'Net Features : seo

4 Backlink Myths Busted

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:30:00 GMT

:: Travis Bliffen, Seo Proz ::

SEO is the magic of the digital marketing world with experts promising to pull rabbits out of hats for first-page search engine results. But as search engine providers continuously update their ranking algorithms, SEO success becomes an elusive and shifting science - even for those with all the tricks. So, how can you separate fact from illusion? Let's start by busting four backlink myths.

Myth: All backlinks should be created within content that is relevant to the page being optimized.

When a page or content goes “viral,” it is rapidly shared across both new and established blogs, social networks and the net as a whole. As a result, backlinks are created on a range of sites, many of which have absolutely no relevance to the content being linked. Therefore, even if your content is about, say, puppy dogs, if you create a link on a high-quality site about apples, the backlink is still advantageous for your search engine ranking. This doesn’t mean that spamming links all over the place is a good idea though. Natural link building involves creating backlinks in a manner that does not appear spammy, because the links are relevant in some way, but not necessarily to the content of the page. In our puppy dogs and apples example, perhaps there is a forum post where an apple grower is having trouble with his dog. While the content of the backlink site isn’t about the subject-linked content, the link would still seem natural and relevant.

Myth: All backlinks should be from PR2+ sites or better.

When we look at the nature of viral content yet again, we see links going up in all manner of places. You can’t stop PRzero sites from linking your content any more than you can force a PR9 site to link it. Nonetheless, the PRzero backlink is not going to sandbag your content’s search engine rank. When creating backlinks, the focus should not be the on PR status of the site, but the quality of the link itself. All backlinks should be considered from the perspective of a Web-goer. Ask yourself, if SEO didn’t exist, and all of my links were legitimate, “real” people, rather than crawler bots, would this link be something I’d click or does it look like spam? If you wouldn’t click it, don’t create the backlink. Common sense viewers generally won’t click links within sites that appear to be less than reputable. This may include porn sites, casinos, make-money-fast scams and link farms.

Myth: You should create this many backlinks.

The suggested perfect number of backlinks to improve search engine ranking varies, but more often than not it’s a lot—or as many as you possibly can. Truthfully, though, just how many backlinks you should create is a trick question, because you shouldn’t be creating them all. Viral content does not become viral because the creator links it hundreds of times, it becomes viral because the content is timely, high quality, and useful or interesting. The same way creating backlinks with the same anchor text every time or linking from the same site repeatedly can make a link look like spam, being the only person creating backlinks can as well. Instead of aiming to create backlinks, focus on creating content that encourages other people to do it for you.

Myth: High-link velocity will hurt your search engine ranking.

Falling under the old quality-is-better-than-quantity adage, it’s often suggested that backlink creation should be staggered as rapid link velocity makes a site look like spam. When content goes viral, however, it is indeed rapidly linked from all over the place, so if this rule is true, why aren’t all those pages sinking to the 150 page? While it is true quality counts more than quantity, if your backlinks are being followed and not just created it doesn’t matter how fast they appear. One hundred backlinks in 24 hours that nobody clicks might be seen as spam, but 100 backlinks that are getting active traffic are a seed to viral content. If your aim is to plant that seed, you need to mimic the process by which content becomes viral to the best of your ability. News and social signals play a massive role in the virility of content, so with a viral-style link building campaign, don’t forget to introduce the content to social networks and news feeds.

The truth about launching a successful SEO backlink campaign is just that, dismiss all the rules. Forget about the experts stabbing in the dark at the magic behind scoring the first page, and think like a real human being from the perspective of the people that you want to view your content. After all, it is people that make content go viral, and when content wins the people, it scores the first page of search engine results as a trophy.

Travis Bliffen is the founder of The Seo Proz a search marketing company located near Marion, IL. After working in the industry under the guidance of other search-marketing professionals, he launched The SEO Proz in early 2012. Since then he has worked with numerous local, national and international clients to improve their search rankings.

Could Google+ Play a Role in the Upcoming Penguin Update?

Michael Garrity — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:05:00 GMT

On Friday morning, Matt Cutts, the person in charge of Google’s webspam team, announced via Twitter that the search engine would be rolling out the next generation, version 2.0, of its Penguin update (originally released in April of last year).

This update will likely have considerable ramifications on the way that Google sorts and ranks pages on its search engine results pages (SERPs), as these types of overhauls entail altering the search algorithm, as opposed to just an index refresh.

Penguin 2.0

The first Penguin update focused on black hat SEO and links/link quality, as part of the company’s apparent desire to keep "spammy" sites stuffed with low-quality links from reaching the upper echelons of the SERPs (or even the first couple of pages, for that matter). It’s been tweaked a few times since then, with the first refresh (Penguin 1.1, if you will) simply cleaning up and implementing the algorithm update in the way it indexes pages, and the second refresh adding the Disavow Links Tool, which puts the onus of identifying and removing bad links on the webmasters.

