Have You Fixed Your Broken Links?
Broken links can kill a website if allowed to go on for too long. That’s why you should identify them quickly and get them taken care of.
So what happens when your website has broken links?
If allowed to linger for too long, broken links can be a ding against your website’s SEO ranking. In other words, they can count against you. One or two might not hurt, but hundreds will. And many webmasters will allow their broken links to continue because they don’t monitor them.
A simple diagnostic tool will tell you if you have broken links on your website. Google Webmaster Tools is free and does the job for you. Google will tell you if your site has broken links.
After you have determined that you have broken links, go to the pages where those links exist and analyze your content. Can you find another source to link to? If so, then replace the broken link with a link to a resource that is just as helpful, or more, to your website visitors. If you can’t find one, then consider revising your content so that the link isn’t necessary.
When you revise your content you invite the search engines back to re-crawl your pages. They will then re-index your pages based on the latest crawl and re-rank them. Some webmasters have seen increased page rankings based on fixing broken links.
If you are looking for more opportunities to increase your website’s search engine optimization, find and fix your broken outbound links. It’s a small thing, but it can matter.
6 On-Page SEO Tips For Online Merchants
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.
How Pinterest Is Kicking Up A Dust Storm
There’s a new social media site in town. It’s called Pinterest. And in the last month the site has gained 7 million new visitors.
Pinterest is an interesting social media experiment. And it looks like it could become one of the powerhouse websites, especially for women, its largest set of users.
The cool thing about Pinterest is that it is highly graphic. Take a look at its home page and you’ll see all the photos and images, and it isn’t cluttered.
The way it works is you set up your own pinboard. You can have one for your company just like Mashable has. And just like Mashable’s, it can be branded.
Notice how Mashable’s pinboard has the Mashable name in it. That’s great for reputation management and branding. Then, on the left, you can see the big Mashable logo with the website URL underneat. Again, that’s great for branding, but the URL back to the website provides a useful inbound link for SEO purposes.
If you look at the pins that Mashable includes on its pinboard, they’re not all self-promotional. They spend a great deal of time promoting other items around the Web. That’s great stuff. It’s the way that it should be done.
You don’t have to be a rabid self-promoter to be successful in social media generally or at Pinterest in particular. You just have to have a solid strategy for your online content, a strategy that includes promoting others while branding yourself. That’s the best social media strategy in the world, and your company can make that happen.
SEO And Great Content Go Hand In Hand
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.
Should You Link To Your Google Places Page?
A reader asked Mike Blumenthal if linking to her Google Places page would make it rank higher in the search engines.
The question has its basis on the longstanding practice of many SEOs to build inbound links to pages on their websites. Such inbound links have often increased the rankings of their web pages in the search engines. But there are flaws in thinking the same practice when applies to a Google Places page would have the same effect.
First, a Google Places page, as Mike Blumenthal points out, is a search result. Linking to it would be like linking to a search results page for a query that is related to your business niche. That wouldn’t boost your web pages any and it wouldn’t make any sense.
Secondly, linking out from your website to an external page would drain link juice that you could put to better use on your internal pages.
While such linking might be detrimental in terms of your website’s SEO, there may be times when linking to your Google Places page constitutes good marketing. For instance, if you want your website visitors to see all the rave reviews your business gets on Google, then you could link to the page. But I wouldn’t do that from your home page and I’d recommend that you do it using a no-follow link.
Sometimes, detrimental or harmful linking practices can be good marketing practices, and vice-versa. This is where you have to do some weighing of pros and cons. Choose a value that is most important to you and perform the action that makes that value work for you.
Are Shorter Videos Better?
One growing branch of online marketing is online video marketing. It seems to be picking up speed. But there are certain principles that video marketers should cling to if they want their marketing to be effective. One of those principles is to keep it short.
I’m talking about your videos.
High quality shorter videos seem to attract a great response from viewers and have the best potential for going viral.
The reason shorter videos work best is because people in today’s fast-paced global marketplace are crunched for time. A thirty second video will go much further than a one hour documentary. Especially if your goal is to attract attention and drive traffic for marketing purposes.
