The Wall Street Journal tells the tale of two businesses that are losing their shirts due to the recent Google algorithm change. The problem is they were a doing a lot of things “right.” That is, the way that online marketers have been doing them for years.
Yet, one of them admits that he did buy some links. That alone could have affected his business.
Article marketing, however, has been a mainstay of Internet marketing since the very first days of the Internet. Still, read a few of the articles in the popular article directories and you’ll see why Google saw the need for an algorithm change. A lot of the recent discounted links and content are low quality articles in these directories. And they’re promoting legitimate businesses.
If you are a small business owner, you have to be careful where you get your online marketing advice. There are still companies touting the old ways of doing things – the way they’ve always been done.
You can’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Not any more. Today, your online marketing has to be as unique as your website. Your content needs to be original, your links natural, and your publishing credits diverse. You should get your message in front of your audience, wherever your audience is, rather than relying on sites like EzineArticles and Squidoo.
I’m not saying you should abandon these websites, but here’s the bottom line:
If you’ve heard of link diversity, you should also try a little content diversity. It’s the new way of marketing online that businesses should have been doing all along.
In light of the Penguin update you’ve probably been hearing a lot about quality content. In fact, since the first Panda update, every SEO in the world has come out in favor of quality content. It makes you wonder if they were in favor of quality before they got beat down. They certainly weren’t talking about it then.
So why are they talking about it now?
SEOs have always been interested in whatever is going to make their websites rank higher in the search engines. At one time that meant counting keywords and focusing on keyword density. Even after it was evident that keyword densities didn’t work, many SEOs kept advising their clients to count keywords anyway.
Then there was link counting. And anchor text manipulation. Link building became a spam game between SEOs to see who could acquire the most and the best links. Many of them won. Then along came Panda.
Getting boinked isn’t fun. Especially if it costs you money. But if you focus on producing quality content, then you don’t have to worry about getting boinked. And this hasn’t changed. Quality today means the same thing it meant in 1998. The only thing that has changed is that now every SEO on the planet wants to focus on it.
Quality content means writing content that your readers want to read. It means providing useful and valuable information on a topic that is important to your audience. If you can do that, you’ll rank for the right key terms.
Do you know the most important on-page optimization element? Is it internal links? H1 tags? Meta Description (is that even on-page?)? Your primary keyword? Secondary keyword? Or maybe it’s your page title?
Yesterday I stumbled across a web page that ranked No. 1 in its niche for the keyword the author was targeting. When I clicked View Source to check out what was under the hood on that page I discovered a div tag with the element title “hidden SEO”. It was followed by a long line of keywords, keyword phrases, and other SEO content. Could that have been the reason the page ranked No. 1?
Possibly. But even so ….
I wouldn’t put my life on it. That wasn’t the most important on-page optimization element.
So what is?
The most important on-page optimization element for any page you build for your website is the actual content on the page. If you think that’s vague, try building a web page with no words on it. Just build a sidebar with widgets. Does it look good? Do you think it will rank? Now add a link. Nothing more, just a link. Better now? How about adding a video. No description, just a video. Think you’ll make money with that?
I could go and on, but the point is real simple. A web page with no words, no content, no message that intrigues, entertains, enlightens, informs, educates, or sparks a call to action is not really optimized. It’s just there.
Funny how so many people are willing to tell you how to optimize a web page but they can’t do it themselves. They’ve read the book, they know all the right things to say, but where are their rankings?
They don’t have any.
Real SEO is not about chasing keywords. Keywords are important, yes. But if you can’t rank a web page without doing keyword research, then you probably aren’t doing your SEO right. Stop it.
Search engine optimization is about creating opportunities. It’s not about following 10-year-old advice as if it is today’s recipe.
So now the big question is, How do you create opportunities with search engine optimization? Glad you asked.
What world class copywriters do is study copywriting techniques. They write headlines that grab readers’ attentions. Then they write content that people want to read. And they do it so well that you wish you had written it. On any given day a good online copywriter can get their content to rank for hundreds of keywords. They write content that matters.