But this new update promises to be much more significant and should resonate more with all websites and webmasters. In a video released yesterday (see the bottom of this post), Cutts said that the upcoming Penguin update, which is expected in “a few weeks,” will likely go deeper and have more of an impact than Penguin 1.0, but didn’t really elaborate beyond that. He also explains that Google is looking to give special ranking "boosts" to sites that are authorities in a specific industry, community or space, meaning it will return those sites above loess authoritiative sites in related queries. He doesn't define how they will determine that authority, however.

Naturally, this has led many Web pros to wonder just what this new update will entail, and how it may affect their own performance in the SERPs. For now, all we can do is speculate.

What about Google+?

One likely scenario involves Google’s silently growing social network, Google+, which passed Twitter in Dec. 2012 to become the second largest online social network in terms of active monthly users (according to a Global Web Index study). Whereas Google started out by aggressively (over) marketing G+ when it first went live, the company has slowly backed off in favor of quietly integrating the social network with its myriad other products.

It wouldn’t be at all surprising, then, to see Google trying to incorporate G+ more intricately into its search engine, as well. And since the original Penguin was largely about links and link quality, one might expect Penguin 2.0 to put a special emphasis on links appearing on the social network. That is, content that gets linked to on or from Google+ will be weighted more heavily, or at least with more credibility, than if it were just a link on a random website or blog.

In other words, Google could end up viewing links that also appear somewhere on Google+ as being of a generally higher quality than others, so it may end up giving them a boost in the SERPs. And if that’s the case, it wouldn’t be surprising if Google Search also paid attention to the activity around links on Google+ (e.g. shares, +1s, etc.) in order to better determine just how “quality” they may actually be.

Should this end up being the case, it would mean that brands and content publishers, especially, will want to become more active on Google+, sharing links on the social network in order to give them more authority or credibility in the SERPs, especially if they expect these links to appear on other websites or blogs.

Of course, this is all just speculation, and Google is being, and will continue to be, quiet on the subject until the release of the new update, as it always is. I’m just saying, it would be an interesting way for the company to quietly nudge people toward using Google+ more often, although the downside would be the creation of an increasingly insular, exclusive “Google Universe” that may alienate Web professionals and users even more than it already has.

Is there a POC in Your SEO Audit?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:05:00 GMT

SEO is becoming increasingly difficult by the day. To truly excel with the digital marketing tactic, it's essential to periodically audit the various elements of a website that may influence its ultimate success on the search results - particularly for those highly sought-after keywords (you know, the ones that your prospective visitors would actually use to find your website).

There's been a rise over the past few years of agencies offering their clients audits of those clients existing search engine optimization campaigns. While it's vital (I repeat, vital) to know what's working or not, too many of these audits are self-serving - to the agency - at best, and can be downright misguided when those performing the audit simply don't understand your business, its customers, or its competitors SEO strategies.

Again, audits are really important but you should not do so in a silo. What you should look for (or request from the agency performing the audit) are some benchmarks as that alone will provide the most valuable insights and ultimately the most benefit. Companies need a point of comparison (POC) to gauge their efforts. That POC should ideally be a competitor, and a competitor within your geographic market.

If you offer SEO services you might right now be fuming mad (that's double the work!) but in reality, you can't and shouldn't expect your clients (who will pay you good money) to make a decision based on half the SEO story. Buyers of SEO services need to understand how much improvement to their current efforts are required to beat the competition. If you can show them how low the hurdle is, just imagine how quickly they will sign on the dotted line.

Here are a few key essential SEO audit points and why it's important to provide a POC for each:

Keyword Focus: Most websites, particularly those on a smaller scale, focus on just a handful of keywords. Knowing what those keywords are (based on the research you can gain from popular keyword research tools) is important but if the competition has been engaged in SEO for some time, they may have discovered a few search terms that really, truly convert browsers into buyers. Knowing what search terms competitors are currently using therefore can prove exceedingly valuable when developing an SEO campaign. Don't accept a SEO keyword audit without knowing what your competitors are optimizing for today.

URL Structure: Yes, a well-organized website structure is important to a successful presence on the search engines - it's undeniably one of the most important variables in good on-site optimization. But unless you have thousands of web pages, there's really no reason you'd have an abnormal structure whatsoever (no complex folder hierarchies, or product parameters for example). It would be useful to know if competitors did have an URL structure problem though because then you'd have an opportunity to differentiate your digital presence from the perspective of the search engines.

Title Tags: SEO's need to do a better job of showing their clients what it is that they actually do (URL structure by the way isn't one of them as from a distance it seems rather simple - just change the name, right?). The best way to do that is to communicate the importance of title tags; and since they're visible on the search results to users this isn’t really too much to ask for from the SEO group performing the audit. If you can clearly express why your prospective clients method of title tag optimization isn't working, show them how their competitors too are doing it wrong, and how your approach to the practice is better, you’ve got a near fool-proof way to once again get that client on your side.

These are just three areas where I hope you can see that having a point of comparison in SEO audits is really important to the benefit you could derive from an SEO audit. Consider a few other elements - validated code, social media, mobile compatibility, code validation, and page load speed - and ask yourself, is this something that should if I were to show to my client, it would benefit from them knowing about? Remember that in the SEO industry, knowledge (and more of it) is power - the power to make the right decisions.

