he uses and the way he navigates through it.

Google Panda will have an automat system that counts the way users are treating the site and the interest that they have on every page of the site. This is the new quality method that will have the most powerful influence on Google rating.The new SEO method is a quality orientated one, because Google found out about the easy methods to trick the old system.

This is why Panda system will pay more attention to the site, individually and not by the way it is looked by the other sites.This is a new method to stop the low quality sites to have the first position in the Google search in the expense of the high quality sites, with interesting content that is capable to attract the users in using it at its most.

More, depending on the time that one user is spending on the site, Google registers the level of experience that the user has it on the given page and this will be one of the indicators.More, the bounce rate will be another one and it will be a very important instrument that will give Google information about how the user landed on the site and how long will take until he will close the page.

Reference by newsinabox.net

Boost Your CTR With These 5 PPC Ad Copy Strategies

2011-06-21T02:31:00.000-07:00

The compounding factors of improved CTR, increased quality score, and reduced CPC can make a tremendous impact on performance. Ad copy testing lies at the heart of seizing this competitive advantage.

With an endless number of attributes to test, it can be a little daunting to pick a starting point. Looking for a positive impact? Here are five ad copy attributes you can test.

1. Price Points & Percentage Off

If you’re a retailer, this is must. You're missing out big if you aren't testing into specific price points and percent off offers.

Important: don't make assumptions here. Test out multiple price points and percentages off to find out what will resonate with consumers. Here’s one of my favorite illustrations of why not to assume anything when it comes to price points:

A 76.5 percent CTR lift on the higher price point. We can make assumptions as to why the higher of the two price points experienced the higher CTR. Maybe the “or Less” factored in, or maybe “$39” just sounded too good to be true. Hard to say. This is precisely why we test.

2. Google Sitelinks

By now you have hopefully enjoyed the benefits of running Google Sitelinks in your ads. The presence of ad sitelinks can lift CTR by more than 30 percent.

Surprisingly, many advertisers still haven't added these to their campaigns. Maybe they’ve tested it and found that their ads perform better without sitelinks, but this is doubtful. I haven’t seen an instance where an ad's CTR decreased as a result of having sitelinks present.

Don’t let your sitelinks get stale. Remember to rotate in new pages to test, and test variations of the ad copy. Keep refining.

3. “Official Site”

Using “Official Site” directly following the name of the brand in the ad headline has almost always lifted CTR and reduced CPC. There is an absolute correlation between the power of the brand and the influence that “Official Site” will have on improving performance.

Recognizable brands that carry more weight will typically benefit from this. In instances where there are many affiliates competing in the space, the brand will also benefit from this tactic.

“Brand Name – Official Site” can also lift performance on non-brand terms, especially in instances where the brand is considered a leader. Depending on your account, it may be worth experimenting with this.

With the recent modification of Google displaying the root URL of the display URL within the headline, there’s been speculation that “Official Site” many not be as necessary as it once was, and those valuable headline characters can be better utilized. Sounds like another great test!

4. Sense of Urgency

Any good direct marketer understands this principle. Give consumers a reason to feel as though they should decisively take action, and they are more likely to do so.

If you're running an offer in your ad copy – and you should be if you can – test using an end date. Here are some iterations that work well:

“Ends 6/11” – a specific end date. Drop this in the ad copy about five days prior to the end date
“Ends Monday” – test using the day of the week vs. the actual date
“Hurry!”, “Save Now”, “Ends Soon” – Even without an end date, there are ways to create that sense of urgency with the consumer

5. Extended Headline

This is another recent modification to how Google displays ads. You no doubt have seen this, and hopefully have been experimenting with it.

SEO with Marketing

2011-06-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

Our goal for any campaign is to better to align as many marketing channels as possible with SEO best practices in order to better leverage all of these marketing activities from an organic search perspective. Additionally, we wanted to improve the internal communication, especially around keywords. To do that, we concentrate on the following areas of focus:

Internal Communication
Keyword Management
Digital Content Strategy
Social Media
PR Optimization
Training

Let's discuss some of the tactics that we used to successfully align each of these areas of focus with SEO best practices.

Internal Communication

Improving the lines of communication within any organization is the cornerstone of our success. Getting everyone focused on the same goals will always have a tangible effect and produce better results than would have otherwise been possible. In order to better align the members of various marketing teams, we provide them with keyword lists that are relevant to whatever projects they are working on. Some folks get the whole keyword set and some got a subset of the overall keyword list depending on their role in the company. Once those keywords had been provided, we trained each of those groups on how they could implement those keywords into the activities that they were responsible for (more about training later).