If you want to provide in-depth videos on a given topic, you are better off using short videos to attract attention to your business and website and using them to drive traffic to your longer pages. You might even put those long educational videos behind a paywall and charging admission. Then you know that someone interested in that kind of time commitment is willing to pay for it. When people put their wallets on the line, that’s a commitment.
Put your marketing budget into your short videos. They don’t provide any more SEO benefit than longer videos, but they are also don’t provide any less SEO benefit. But they do work for driving traffic.
Online video marketing isn’t rocket science. You can be effective with just a little forethought and some respect for your prospect’s time. Draw them in with short videos and close them with your on-page content.
Are Rankings A Panacea?
For the longest time now just about anyone you talked to in SEO circles would sing the praises of the No. 1 position in search results. But have you noticed that most PPC specialists – at least the ones who are worth their weight in salt – prefer to get their clients No. 2, 3, or 4 positions in the rankings? Why is that?
The truth is, No. 1 positions are the most clicked-on positions. That’s true for PPC and organic search listings. But those are not the most profitable positions.
The most profitable positions are the ones just below the No. 1 position. Why is that?
What most people don’t realize is that most searchers will click on that No. 1 position, but if it isn’t what they were looking for, then they hit the Back button and click on another search result. SEOs know this. Clients don’t necessarily know this. So everyone is scrambling to get that No. 1 position.
There’s nothing wrong with being No. 1. But you should be seeking to be No. 1 for the right search queries. What questions does your website answer? Those are the key terms you should seek No. 1 rankings for.
SEO results fluctuate. But they are also much more personal. Google now provides videos, images, and personalized results based on who your Google+ friends are your past search history. Your search results are not my search results. That makes the No. 1 position just about unattainable. Trying to get there is an exercise in absurdity.
The job for search engine marketers in today’s search climate is to produce the best content and promote it in the best places. Rankings won’t cure all your ills.
Google’s Best Reputation Management Tool
Reputation management has become one of the most important tasks for any Internet marketer, particularly an author. Google has a tool that can help webmasters test their reputations online to see if their content is doing what it should. That tool is the Rich Snippet Testing Tool.
So what does it do?
In a word, it looks at a web page on your website, or any website you want to test, and tells you whether or not that web page is using microformats to present your authorship of the page in the best light. Specifically, it will:
- Tell you whether the page is linked adequately to your Google profile.
- Let you know if the page is linked to your social media profiles at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon, Quora, and other social networks.
- Show you a preview of your Google snippet for that page should it be returned in a search results page for your author name.
- Give you the extracted rich snippet data from the page.
- And show you what a custom search engine would see if it were to look at your rich snippet data.
That’s a lot of information. More importantly, it’s a lot of useful information.
Rich snippets are very important for authors and other creatives who spend a lot of time creating content in their own names. Even if you employ a ghostwriter to create your content, you are its author. You should test your rich snippet data on a semi-regular basis to ensure that you are making the most of your microformatting opportunities. It not only has reputation management consequences, but it can affect your SEO as well.
Does Your PR Campaign Need A Press Release?
Press releases are good for one thing – links. If you really, really want to build some inbound links to your website and hope that your public relations campaign takes off, then submit a few press releases to the press release distribution websites. But what if you really want to power up your PR campaign?
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t submit press releases. Submit them. You’ll get your inbound links and if you optimize them well you’ll likely see some inbound traffic when searchers find your press release in the search engines. You may even get a call from a reporter or see your press release re-printed somewhere – maybe even off line. But don’t expect your press releases to do all the work. Public relations goes beyond a mere press release.
Good public relations involves some level of relationship building. You need to find out what publications cover your industry. Make a list. Then find out who the person is in those publications who reports on topics that are important to you. Again, make a list.
When you’re ready to start your public relations campaign, contact those people on your list and make a personal pitch. The personal pitch is a lot more effective than a press release. It shows that you have the ambition and the incentive to go an extra step. Most of your competitors are submitting impersonal press releases. But you will be more direct, more personal, and more effective.
When you make a pitch, tailor it to the specific needs of the person and the publication you are pitching to. Is it a lone blogger in your niche? Find out what he likes to write about (you should subscribe to his blog and read it every day) and pitch to that.
Are you pitching to a national news magazine in your niche? What kind of stories do they run? What are their biases. Play to those.
Public relations is about more than building links and sending press releases. If you really want it to be effective, make it personal.