5 Reasons Your Search Traffic is Declining

Michael Garrity — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:27:00 GMT

Maybe it’s been happening over the past few weeks, or even months. Slowly, but surely, you’ve been watching your traffic numbers decline, despite not having changed much of anything about the way you publish content or optimize your website for the search engines.

Naturally, you’ll want to know exactly what’s going on and what’s causing this continual dip in traffic. For some problems, you may be able to look at your analytics platform to determine what content is seeing its traffic numbers decrease, which could help you clearly identify where you’re struggling.

However, in most cases, you’ll have to perform some kind of search result audit for your various keywords that will show you where you’re currently ranking on Google and its competitors for your most important keywords. Ultimately, this could reveal one (or more) issues that are holding you down in the SERPs and, thus, negatively affecting your traffic numbers.

But before you begin investigating, it might be helpful to know what you should be on the lookout for. So, here are the five most likely reasons that you’ve been seeing your website traffic decrease:

New Competition
(Too) many website owners and SEO professionals tend to a take an “it’s all about me” approach to their work, and when they start to have an issue like declining traffic, their initial instinct is to wonder what it is THEY are doing wrong and what THEY have to do to fix it. However, few immediately consider the possibility of a new website (or sites) that have moved into their niche and are luring away some of their traffic by offering comparable products or content. This is one of the reasons why conducting regular industry assessments and search audits is imperative.

Content is Out of Date
Every good content creator strives to make something evergreen that will last forever, so that visitors will consistently come to his or her website to read it. However, over time, the majority of content will become dated, and its value will begin to depreciate at a regular pace. One way to tell if your content isn’t as enticing to searchers as it used to be is to monitor that page’s analytics, and if something that used to get a consistently high influx of visitors now gets less and less, it’s likely that the content on the page is decreasing in value to most readers. A method for correcting this issue could be to produce a new, updated version of that content, and then to link to the new page on the old one.

Shifts in Algorithm Values
This is another instance where your decreasing traffic isn’t actually your fault. Occasionally, Google and the other search engines will alter their algorithms to give more weight to certain types of content for specific search terms. When that happens, images, videos, wiki pages or other content that is slightly different from standard Web pages may be given prominence over your site, which can have an effect on how much traffic you get from that search engine. If you notice that Google seems to favor certain types of content for one of your keywords or targeted search terms, maybe that means you should consider making a video or infographic the next time you consider writing a blog post about a that topic.

Caught Red Handed Being a Black Hat
And other times, SEOs are knowingly or unknowingly participating in nefarious “black hat” SEO tactics in order to move their sites higher up in the SERPs. Once Google and the others bust you – and they almost always will – they’ll penalize your site and send you way down in the rankings, and that will obviously affect your traffic. If you genuinely weren’t intending to be shady and just made a mistake, it’s important that you find out what your exact offense was and correct it as soon as possible, so that you can start trying to garner some good will with the search engines and make your way back up in the rankings.

They’re Just Not That into Your Content
However, the unfortunate truth is that much of the time, consumers just aren’t going to be that interested in the content that you’re publishing, meaning it’s not engaging or valuable enough to hold their attention and keep them coming back for more. And without engaging content, your traffic numbers are going to suffer. To rectify this problem, you should be aware of the top sites and blogs in your niche or industry, and take note of what they’re regularly publishing content about (in order to understand emerging trends) and what their readers are saying in comments sections and on social media sites to see what they’re asking for, so that you have a better idea of what content will be engaging and valuable to the visitors you want to attract.

BrightLocal Puts SEO Industry In Focus

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:14:00 GMT

BrightLocal has released results from a survey which examines the health and nature of the local search engine optimization industry, revealing just what life's like for SEO's on the ground.

This is BrightLocal's second such survey of the industry (the first was released in July of 2011). Just over 1,400 SEO's responded to the survey, the majority of whom are SEO freelancers, small digital agencies and Web designers. The survey explore the size and turnover (revenue) of respondents companies, their clients and the industries they serve, marketing and sales, services and tasks, as well as respondents future outlook on the industry.

Highlights of the survey, available here, include:

- 82% of said they have between 1-5 practicing SEO's in their company.

- 70% of companies pay under $1000 per month for SEO services.

- 71% of SEOs handle 6 or more customers

- Just 14% of SEOs/agencies target 1 vertical industry

- 91% said word-of-mouth marketing brought in the most leads

- 32% of SEOs don’t make out bound sales enquiries (down from 46% in 2012)

- 91% of SEOs offer on-site optimization

- 82% of SEOs said that social media is an effective channel for local businesses

- 55% of SEOs say they find link building the most time consuming/tedious task they do

- 93% of respondents said they expect to grow their business in 2013

Don’t Let Your Social Media & SEO Take a Vacation

Administrator — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:39:00 GMT

:: By Chris Marentis, CEO of Surefire Social ::

While summer (or any off-season for a business) might represent a downtime, don’t send your SEO strategy on a short-term vacation. Instead, take some of the downtime in your own business to re-evaluate your approach and determine what is and isn’t driving new quality customers to your website and creating increased sales leads.