Equally important is getting this entire initiative prioritized by management and having that priority communicated to all of the teams that we were working with. Having upper level management communicate the priority of search to the entire company is critical. Additionally, demonstrating through analytics data how important SEO is to the marketing and sales efforts of the company is another key initiative.

The other piece of the puzzle is a high degree of collaboration including weekly SEO team meetings and participation in marketing meetings. These tactics are very successful in improving communication and getting everyone aligned with the goals and objectives of our SEO campaign.

Keyword Management

Segmenting keywords into campaigns based on business objectives and then within those campaigns, segmenting by keyword group is a very important part of our process. Not only does the segmentation allow for more granular understanding of SEO performance, but it also makes it easier for us to provide relevant keywords to various marketing teams. Content writers and bloggers are given keywords that were relevant to their area of focus whereas other marketers are given the entire list depending on their role. Obviously training all these folks on how to use the keywords is a critical piece as well. But the segmentation of keywords makes a big difference in the campaign.

Digital Content Strategy

Once the keywords have been identified and segmented, a content gap analysis is performed to illustrate where sufficient content is needed to address the keywords that they had targeted. Additionally, a lot of the marketing content often lives behind an authentication wall (you have to register to download a whitepaper for example). Creating optimized landing pages for this content that is targeted towards relevant keywords with content previews (snippets) helps open that content up to search. We also collaborate with various content producers to create new content (both text and video) that is aligned with company goals and marketing objectives. Keyword research is really user research that explains how your targeted audience is using language to describe your goods, services and concepts in your industry. Therefore, aligning your marketing content with those keywords means that you are talking the same language as the people you are trying to sell to which not only improves your search rankings but also improves your conversions because people understand what you are saying.

The main goal within the Digital Content alignment is to have the people who are producing digital assets on an ongoing basis get the education that they need to create optimized content from inception. In other words, our SEO team wouldn't need to optimize every new page on the site because it was built from an optimization perspective to begin with.

Social Media

Social Media is a huge area of focus for us. In addition to using social media channels like Blogging, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to extend messaging, promote content and engage our target audience, we want to use social media to create thought leadership, consistently produce new keyword focused content, and acquire new, relevant links that will make a difference in our SEO campaign. In addition to the keyword lists and training that we provide to social media teams, another successful tactic is a consistent posting schedule for all social media platforms for their content. We create what we called a Digital Asset Chart that gives instructions on how and where to promote each type of digital asset (blog post, video, webinar, etc). This way we always have a consistent approach to promoting content through social media, no matter whose job is ends up being.

PR Optimization

One of the most important vehicles for link building any company is press release optimization. By training PR teams on SEO best practices, we are able to make each release more impactful to the overall SEO campaign. The releases get more traffic because they get more search traffic, even if they live on someone else's domain. And, because they are created with relevant, embedded links that point back to our clients’ Websites, every time the release is picked up, they get new, valuable links. Obviously this tactic is only successful when you're company has something meaningful to say.

SEO Training

This is another cornerstone in the success of this SEO campaign. Empowering people within the organization to make their own contributions to the SEO campaign is a huge priority for us in any engagement because ultimately it's easier to scale across a large organization than trying to have one SEO team do everything. We conducted training for the following groups of people:

Content writers
Bloggers
PR Team
Social Media Team
Internal SEO Resources
Management
IT

And depending on which group we were training, we covered the following topics:

Keyword Research
On Page Optimization (Content Optimization + Meta data + Page Titles)
PR Optimization
Social media / SEO best practices
Link optimization (Internal and External)
Site wide optimization (Technical Issues)

By demystifying SEO across various groups within the company, we were able to align all of the groups against the goals and priorities of the SEO campaign.

By aligning all of these marketing groups with those goals and aligning their activities with SEO best practices, we have been able to help many clients achieve significant gains in organic search. Hopefully this model can provide a template for others to follow to achieve similar results.

Google Panda Update SEO Survival Tips

2011-06-21T02:20:00.000-07:00

Google Panda 2.2 is looming to drop sometime soon, and with it, increasing levels of apprehension in the small business community on fears of further collateral damage to organic search traffic. As a speaker at SES Toronto this year, I had the distinct honor of accompanying Dave Davies,Thom Craver and Terry Van Horne on a panel to discuss the impact of Google Panda, and long-term strategies for SEO success.

Diversify Your Traffic

Much to my own amazement and to that of my peers on stage, many in attendance at SES Toronto felt that they received significantly more traffic from Google organic search than any other source, and that SEO traffic converted much better than other sources.

