The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

It used to be that all you had to do was write a decent page of keyword-based content, add some meta tags, and then start building links. If you were even halfway good at it, you could expect to achieve respectable rankings. SEO is a lot harder now.

Specifically, on-page SEO is a lot harder now. And it’s getting harder.

What’s making on-page SEO so hard? Why is it getting harder?

There are several reasons why on-page SEO is getting more difficult with each passing day. For starters, Google changes its search algorithms more than 50 times a day, so it’s near impossible to keep up with the changes.

Secondly, there are so many search factors to keep up with that no one can feasibly master them all. And we can’t be sure any more just how much weight is given to specific on-page factors such as keyword density, keywords in subheads, meta tags, page titles, etc. Plus, the addition of schemas and structured data means that some SEO factors may be subject to certain conditions and your rankings may or may not have to do with anything related to those conditions.

For instance, all else being equal, if you use a particular bit of structured data and your competitor doesn’t use any, your competitor could still rank higher for you on some search queries even if you rank higher than him on others.

SEO is getting to be more and more subjective all the time – subjective in the sense that each page is judged on its own merits without consideration for what’s going on in other parts of the web.

There are basics to on-page SEO that every webmaster should pay attention to, but beyond those, your best bet is to test, experiment, and measure. No two web pages are a like and no two search queries are either.

A new study shows that Facebook would earn 22% of the search market share immediately if it launched a search engine right now, today. This actually brings up two questions for me.

1. No. 1, why doesn’t Facebook have an adequate search feature then?
2. And, two, what if the search engine just wasn’t any good? Would that share drop off considerably once users decided they didn’t like it?

Of course if Facebook did have its own search engine, that would strain its relationship with Bing. I can’t see that Bing and Facebook would continue to have the relationship they have now if Facebook were to develop its own search engine. So I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

Thirdly, if Facebook had 22% of the market starting out and it did build a search engine that people would use, it would likely siphon off some market from Bing. It could very well end up at the 40% market share neighborhood and leave Bing flailing like Yahoo!

Building a search engine is a difficult thing to master. Certainly, 22% of the share of the search market would put Facebook at No. 2 in the search engine competition. However, creating value in search is not easy to do as both Yahoo! and Bing have discovered.

I’m not saying Facebook shouldn’t build its own search engine. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be good if they did. I am saying that simply building one wouldn’t necessarily mean it would be good.

What do you think? Should Facebook build its own search engine? Would it be worth trying if they did? Would you use it? And one more question: How would that affect search engine optimization practices?

Have you ever checked your referral logs or analytics and saw a search query that someone found your site for and wondered why you ended up ranking for that search term? Have you ever seen that search query show up more than once in your referral logs and analytics reports? If you’re like me, I’m sure you have.

What happened?

SEO Theory’s Michael Martinez says this.

Search engines don’t stop ranking your pages at the end of your list of carefully chosen keywords. If they find expressions your page is relevant to that you didn’t think of, they’ll give you some exposure you didn’t count on. The difference between a real long tail strategy and a faux long tail strategy is the absence of popular head terms in your search goals.

What most business owners, and even a lot of SEOs, don’t understand is that the magic that happens in search happens when the searcher enters a search query in the search query box and clicks the Search button. It does NOT happen when you optimize your web page.

So what does that mean exactly?

Well, you can optimize your pages endlessly, do all the keyword research you can think of, and build link after link after link with the very best anchor text possible and still get traffic for search queries you didn’t think of. That happens because search engine robots are looking for content that matches search queries. They are not looking for search queries that match your content.

That’s an important distinction. But what does it mean in terms of search? Here’s what I think it means:

Quit chasing keywords. Instead, chase the customers that are important to your business – the ones most likely to buy your products and services. You cannot guess every search query those customers will use to find you on the Web. What you can do is write great content that attracts the people you want to do business with. Then promote that content where those people hang out.

Does your website need a sitemap? And if so, where do you get one?

First, let’s talk about what a sitemap is.

A sitemap is a list of web pages on your website that you submit to the search engines to make your site easier to crawl and index. I’ve seen some smaller websites get by without a website, but if you have more than 10 pages on your site, then I’d say a sitemap is definitely necessary. Even if you have fewer than 10 pages on your website, a sitemap could benefit you.

Don’t rely on the search engines to crawl every page on your site. Get a sitemap.

One of the most important benefits to a sitemap is that you can assign priority to your pages. Your home page should have the highest priority. But if you have second and third tier pages on your site, then you can assign a priority to them accordingly. The search engines will crawl those sites based on that priority.

A sitemap is an XML file that you upload to your website and submit to the search engines. You should also include a TXT sitemap, and HTML sitemap, and an ROR sitemap on your site. These are for your human visitors.