Can Microsites Provide Good SEO?
You could call 2011 The Year of the Panda. Panda in this case is a reference to Google Panda, the algorithm update that killed hundreds or thousands of websites instantly, many of them big name websites. It also did in some microsites.
And that makes us ask the question, are microsites good for SEO?
My answer is, they can be if done right. The problem so often is that website designers do not often do them correctly.
So, What’s A Microsite?
A microsite is a small website that serves a specific purpose. It is usually defined as a site that consists of only 3-5 pages not counting the terms of service and privacy policy pages. The focus is very narrow and specific.
You can build a microsite that targets a narrower niche within your broad company website’s niche. But what has killed many SEOs trying to use microsites is they linked them all together in a massive link building scheme. Google caught on and all their sites were de-indexed. Rather quickly.
If you build microsites, build them as standalone webites, not as link satellites for your larger site.
The Real Benefit Of A Microsite
The real benefit to having multiple microsites is not that you can use them to build links to your major corporate website. The real benefit is that you can use them as separate websites that achieve search engine rankings on their own.
If you have three microsites that each target their own specific keywords, that’s 6 times the number of opportunities to rank well for the keywords that you are targeting. That’s in addition to the ranking opportunities of your main website. And that’s if you don’t link them together.
You have to make sure your microsites aren’t associated with each in any way. Treat them like separate businesses and promote them as such.
Why Facebook Is At A Disadvantage
A brilliant post at SEOmoz illustrates how Google uses its own SEO guidelines to rank its own pages higher in the search engines.
Consider this:
How has Google won so much real estate on their own search pages in such a short period of time? Do they cheat? No, not really – more on this later. Google wins by employing really smart Search Engine Optimization techniques – the same SEO practices available to any online business.
What Cyrus Shepard doesn’t tell you is that Google knows its own algorithms better than anyone else. It has the inside information. Facebook doesn’t. And that’s one of the reasons that Facebook is at a disadvantage.
On the other hand, the SEO principles that Cyrus shares in his post are pretty much all common knowledge. They’re things that everyone – even Facebook – at this point should understand.
One really telling point is how Facebook blocks Google from crawling its profile pages. As Cyrus points out:
Facebook actively prevents Google from crawling most of its content, allowing big G to access “Fan” pages, but limiting information from regular profiles. Now that Google+ has entered the social game, this policy puts Facebook results at risk of dropping in rankings and losing search real estate.
On the one hand, Google+ has an advantage in the search engines because it is owned by the largest and most popular search engine. On the other hand, Facebook doesn’t employ sound SEO tactics anyway, so if you take away the Google+ advantage, Facebook would still be at a disadvantage.
So what’s the lesson here? No matter what business you are in, think about how search engine optimization can help you reach your goals.
Use Blogger For Your Own Personal Article Directory
Now that Google Knol is dead, is there an alternative that you can use for your articles?
Yes, there is. It’s called Blogger. That’s Google’s free blog service.
You can use Blogger as your own article directory and there are two ways to do it.
First, you can start one blog and periodically post your articles there and link back to your company branded blog or website. The second way to use Blogger as an article directory is to upload each article you want to post to its own blog utilizing your primary keyword as the blog subdomain.
Both strategies work well.
Blogger has been listed as the second most trafficked social media website, ahead of Twitter by more than twice the traffic.
Of course, this Nielsen report doesn’t consider YouTube. Still, that puts Blogger into the high traffic arena, and it’s good for SEO as well. Being owned by Google, you’d expect no less, right?
The key to using Blogger as your own article directory is to not overdo it. You don’t want to draw undue attention to yourself as a link spammer, but you do want to use the tools at your disposal to build good inbound links. Blogger is great as a link building tool, and it could send you some additional traffic as well.
Will SEO And Social Media Become Interlinked?
Rand Fishkin is at it again. Predicting the direction of search for 2012. He does it every year.
Two things stand out in this year’s predictions:
- “SEO without social media will become a relic of the past”
- “Google will make it very hard to do great SEO without using Google+”
These two predictions are intricately linked. If SEO and social media go hand in hand, then that includes Google+. If Google forces search marketers to using Google+, then that will enhance the need for social media overall. I agree with Rand. It’s coming.
