Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization (SEO)’ Category
40 (of the) Best SEO Guides, Tips and Insights of 2011 (So Far)
Monday, November 14th, 2011Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key component in designing and developing an effective website, as well as the core of web presence optimization (WPO). And with continual algorithm changes by the search engines and the emerging importance of social signals and content, SEO ranking signals, responsibilities and best practices continue to evolve.
How to keep up? Here’s a good place to start: 40 of the best SEO guides to strategy, tactics, considerations, common mistakes to avoid and more from some of the best SEO bloggers and writers around.
SEO Guidance and Tactics
Dropping In To See What Condition Your Condition Is In – Part I by Search Engine Guide
Stoney deGeyter details five guidelines for establishing credibility for a site with search engines, such as making it “easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site” (for example,through citations and references) and making it easy to contact you (i.e., by providing a phone number, physical address and email address).
Rules for beating Google at SEO by iMedia Connection
***** 5 STARS
Brandt Dainow lists 173 positive and negative ranking factors compiled from members of the Search Engine Land group on LinkedIn and believed to influence Google rankings. This is one outstanding checklist.
4 Reasons Why SEO is Underfunded by Search Engine Watch
Noting that “Google has confirmed that CPC costs are trending above inflation year over year. This combination of factors makes SEO risk mitigation, diversification, and an investment in ensuring affordable long-term traffic,” John Lynch presents four common challenges to properly funding SEO efforts and how to successfully address each.
Without CRO & On-Site Optimization, It’s Tempting to Abandon SEO by The Daily SEO Blog
In an excellent complement to the post above, this piece demonstrates, through charts and narrative, how conversion rate opimization (CRO) is arguably more important than SEO–but ideally, both practices will be incorporated in a coordinated fashion to drive business results.
Why SEOs Shouldn’t Fixate on Keyword Rankings by Search Engine Watch
Rob Chant contends that “focusing on position, especially for a small group of keywords—and especially to the detriment of other factors—is a terrible idea. It’s usually isn’t best investment in a campaign or a good indicator of the overall health of a campaign,” then explains why this strategy is difficult, and what to do instead.
Why Rank Checking is Still Useful by SEO Book
Arguing against “the school of thought which postulates that ranking reports or ranking data is either essentially dead, useless, or pointless” (perhaps Rob’s post above?), Eric Covino makes a compelling case for the continuing value of ranking reports, along with interesting stats on the typical percentage of clicks for each search position.
20 SEO Tips You Either Forgot or Didn’t Know! by SEO Design Solutions
Many of these tips are commonly known, but some will be helpful reminders for experts and new information for others, such as “Primary pages should have 750 words or more (preferably with unique content free of excessive stop words)” and “If you cannot create enough unique content for a page to (a) rank on its own or (b) act as a stable supporting page, then consider using the robots meta tag to add a noindex, follow command (don’t index the page, but follow the links).”
The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded by The Daily SEO Blog
Rand Fishkin how the role of an SEO consultant/expert has evolved over time from primarily tactics duties (e.g. basic keyword research, HTML sitemaps, on-page keyword targeting) to significantly more strategic priorities (reputation tracking, social media promotion, content strategy).
SEO Tactics Chart: Creating content is the most-effective tactic — here’s how to get started by MarketingSherpa Blog
Adam T. Sutton reports on research showing that content creation is viewed as most effective tactic for increasing search traffic–but is also viewed as the second-most difficult (behind link building). Then,noting that “Even though creating content is the most effective SEO tactic, it comes in sixth in terms of popularity with 60% of marketers using it. This disconnection could be due to the difficulty of creating content,” he presents some quick case study-based guidance on how to plan and execute a productive content development strategy.
Content Optimization Tutorial: How to SEO your Content for Rankings by Search Engine Guide
Acknowledging that “Copywriters are resistant to having to use particular words to get their point across and, rightfully, don’t want their content cluttered with dumb sounding ‘keyword’ phrases,” Stoney deGeyter outlines the “correct” way to optimize content for SEO using core terms, supporting phrases, related words, page headings, internal hyperlinks and meta tags.
Our Online Reputation Management Playbook by The Daily SEO Blog
Brian Patterson supplies a case study and example of an aggressive plan to assist a client whose name was appearing alongside “scam” in Google Suggest. The techniques outlined are helpful for promoting any type of content, but crucial in a crisis reputation management situation.
Search and Social Media
What Social Signals Might Search Engines Use by Graywolf’s SEO Blog
Michael Gray speculates on how Google may incorporate social media signals into search results, and provides guidance on how to capitalize on these signals for optimization such as “Strive to build up as much trust, authority, and reach as possible with your accounts.”
Social PR: 6 New (+ Old) Ways to Win Friends and Influence Search by Search Engine Watch
Noting that “both Google and Bing continue to use social signals to help rank regular search results (and) studies show friends are more likely to follow friends in search results,” Lisa Buyer supplies a half-dozen tips and techniques for increasing both your social influence and search rankings.