Instead of chasing keywords, try instead to write as keywords don’t matter. Don’t just pick a popular phrase that a lot of other people have written about and write a post about it. Instead, write a post about something that people in your niche want to know about. Write it without worrying about what keyword to use.
I’m not saying keywords are not important. What I am saying is that bad content can’t be saved by keywords. Learn to write good content before you try to spruce it up with keywords.
Is there an SEO activity that is more important than all the others? Is it link building? Social networking? Writing meta tags? Keyword research? Looking over analytics reports?
Actually, it’s none of those. The most important SEO activity that you can perform at any time is content creation.
That’s right. As simple as it sounds, content creation is no mundane activity. It is the heart and soul of SEO. Without quality content there is nothing else that you can do that can make your website’s SEO effective.
All the link building in the world is fruitless if you aren’t producing quality content on a regular basis. What good is analytics without content? Why are you networking if you have no content? Meta tags without content is senseless. Yet, many webmasters spend a great deal of their day engaging in one or more of the above activities without producing any new content.
When you produce new content for your website you are telling your website visitors and the search engines that you take their concerns seriously. I’d rather spend an hour writing more content than two or three hours on each of the other activities combined.
If you aren’t creating new content every day – even if it’s just one article – then you aren’t really doing SEO.
If you don’t have a huge budget but you still want to take advantage of the benefits of link building, there are ways you can build solid links to your website or blog without spending a lot of time or money on the effort. It does, however, take some creativity.
The first step is to ask for guest bloggers to write content for your blog. Set up a Guest Blogger page on your blog and get people to sign up to be a guest blogger. Then, give them some sample post titles to write, but be willing to accept other types of posts as well. Keep an open mind. But one thing you don’t want to sacrifice on is quality. Insist that all content you publish is high quality content.
Be sure to promote your guests posts through your social media accounts. Then follow those guest bloggers on their social media accounts. Retweet their tweets, Like their posts, and build that relationship.
After you’ve built your relationships, cash in. Ask those fellow bloggers if you can write a guest post on their blog. When you do, use the rel=author tag to link your guest posts to your Google+ account (you do have one, don’t you?) and link your Google+ account to your guests posts. Also link those guest posts back to your blog or website, which is the inbound link that you’ve been coveting.
Building links this way won’t be fast, but it is effective and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
For awhile webmasters were stuck on buying paid links. But link networks have pretty much gone by the wayside and I think the reason why is because their business model has been destroyed.
Google has built a great system for detecting bogus links. There are tell-tale signs that a link is a paid-for link and not a natural link. For instance, if you have the perfect anchor text for “viagra” on a website about pet ownership, then there’s a clear indication that you have a bought link.
There are other signs as well. Link sellers generally spin their content. So if you find articles online with similar content over and over again with a mix of irrelevant anchor text links, that’s likely a link seller’s page. Google Panda took care of a lot of those.
And then the big kicker. Google operatives.
Imagine trying to sell links to an unsuspecting webmaster, but that webmaster turns out to be a Google employee. Bam! You’re dead.
It’s much like the way drug dealers and law enforcement personnel work. The dealer tries to find strung out peeps to sell his drugs to, but he has no way of weeding out the real fiends and those playacting. Law enforcement actually has an advantage. They work undercover pretending to be the type of customer the drug dealer wants. When an offer is made, bam! Snagged.
Google has its undercover agents as well, and they’re pretty good. If you’re still buying paid links, you’re throwing your money away. You’d be better off buying content the old-fashioned way and marketing through high quality content that builds your reputation and your SEO.
Businesses that try to employ search engine optimization techniques to improve their search engine rankings often make costly mistakes that kill their rankings. Google has shared a video that is aimed at business owners and webmasters that tells how to avoid 5 mistakes often made with regard to SEO.