Google could see this as a way to control link spam. Which brings up another one of Rand’s predictions: “Google will finally take stronger, Panda-style action against manipulative link spam.”
These three predictions seem to be linked in ways that make sense. If you are using Google+ to improve your website’s ranking prospects, then you aren’t out building questionable links. Link building, as we know it today, could be a thing of the past after 2012.
I think a lot of SEOs would welcome that change. A lot more will hate it.
But it could be a way for Google to finally kill link spam once and for all while improving the search results for users – especially users who are also on Google+. What do you think?
What Online Marketing Methods Are Important For 2012?
If you plan on doing any online marketing in 2012, what are the important methods of marketing that you should focus on? What should you stay away from?
First and foremost, SEO is definitely not dead. You shouldn’t give up on that yet. But it has changed in the last five years.
For instance, if you are out prowling for links and looking for high PR do-follow links, then you are probably wasting your time. But if you are focusing on placing your unique articles on high profile, high traffic websites where they will be seen, then that is a much better way to go about link building in 2012.
Social media is another online marketing tactic that isn’t going away. However, don’t just sign up for a bunch of social media websites and forgetting about them. Stick the large sites with current traction and high traffic. For most businesses, that means Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. If there are niche-specific sites that you can focus on, join them too.
Whichever social media websites you decide to join, stay active.
Video marketing and mobile marketing are two other online content strategies that are gaining ground and look to be effective in 2012.
Online marketing hasn’t changed much in the last five to ten years, but it has changed. Make note of the changes and keep promoting your content far and wide.
Why External Links Are Good
Most SEOs will tell you that the way to boost your rankings in the search engines is to build lots and lots of inbound links. Don’t build external links – those that link out – because they drain your authority juice away. Build your inbound links with great anchor text from relevant high authority websites and you’ll be the golden boy of SEO.
That advice really sucks. I’ll tell you why.
Google has long caught onto the practice of spammy links that follow all the rules of the book. They’ve done changed their algorithms at least a couple of dozen times to prevent those links from helping websites that shouldn’t rank. So do all the crafty link building you can following all the usual rules. It won’t work.
What does work is linking out to other sites within your niche. Don’t worry about draining your authority juice. You probably don’t have any yet.
Rather, consider yourself an authority in your niche and act like it. Would an authority link to a resource off site that would help a reader more than anything else you can post on your own? Of course he would. Then do that. Real authority websites link out promiscuously. They link to websites that are helpful to their readers.
That’s not to say you should link everywhere you can. Be selective about your external links. You don’t want to send your readers to warez sites or sites where they’ll pick up a malicious virus.
Set your standards for excellence based on common sense. Link to sites that add value to your niche for your readers. Become a real authority, not some fake authority based on spammy links that get you nowhere.
The One Unbendable Rule Of SEO
If you’ve been around the Web for long and have studied much in the way of SEO, then you’ve likely encountered the countless Internet marketers who have hyped and harped on the idea that SEO is nothing more, or less, than building links. But as many of us have seen, links eventually lose value.
In fact, for every SEO benefit you receive from any action, there will always be a loss of benefit somewhere else. Links get too old and become obsolete, content value is diminished because someone else did it better, social triggers raise and lower your reputation by the minute, etc.
About the only thing you can count on with best SEO practices is change. What works today may not work tomorrow. The action you take today may not show any results for a year. Sometimes, the best thing to do is wait.
Search engine optimization is not some magic pill. There is no formula that can catapult you to instant success, or any success. The best SEOs are the ones that experiment, test, and try something new when all the tried-and-true wisdom has failed. And I can’t tell you how many times a business owner has fired his SEO guru because the business owner read a book and became an instant expert.
The one unbendable rule in SEO is Change is Inevitable. This is not a “don’t rock the boat” industry.
Google Cares About Sentiment?
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.
Blog Posts: Categories And Tags
A customer asked, “Shouldn’t I put my blog posts in multiple categories for better search engine optimization?”
Our answer: No.
The search engines won’t rank your content higher because you’ve placed it in multiple categories. In fact, they might gig you for duplicate content if you allow them to crawl your categories at all. And that’s why many SEOs put a nofollow, deindex command in their robots.txt files for the category and tag pages of their blogs.