Review Site Performance

By using tools like Google Analytics and your CRM system you can identify trends, issues and opportunities when it comes to website traffic. Measuring unique visits, page traffic, lead conversion rate and the popularity of content like blog posts or landing page copy gives you the chance to make improvements.

Helping you send the right signals to Google for improved search visibility, Google’s Webmaster Tools offer you diagnostic reports that let you improve your site’s relationship with Google. This includes customizing important settings, specifying URL parameters, prioritizing sitelinks and more.

Based on these analytics, tweak content and keyword strategy as needed. If your website traffic is high but conversions are low, you should evaluate which type of Web searcher is actually finding your website. Make identifying keywords a part of your marketing strategy and ensure they appear on your website’s homepage. However, remember not to abuse keywords, as search engines penalize websites that overuse keywords. If you are using keywords that potential ready-to-buy customer would use to search for your business, you are likelier to attract quality leads.

Reassess Link Building Strategy

In order to boost website visibility and rank well in search engines, look at your link-building strategy. From a Google perspective, link building is about to shift entirely with the much-anticipated Penguin 2.0. Google is now discounting links if they don’t find them relevant and trustworthy.

These low quality links might include overuse of keywords, link buying or heavy interlinking of your own website. If you are guilty of the previously mentioned, start cleaning up links now before Penguin 2.0 is released and refocus on authoritative links like contributed content, blog posts, videos and reviews. Otherwise, the negative links could hurt your page rank and visibility in search results making it difficult for customers to find you.

Increase Social Media Sharing

Also, review how social media sharing, infographics, earned backlinks, site blog distribution and other content is helping you move to top of search results. Informative content including blog posts, how-to articles or photos and videos has the potential to be shared and even go viral and can bring more exposure to your business. This combination of SEO, social media and content creation is needed to send positive signals about your business to search engines. Don’t forget to share your earned links through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media for increased exposure.

Try to set up a system and a workable dashboard to look at the data on a regular basis. During the summer, reassess your website traffic by taking a close look at analytics available to you. Also, look at the technology and underpinning supporting your website to ensure code cleanliness and optimal site speed. Check that keywords and site structure are aligned with your business objectives and what products/services you are trying to rank well for in Google and other search engines and directories. With this analysis, you can create a plan to make any necessary updates to prepare for a busier fall and winter.

Regardless of your business type, different seasons might represent a lull but know that just because an SEO strategy worked in the past, it might not work in the future. It is important to continually reassess whether your approach to SEO is effective, reaching your targeted customers and making a strong impact on your bottom line.

CHRIS MARENTIS BIO

For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL's Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies (now Add This), Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 content distribution technology platforms in the world.

6 SEO Game Changers to Know

Administrator — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:05:00 GMT

By Michael Marshall, Search Engine Academy of North Carolina

Important Developments in the History of Search and Where It’s Headed

When I started working in SEO, the Web was the Wild West of marketing. Twelve years ago, the most popular search engine was AltaVista, and most optimization work was made up of on-page factors. Paid search was ridiculously inexpensive, and websites had the power to dominate pages of organic search using fairly straightforward techniques. A page manager could watch his site ranking increase in less than an hour after making changes to a page — even for competitive key phrases. Looking back, it was a simpler time for Internet marketers.

The world of SEO has evolved over the years, awarding success to those who adapted — and failure to those who didn’t. Here is a brief history of the important changes in search, as well as an overview of what the future holds for SEO.

6 Important Changes in SEO

From sweeping Internet upheavals that threw the entire marketing industry for a loop (like the advent of social media) to more SEO-specific developments, like the introduction of instant search, the past two decades have dramatically transformed the world of Internet marketing. Here are six of the biggest changes to SEO:

1. Inbound linking:

The dominance, and later refinement, of inbound links created an entire cottage industry of link-building brokers and service providers as businesses scrambled to capitalize on this new element of search. It simultaneously made SEO more complex and ensured spam tactics were less effective.

2. Personalization of search:

This evolution in SEO eliminated the use of search engine rankings — what had been SEO’s flagship for measuring success. Without credible search engine rankings, traditional rank-checking methods were rendered futile, and identifying competitors became nearly impossible. The personalization of search also forced website owners to refine their content so that it was relevant semantically and would hold the interests of searchers.

3. Social media:

The influence of social media not only opened a new channel for marketing, but it also had a growing impact on organic results, which is still crucial to SEO today. This new aspect of marketing forced businesses to focus on user engagement and their online reputation — and to also offer a new wealth of information about consumers to marketers.

4. Search queries:

The introduction of instant search and auto suggest caused big changes in a search query’s behavior. Consequently, these new features then caused marketers to alter the process of deciding which queries to target, and in effect, changed the remainder of the SEO process. SEO specialists now think in terms of families of search queries, rather than isolated key phrases.

5. Crawlers:

Crawlers used to be slow in frequency and limited in what forms of content they could extract. Search result pages would experience huge fluctuations each month, giving rise to monikers like the “Google Dance.” Now, crawlers have improved in frequency, as well as in the type and amount of content they can extract — even getting data from Flash presentations.

