Stop Believing These Three Common SEO Lies

Given that good Search Engine Optimisation techniques are considered the Holy Grail of online branding, it should probably come as no surprise to find a multitude of myths, tall-tales and outright lies being spread about the process.

The trouble is, when these misleading ideas become popular, real businesses start following them. By the time they realise they took a wrong turn, it’s too late. The damage has been done, and they’ve wasted time and, quite possibly, a good bit of money in the process.

To help you avoid these all-too-common SEO lies, here are three of the most depressingly widespread falsehoods.

1. If you build an optimised website, you’re sorted

Some companies think all the SEO their website needs can be handled during its design. As long as all the initial text we upload is well-written and packed with relevant keywords, they think, we’ve done all the ‘SEO-ing’ we need.

This may be true if you are in a niche that gets searched a couple of times per week. If that is the case, you don’t really need SEO as nobody is looking for what you provide anyway.

2. Google hates link building

This downright lie has become so common recently, that even some fairly trusted sources have started believing it. The idea is that, during recent algorithm changes, Google expressly took action against all attempts to link build and, so, trying to implement these tactics in your SEO is now essentially a grey hat activity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Natural links are still a 100% legitimate way to add authority to your website. Earn your links instead of buying them or using spammy link building tactics.

3. It’s all about targeting one big keyword

This is an area where may amateur marketers go very, very wrong. They decide that, because their company deals in, say, photocopiers, their sole SEO aim should be to lead the Google search rankings for ‘photocopiers’. From that point on, they pour all their content efforts into targeting this and only this keyword. This quest is doomed from the start.

The problem is, unless they are the only site in the world discussing photocopiers (and they won’t be), they are unlikely to ever make good on the goal. Similarly, as they are ignoring all the other highly lucrative long form keywords related to photocopiers, they are missing out on much more obtainable and much more lucrative SEO opportunities.

SEO is crucial for any company who wants to get noticed online. Yet that does not mean you should believe everything that you read about the topic. Good SEO is all about crafting a well-balanced, regular, long term strategy, involving relevant, intelligent content and smart keywords. If anybody offers ‘advice’ that tells you different, you would be wise not to follow.

Courtesy of: business2community.com

3 SEO Predictions You Need to Know for 2016

1. Mobile is the future

Mobile searches will surpass desktop in 2016

According to eMarketer, 2015 will see mobile search reach the tipping point—the stage at which the majority of spend, organic traffic and paid clicks comes from smartphones and tablets rather than the traditional medium of desktop and laptop search.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Mobile-search-advertising-spend.png.png

Figure 1: Increasing search ad spending on mobile over time from 2013 to 2018

What does this mean for your business?

Apart from making your website both mobile friendly and responsive to all devices, you need to go a little further.

It means you need to have a mobile mindset for all of your website and product based decisions. Consider how your content will appear on a smartphone before finalizing your website, product pages, service pages and layouts.

The aim is to give mobile users the same optimum experience when they visit proper desktop websites.

In other words, businesses must give thought to all of the following; mobile marketing strategy; mobile design, mobile search marketing and advertising, mobile e-commerce and mobile payment, mobile CRM (customer relationship management), mobile coupons, and integrating mobile, local and social.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/PlusNet-mobile-mindset-for-SEO.png.png

Figure 2: A case study of PlusNet whose “mobile first” mindset led to increased conversions on mobile

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Mobile-design-tips-for-SEO.png.png

Figure 3: The difference between past and present mobile designs. Note, the new focus on better visual experience and the use of space to highlight important elements of the web page

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Example-of-mobile-design-Zazzle.png.png

Figure 4: Example of Zazzle Mobile Design changes:

What did Zazzle do?

• Created simpler, more focused product pages
• Kept only features that are useful to mobile users
• Prioritized products that are popular with mobile users
• Created mobile-only deals and promotions

The results?