As a general rule of thumb, no more than 40 percent of your referred traffic should come from Google because any significant change is bound to have a negative impact on your bottom line. When you consider how long it can take to notice and recover from an SEO penalty for even small mistakes (such as server downtime, bad navigational links, forgotten redirects, etc.), putting all your eggs into one basket substantially increases your risk.

Normally I wouldn't disagree with a large group at SES, but to say organic traffic converts better than other sources indicates that very few attendees are properly optimizing their paid search campaigns. Why? Paid search marketing has several distinct advantages over organic search traffic that should yield higher conversion:

Product: Guaranteed exposure to only those products and services you want to promote in search results. Match keywords to exact product offerings and watch conversion skyrocket.
Price: In this case, it’s not the price of the product or services offered, but the price your business pays for the traffic itself. Don’t forget to factor in all the time and effort invested into ranking for keywords in organic results, and how often changes may be required.
Promotion: While you can change the content surrounding your products, you may not have the same amount of creative license to change that content as quickly for mainstay (SEO targeted) pages versus paid search landing pages, nor will you necessarily have control over which pages Google chooses to display in results pages for any given query.
Place: Distribution of your product won’t change, but distribution of your product in organic SERPs may be highly elastic versus highly-controllable paid search campaigns.
People: Perhaps the most important component is your inability to control and target behavioral cues in search queries using SEO. It doesn’t get much better than the complete control that multiple keyword match types, negative match keyword lists, and advanced query performance reporting affords a search marketer.

My final argument about why organic search traffic may not convert as well as other sources? Visitor intent.

Visitors coming from organic search results for the first time are extremely hard to convert, and it can take several repeat visits, if your content is good enough, to finally convert them sometime down the line.

Measure Success Using Actionable KPIs

I love data, but much of it is useless and not actionable. In terms of useless SEO metrics, here are a few:

“Average position” and “Impressions” as provided by Google Webmaster Tools are useless metrics because Google varies position by geographic locale, personalized results (when logged in), and likely past-user behavior (not logged-in cookies).
“Visits” and “Page Views” and even “Average Time Spent” as measured using analytics software aren't as useless, unless used alone because webmasters have little control over how much traffic search engines send them.

The emphasis should be put on measuring actionable KPI’s segmented by traffic source such as bounce rate, micro and macro conversion rates, revenue, and visitor loyalty.

Want to get really sophisticated? Try testing out multi-source attribution and start assigning real dollar values to each one of your traffic sources touch points.

Build a Community

The group was decidedly split on the influence of social media on Google Panda, due in part to a tangent discussion on how Google might one day leverage social signals from Google +1. As it stands, Google currently uses Twitter’s “fire hose” feed and some signals from public pages on Facebook to influence rankings, the former weighing much more heavily in substantial, but short-lived SEO boost.

Google’s modus operandi seems to have always been to show up late to a party, build their own dance floor, and either win people over, or buy out their best competitor (YouTube, DoubleClick, Postini, Urchin, etc). In much the same respect, it will take time to see whether Google +1 gains enough momentum and critical mass to make a sizeable dent on the hundreds of other “favoriting” sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, to name a few.

Don’t look to social media to build links for SEO because the best links come from establishing earned media from a community of loyal brand ambassadors. Talk to your visitors and customers, engage communities, and start practicing the art of building personas. Through careful research, webmasters can hone into communities online that serve the best bang for their buck, and those might not be in any of the top social websites.

If you invest time into building a community, your business isn’t as likely to be as hard hit by changes to search algorithms such as Google Panda.

Competitive SEO Analysis

2011-06-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

On Site Research

Marios Alexandrou, Rosetta

When conducting on site (i.e. within your competitor’s site) competitive analysis, start by:

1) Asking yourself, “what companies should I look at?” Compete.com can come in handy here. Enter a handful of competitors and look for companies with high traffic. These are the companies that will likely have characteristics that will help inform your SEO approach.

2) Assessing your competitors site. Be sure to divide on site components into 3 categories: Content, Technical and Internal Links. By segmenting, you can more easily identify their strengths, as well as their areas of weakness.

3) Crawling competitor sites by leveraging crawler tools like Xemu. This will help determine:

size of site
links to internal pages
popular search term pages
Google Index

Once you have conducted your research, create a matrix to get a full picture of the competitive landscape. Do this by listing your competitors within excel on the y-axis and cross reference them against criteria (x-axis) like: Targets Long Tail, Optimized Title Tags, Internal Linking, Image Content, etc.

Off Site Research

Ross Dunn, StepForth Web Marketing

One of the most important elements to consider when performing off site research (i.e. looking at factors outside your competitor’s website) is quantity and quality of their external links.