Your categories and tags are for reader benefit. Fewer categories on a blog make for a cleaner, easier-to-follow blog. Limit your reader’s choices in categories and you’ll encourage more reading. Therefore, your categories should be broad catch-all organizational tools like the chapters in a book.
Tags, on the other hand, are narrower in scope and therefore it’s OK to have more of them. It’s also OK to give individual blog posts with multiple tags.
Tags are more like the index at the back of your book. You might have only 10 chapters (blog categories) in a book, but you’ll have hundreds of tags. And specific words or phrases may appear in several chapters of your book. Those words or phrases (tags) in your index will show which specific pages of your book those words or phrases appear in even if they are in different chapters.
The reason this happens is because you’ll give a full treatment of a topic in a book chapter, or a blog category, but you and your reader both recognize that all of your concepts are interrelated. Sometimes, due to that interrelatedness, you’ll mention a topic in a chapter that covers another topic with a fuller treatment. It’s only mentioned as it relates to the other topic. That’s where your tags come in.
Keep in mind that tags and categories are organization tools, not necessarily SEO tools.
Do You Need An SEO Consultant?
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.
- 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.
- The assist-you consultant who analyzes your website and makes recommendations that you follow up on and implement.
- 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.
Is Custom Web Design Really ‘Custom’?
There are a lot of website design companies online that purport to build you a custom-designed website, then use an off-the-shelf web template. Sure, they modify the template, but that’s hardly “custom.”
A custom-designed website is one where the web design company takes your concept and builds you a website from scratch. The language used for the website is immaterial. It can be PHP, CSS, JavaScript, ASP, or a combination of the above. Or something else entirely. But they code the website from top to bottom. And they do it with sound search engine optimization strategies in mind.
Web design isn’t rocket science, but it’s not exactly Cracker Jack box thinking either. There is some creativity involved.
A good web design company can take your company image, your logo, your brand, and design a real website that captures the personality and essence of your brand. It is unique. It is custom designed in the truest sense of the word.
When you are in the market for a custom web design, take the time to interview companies first. Find out what their web design strategy is. Do they take an off-the-shelf template and modify it or do they truly build you a website from the ground up?
Isn’t Killing Knol Pages Fun?
Google has announced that Google Knol is going away. But not for good.
In actuality, they’re just changing form. But there may be more to it than simply a metamorphosis. It looks like a complete branding job and Google is getting out of the picture.
It appears that Annotum intends to keep the basic format of Knol while changing its platform to WordPress. But it’s unclear what else will change beyond that. Currently, Knol pages provide a link building benefit for authors – the few – who use them. But will Annotum continue that? Will Google place a higher priority on content published on Annotum? Those questions have yet to remain unanswered.
Furthermore, Annotum seems interested in targeting the scientific and scholarly communities, which is how Knol started out. But because Google didn’t put strict guidelines on the content, much of it became commercial. And that appeared to be by design. Some people suspect that Google encouraged commercial content. Whether they did or not is neither here nor there since the Knol domain will no longer be active after May 1, 2012.
Change is something Internet marketers have come to expect. And Google giving up on products not doing well is another. There’s no real surprise here. But if you have Knol pages, then you should either import them to Annotum or download them for other uses.
Is SEO Getting Harder?
Aaron Wall is punching at Google again. This time he’s accusing the search giant of favoring big companies like Wal-Mart. At the expense of small companies. Here’s what he says specifically:
In the meantime, I expect Google to keep increasing search complexity such that it’s prohibitively expensive to make & market a small independent commercial website. That will force many smaller companies to live inside the Google ecosystem, with Google ranking the Google-hosted pages/products/locations for those companies, so that they can serve ads against them and get a bigger slice of the revenues.
In other words, small business owners will be forced to use Google-powered site hosting products because they won’t be able to afford to pay professional SEOs to do their optimization work. Meanwhile, big companies like Wal-Mart will be favored in the search engines unless small businesses use the Google-hosted sites, which will serve up ads and increase Google’s revenue at the small business owner’s expense.
Somehow, I don’t think that business model would work well for Google. What would happen when small business owners discover the game is rigged against them?
SEO is already plenty difficult for most small business owners. They either have to take the time to learn how to do it themselves, and most of them don’t have that kind of time, or they have to pay a professional anyway. Forcing small business owners into a corner doesn’t seem like a plan that would benefit Google.