A 186% increase in mobile sales

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Call-only-ads-in-search.png.png

Figure 5: The tactic of using “Call-Only” ads can work well for businesses who want to increase the call conversion on mobile devices. This could work for products where users don’t need to gain an understanding about them and want a quick answer, for example: removal, storage, laundry, car rental…etc

Claim your business across Google Search, Maps, and Google+

50% of consumers visit a store within a day of searching on a smartphone.

72% of consumers who searched for local information on a smart phone visited a store within 5 miles* (Source: Google, May 2014) and of the 69% of Australians who use social media 30% post reviews. *(Source: YP Sensis 2014)

Soaring mobile search will have a major impact on local businesses, especially for retail stores and hospitality venues such as restaurants, cafes, and hotels.

This emphasizes the importance of getting your business listed on Google Plus Local, Maps and customising your search appearance.

Businesses should ensure they have completed the full description of products, services, images, videos and social reviews.

2. The rise of voice search

Next time you use Siri, Cortana, or Google Now think about how your interaction is different.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Examples-of-voice-search.png.png

Figure 6: Voice search is now available on Apple Siri, Google Now and Windows Cortana phones

With text-based search, you type something like “Home Depot” and you click on the address to find its location.

With voice search, you’ll say, “Where is the nearest Home Depot?”

Think about how you began your search. Did you open the search box by touch or did you prompt the assistant by saying “OK, Google.”

Not long ago an agency, Rosetta, published a brilliant article that shared the unique idea that voice search is marked by the use of question words: Who, What, Where, Why, and How.

These are the question terms that will define our changing search patterns on mobile devices.

While desktop searches will be used for in-depth content that can’t be answered in basic short form.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Mobile-device-search-volume-growth.png.png

Figure 7: As you can see tablet growth is the highest, due to the growth of Wi-Fi and voice search.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Ready-to-act-based-on-search-queries.png.png

Figure 8: The ready-to-act level changes when it comes to different type of search queries.

As you may know, Google is launching voice recognition search features on Google apps.

Voice search changes the behaviours of consumers by moving faster than type search. Although Google hasn’t provided exact stats on the superiority of voice recognition over type search yet.

Part of this change is to embrace the increasing popularity of mobile search and to make the search engine more proficient, saving the consumer both time and effort.

Conversational search helps users answer fact, stat-based questions such as “tell me the hotels in the Sydney CBD”, it can then refine the search to “find me the cheapest hotel in Sydney CBD”.

You can appreciate how efficient the search assistant system is, making the entire process much easier for the time-pressed consumer.

What You Can Do To Embrace This Change?

You need to improve your efforts on local SEO. Search results depend on many factors, among them are full details about products/services (pricing, location), reviews, and local citation. All of which are important factors to get your site ranking highly in search results

It is now important to make your apps search friendly. Apps are becoming more integrated within Google search results since Google has started indexing app content. Accordingly, businesses can make sure their app appear in search results under web and applications, making it more accessible to users.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Example-of-apps-appearing-in-a-search-tab.png.png

Figure 9: Example of apps appearing in search results

Another key point I took from the conference was the importance of the mix between content marketing and SEO.

It is important to integrate your SEO strategy with your content marketing.

For example, conducting comprehensive long tail keyword research to identify the popular words and phrases that users are searching is only necessary or pertinent when combined with the relevant content strategy which could involve FAQs, Facts, How-to-articles, Explainer Videos and so on.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Long-tail-keyword-research-example-spreadsheet.png.png

Figure 10: Example of Result Driven SEO’s long-tail keyword research.

Analyse your long tail keywords to find patterns, and consider using those that stretch into six and seven words in length, including question phrases and positives or negatives accordingly. Then you can write content using these terms.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Voice-searches-and-long-tail-keywords-graph.png.png

Figure 11: Voice searches contain more words – this means long-tail keywords are even more important as part of the SEO process.

Google has yet to comment on how conversational search will impact ad listings, but I doubt any significant changes will occur any time soon.

3. Structured data and direct answers are trending

Direct answers are Google’s attempt to show you the an exact answer to your search query at the top of the search page.