Like on site research, off site analysis by identifying the competitors. One way to determine your competition is to enter core phrases like “mountain bikes” as well as long tail phrases like “brand x mountain bike parts”. Survey the search engine results page (SERP) for top ranking businesses. Be sure to weed out wikipedia and other non-competitive sites.

Now that you understand the different players, follow Ross’s tips for off site analysis.

1) Create Advanced Reports within Majestic SEO for each competitor and export the list to excel

2) Manually review top 50 links for each competitor and ask yourself:

is their anchor text relevant?
is their relevant on page content?
do they have quality on page content?

3) Find and highlight shared links among 3 competitors (hub links). These links are likely attainable and have value for your search results.

4) Look for biased links (i.e. hundreds of supposed different all linking to the same page with the exact same anchor text should raise some flags)

Don’t recreate the wheel. Learn from your competition’s link efforts to elevate your online strategy.

PPC Research

Matt Van Wagner, FindMeFaster

Start your PPC research with the mindset that to succeed you need to go beyond obvious questions like “what keywords are my competitors buying?” to ask questions like “where is the biggest area of opportunity?” Both questions are important, but the latter will help you look past competitive data to focus on the opportunities that can be gleaned from your research.

Quality PPC research tools are plenty, but before you start your research, arm yourself with questions that will help you hone in on key aspects of PPC.

How many ads are they running? How many different messages/offers do they present? Are they using best practices (i.e. do relevant keywords appear in ad titles)? How often do they present new ads? Do they react to bid changes?

With these types of question in mind, here’s a list of some of Van Wagner’s favorite tools for competitive PPC research:

AdGooroo
Compete
iSpionage.com
Keyword Competitor
Keyword Spy
Comscore

Walking into this session, I have to admit that I was looking for the silver-bullet. The one tool that does EVERYTHING. The truth, as we all know, is that although there are powerful competitive research programs, your approach to competitive analysis is truly your most powerful tool. Learn from competitors by researching their efforts with a laser-like focus.

To borrow a line from Alexanderou, “copying your competitors doesn’t make you better than them. It makes you the same.” Determine their strengths. Determine their weaknesses. Incorporate these lessons to take your program to another level.

14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites

2011-06-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

The key insight behind these best practices is the realization that only 10-20% of the total end-user response time is spent getting the HTML document to the browser. You need to focus on the other 80-90% if you want to make your pages noticeably faster. These rules are the best practices for optimizing the way servers and browsers handle that 80-90% of the user experience.

These pages are the companion web site for the book High Performance Web Sites. The examples referenced in the book are hosted here. Navigate through the rules listed below to find the associated examples. Each rule page also contains a link to theYahoo! Developer Network Performance Blog. There you will find a brief summary of the rule along with comments.

how these rules came about
YSlow, Yahoo's performance analysis tool
YDN Performance Blog
YUI Performance Blog
links from the book
sleep.cgi source code

WebCertain: Optimizing for Yandex is Much Different Than for Google

2011-06-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

Rules for SEO are largely the same from market to market around the globe — but there are some nuances to consider when trying to optimize for such search engines as Yandex, Russia’s most popular, SEOmoz says. A video interview with Andy Atkins-Krüger, the founder and CEO of international SEO firm WebCertain, gives some insight.

For example, Google does not use machine learning on its natural search to anywhere near the extent that Yandex does, he says. Yandex's algorithm was created by what human assessors think of web pages, who set those as targets. Then the algorithm tries to achieve those targets. "Now what that means is that if you've got a set of results and in those results there's a kind of a certain approach that should theoretically get you to the top of those results, and you launch a site that matches that format, then the algorithm is going to say, 'Oh, no, that's not what we wanted,' and it will shift. So as an SEO, you're in a fairly difficult position because it's going to move around all the time," says Atkins-Krüger.

Growing SERP Real Estate by 2 or 3 Lines

There are six underutilized ways a site can increase its Search Engine Result Page real estate by two or three lines, writes David de Souza, founder ofMatchingDonations.org, for the SEO Book blog. he says.

These are:

1. Dual Rankings. If more than one of your pages is relevant for a search query on any given page, Google will group these listings together. For example, if a site is listed in the second position for a certain keyword and on the second page of Google in position 11 there is a different URL that also ranks for the same keyword, building enough links to push the secondary listing to page 1 will cause Google to automatically promote it to position 3, he says. "To achieve dual rankings, build both internal and external links to the lower ranking page using the anchor text of the keywords for which you wish to receive dual rankings."

2. Meta Description. "I often see websites using just a few words for their meta descriptions, resulting in only a single line in the SERPs. By adding a few more words, a website can take advantage of the second line that Google allows them for describing their site."