In The Age Of Social Media
Internet marketing is an ever changing discipline. How to effectively market your business and manage your content today is nothing like it was ten years ago, or even five years ago. If you plan to do business online, then you’ve got to adapt to the changing landscape of online marketing. That means adjusting your aim and trying new things from time to time.
Social media has only been around a short while, but it’s undoubtedly the way to market your business online today. And I don’t mean in the usual way that most Internet marketers today think of as social media.
The big secret in this industry is that most Internet marketers are about five years behind the times. Yes, five years.
They’re still trying the hard sell. They’re still pretending like SEO is the holy grail of online marketing. And they’re still banking all their social media coin on social bookmarking. But that’s not what social media is all about.
What it is about is building relationships. It’s about attracting the type of person you want to do business with. Nothing more, nothing less.
When you employ a successful social media campaign, you’ll know in the gut that you’ve made the right connections. And many times that translates into positive SEO. But if that’s your end goal, then you’re doing it wrong.
Does SEO Trump Branding?
There’s no doubt that SEO is a necessary component to your online marketing efforts. But what about branding? Is it necessary for online marketing? Which is more important?
Let’s take a look at the functions (purposes) for each of these efforts.
- Search engine optimization – The purpose for SEO is to get your content to rank in the search engines so that you can increase your website visitor traffic and convert it into sales. That’s obviously an important task, but if all you did was SEO in the way of marketing your content and your website, then you’d be woefully undershooting your target.
Online branding – Online branding has a much wider reach. It can, and should, include SEO. But it should also include your social media initiatives and everything else you do – online and off line.
If you think of online branding as a part of overall reputation management strategy and your overall business strategy, then it is far more important than SEO, which is simply part of your overall marketing strategy. Granted, it’s an important part, but it’s not the only part worth considering.
In terms of online marketing, everything you do is a part of your branding effort. That includes SEO.
Can You SEO A PDF File?
Not very many people think of performing SEO on PDF files. After all, they’re not web pages.
Ahh, but they are crawlable. And that means you should make an attempt to perform best search engine optimization practices on them.
Here are a few tips to help you SEO your PDF files better.
- First, break large PDF files into smaller documents. If you have a small e-book of 150 pages with 10 chapters of 10-13 pages each, then break each chapter down into its own document. Tag each document with relevant keywords.
- Make sure the PDF is text-based. Search engines like text and crawl text. Be sure to fill out the author, document title, description, file size, and modification date fields.
- Make your links within the document easy to find for the search engines. Don’t bury them. And use anchor text and good title attributes for those links as well.
- Make sure the search engines can read the PDF file format version number.
- Just as you would for a web page, make sure the PDF document reads logically. There must be a logical flow of information so that the search engines can more easily ascertain what the document is about and index it accordingly.
- Finally, ensure links from your web pages to your PDF document use the proper anchor text and title attribution. Those links are vitally important.
Performing SEO on a PDF document is largely the same as performing SEO on a web page with a few subtle differences.
The Long Tail Keyword And Your Website
Are you familiar with the term “long tail” in relation to SEO and website optimization? If not, here’s the lowdown.
Think of a many-headed hydra. In Greek legend, the hydra was a monster with nine heads. Those heads were quite dangerous. If one got you, it hurt. And of course, if you cut one off, then another one grew to replace it. The Greek hero Hercules had to fight a hydra one time – you know, mythologically speaking.
Many search engine optimizers approach SEO like they are fighting a hydra. They focus on the head. But if you focus on the head, even if you defeat one (that is, manage to take over its search engine ranking), there are two more ready to sprout up in place and challenge you to work harder. This type of SEO is very difficult to beat. You can go after the most popular search phrases and risk fighting more and more powerful and dangerous heads (competitors) or wise up and go for the long tail instead.
The long tail in SEO are the less popular phrases that can be just as powerful yet easier to defeat. That hydra had a tail. It was long. And it could sweep around and knock you off your feet. But if you managed to cut it off, nothing grew in its place.
Long tail keywords are like that hydra tail. They’re easier to defeat even as powerful as they are. Knock your competition off the pedestal and there aren’t as many competitors there to try and replace them. It’s easier to win.