6. Tags:

Tags, especially meta tags, have decreased in importance as search engines are now better at gathering signals from a website’s copy and a hyperlink’s structure between sites. Still, they’re not completely useless. Meta tags are now used to help with URL canonicalization problems, enhance search result listings, and improve click-through rates.

What’s to Come for Search

As the Internet continues to become more personalized, the ever-growing integration of technology with human biology and interaction will only continue to progress. It might sound a little abstract, but this sophistication in technology will make it possible to leverage natural forms of human communication, such as speech, gestures, facial expressions, visual focus, and emotions.

Searches triggered by speech are already on the rise. What if a user’s vocal tone was an added consideration to search? If search results became partially based on a speaker’s tone, marketers would need to “optimize” for yet another user-specific component of search. Or imagine a search query being triggered by facial expressions — marketers would then need to optimize for the facial component of a search as well.

How to Prepare for These Changes

There are companies that have gone out of business due to their failure to adapt. Back in 2003, during the Florida update — and more recently, during the Panda and Penguin updates — companies lost as much as 90 percent of their traffic overnight. Don’t let that happen to you.

So how do you prepare? For now, the better you can fine-tune your message and detail your knowledge of target audiences (psychographics, demographics, consumer motivations, social contexts, etc.), the more likely you will be able to leverage new modes of search when they do come.

More generally, marketers must make keeping up with developments in SEO a priority — whether that means attending industry conferences, like Pubcon and Digital Summit, or going to more focused venues for training. Reading information published by the search engines themselves, as well as industry publications like Search Engine Land, can also help marketers stay abreast of important changes.

Marketers must also focus on utilizing social media as originally as possible. Companies like Talking Moose Media are helping companies add a social media dimension to in-person events and meetings, boosting SEO and social media marketing efforts. It’s like augmented reality for marketing and events.

Ultimately, the key to keeping pace with SEO is a willingness to embrace change as the Web continues to evolve. Think of it this way: These dramatic changes to Google or other components of SEO that intimidate marketers are there to make consumers’ lives easier and businesses more profitable. They are, in reality, improvements to SEO — improvements that you can capitalize on if you’re prepared for them.

Michael Marshall is the lead instructor and owner of the Search Engine Academy of North Carolina. He has more than 24 years’ worth of experience in information technology, covering a wide range of specialties including web design, software engineering, ecommerce solutions, artificial intelligence, and Internet marketing. He is a member of the World Association of Internet Marketers and of SEO Professionals. Connect with him on Twitter and Google+.

3 Tips to Get Started on Mobile SEO

Michael Garrity — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Optimizing your site for mobile search engines should certainly move to the top of your to-do list, if it hasn’t already. After all, it’s an easy and enticing activity for on-the-go consumers who may have a question about a product or service they're looking for, or need to find specific information about a business.

However, trying to meet mobile users where they’re searching is a bit trickier than your average run-of-the-mill desktop search engine optimization. Mobile searches take into account a number of different criteria to determine a site’s ranking, which can include overall site performance, usability, download speed and screen rendering, among other things. But the extra work is worth it, because not only are mobile users searching more and more, but they’re also buying more frequently from their devices.

When it comes to preparing your business for mobile search, there are a number of ways that you can differentiate your SEO practices to be ready for tech-savvy, mobile-ready consumers that can help you vastly improve your business’s performance on the mobile Web.

Design for All Devices

A website that is appropriately optimized for mobile devices of all shapes, sizes and operating systems will have a much better chance of ranking higher in the mobile SERPs, particularly when compared to a site that has just been reformatted to fit a smaller screen. This is because transcoding a pre-existing Web page strips it of some key content and leads to incomplete pages and, thus, decreased usability. All of this is detrimental to a high page ranking.

Plus, the type of mobile device that a user is searching on also plays a role in determining site ranking, as different mobile browsers render pages in different ways that can affect usability. As a result, brands with device agnostic mobile strategies that work with a number of different mobile operating systems will consistently rank higher for the vast majority of mobile users.

Localize

If you already have some sort of local presence online, you should definitely be nurturing that as part of your mobile SEO initiatives, because often, many mobile searchers are actually looking for specific information about local businesses. In fact, according to a Google survey, 76 percent of mobile consumers use their devices to search for a business’s location or operating hours.

In other words, part of having good mobile SEO is also having good local search optimization in place, especially if you’re just a local business or a retailer with various brick-and-mortar locations. For a quick guide on how to get started, check out our 3 Key Steps to Optimize for Local Search.

Be Ready for Email

Approximately 41 percent of all emails that marketers send out are opened on mobile devices, which means that companies should be incorporating multiple incoming links into their digital newsletters that will send recipients to their websites. These links will offer a fully integrated experience that gives brands a chance to establish a more connected presence across the mobile Web. But more importantly, these traffic driving tools, along with social media, allow consumers to find and click on links instantly.

All of that traffic, especially via outside links, is going to look good for your mobile website and can play a big role in helping to improve your mobile SEO efforts. However, links that aren’t tested or maintained will obviously end up leading to a loss of traffic from redirects to your mobile site, so make sure you put working links in your email newsletters, in order to fully reap the benefits of all of that traffic.