3. Forums. These not only get up to 4 additional listings in the SERPs, they also stand out and catch a user's eye compared to a regular listing.

4. Rich Snippets. They not only enhance rankings, and improve your CTRs but also increase the size of a listing. Here is where Schema.org will come in handy: it provides webmasters with a shared collection of recognized rich snippets supported by search engines.

5. More Results. Google will display an additional line under a listing if the site is a good source of relevant information. "You can increase the probability of Google showing this extra line by having a diverse set of content on your site, interlined with relevant anchor text."

6. Sitelinks. Google generates sitelinks automatically, you can’t do anything specifically to receive them, de Souza says. "To improve your chances of receiving sitelinks, you should follow the best practice of using informative, compact anchor and ALT text for any links to your site."

Social Networking Sites

2011-06-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

http://netscape.aol.com/
http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/
http://slashdot.org/
http://video.google.com/
http://youtube.com/
http://flickr.com/
http://photobucket.com/
http://digg.com
http://mystuff.ask.com/
http://www.technorati.com/
http://del.icio.us
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://simile.mit.edu/
http://furl.net
http://9rules.com/
http://odeo.com/
http://www.propeller.com
http://www.rojo.com/
http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com
http://www.google.com/notebook
http://myaskjeeves.uk.ask.com/
http://www.slide.com/
http://www.esnips.com/
http://www.twitter.com/home
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia
http://reddit.com
http://www.box.net/
http://www.ifilm.com/
http://www.blogcatalog.com/
http://www.topix.net/blogs
http://meneame.net/
http://www.taggle.de/
http://fark.com
http://www.shutterfly.com/
http://www.43things.com/
http://www.metafilter.com/
http://tags.library.upenn.edu/
http://www.newsvine.com/
http://www.matrix.msu.edu/
http://www.techmeme.com/
http://ma.gnolia.com
http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/
http://rollyo.com/
http://swik.net/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://simpy.com
http://eventful.com/
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://www.nowpublic.com/
http://a9.com/-/home.jsp
http://www.librarything.com/
http://www.frappr.com/
http://www.blogpulse.com
http://tailrank.com
http://www.start.com/
http://www.yoono.com/
http://www.blogarama.com/
http://de.lirio.us
http://www.citeulike.org/
http://www.kuro5hin.org
http://connotea.org
http://kinja.com/
http://www.claimid.com
http://www.krugle.com/
http://www.clipfire.com/
http://sitebar.org/
http://www.jeteye.com/
http://favorites.live.com/
http://scuttle.org
http://segnalo.alice.it/
http://www.buzznet.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/
http://www.fotki.com/us/
http://www.quizilla.com/
http://payperpost.com/index.html
http://www.pando.com/
http://iq.lycos.co.uk/
http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/
http://allrecipes.com/
http://www.ilike.com/
http://mog.com/
http://www.buddytv.com/
http://blinklist.com
http://www.dzone.com/
http://www.videosift.com/
http://www.wetpaint.com/
http://clipmarks.com/
http://www.pligg.com/
http://www.kaboodle.com/
http://bluedot.us/front
http://www.jaiku.com/
http://www.tradebit.com/
http://www.wykop.pl/
http://tec.fresqui.com/
http://www.gather.com/
http://www.spicypage.com/
http://www.springwidgets.com/
http://www.zaadz.com/
http://spurl.net
http://www.diigo.com/
http://www.mister-wong.com
http://blinkbits.com
http://netvouz.com
http://www.popurls.com
http://popurls.com/
http://30boxes.com/welcome.php
http://blogmarks.net
http://zoomclouds.egrupos.net/
http://blogcritics.org/
http://www.wink.com/
http://www.backflip.com/
http://www.tagworld.com/
http://www.linkarena.com/
http://www.rateitall.com/
http://shadows.com
http://www.bibsonomy.org/
http://rawsugar.com
http://www.touchgraph.com/ of Your Networks
http://www.listible.com/
http://www.bloghop.com
http://www.trailfire.com/
http://www.plime.com
http://www.chipin.com/
http://www.cocomment.com/
http://tagzi.info/upcoming.php
http://tagsocial.info/upcoming.php
http://tagposts.info/upcoming.php
http://spurls.info/upcoming.php
http://taggingsocial.info/upcoming.php
http://socialmore.info/upcoming.php
http://sociallinkets.info/upcoming.php
http://spotsocial.info/upcoming.php
http://hotbmark.com/upcoming/
http://sociallinking.info/upcoming.php
http://www.itimes.com