There are several sitemap generator websites online. One that I recommend is XML-Sitemaps.com. You generate your sitemap and upload the files to your server.

A sitemap will increase your chances of getting your pages crawled and indexed. You can have a separate sitemap for each section of your website and if you have a large website, then that might be in order. You can also have a video sitemap for your site’s video section. Anything you can do to help the search engines index your website should be done.

What will Internet marketing look like in 2032, twenty years from now? Care to take a guess?

If you look at the history of Internet marketing from the beginning of the World Wide Web until now, it’s very interesting how we have progressed to the point that we have.

• 1990 – Birth of the World Wide Web including browsers and hypertext, online bulletin boards are very popular communication channels
• 1993 – Excite, the world’s first search engine, was created
• 1994 – AltaVista was created and later would become the world’s first major search engine; Yahoo! became the first powerhouse Web directory
• 1995 – GeoCities launched, becomes the first successful online community; webrings begin to rise in popularity
• 1997 – SixDegrees is the first official social network
• 1998 – Google was born, the first search engine to analyze back links
• 1999 – Overture became the first company to offer pay per click advertising; Blogger.com launches
• 2000 – Google enters PPC market with Google AdWords
• 2003 – Google AdSense program starts, increasing Google’s hold on the PPC market; LinkedIn and MySpace both launch
• 2004 – Facebook is created
• 2005 – YouTube launches; Google introduces personalized search
• 2006 – MicroSoft LiveSearc started; Twitter launches
• 2007 – Mobile marketing starts to pick up
• 2008 – Facebook becomes most popular social network
• 2009 – LiveSearch rebrands, becomes Bing; Google rolls out personalized search for logged out users
• 2010 – Local search becomes more important
• 2011 – Google+ launches, Google proclaims it is the future of the search engine’s search and social product

This is a very sketchy history of Internet marketing, but it can shed some light on the direction that online marketing is going. More personal, more local, more social, more mobile, and incorporating more video and visual results. So what will all of that look like in 2032?

Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that all of these components of search will be more integrated and more sophisticated. Are you preparing your company to make the most of your opportunities in each of these online marketing channels?

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.

We’ve said all along that small businesses – in particular, local small businesses – should make their best use of search and social. If you can incorporate a strong search engine optimization campaign and a social media campaign, then you should do it.

As you manage your two campaigns, there are three pieces of information that you should ensure you incorporate into both campaigns:

• Your business phone number
• Your business address
• Hours of operation

Why Your Phone Number Is Important To Search

According to the latest social search study, the information most often sought by local searchers is a business phone number. The second most sought after information is a business address. And the third most searched for information are hours of operation.

In fact, these three little bits of information far outweigh everything else people search for online. So you should be sure to include them on your website in a prominent location. If possible, get them into the search engines.

But don’t just stop there. More and more, people are using social networks to search for local businesses. And 91% of the people who do are using Facebook to do it. What’s that tell you?

It tells me that you should have a Facebook page and your phone number, business address, and hours of operation should be displayed prominently on it.

Why People Do Business With You

Here’s the kicker. 72% of survey respondents said they are more likely to do business with someone if a friend or colleague recommends them. If you are a business-to-consumer operation, then Facebook is your friend. Build a brand page, share it with your friends and fans (and customers) and watch them share it with theirs. A recommendation online goes a long way.

Make it easy for people to find you and they will find you. Whether in the search engines or the social networks, being found is the first step to getting business.

In the old days of SEO, all a marketer had to care about was whether or not he was building good content and building good links. If you wrote great content for your website using the right keyword mix with content that helped your audience, built links from good domains and with the right anchor text, and didn’t do anything the search engines didn’t like, then there was a good chance you’d rank well for the keywords you targeted. Those days are going away – fast.

SEOMoz has a great post on how Google looks at sentiment and how that affects SEO at the local level. You’ll be amazed at the technology the search engines now have.

Using something called stylometry, Google can determine whether your link from a third-party website is a positive endorsement, a negative endorsement, or neutral. And I find that amazing. It could affect your rankings.

Get enough bloggers to link to your website using negative references and you could see your search engine rankings plummet. On the other hand, get enough rave reviews and you could rise to the top. It’s pretty easy to imagine what you need to do to improve your rankings then, huh?

No, I don’t mean buy positive endorsements. I mean provide great customer service. Your reputation is more than just a few paid-for links. It’s how you do business.

MerchantCircle conducted a survey and found that most small businesses would put all of their marketing budget into SEO if they could only choose one channel. These are interesting results. Why is it that small businesses would choose SEO over social media or traditional media?