The 5 mistakes that website owners make, according to Google, are:
They don’t have a value proposition – They have no value proposition, something that sets them apart from the competition. Instead of focusing on SEO and keyword densities, try instead to focus on valuable high quality content that will attract the type of people you are looking for to become your customers
They use a segmented approach – Instead of approaching SEO holistically, many businesses use a segmented approach where the marketing department appears to not be communicating with other departments within the company.
They get stuck in time-consuming workarounds – We see this one all the time. Many businesses get so stuck on SEO techniques that they spend all their time trying to find a workaround to high search engine rankings. You’d be better off just focusing on producing high quality content
They get caught up in SEO trends – Here’s another big one. If you are chasing the algorithms, then you are likely wasting your time. They change so often that no one can keep up with every change. You should focus instead on finding your prospects with high quality content.
They are slow iterators – Many professional SEOs fall into this category as well. Many SEOs are still stuck on 2005 link building techniques. If you focus on providing original, high quality content, then you can’t go wrong.
Watch the video for yourself (below), and when you want to get serious about quality content call an SEO company that understands how to make it stick.
Proposed legislation in Germany would require Google and other search engines to pay for content it borrows from website owners and publishes in its search results pages. I agree with Cynthia Boris’s analysis on the topic, but what about her conclusion?
Would Google really pull out of Germany?
I doubt it. I think what is more likely is that Google would figure out a way to include search results without taking snippets from the web pages it indexes. That would be the first adjustment the search engine would make, although it would likely not index photos and videos in Germany.
Remember when Google took its snippets from information provided by the Open Directory Project? It still does this at times. I think, if forced to, it would move to a similar policy in Germany and if that information wasn’t available there might not be a snippet at all. Or, the search engine might require webmasters supply their own snippet if they want a listing in the SERP.
Granted, that all might be a nightmare for the search engine to manage, but if you consider the lost revenue by simply pulling out, then it would likely be worth it in the long run.
Fair usage in the digital age is a murky game at best. We all want to protect content owners and producers, but what is the best way to do that? I can assure you that it isn’t by placing unreasonable restrictions on the search engines. After all, a high search engine ranking is compensation, isn’t it? What about traffic? If Google sends you visitors, couldn’t that be considered fair compensation for your 150 characters of content or reproduction of your image? I think so.
Recent news shows that Twitter – chirp chirp – has acquired Posterous. So now for the obvious question, so what?
The move has many speculators suggesting that Twitter will eventually shut down Posterous. After all, Twitter’s own message hints that the reason they made the purchase was to gain access to the engineers working on the Posterous platform:
Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.
If that’s the case, then don’t be surprised if you do see your Posterous account suddenly in jeopardy. But Twitter is trying to be sensitive to your needs:
Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.
It think it would be wise to take them up on their offer and back up your content. There’s the possibility that Twitter will allow Posterous to continue, but I doubt it. These types of acquisitions generally lead to closures, and it’s understandable why. They are a drain on resources and an expense, not to mention a distraction from the purchasing company’s primary mission. So, the business philosophy is to cut the fat.
Should you ditch Posterous right now? No, I wouldn’t say that. You should adopt a “wait and see” approach. Keep posting as before, but be prepared to take your content elsewhere should Twitter decide to close the service.
In social media and Web marketing, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Do you know the definition of content? I can tell you this much – it isn’t fluff.
Fluff is that soft white stuff that some kids like to spread on their bread like butter. It’s creamy, has no substance, and isn’t particularly nutritional. It has little, if any, health benefits. The upside is it isn’t harmful to your health either.
Content, however, is just the opposite.
It’s meaty
It’s substantive
It’s vitally important to the intellectual or mental health of the person reading it
It improves the reader’s life in some way
Many online content writers have a tendency to write to the keyword. They’ll find a word they want to rank highly for in the search engines and focus their content on that keyword ending up with nothing but a big bucket of fluff.