Social Bookmarking Pligg sites list

2011-06-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

http://vesti24.eu 6
http://www.kwoff.com 6
http://www.linkk.com.br 6
http://www.lynki.com 6
http://www.yforum.pl 6
http://unterrichtsmedien.ch 5
http://vybrali.sme.sk 5
http://Blogskinny.com 5
http://webdakota.com 5
http://worldpharmanews.net 5
http://www.bizsugar.com 5
http://www.bloggingcanadians.ca 5
http://www.designfloat.com 5
http://www.diggita.it 5
http://www.elserver.com/alacarta/ideas 5
http://www.enchilame.com 5
http://www.faqpal.com 5
http://www.iliketotallyloveit.com 5
http://www.jewsweek.com 5
http://www.listio.com/web20 5
http://www.pligg.com/demo 5
http://www.plugim.com 5
http://www.socialseo.com/socialnews 5
http://www.topix.lt 5
http://www.zabaldu.com 5
http://you-need.info 5
http://valid.ac/opencinema 4
http://votejung.com 4
http://wagg.it 4
http://webdesignlab.jp 4
http://weblog.nykredit.dk/taenknyt 4
http://welcome-business.com 4
http://wic-news.com 4
http://www.2digg.net 4
http://www.arsenalnews.co.uk 4
http://www.atheistspot.com 4
http://www.bluegger.com 4
http://www.bollyscoops.com 4
http://www.care2tell.com 4
http://www.digg.ee 4
http://www.dnhour.com 4
http://www.foodrank.eu 4
http://www.hostigg.com 4
http://www.huip.de 4
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/geeklets 4
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/geeklets 4
http://www.newstube.de 4
http://www.ngjarjet.com 4
http://www.notizieflash.com 4
http://www.oldrec.com 4
http://www.rambhai.com 4
http://www.sappienssocial.com 4
http://www.sexydigg.com 4
http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com 4
http://www.social-bookmark.me 4
http://www.sphinn.jp 4
http://www.sportscafe.fr 4
http://www.statia.ge 4
http://www.sustaind.org 4
http://www.thailander.com 4
http://www.thefindbuzz.com 4
http://www.upnews.it 4
http://www.vincipremi.it 4
http://www.zynios.lt 4
http://xn--l3cg2cxcbu.thaihealth.net 4
http://zimbabwenews.com 4
http://twittelicious.com 3
http://ufoandparanormalnews.com 3
http://ukmediaroom.com 3
http://ukusno.com 3
http://ummahsbest.com 3
http://unosaficionados.com 3
http://usbiznews.com 3
http://usofearth.com 3
http://usualpolitic.com 3
http://utrechtreporter.nl 3
http://valaipookkal.com 3
http://vaticannews.com 3
http://venezuelanews.com 3
http://vicus.fr/digg 3
http://videosift.pl 3
http://videosyoutube.com.ar 3
http://vinsure.com 3
http://virtualjobs.com 3
http://vistaalmar.es/hablame-del-mar 3
http://vote.photoblogawards.com 3
http://wazit.it 3
http://webaddlink.com 3
http://webbiru.com 3
http://webeame.net 3
http://whowantstobe.co.uk/bench 3
http://wjwx.net 3
http://word-media.com/digg 3
http://worldq.de 3
http://wotbooks.com 3
http://wpthemez.com 3
http://www.addalo.it 3
http://www.adult-bookmarks.com 3
http://www.android-dls.com/brainstorm 3
http://www.biznesprawo.pl 3
http://www.blognews.ch 3
http://www.bloodee.com 3
http://www.bringr.com 3
http://www.catalaemprenyat.com 3
http://www.chumit.com 3
http://www.cienporcienmotor.com 3
http://www.ciudadlaberinto.info 3
http://www.clsoc.com 3
http://www.coollinks.ru 3
http://www.craftjuice.com 3
http://www.dealigg.com 3
http://www.detroitinstitute.org 3
http://www.digg9.com 3
http://www.diggja.com 3
http://www.dirload.info 3
http://www.dirtyrottengossip.com 3
http://www.dubbagol.com 3
http://www.fusebulb.com 3
http://www.gametaggr.com 3
http://www.googletop.net 3
http://www.hazmereir.net 3
http://www.hdtvlcd.org 3
http://www.healthcareinternational.net 3
http://www.hit.in.th 3
http://www.hondurastips.com 3
http://www.hotindianstartups.com 3
http://www.ideaopedia.com 3