I believe the answer is quite simple. Quite frankly, it’s the most effective and most cost efficient marketing channel.

SEO allows you to attract the type of customer you are searching for by “pulling” them in based on their own active search for information that you have to offer. And even today, the best converting traffic for most websites is traffic that comes from search engines. It’s almost a no-brainer.

But how many small business owners actually know how to conduct a search engine marketing campaign using the latest best practices for SEO? The answer: Not many. So who is going to do the actual work of optimizing their website?

It may be time for you to consider an SEO consultant. There are really three kinds of SEO consultants.

1. The do-it-all consultant who analyzes your website and looks for opportunities to better your on-page and off-page SEO for increased search results. Then they implement a strategy approved by you.
2. The assist-you consultant who analyzes your website and makes recommendations that you follow up on and implement.
3. The hybrid SEO consultant who uses a combination of these two strategies and the two of you work together.

There are pros and cons to each type of consultant. Whichever is right for you is your call, but now is the time to consider an SEO consultant for your business for the upcoming year.

Here’s an interesting post on how social media is changing search. There’s actually some real serious thought fodder here.

Specifically, here are a few snippets to bite into:

If I want to find information about very recent events, such as the things going on at occupy wallstreet or occupy oakland, I’ve been finding it much easier to type the hashtags for those into twitter than search at Google or Bing or Yahoo. At this point, Twitter still seems to be very much ahead of Google’s new freshness approach in pointing out recent pages about those protest movements.

Amen to that! Twitter’s been ahead of the search engines on recent information for a couple of years now. Twitter has actually become a breaking news center and is able to get news to the public faster than traditional news outlets. The search engines have yet to capitalize on that need.

(Source) So Google needs to have the best product to continue selling ad space. That product was ironically endangered by Caffeine. With Panda Google tries to solve the content issue and with the Social Signals linked inextricably to the Authors and Publishers tries to solve the obsolescence of the Link Graph.

Bill Slawski concludes:

Some topics demand very fresh content, and social media has raised the expectations of searchers by providing them with a way of finding fresh information on natural disasters, breaking news events, and other topics that are recency sensitive. If you search at one of the search engines and get no results for those topics, that might seem like a failure on their part. Google’s move towards providing fresher results was pretty much demanded by the expectations of searchers who want fresher content.

I for one believe the search engines have not yet fully tapped into social media’s potential for their search results. We’ve got a ways to go. But I do believe they are working on it. Bing is probably ahead of Google in terms of social media impact on search results simply because it includes Facebook in its results. And you can use Facebook to conduct Bing searches.

Don’t think that Google isn’t thinking of ways to make its search better with social media. Google+ is a big part of that effort and I suspect will become an even bigger part of the picture in the future.

What does it take to be good at SEO? Can you do it overnight? Is it a long-term strategy or a short-term strategy?

There is actually a lot of debate about this in SEO circles. Some SEOs are content to go on responding to Google’s frequent algorithm updates in hopes that they might figure out the secret to high rankings. Some SEOs will spend hours, days, and weeks “studying” the search engine algorithms hoping to learn how best to rank well for specific key phrases.

Is it possible? Can you study the search engines and learn the secret to rankings? Many SEOs stake their reputations on it.

The fact of the matter is that learning “the secret” to high rankings is a never-ending struggle. The best that any SEO can do is maintain a posture of good, solid content creation over time. While you might lucky and achieve excellent search engine results over the short term, the real SEO success formula is a long-term strategy. You are building websites and creating content for next decade as much as next year.

Instead of chasing algorithms, you’d do well to simply create great content and let the search engines do their thing.

Google has spent the better part of 2011 clamping down on bad content. Not “bad” as in dirty or pornographic. Rather, “bad” as in not high quality.

In case you’re wondering, that’s what the infamous Google Panda was all about. It’s got everyone talking.

It’s also got everyone thinking. As well it should.

The most important thing to keep in mind is not that your content needs to be long. You might come away with that impression if you just looked at the surface of the Panda updates. What you should do, however, is look under the hood. Quality content is the name of the game.

So what is meant by “quality?” The truth is, quality is in eye of the beholder. And lest you think that in all cases Google is the beholder, think again. You should not be writing your content for the search engines, or for a search engine. Instead, write your content for your human readers. Quality is whatever your website visitors make it. Quality is what they want.

How do you do that?

For starters, ask yourself this question: “What do my website’s human readers want? What do they really want?”

Then, give it to them.

Quality isn’t about some search engine algorithm. It’s about delivering on a promise – the promise to feed your website visitors with the very best content in your niche. Do that and the search engines will be happy.