Social Media & SEO at Search Congress Barcelona by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Observing that “Search is increasingly social with the incorporation content from social sources (video, blogs, images) into standard search results..(and) all major search engines take data feeds from Twitter and Facebook,” Lee Odden provides two tactical approaches (nicely illustrated with diagrams) for incorporating social media efforts into SEO processes.
How Google+ Affected Social Shares and +1 Adoption Rates by The Daily SEO Blog
John Doherty demonstrates in rich detail how Google’s release of +1 has impacted social signals and Facebook content sharing, and concludes by recommending that webmasters–particularly in technology (my realm), opinion and celebrity gossip–should implement a +1 button on their sites.
YouTube Video Optimization from A to Z by Search Engine Journal
Harrison Jones explores why online video has become so popular, then steps through how to optimize a YouTube channel and individual videos, and how to promote videos through social networks, social bookmarking sites and blogs.
SEO Ranking Factors
The Next Generation of Ranking Signals by The Daily SEO Blog
Rand Fishkin illustrates how key SEO ranking signals for the search engines have evolved and become more complex over time, then offers details about and strategies for optimizing on “the next generation of ranking signals (that) will rely on three relatively new groups of metrics.”
Introducing: The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors by Search Engine Land
***** 5 STARS
Danny Sullivan presents a must-have infographic for SEO pros that graphically shows the key on-page and off-page SEO ranking factors and techniques, along with black-hat tactics to avoid. This is a great illustration to print and keep handy.
2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors by SEOmoz
Rand Fishkin (again) uses a series of graphics to illustrate the key SEO ranking factors based on research, as well as another graphic on the future of search which attempts to predict which ranking factors are likely to become more or less important in the coming year.
30 (New) Google Ranking Factors You May Over- or Underestimate by SEOptimise
Tad Chef supplies his updated list of “new or current ranking factors that get underestimated by webmasters and neglected,” including site speed, outbound links, branding, search CTR (write compelling meta description tags!), page age and link decay (broken outbound links).
SEO Post-Google Panda
4 Profound Google Changes and What They Mean for Industrial Marketers by The Industrial Marketer
This post briefly reviews the four major updates to Google’s search algorithm since April 2010 (Places, Mayday, Caffiene, and Farmer/Panda) along with “opportunities” for dealing with each change.
5 New Tactics For SEO Post-Panda by Search Engine Land
Adam Audette reviews recent Google algorithm updates and how each one affected search, then provides five tips for success in the post-Panda world, including link building via social media efforts and building internal links, along with some more technical recommendations.
More Guidance on Building High Quality Sites by Google Webmaster Central Blog
Who better to ask than Google about to improve rankings after the Panda debacle? Amit Singhal lists 23 questions webmasters can ask themselves to determine if they have high quality content (as Google defines it). such as “Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?,” “For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?” and “Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?”
Lessons from brands that were spanked by Google by iMedia Connection
Observing that “it’s best to learn from the mistakes of other marketers than to learn these lessons on our own, let’s take a look at what we can glean from past black-hat scandals,” Ramsay Crooks details the best-to-avoid-less-than-white-hat techniques that have gotten some big-name websites into hot water with Google, including link farming (J.C. Penney), low-quality content (WiseGeek.com) and cloaking (BMW).
How Google’s Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever – Whiteboard Friday by The Daily SEO Blog
Aaron Wheeler and Rand Fishkin review some of the history behind Google’s Panda update, how Google’s algorithm attempts to evaluate the “quality” of a site, and which ranking factors are most important in the post-Panda world. Along the way, Rand notes that “It is almost like the job of SEO has been upgraded from SEO to web strategist. Virtually everything you do on the Internet with your website can impact SEO today.”
Avoiding Common SEO Mistakes
7 tragic SEO oversights by iMedia Connection
Ramsay Crooks explores seven common SEO errors and their solutions, among them excessive use of dynamic content, failing to consider SEO during the new website design phase, and not leveraging internal site search data for keyword research.
Common URL Related SEO Mistakes by The YOUmoz Blog
Paul Martin outlines 11 mistakes commonly made in URL structure (who knew there were that many?) including lack of keywords, improper directory structure, use of session IDs and “the trailing slash conundrum,” and provides fixes for each (several of which involve 301 redirects).
The 10 most common website SEO mistakes by iMedia Connection
The brilliant Rebecca Lieb recounts an experience reviewing a website that was “attractive and functional, but also a textbook example of the 10 most common errors seen among non-SEO friendly website builds.” Among these ten mistakes: no keyword research, duplicate (and un-optimized) meta page title tags, and vague copy.
Common SEO assumptions that are actually incorrect by iMedia Connection (yes, again)
Erez Barak reports results from an Optify study which contradicted several commonly held beliefs, such as “it’s always best to be on page 1 of the search results.” Optify found that, actually, “The CTR of result 11 (top of page two) is actually greater than result 10 (bottom of page one).” Terms with a lower cost per click in paid search generally got higher CTRs than keywords with a high CPC value. And more.