http://www.ifresh.cz 3
http://www.imli.com/imligg 3
http://www.iphonefanclub.com 3
http://www.itnovice.si 3
http://www.jadgeb.com 3
http://www.japansoc.com 3
http://www.jsurfer.de 3
http://www.keecricket.com 3
http://www.kiefit.com 3
http://www.krt.com.mk 3
http://www.legalblogger.com 3
http://www.lieb-link.de 3
http://www.lieblnk.de 3
http://www.linkanotizie.net 3
http://www.listofadvertisers.com 3
http://www.meneatela.net 3
http://www.mohand.es 3
http://www.mojevijesti.com 3
http://www.mytakeondisney.com 3
http://www.neopagan.com 3
http://www.neweasyrecipe.com 3
http://www.n-ews.de 3
http://www.newskick.de 3
http://www.newsmeback.com 3
http://www.oferty1.pl 3
http://www.osusports.info 3
http://www.pieton-magazine.com 3
http://www.pixelgroovy.com 3
http://www.pligg.ch 3
http://www.rankalo.net 3
http://www.realestatevoices.com 3
http://www.reggiopress.it 3
http://www.rss2blog-review.com 3
http://www.sayitfacetoface.com 3
http://www.seguilaflecha.com 3
http://www.seniorscoop.com 3
http://www.social-bookmarking.net 3
http://www.spicybookmark.com 3
http://www.spletarna.net 3
http://www.stockcenter.com/pligg 3
http://www.sturvs.com 3
http://www.tierboard.com 3
http://www.todump.com 3
http://www.txapelketanagusia.eu/btn09sarean 3
http://www.wahacz.pl 3
http://www.wesmile.de 3
http://www.x-digg.com 3
http://www.xn--9oqx67adx7azjf.net/ 3
http://xbooz.com 3
http://xlnoticias.com 3
http://xpdig.com 3
http://yasnw.com 3
http://yentit.com 3
http://yuppmarks.com 3
http://zabij.com 3
http://zabox.net 3
http://zeedzazab.com 3
http://zemivideo.com/diggmk2 3
http://zimnewswatch.com 3
http://zoomit.ca 3
http://zrqa.com 3
http://zyliving.com 3
http://zzygg.com 3
http://twittl.com 2
http://uan.me 2
http://uan.me 2
http://udarnevesti.com 2
http://ukbiznews.com 2
http://ulavu.com 2
http://universeharrypotter.com 2
http://unorganized.de 2
http://upcycled.co.uk 2
http://uppagerank.com 2
http://upspam.com 2
http://uptheanti.org 2
http://usdigg.com 2
http://veloon.biz 2
http://versoclub.com 2
http://vidmix.ru 2
http://villanews.net 2
http://vipfile.biz 2
http://vorsthammer.com 2
http://votarnoticias.com 2
http://wapher.moffed.com 2
http://web.session.pl 2
http://webinternetgames.com 2
http://webnovosti.com 2
http://website-sharing.com 2
http://websocial.jp 2
http://web-tip.net 2
http://wedelia.com 2
http://welovesite.com 2
http://weloveting.com 2
http://werbopbop.com/r 2
http://westhamnews.net 2
http://whatnwhen.in 2
http://whatsla.me 2
http://wildcatcorner.com/wildcatlinks 2
http://wildlifewire.org 2
http://wildthink.com 2
http://wineblogcentral.com 2
http://wordpressing.es 2
http://worldmartialartsunion.us 2
http://wpthemedownload.com 2
http://wrestling247.net 2
http://wrestlingreader.com 2
http://www.agroots.com 2
http://www.americanos.org 2
http://www.apostille-info.com 2
http://www.boncukcikolata.com/ 2
http://www.buk-mark.com 2
http://www.decrescita.com 2
http://www.efitt.com 2
http://www.favname.com 2
http://www.game-not-over.com 2
http://www.gimp.wisdomplug.com 2
http://www.globalmitt.com 2
http://www.gnews.me 2
http://www.gwiri.at 2
http://www.gyach.com 2
http://www.hogdb.com/razorback-news 2
http://www.ibabedb.com 2
http://www.icecoldnews.com 2
http://www.kitejump.com 2
http://www.l000.de 2
http://www.linksprocket.com 2
http://www.liputankhusus.com 2
http://www.news74.ru 2
http://www.newsyatra.com 2
http://www.novinky-cz.com 2
http://www.pinglog.com 2
http://www.pollgate.com 2
http://www.psiquealo.com 2
http://www.railsforge.com 2
http://www.schnapp-ich-mir.de 2
http://www.shoppingdigg.com 2
http://www.snt.org.pl 2
http://www.snt.org.pl 2
http://www.socialarticle.com 2