Social signals are becoming more and more important in search, and I mean beyond Google simply counting and weighing the importance, relevance, and authority of links.

For instance, if you are logged into Facebook, you can go to Bing and see what your Facebook friends like. On YouTube, or anywhere.

Google, in an attempt to face off with Bing, created its own social network called Google+. When you conduct a Google search, beside each search result you’ll see a +1 button. If you +1 an item and you set your preferences on Google+ just right, then your friends will be able to see what you plussed on your Google+ profile page, and you they.

But Google takes it another step further than that even. On the search results page, you can see what items your friends have shared on Google+ and you can see other items they have shared on any social network – including Facebook.

Are these social signals exhaustive? Not by any means. In fact, they are just the beginning.

Social search is in its infant stage. I believe social signals in search will become much more important and we are only getting started. It will be exciting to see where the search engines of the future will take us. I can hardly wait to get there.

Schema are a new tool provided by a partnership between the big three search engines – Google, Bing, and Yahoo! You can learn more about them at schema.org.

The basic idea behind schema is that certain content is ambiguous and difficult for search engines to ascertain the purpose and intent while human readers have no difficulty. For instance, if you are writing about Vipers, the search engines may not be able to tell if you are referring to the snake or the automobile. Of course, if you are trying to sell cars, then the use of schemas can more easily define your content as related to automobiles and help the search engines in ranking your web page accordingly.

For instance, let’s say you are a local car dealer. There is a schema just for you. It’s listed under the broader hierarchy categories of Thing and Organization. The specific category is LocalBusiness. If you want to get more specific, there’s an AutomotiveBusiness type under that category. Even more specific is the AutoDealer category. That’s where you’ll fall in Mr. Local Dodge Dealer.

But what about that Viper? You can mark up your Viper review with the Review schema to let the search engines know that you are reviewing an automobile or the Product schema to highlight the fact that you are writing about an automobile called Dodge Viper.

With schemas, you stand a better chance of getting your content understood by the search engines. In turn, you stand a better chance of having it rank respectfully.

Many SEOs are still optimizing websites as if they are living in 1997. And they’re teaching their clients to do it too. I’m going to set the record straight about 6 SEO tactics that are ineffective and a complete waste of time.

1. Keyword Stuffing – It’s hard to believe, but some SEOs still believe that if you put 2% keyword density into your web pages, then it will help you rank. It won’t. This is a total waste of time.
2. Meta Keywords – No major search engines care what you put into this meta content field.
3. Search Engine Submission – Directory submissions can help you. Search engine submissions can’t. The major search engines will crawl your website. You don’t need to submit your site to them.
4. Header Tags – If you think H1 and H2 tags are going to push you up the rankings, think again. They look nice, but they only help your site visitors. That’s important, isn’t it?
5. Multiple Pages For Similar Keywords – If you think that optimizing a page for “widget” and another page for “widgets” is going to give you a competitive edge, then you are dreaming. That’s especially true if most of the content on those pages is the same.
6. Nofollow Attributes – Putting a nofollow attribute on your internal links for your privacy policy and terms of service is not going to help you increase your link popularity on important pages. It just won’t.

No serious SEO will tell you these tactics work. If you hear it, run the other way.

Spam is a big problem. There’s search engine spam, e-mail spam, social media spam, and canned spam (just kidding; checking to see if you’re really reading). :-)

I’ve read blog posts from SEOs and Internet marketers that essentially blame Google and its policies for search engine spam. I don’t think it’s a fair accusation. Who would you blame for e-mail spam? Or how about social media spam?

Whenever there is money to be made, there will be cheaters. Stock markets provide a way for people to invest money in hopes of getting a profitable return. Certain practices, like using insider information, are illegal and considered unethical. But people still practice them, and if they are caught they will pay the price.

Of course, spam is not illegal. But the search engines have policies in place to address spam in their indexes. Are they perfect? Do the search engine policies effectively control spam 100% of the time? No. But it’s not for lack of trying.

The real cause of spam is greed. Some people would rather risk future profits for the quick dollar now. That’s essentially the motivation behind every spam message you see – whether in your e-mail box, your search engine listings, or your social media walls. If you are a legitimate Internet marketer, however, you don’t want to get caught being a spammer. It can be a real reputation destroyer. Instead, focus on providing value and deliver on your promises.

Can the addition of a blog help your online presence? There are lots of arguments both for and against a blog and the answer to that question very much depends on who you talk to. From our perspective, the positives that blogs deliver far outweigh the negatives, especially if you publish your blog in the most appropriate manner.