It make take some time and testing to get it right, but readjusting your SEO practices and reimagining your website to consider mobile search engines may be the next step to helping your brand conquer the mobile Web.

Google Kills Instant Previews & Related Search Filter

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:21:00 GMT

Google seems to be in the midst of a spring cleaning frenzy - at least on its search results page. The search engine has recently dropped support for both Instant Previews (which launched back in November 2010) and the "related searches" filter.

The Instant Previews feature showed users what sites appearing in the index actually looked like and would even highlight sections of the page related to the users query.

The reason for removing the features? Both the related search option and the instant previews feature, according to Google, received low usage which is leading many to speculate that a new round of functionality is coming to the search results pages.

Check out some previous coverage of Google's Instant Previews features below:
- Instant Previews Now on Google Ads
- The Good and Bad of Google Instant Previews
- Google's Design Guidance for Instant Previwes

SEO Mechanics - Anchor Text

Michael Garrity — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:25:00 GMT

The Internet has done a lot to make it easier to spread and digest information at a faster pace than ever before, but the really great thing that Web content is able to do is insert supplementary information right into the text on a page in the form of a hyperlink. However, what many up-and-coming Web pros don’t realize is that these hyperlinks, when paired with the right anchor text, can actually play a significant role in improving their SEO efforts, as well.

Quite simply, “anchor text” is just the clickable text in a hyperlink; that is, those specific characters and/or words that a hyperlink displays in the text portions of a Web page that link out to other locations or documents on the Web. When it comes to the coding on a page, anchor text looks like this:

<a href=http://www.exampleurl.com>Anchor Text</a>

But you may be wondering just what kind of a role this actually plays in search engine optimization. Well, as it turns out, search engines tend to use anchor text to figure out the subject matter of the linked-to Web page or document. This means that they get a chance to learn what a page is all about, so if they see that a number of websites link to the page using terms related to its content, Google, Bing and others will note that the page seems relevant to those keywords, and it will begin to rank the page higher, even if those terms never appear in the actual text. Like at all.

See, since search engines tend to heavily weigh inbound links, it is important that they have as much information as possible about the page’s being linked to. In other words, it kind of tells Google or Bing or whoever not only which Web pages the linking site is vouching for, but also why has selected them.

Seems pretty simple, right? The problem is that that many people don’t use anchor text correctly, and that makes it difficult for search engines to glean information about the content of the Web page or document being linked to. This more or less cancels out the SEO benefits of using anchor text in the first place.

The Right Anchor Text Says A Lot
For the most part, the biggest problem that people seem to have with anchor text is that they tend to put links inside text that reads something like, “Click Here,” “Next,” “Read More” or something of that ilk. Of course, by now it should be clear that these sorts of link “descriptions” are inadvisable, as they don’t provide any information about the actual contents of the linked-to page, which makes them virtually useless for search engines and, thus, doesn’t improve the page’s standing in the SERPs.

Instead, anchor text should include targeted or branded keywords often as possible, or at least some sort of descriptive information about the page being linked to. That way, crawlers will be able to quickly find the keywords in their directories.

Just remember that people tend to link to content using anchor text that is made up of either the linked-to website’s domain name or the title of the page in question, so by naming your page with particular keywords, you’ll be able to ensure that *most* of the links you get should include anchor text with those terms that you want to rank for.

Anchor text is a very powerful tool when it comes to SEO and ranking higher on the search engines, but all of its power comes from being descriptive and helpful, not only to the search engines, but readers, as well. It’s important to not force anchor text awkwardly into a Web page; instead, find a way to make it natural and readable, even if that means just including the page title.

Direct Request Link Building from Zero

Michael Garrity — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Everybody has to start somewhere, and when you’re trying to build credibility and bring people to your website basically from scratch, there are myriad opportunities available to build links around the Web that will make users and search engines, alike, take notice.

Here at Website Magazine, we’ve provided a step-by-step guide to link prospecting for when you’re starting with close-to-nothing (e.g. time, money and resources). However, when all is said and done, the whole reason why we prospect for links is to find those websites that we want to build close relationships with that will be beneficial for both parties.

So, although there are some more “hands-off” techniques for acquiring links on the Web, such as submitting your site to a directory or a local business listing site like Google Places, the best way to go about building quality links is still to seek out quality, authoritative websites or blogs in and around your niche. You should forge a relationship with them through direct requests, or by providing them with contributed content.

Let’s look at a few of the best ways to build links and, more importantly, relationships with other websites, especially when you don’t yet have the credibility or resources to get your content published in “high-profile environments” that will naturally garner some links. When you’re starting from zero, how can you go about getting good links?

Just Ask

Just like in real life, the best way to approach someone is to be open and honest. Direct requests for links are not only the most obvious way to go about introducing your site and its content to others. And going directly to a website owner to request a link beats asking a group of strangers on a message board, because you have no way of controlling who will respond to you and how worthwhile their website’s will be for your link building efforts.