Now, I’d like to say that there is nothing wrong with keywords. We use them all the time. But if your content is so full of your keyword that it ceases to provide intellectual stimulation or anything substantive to the reader, then you might want to scale back on the keywords and add a little meat. Make your content communicate something extraordinary.
Content can take many forms. It can be online website content, dynamic blog or widgetized content, social media content. It can be viral, video, make use of vivid imagery, contextual, or a combination of these. The important thing is that your content be valuable to someone.
If your content doesn’t provide value, then it’s fluff. Take out the fluff and add some value. That’s how you build online content.
One of the biggest hurdles to get over for new content creators is the development of ideas. Sure, you can keep it going for a while, but what happens when you’ve run through your list of keywords a dozen times and you begin to repeat yourself? What do you do?
Why not ask your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn followers?
Your social media followers are likely some of your most avid blog readers and most frequent website visitors. Why not ask for their feedback on what to write about next?
It doesn’t have to be a big to-do. You just want some ideas for content. So ask your followers to visit your blog and tell you what they want you to write about. There are several ways you can approach this.
Make it fun – Write a blog post saying the best suggestion for a blog post will get a free copy of your e-book. Give a deadline and then share your blog post on your social networks.
Up the stakes – Ask your followers to give you their ideas and if you use the idea, then you’ll give away your e-book or multimedia presentation to each person whose idea you use.
Ask for guest bloggers – Open up the floor for others to post their content on your blog or website.
Interview a reader – Pick one of your most avid readers and interview them. Post the interview on your blog and make one of your questions about you. Ask “why do you like reading my blog?” or “what kind of content should we write about here?”
Readers love to give you their feedback, so give them plenty of opportunities for doing so.
Natural language writing does not preclude use of keywords. In fact, you still want to employ some level of keyword usage, but you want to focus your writing on natural language techniques.
In the spirit of Google’s semantic language indexing policies, we’ve come up with 5 rules for natural language writing. Disobey these rules at your own peril.
Rule #1: Use Keywords – The first rule is to use keywords, but use them sparingly. You want your primary keyword in your title and if you are linking to another page, use your primary keyword as anchor text. Also, use it a couple of times in your body content for every 500-700 words of content.
Rule #2: Substitute Keywords – Take your primary keyword and find a synonym for it. Use your synonyms profusely. In fact, if you’ll write your content with a 5% keyword density, then go back and change some of those keyword phrases to synonymous phrases, you’ll be adding natural language fuel to your content.
Rule #3: Keep Your Content Focused – Don’t go off on a tangent. Keep your content tightly focused on one topic. Make salient points on that topic and support them with facts.
Rule #4: Speak In The Language Of Your Audience – I’m not talking about English vs. Spanish. That should be a given. I’m talking about using words that your audience can relate to. For instance, if you are writing about celebrities, would your audience say “celebs?” Would they use “stars” instead of “movie stars?” Don’t just use a word because the search engines like it. Use words that your audience will like.
Rule #5: Take Out The Fluff – Natural language writing is terse, tight, and to the point. Don’t belabor the message. Say it and get out.
Natural language writing has been around since long before the search engines. Instead of writing for robots, write for real people.
If you like to watch SEOs argue (and who doesn’t?), you’ve probably noticed that there are essentially two types of SEOs. There is the “Content is King” crowd. Then there’s the links-are-the-most-important-strategy crowd. Almost all SEOs lean toward one end of the spectrum or the other.
I’ve always believed in both. Content and links, not one or the other. But my philosophy includes the necessary component that links are a form of content.
Only in that context can you truly say “content is king” if you believe that links are important tools for SEO.
It matters a great deal post-Panda.
Remember, the Panda update is the big “content farm” killer algorithm update that Google underwent last year. Big web properties, including many article directories, lost search engine rankings (and traffic) overnight. It caused a big ruckus among search engine optimization specialists all over the world.
And the problem wasn’t links. It was on-page content. But it was low-level content and that’s what Google went after.