They were not originally designed with mobile in mind, but the requirements and restrictions of mobile search have pushed its growth.

Bad news

• Google: “we built Google for users, not websites.”
• Approximately 19% of queries result in rich/direct answers
• Bad for specialized search engines and competing answer engines –i.e. weather sites, shopping searches, yellow pages and lyric sites
• If your business strategy is to collect and present data and facts you don’t own, Google is now a direct competitor

Good news

• Most direct answer platforms are not commercially valuable.
• Some answer engines (Weather Underground) provide data to Google via licensing –additional revenue + traffic stream
• If you are the answer to a direct answer (what is the best restaurant in Sydney) then life is good!
• About 75% of the time, links to the source are provided
• Most searches can’t be turned into a direct answer, and many search sessions are multi-step
• Major sites are not reporting a downturn in traffic as a result (so far)

How to adapt

Provide structured data for everything you can.

Do you ever wonder how some e-commerce sites get yellow stars, prices, or thumbnails in their search result listings?

That’s structured data at work.

Structured data sounds a bit off-putting, but it’s simply a way of tagging the data in your web pages so that search engines can easily understand. These data elements can be anything from pricing and availability to breadcrumbs and video.

So what exactly does structured data look like in search engine listings?

Structured data is the “extra” information that you see next to a website and meta description. For example, if you are searching for a restaurant, you will not only see the restaurant’s name, but also additional information such as hours, pricing and stars to indicate positive reviews.

So do you need a web developer to manage structured data and SEO for you?

Unfortunately, yes you do, your time is better spent growing your business rather than trying to figure out how to implement structured data on your website.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Google-reviews-in-search.png.png

Figure 12: Example of Google review and video mark-up

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Additional-information-next-to-reviews-in-Google-search.png.png

Figure 13: You can mark-up not only for rating but, time, price and other specs

Structured data is definitely not only for search engines. If done correctly it will make your result much more attractive and increase your click through rate.

Tools and Resources For Your Markup

• Googles Structured Data Testing Tool
• Schema.org for Local Businesses

Change how Google displays your brand

Your brand’s ‘Knowledge Graph’ panel is your new digital business card, your brand’s first impression.

It is the box that shows up on the right side of a Google search.

Here’s how you tell Google what needs to be there.

Companies and people can now customize their own data in the ‘Knowledge Graph’ by adding structured data mark-up to their official website. The following types of data may be customized:

• Logos
• Company Contact Numbers
• Social Profile Links

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Structured-mark-up-in-Google-search.png.png

Figure 14: Businesses can now customize their logo, contact info, and social profiles in the Knowledge Graph by adding structured data mark-up to their official website

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Customize-what-Google-shows-about-your-brand.png.png

Figure 15: The information about Result Driven SEO is accurate and, fortunately, our previous clients have left some good Google reviews

Wrapping it up

Mobile searches out number desktop, it has become crystal clear that mobile is the future of digital marketing.

As marketers and site owners we need to think “mobile” in all of our digital dealings, and we must have a mobile marketing strategy in place.

Voice search and direct answers are also growing strongly, meaning content marketing and SEO should go together to make your site a source of authoritative information.

With the increasing integration of apps to search results, make sure that your apps are search friendly.

Finally, make use of Google Products such as Google Plus Local and Structured Data to make your site easily crawlable by Google through text-based and voice searches.

The results of which should be more leads to your website, and more sales. Good Luck!

Courtesy of: business2community.com

5 SEO tips for startups from the CEO of Volume Nine

Chuck Aikens is the CEO of Volume Nine which is a leading SEO and Social Media company here in Denver, CO.  Volume Nine was founded in 2006 and has been named to the Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies for the last 3 years.    When not working hard, Chuck is working towards his lifetime dreams of throwing catch with Peyton Manning in his backyard and playing golf with Rory McIrory at Cherry Hills Coutry Club.