Blogs are especially beneficial to those who try to market a business on a small budget. In fact, apart from your time, blogs can be published and used as a marketing tool, virtually for free. However, don’t make the mistake of adding a blog and then publishing anything and everything. Like all business processes, a little planning can go a long way. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Consider your audience:

Your blog should be targeting your audience, and that starts with simple things like your theme and the language used. If your audience is young, then a bright, cheerful, and fun theme may be appropriate. If your target audience is more mature, then a more mature blog may be more appropriate.

When it comes to language, if your target is a youth audience, then using the language of youth could be appropriate – you could even consider hiring a young person to write your blog. Likewise, if you are targeting mothers, getting a mother to write your blog could pay dividends.

Focused content:

Plan your content. One of the biggest mistakes that many business blogs make is to oversell. Use your blog as a social communication tool rather than as a formal business tool. This is where niche related writers often bring better results than marketing people. Your content should be focused on your business, be entertaining, and should take a ‘helping hand’ approach – even when introducing new products.

One of the benefits that blogs bring to any online presence is the steady stream of content. Search engines will visit a website more often if it is regularly publishing content. Naturally, your blog should be optimized for organic search to deliver best results.

Ultimately, your blog is a great communication tool. It draws interest from search engines, from social media communities, and from general readers. Make your content interesting and people will come back on a regular basis.

The real

One of the downsides of the Internet is the lack of privacy. It can be amusing to see individuals jump up and down because Facebook has breached their privacy when the exact same information is freely available on their website. I guess it’s the principle at stake. However, it does lead to my point that, online, there is very little privacy. When it comes to competitive intelligence, the information is out there and often easy to find.

The biggest source of information are the search engines. Search engines spend their whole being scouring the web looking for information that hasn’t been indexed, and updating information it already has. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing the search engines only index web pages – they certainly don’t. Images, videos, tweets, and forum posts along with a million and one other social media conversations are all being indexed and, once indexed, they could appear in search results.

When seeking information related to your competitors, the hardest part is not finding the information; it is sifting through to get to the real data. A review, for example, could be written by an affiliate, a disgruntled customer, a pay-for-post blogger, or perhaps even an employee.  Of course, don’t be surprised if you come across data that appears to be wrong. Smart business owners are trying to foil competitors by placing misinformation in certain areas – misleading keywords in meta tags is an obvious one.

Is it wrong to collect competitive intelligence? Businesses have been doing it for thousands of years – the Internet has just made it easier. Besides, if you’re a strong competitor, you can bet they are looking over your shoulder right now! Privacy – you’re online – what privacy?

In the early days of Internet marketing it was relatively easy to get a web page to rank in the popular search engines for the keywords that you wanted to target. Keyword targeting essentially started with these early search engines and keyword density along with meta tags was the dominant way to get a web page to rank.

But in 1998, a search engine company appeared on the scene and introduced new technology that would change the landscape of search forever. That company was Google.

What was so special about Google? The search technology that Google introduced was all about counting backlinks as a measure of value. If a web page had a lot of inbound links, so the thinking went, then that meant that a lot of other web publishers saw value in that web page and it should rank higher for the keywords it targeted.

This presented a few problems and once word got out that Google counted links then everyone started looking for ways to get more links. You could call it the Great Link Scramble and you’d be right on the money.

In the last ten years Google has made a lot of changes to its algorithm. The search engine has added some factors and taken some factors away in its search for the optimal mix of ranking factors. But the basic core philosophy of using backlinks as a measure of value is still there.

Some other changes that have taken place since Google’s entrance into the search engine wars include the addition of new technologies like pay per click advertising, video marketing, social bookmarking, and social networking. While article marketing was a popular way to seek links early on, social media sites seem to be a more popular way today. But article marketing still works.

As the Internet grows and more people use it for marketing, more technologies come into play for marketing through the medium. I can hardly wait to see how it will change in the next ten years.

MSN is determined to take over Google’s dominance of the search wars. And its latest weapon in the battle is the newly minted Bingbot. Honestly, though, it’s just a new name, not a new bot.

Bing has changed the name of its bot from MSNbot to Bingbot. But that name change is not all that has changed. The bot is also more adept at crawling non-optimized websites, so Bing says. Take that for all its worth. I wouldn’t purposely fail to optimize my website in hopes that the Bingbot would find room for me in in Bing’s search rankings. That would be foolhardy.

The bright side for webmasters is that you don’t have to change anything in your robots.txt. Bingbot will still respond to calls for MSNbot. In other words, when you look in your log files and see “Bingbot” you can just consider it the same as “MSNbot”. In fact, because that’s what it is under a new name.

So will Bingbot help Bing overtake Google as the No. 1 search engine? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, learn more about how you can sing a song the Bingbot will enjoy.