If you believe that “content is content is content,” then you don’t understand the power of Google’s strong arm of the search engine law. Google has the power to kill your website at will, though they seldom go after individuals or particular sites. Rather, Google tends to incorporate changes to its algorithms that go after types of websites, or websites that pursue a particular strategy to game results.
So what should we learn from all this? Here’s the takeaway: Content is still king. But not just any content. Quality content.
Quality content is content that a searcher would consider answers the question they have when they conduct a particular search on one of the search engines. If you think about what those questions might be and seek to answer them with your content, then you’ll have a much better chance at winning in the search results.
One of the most important things that you can do with your content today is to repurpose it. But which content should you repurpose and what benefit does it serve?
The best content to repurpose is content that has done well. Do you have any web pages, articles or blog posts that have been popular in the past? If so, that’s great content to repurpose. It’s really good to repurpose content that did well for a time then fell off the radar. For instance, if you wrote a blog post that became your most popular blog post ever during a 30-day period of time then quit getting page views after about six months, it could be time to revisit that topic and repurpose the blog post.
But you don’t want to repurpose it on your blog. You want to take that content and massage it for another medium.
Think of new ways you can use the same content. Maybe it would make a good video. Or maybe it would make a good article or guest post on someone else’s blog. Perhaps you could turn it into a standalone website and turn the content into a microsite from which you could solicit orders.
Whatever ways you decide your old content can be repurposed, take it and make it brand new. You do that by reordering the content and rewriting it completely. Don’t take any chances on duplicating your content.
The benefit to repurposed content is that you can take popular content from last year or two years ago and make it popular again. You re-capitalize on that content to drive new traffic and increase conversions. If it did well once, it will likely do well again.
Everyone wants link bait. But link bait doesn’t grow on trees. And it’s not as easy to create as you might think.
Here are 5 reasons creating link bait might just be the biggest waste of your time.
You think keywords aren’t necessary – Content is searchable. Even link bait. You must think about how your website visitors are going to find your content before you decide to publish it. What will make them think your article is worth a link? If it isn’t the keywords and it isn’t the way your content is written, then what is it?
Link bait isn’t a magic carpet ride – No link bait is ever just created and published without a plan. If you’re too lazy to plan your content, how it will be written, what it will look like, what graphics will accompany it, etc., then there’s no use in creating it.
You think it will promote itself – Even link bait needs to be promoted. Will you push it out with social media? Video marketing? Your blog? Will you share it with high profile bloggers in your niche? Include your promotional efforts in your plan for your link bait.
You expect too much too fast – You can’t predict how many people will link to your content and when. You can write it, you can publish it, and you can promote it. The rest is up to everyone else. Focus on what you can control.
You think quality doesn’t count – All link bait is based on quality. If you don’t think that’s true, then you shouldn’t be trying to create link bait. No one is going to link to content that doesn’t provide value.
Link bait is more than just some fancy SEO trick. It’s a content strategy. Build your strategy on sound marketing principles, not crazy viral hype.
If you run an online web store and are concerned that your SEO might not be up to snuff, never fear. You can always improve your SEO and here are 6 on-page ways that you can give your SEO content a boost. All of these are easy to implement and will produce positive results for your onsite SEO.
Descriptive URLs – Let’s start with the URL. Instead of using dynamic URLs, use descriptive URLs that utilize your best keyword phrase for each content page. Your product name, a product description, or a phrase that best identifies each individual product is best for your product description pages.
Create Unique Content For Every Product – Every product page should have unique content, and I’ll add that each should have at least 250 words of content. If necessary, combine several like products on one page and give each one a unique description. Is there really that much of a difference between a blue widget and a yellow widget? Do they need separate pages? If so, make sure you provide enough content on each page that you give them maximum SEO value, and that means no duplicate content.
Use Category Pages – People don’t just shop for individual products. They also search for categories of product. If you sell cameras, have a section for digital cameras. Have another for camcorders. Make sure each category page has unique content.