 

 

1) What is the most important thing for a startup to remember when creating and executing an SEO strategy?

 

The first thing to remember is to be patient.  Google and all the other search engines in the world are smart. Like, really smart. There are many, many different factors they use in evaluating and ranking sites; many of these are dependent upon time. When the search engines evaluate a site, they look at things like longevity, how well built up your network is, whether or not you are established on the internet, etc.

 

Essentially, they want you to prove to them that you can be trusted to be put in their search results and this only grows with time. Less competitive industries will find it quicker to build up this trust, but is is crucial to understand that all SEO work take some degree of time and effort to see success.   Or, in other words, doing good SEO takes work. You can't cheat the system - Google will always win. 

 

However, that does not mean there is no hope. A start-up should work towards creating a solid SEO foundation for which all their future efforts can rely upon. Things like technical optimization, site speed, having great on-site content, doing light content optimization, etc. can go a long, long way towards seeing long term success. Following these basics, it is then time to start thinking about getting going with more time-intensive tactics such as content marketing, social, blogging, influencer outreach, etc. 

 

2) How do you optimize your site, if the most appropriate keywords are highly competitive? Alternative approaches?

 

If your target keywords are highly competitive, you may need to find keywords that are searched less but are not as competitive.  When starting out, we often recommend that you pick a few specific keyword themes that you can establish authority and relevancy.  Google will often rank a new website (or business) that focuses on 1 or 2 very specific concepts over a more trusted website that covers a wider set of topics.

 

When you optimize your website, or build in-bound links, be sure to not over-optimize as Google doesn't like websites that are deploying obvious SEO tactics.  Older and more established websites might get away with it, but Google algorithms are built to catch sloppy SEO.  We always like to tell people (and so does Google) that often times the best SEO 'technique' is to simply build an awesome, unique, and relevant website. If your site is good, a lot of the SEO gets taken care of on it's own through the distribution and interaction from your users. 

 

By the way, the Google algorithms updates over the last 2 years have been named after animals so we aren't pulling a prank on you when you start talking about the Panda, Penguin, and Pigeon updates.

 

3) What are some of the best strategies for building organic SEO?

 

Once you have optimized your site and finished the first round of promotions, the next step is to setup and commit to a long-term strategy.   Many exerts in our industry say that "Content is King" and you should definitely put some effort into developing great content that will attract your target audience to your website.  More importantly, you should use content marketing to win links, get social shares, and build up the authority and trust of your website.  Other ways of generating organic traffic is getting earned press mentions, guess blogging, conducting webinars, building infographics, or just asking your partners and vendors for a link.  Not only is this a good SEO strategy, but you might also get some great referral traffic as well.

 

4) At what point do you think it is appropriate for a company to buy search results?

 

If you have a viable offering and are ready to sell something or generate leads, buying traffic from the Search Engines should be something that you evaluate.  A good Paid Search program is a great complement to your Organic Search program.  In the beginning, it is a great way to see what the best converting keywords are and how much they cost. Furthermore, studies show that having both an organic listing in the search results along a paid advertisement works better together than have just organic or just paid advertisements.

 

Display advertising, social advertising, and re-targeting are also other great mediums for start-ups to get the word out and may bring positive ROI even though they can sometimes take quite a bit of work to get up and running efficiently. 

 

 

5) What else would you recommend to a startup that in not familiar with SEO techniques?

 

SEO is an important first step as you can build on a good framework for many years to come. But it doesn't stop at optimizing your website, you also need to produce great content, build a social community, and develop out your creative assets.  One you get someone to your website, you need to work on conversion rates, be mobile friendly, use rich media like video, and overall think about how marketing automation works with your organic and paid traffic.   

 

It sounds like a lot of work, but SEO is just one part of a solid Inbound Marketing program, and we find ourselves working with our clients on all of these different specialties in some capacity even if our main focus is SEO and that is where we started with almost all of our clients.

Courtesy of: builtincolorado.com

Successful SEO Tactics: Off-Site Optimization

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