Why Fresh Content Is Still Necessary
Fresh unique content on a regular basis is probably more necessary now than it ever has been. If you haven’t learned about Google Fresh yet, you should read up on it.
Due to the Google Fresh update, it is likely that your static content will fall in the SERPs if you do not have a strategy for updating your website on a regular basis. That means coming up with ways to keep your content fresh and interesting.
Here are five ways to do that:
- Add a blog to your website and update it daily.
- Start a forum on your website and appoint someone to be the moderator.
- Write and publish periodic press releases.
- Build a community around your brand by allowing user-generated content on blogs, forums, and other UGC community assets.
- Post often to social media.
Maintaining a constant presence in the search engines ensures that Google does not forget about. It also ensures that your audience doesn’t forget you. Your website will grow all the more if you continue to update it with fresh, unique content that is deemed valuable by your community.
This is why community-oriented and news sites tend to do better in the search engines. Don’t just build web pages then forget about them.
Google+ Rolls Out Business Pages
Google+ Pages for Business are finally here. Some of use have been waiting for these for awhile.
If you’re wondering just what a Google+ business page is, think of it as a Facebook page for Google. There are, of course, some subtle differences between Google+ pages and Facebook pages. One such difference is that you must have a Google+ personal account before you can add a page. But that’s a minor hurdle. I recommend that you get a personal account as well.
So what can you do with a Google+ business page?
For one thing, you can post to Google+. If you’re not sure if that’s a benefit or not, consider these points and then make up your mind.
- Google+ is owned by Google, the largest search engine online. While SEO benefits are currently unproven, you can bet that Google will eventually provide greater weight to personal profiles and business pages for brands.
- Increased online reputation management opportunities.
- Better targeted marketing as you can create circles around your different market segments and communicate with each segment more easily.
- Multiple pages possible, which means you can have one for each product or brand you support as well as each location you serve.
- More effective video marketing since YouTube and Google+ are integrated allowing you to share videos more easily.
- Google+ is the fastest growing social media website in history.
- You can schedule hangouts with your clients and partners and communicate for free with them via video right inside Google+
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Google+ is only going to get better. If you haven’t joined yet, I highly recommend that you do and set up your business pages now.
Which SEO Ranking Factors Are Important?
Danny Sullivan created a Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. The idea itself is so sublime that the mere thought of it is worth mentioning. It’s a cool idea because it renders a quick visual look at the most important SEO ranking factors while keeping it simple.
So what are the most important SEO ranking factors?
According to the chart, the most important SEO ranking factors include:
- Content quality
- Keyword research
- Inbound link quality
- Site crawlability
- Social trust and authority
Important negative ranking factors include link buying and cloaking. Those two sins alone can be site killers.
These are, of course, not the only SEO ranking factors, but they are the most important meaning that focusing on these factors before you worry about anything else is of prime importance.
Danny Sullivan’s table wasn’t mean to be exhaustive. It was meant to be a gentle reminder of what is truly important in SEO. Other factors that might be less influential should still be considered, but ignoring these “most important” SEO ranking factors will almost certainly kill your chances at ranking well for the keywords you want to rank for. They are essential factors for consideration.
When it comes to SEO, don’t just focus on one or two ranking factors. Spend some time learning the principles of SEO and the things that don’t change over time. Everything else is temporal.
Why PPC Is King
You’ve likely heard that content is king. And that’s true, if you are talking about website marketing strategies. Nothing beats content. But PPC is king in terms of online marketing strategies.
Pay per click marketing wins hands down for a number of reasons even though it costs you money.
For starters, PPC allows you to get instant results. Write your ad and get it live today, you can actually see click throughs today and marry those up with conversions. No other online marketing strategy has that potential. If you build a website, you’ll have to get it indexed. There’s no guarantee that will happen in one day.
Social media can be effective marketing, but it likely will take you some time since you have to build up a following, build trust, and develop a track record. That takes time.
Video marketing can also be effective. Again, the chances that you can produce a video, get it online, and see results in one day are pretty phenomenal. It can happen, but not likely.
Other online marketing strategies show similar potential. You may get better results long term from SEO, social media and video marketing, but only PPC promises same-day results. And that’s just one reason PPC is king. There are others.