Link Your Pages Together With Anchor Text – Link your pages together with appropriate anchor text. This alone can give your website a huge boost. Figure out the best internal linking strategy based on consumer buying habits, keyword phrase associations, and complimentary products.
Allow User Reviews – Every time you add new content to a page, the search engines return to crawl that page. When they do, they also re-index and re-rank it. Allowing user reviews, even negative reviews, can give your product pages a huge boost in the search engines.
Allow Social Media Sharing – Social media sharing can encourage your content to travel far and wide. That means more potential traffic, more potential product reviews, and better SEO overall.
Each of these specific on-page content solutions has at least one associated SEO benefit. If you want to improve your online shop’s SEO, try these on-page content tricks.
There is a misconception among many search engine optimization specialists that SEO must be a focus of content or the content just isn’t good. The truth is, great content and great SEO compliment each other. They can co-exist without hurting each other.
The key to this SEO philosophy is in the use of keywords and links. Keywords are the fuel in every search engine optimization strategy. You don’t want to overdo it, but you must do it.
What does that mean, exactly?
Keywords are a matter of targeting the right phrases for the right audience. If you are trying to reach people who purchase automobiles, then you have to target the right key phrases that attract automobile buyers. If you sell Ford vehicles specifically, then target your phrases to people who buy Ford vehicles. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
It is, but you’d be surprised at how many SEOs target the wrong keywords for their audiences.
When it comes to links, you want your links to compliment your keyword phrases. They shouldn’t dominate. Anything in moderation is better than the same thing in overdose. Use links that compliment your keywords by incorporating the keywords into the link anchor text and pointing them to relevant pages on your website. Title attributes can also compliment your anchor text.
By complimentary title attributes, I don’t necessarily mean repeating your anchor text key phrase. I mean use a phrase that compliments it and is a more nuanced way of using your important keywords.
SEO is not a science. It certainly isn’t rocket science. Your first concern should be in creating great content. Make the SEO compliment the content.
In the current landscape of search engine marketing, it isn’t enough to get your content published, crawled, and indexed. You want to own it. You want it working for you. But there is a major obstacle to that happening for many webmasters.
Duplicate content is a phrase that has scared a lot of webmasters into unnecessary paranoia. The problem with duplicate content has always been scraping, not two articles by the same author that are somewhat similar.
Look at it this way. You have two articles that overlap. They are both on your website and clearly have you as the author. What’s the worse that can happen? In Google’s world, you could have one of the articles de-indexed. While that could be an inconvenience, it pales in comparison to an article you wrote being de-indexed while the same article with someone else’s byline being catapulted to a No. 1 ranking. That would hurt.
Google’s problem with duplicate content is knowing which version of an article came first. If they get it right, no problem; if they get it wrong, that’s a problem.
When you publish your content on the web, article directories may not be the best place to go to. That’s because you are competing with thousands of articles and if your article appears elsewhere on the web, there’s no guarantee that your article in the article directory will be recognized by the search engines. Send original content to niche publishers that link back to you with a bio. Make sure those article are indexed fairly quickly.
A gravatar can be a very useful tool for online content providers. It does several things for your online identity including:
Notifying bloggers that you are not a spammer
Making your name and website more brandable
Easily identifies you as authentic everywhere you go
Unifies your blogging, commenting, and social media presence across all channels
Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. It’s easy to set up. You just head over to Gravatar.com and upload your photograph or image – the one you want to be associated with a particular e-mail address. It’s important to note that if you own several websites and have different e-mail addresses for managing those websites and often comment on blogs, forums and social media sites under your various names, then you can have more than one gravatar. You can have one for each e-mail address you own because the gravatar is associated with a single e-mail address.
Every time you enter your e-mail address into a comment form, your gravatar will appear beside your name. This makes you recognizable to other commenters while branding you online and shows that you are a legitimate poster, not a spammer.
I highly recommend that you set up your own gravatar – especially if you blog regularly and comment on other blogs regularly.