http://www.socialpa.it 2
http://www.spampligg.com 2
http://www.spicywood.com 2
http://www.sportsag.com 2
http://www.squic.com 2
http://www.supplementdeals.net 2
http://www.tonesall.com 2
http://www.top-newsy.pl 2
http://www.topvicevi.com 2
http://www.trendanistas.com 2
http://www.trymydeals.com 2
http://www.tutable.com 2
http://www.vkolbe.ru 2
http://www.votaciones.congresodewebmasters.com 2
http://www.windowsseite.de 2
http://www.ww2.aranijothish.com 2
http://www.ziki.com.au 2
http://www.ziki.com.au 2
http://y2k38.info 2
http://yo.com.ua 2
http://yodesi.com 2
http://yomash.com 2
http://youdude.net 2
http://youtubefilter.com 2
http://yummyuck.com 2
http://zeelandreporter.nl 2
http://zicnow.com 2
http://zikandco.com 2
http://zonedigg.com 2
http://zonepromoteweb.com 2
http://zuidhollandreporter.nl 2
http://twitter.916sac.com 1
http://udonnetwork.com 1
http://uffici.org 1
http://ultimateaffiliatesoftware.us 1
http://ultimatequest.org/ 1
http://undubde.com 1
http://untell.com 1
http://upcoming.pl 1
http://urbanredux.com 1
http://ur-faves.com 1
http://urselections.com 1
http://usiam.co.cc 1
http://vaseclanky.cz 1
http://veryin.org 1
http://vkizz.com 1
http://vorazius.com 1
http://votocilina.com 1
http://votrebuzz.fr 1
http://vselink.cz 1
http://vsenastroiky.ru 1
http://vtagit.info 1
http://vuelosbaratos10.com 1
http://wacody.co.cc 1
http://wamobi.com 1
http://waspadalah.com 1
http://way2boom.com 1
http://webinthai.com 1
http://webmarketingtribe.com 1
http://webthaigg.com 1
http://webwhompers.net 1
http://weseeker.com 1
http://whobuiltthatsite.com 1
http://wikipardis.com 1
http://wirepost.com 1
http://worstpress.com 1
http://www.alapbangla.com 1
http://www.atella.tv/public/news 1
http://www.bimbuzz.com 1
http://www.bloob.net 1
http://www.bookmark.khaikai.com 1
http://www.bookmarkopedia.com 1
http://www.bookmarkwebthai.com 1
http://www.booktagz.de 1
http://www.catchline.de 1
http://www.cienporcienmujer.com 1
http://www.digaki.com 1
http://www.digga.com.br 1
http://www.ergebniswette.com 1
http://www.favor.it 1
http://www.fjr.com 1
http://www.flashvip.com.br 1
http://www.freebiesup.com 1
http://www.galatiul.com 1
http://www.gamezdigg.com 1
http://www.gazmos.com 1
http://www.geanostra.com/hot 1
http://www.hoopsdojo.com 1
http://www.ideawala.com 1
http://www.indice.it 1
http://www.inter-stilist.de 1
http://www.iwantideas.com 1
http://www.kazinoo.com 1
http://www.kimom.com 1
http://www.lingeriebookmark.com 1
http://www.linksiden.no 1
http://www.macintoshr.com 1
http://www.magavenue.com/galerie 1
http://www.manthong.net 1
http://www.mydamsu.de 1
http://www.nautictimes.com/nautictimes 1
http://www.ninja-blue.com 1
http://www.nonpagare.com 1
http://www.offpath.co.uk 1
http://www.phangansite.com 1
http://www.real-estate-bloggers.com 1
http://www.romstiri.com 1
http://www.rumdb.org/ 1
http://www.runzoom.com 1
http://www.savetheurl.com 1
http://www.schooldecision.com 1
http://www.searchhyip.com 1
http://www.share-news.net 1
http://www.sitesbookmarking.com 1
http://www.sold.es 1
http://www.styleplus1.com 1
http://www.teeblr.com 1
http://www.thaibm.com 1
http://www.theparishilton.eu 1
http://www.top-vyrobky.com 1
http://www.turismo-vacanze.net 1
http://www.uptheranks.com 1
http://www.voterank.de 1
http://wykop.napisz.bieszczady.pl 1
http://wykopuj.pl 1
http://yehiapress.org 1
http://yesdiga.com 1
http://yobookmarks.com 1
http://yosoylibre.es
http://younews.in
http://yoursecretrecipe.com
http://yoursourceforinfo.com
http://yousubmittags.com
http://zedaga.co.cc
http://zetadigg.com
http://zilei.ro
http://zipdigg.com
http://zonautos.com
http://zoneface.com