There are a couple of ways that you can go about getting in touch with a website owner or webmaster, including through social media (although this isn’t recommended) or a website’s contact form, but probably the most effective method will be to simply send a direct request email. However, remember that you’re trying to build relationships here, so if you’re going to send a direct request email, do so in a way that shows that you’re familiar with the website and its work, and explain how you could benefit them, as well.

Start by looking to see if the website(s) you’re interested in link to some of your competitors or not to determine if they’re even willing to link out (some may even have a specific email address listed on their sites for people interested in link building). Then, make sure that your link request appears to be relevant and beneficial to both you and the linker.

Keep Them Updated

One way to prove that linking to your website will also be beneficial to the linker is to provide them with some valuable information or content right off the bat. Perhaps you could initiate your relationship by supplying the other website with a news release about something your company or website is doing, or something happening within the niche that you both operate in. Anything they can use to improve or add content to their websites could be considered “beneficial." It’s all about having your thumb on the pulse of your industry and proving your worth to the desired linker. Services like PRWeb allow users to create and distribute press releases for little-to-no cost.

Again, this can be done through social media or other outlets, but the most direct and effective method is email, and it probably will be for the foreseeable future.

Give Away Content

If you want to get links from a blog, or a website that features a blog, there is no better way to show off your value and provide something beneficial to the prospected linker than by writing up a guest blog post and sending it to them. If they publish it, not only will this automatically give you one link from their website (since they’ll likely link to your website somewhere in the post), but it will also help you establish a relationship with them that is mutually beneficial from the outset, and that will greatly improve your chances of getting links from them in the future.

The main thing to remember is that good link building is about more than just acquiring citations from other websites that are kind of related to your niche or industry; it’s actually about forging lasting and valuable relationships with others. By just taking some initiative and offering something valuable to other websites, you’ll eventually be able to do that, and improve your site’s credibility in the process, even if you’re starting from zero.

Future Proof Search Engine Optimization Campaigns

Michael Garrity — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The search results pages of popular search engines are changing dramatically into far more dynamic resources. Is your digital presence ready – is it future proofed?

Many of the search engine optimization industry elite today believe both Google and Bing SERPs will look, perform and act far differently in the future — we’re looking at you Google Glasses. But will the search results pages of search engines, the primary source of traffic for a vast majority of websites, actually be unlike today’s? And will future SEO demand that big brands, small companies and startup enterprises change the tactics they currently use to acquire visitors from those sources?

There’s a different way to think of the future. Perhaps what will change most about SEO is how those responsible for its success (defined as gaining more qualified unique visitors from the likes of Google and Bing’s unpaid search results) approach the practice on the whole. In the future, top search rankings will be the product of a more proactive and comprehensive plan covering the entire digital experience. This could result in smarter design and broader, yet more relevant awareness initiatives, and even a more profitable experience for the business itself.

So, what should your brand expect? How can your SEO team future proof its efforts? Let’s explore what the future may hold and how enterprises can prepare.

High-Impact Link Prospecting From Zero

Administrator — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:55:00 GMT

There's nothing more discouraging to a digital professional than seeing their website's link profile remain stagnant, as in no steady upward growth, not even an occasional burst of activity.

Building steady streams of traffic requires a great deal of investment (time and actual money). If you're starting at zero though - zero money, zero time, zero resources - then link building efforts should be focused on only the most high-impact tactics, exercising every muscle in the marketing arsenal. First, however, you need to put the work in if you want to see the results.

Keep in mind that the following isn't for the virtually weak hearted - you're going to need some courage (and energy) to see this style of campaign work. Nevertheless, when you're prepared, anything is possible.

Over the next few weeks, Website Magazine will provide a series of articles (just like the following) on high-impact link building tactics. These articles will focus exclusively on a specific tactic or method for use in your link building efforts. Today, let's explore how to use Alexa and popular "similar sites" tools for building a prospective link pool - a group of sites that have the potential to link to our own immediately or in the future. The bigger the pool, the better the chance you'll have of catching something.

I know well and good what you're thinking: "Alexa, really? That's all we're working with here?" Remember, we're starting with zero (no fancy SEO research tools) and besides, if you know where to look and how to look at it, some of the data that Alexa provides can actually reveal a whole host of link building opportunities. Besides, Google doesn't make it easy to see the link profile of each and every site, but what they do show is related sites. And when you look at that information as an opportunity to increase the prospective link pool, you're well on your way to success with SEO.

EDITORS NOTE: The following is a "manual" process - meaning there's a fair amount of repetitive copying and pasting into Excel (or any spreadsheet application) involved. That's OK if you're starting from zero, but not so much if the resources are available to use one of the automated Enterprise SEO software solutions such as those listed in a recent Website Magazine Top 50 as they're able to provide far more useful details into prospective link targets.

STEP ONE: Visit Alexa.com

Under each Alexa profile, an indication of the number of sites "linking in" is included with its site information. The number of links that are being reported is hyperlinked - click on it and you'll find details on what sites in particular are linking to the site profile you're researching.

For example, in the image below, we can see that a site like Alexa.com has more than 376,000 sites linking in, which is quite a link prospecting pool.

STEP TWO: Identify Link "Types"

Every website has a different link profile, but some common themes exist. For example, citations (links) are available pretty much everywhere - from social profiles and forum threads, to guest posts on separate blogs and media releases on news aggregators. The trick is to find out what those link "types" are and then take note of them. A quick spin through the listings provided by Alexa will provide the answer.

STEP THREE: Organize Links by Category Type

While Alexa only returns 100 of the inbound links it knows about on the profile being researched, that's 100 more data points that you didn't know before. It's important though to group the links available into the categories you identify and the marketing tactic you'll need to engage in to acquire a link. For example, you might have a social media category, a forum-marketing category, a content marketing category, a joint-venture category, a legacy partnership category, etc. Defining the categories now will make future link building much easier.

STEP FOUR: Expand the Link Pool

Once you have a handle on the categories and know about the types of links that your competitors are receiving (along with a few sample sites), it's much easier to then locate other similar Web destinations to add to your link prospecting pool - it's easier to start with a few citations, which is why Alexa was the first stop. Armed with a list of sites, enter each one individually into the search box at Google (using the related search query: related:http://www.website.com) and you'll find additional websites to add to your prospecting pool. Google, of course, isn't the only way to find related sites. Consider using websiteslike.org, skrittle.com, similarsites.com, similarweb.com and similarsitesearch.com.

It's not a fool-proof method to build a prospective link pool, but it's a great way to get started. In part two of this article series, how to start the actual process of building links per category will be discussed. Stay tuned!

Webmaster Tools New Site Verification Mods

Administrator — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:15:00 GMT

Google has made some changes and modifications to its Webmaster Tools verification system related to management of website verifications.

Webmasters can now see who the verified users on their sites are and now the verification method they used to achieve that status. That's useful information to know when you're managing sites within Webmaster Tools that were once under the control of another individual or agency.

Google is also now requiring that that the verification method be removed from a site before unverifying an owner within Webmaster Tools. If the verification (for example a meta tag or an HTML file) then there will be an error message shown. It's easy enough really to remove meta tags and HTML files that were once used for site verification, but this change likely the result of the delay in updating DNS records (a common problem).

Finally, Google also modified the CNAME verification string, making it shorter in order to support more DNS providers. Google's long CNAME was causing some problems for some users who were not able to use the verification method because some DNS systems limit the number of characters than can be used in DNS records.

SEO Performance Measurement Today

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:45:00 GMT

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically during the course of the past fifteen years.

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the sole measure of SEO success was where a site ranked on the popular search engines of the day. Websites were pleased that they ranked for a particular keyword in a particular position. Those days are gone however.

Keyword rankings are unstable, personalization makes reporting inconsistent at best, and it's increasingly difficult to understand what actual strategies are paying dividends in the form of traffic - particularly as the influence of social increases in importance.

So how do you (and others) measure SEO performance/success for your Websites and digital properties today? While the approach your enterprise will take depends on a variety of factors, here are the most common:

: Conversions/Sales :

The savviest enterprises (and their SEO's) know that the one ideal measurement of success when it comes to search engine optimization is conversions - sales, signups, however they are defined for a specific digital property. Search engine optimization agencies, at least the pure-play vendors (i.e. not integrated digital marketing agencies), tend to shy away from using conversions as the sole proof of performance because there are so many other variables that come into play - namely design, price, checkout, etc - that may interfere. That's really why there are so few performance-based SEO agencies in the market - because they need more control over the total experience, and many enterprises are simply unwilling to let that control go.

: Unique Visitor Traffic :

Since most SEO agencies are unwilling (or uninterested) in convincing their clients to adopt a conversion-centric SEO campaign, most opt to measure their SEO performance by the number of unique visitors that arrive on their website properties. It's a terrific measurement, of course, but it can't tell as deep a story as measuring by conversions. There's another problem too, a big one. While the "keyword not provided" issue is a rather significant issue for websites interested in knowing why users are arriving at their site, some SEO's love it - particularly if they are using longer tail search phrases to drive traffic which may or may not ultimately provide much in the way of conversions or sales. In essence, you can get all the traffic in the world, but if users aren't actually acting upon your unique selling proposition, efforts are for naught. Of course, that doesn't much matter if the only performance metric is unique visitors.

: Rankings/Placement :

Conversions and unique visitor traffic are clearly good indicators of SEO performance by themselves, but despite all the complexities of the modern search engine experience (which is both highly personalized and dynamic) the actual rank of a site still remains a pretty good measurement. You may be thinking, "No it's not - everyone's search results are different," and that's true but there is a way to get a good idea about where a site is ranking on average for a particular keyword/keyphrase. For example, it's quite easy to set up a campaign on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and pay a few cents on average to get one of their knowledge workers to fire up whatever search engine you are measuring results for and let them, in aggregate, determine the average placement which can in turn be used in reports to clients or yourself.

Website Magazine is running a poll today on its Facebook page about common ways to measure the success of search engine optimization efforts (those approaches listed above). Cast your vote now and we'll be sure to share the results.