SEO and Competitive Research
Enterprise Level Competitive Keyword Research by SEO Himanshu
This post provides a detailed six-step process for researching competitors’ keywords that can work for even very large websites in under 60 minutes.
SEO Competitive Analysis: Your Roadmap to Ranking #1 On Google by Search Engine Journal
***** 5 STARS
Zeke Camusio outlines a dozen key factors in competitive SEO analysis (e.g., number of incoming links, quality of inbound links, number of indexed pages) and tactics for success in a succinct “Why It Matters,” “How to Check” and “What to Do About This” format.
Defining Your True Competitors by The Daily SEO Blog
Explaining that “competitive research can show you which of your potential strategies is most likely to provide your site unique value, value that your competitors will probably have a harder time getting or which they seem to have neglected so far,” Benjamin Estes details a process for competitive SEO assessment and strategy development. The post gets a bit technical, delving into statistical analysis and Excel pivot tables, but may be helpful for those working on enterprise SEO projects.
Mobile Search and Local SEO
What’s the Future of Mobile Search and SEO? by The Daily SEO Blog
Pointing out that “search – the process, the intent, the results - just isn’t that different on mobile devices vs. laptops and desktops,” Rand Fishkin (yet again) explains what SEO pros need to do—and more importantly, don’t need to do—in order to optimize sites for search on mobile devices.
How To Optimize Your Website for Local Search by Entrepreneur Magazine
***** 5 STARS
Noting that “Local search is essential to small businesses. In 2010, Google revealed that the proportion of Google result pages that show a map is one in 13,” Jon Rognerud provides a five-step process for local search optimization, along with helpful lists of local directories and niche marketplaces as well as links to local SEO resources.
SEO and Google Webmaster Tools
Top Seven Reasons Search Marketers Should Use Google Webmaster Tools by MediaPost Search Insider
Janet Driscoll Miller details her top seven reasons why webmasters (and SEO practitioners) should use Google Webmaster Tools, including identifying top search queries, impacting sitelinks, and analyzing inbound links.
Google Webmaster Tools – 6 Key Pieces of Information by StayOnSearch
Kristi Hines explains how to set up Google Webmaster tools, walks through some of the key features, and provides guidance on analyzing the results reported.
Technical SEO
What Makes A SEO Friendly Web Design And Why You Need It by Link-Assistant.com
Alan Rosinski concisely explains three key elements of SEO-friendly website design (such as using Divs in place of tables) and why each element is important.
The Canonical Tag Can Save You from the Duplicate Content Monster by Search Engine Watch
Ray “Catfish” Comstock explains why duplicate content is a problem in search, then details the circumstances in which the canonical tag is a better option than a 301 redirect for correcting duplicate content issues.
301 Redirects: Formatting Bulk Redirects In Four Quick Steps by MediaPost Search Insider
Janet Driscoll Miller outlines what she terms “an easy way to quickly format your 301 redirect mapping for non-dynamic pages to match .htaccess formatting.” As oxymoronic as that sentence is, this process is just about as simple and straightforward as this complex task can be.
Rich Snippets Update: Introducing Schema.org by MediaPost Search Insider
One final post from Janet Driscoll Miller. In this one, she writes that “Google, Bing and Yahoo have teamed up to develop a standardized microdata format that the three engines will use to better understand the content contained on Web pages” and explains what this means for promoting specific types of content (e.g., reviews, products, events, TV listings) and how to use rich snippets in accordance with Google’s guidelines.
On-Page SEO: Eight Techniques for On-Page Website Optimization
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011While search engines use hundreds of signals to determine how any particular web page should rank for a given search phrase query, all of those signals feed into two primary measures: relevance and authority.
Relevance is principally determined by content and other site-wide or on-page factors. For example, on a search for information about a specific breed of dog, a page devoted to that breed would typically be deemed more relevant than a page about dogs in general. And a page on site solely focused on dogs would likely be judged by the search engines to be more relevant than a page on a site about domestic pets, or animals in general.
Authority is predominantly determined by the quantity and quality of external links to a site. One common technique for building links in the past was to submit a website to hundreds of general online directories. The major search engines have now caught on to this tactic, however, and discount links from low-quality directories to the point where they are nearly worthless.
It’s still helpful to be listed in a few of the well-respected, higher-quality online business directories, but the focus of link building is now through social media, content sharing and online PR activities. In short, links can’t be bought (at least not without risk) and they can’t be spammed—they have to be earned by producing great content and exposing it to key influencers in your industry.
On-page search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques for making it clear to the search engines what each page, and your website overall, is about. Think of these signals like the dust jacket of a book; you can discern quite a bit about what a book is about just by the cover, promotional blurbs and table of contents. Similarly, the search engines use meta tags, page headings and other signals to assess the relevancy of your site for given search phrases.
Each page on your site should have one main search phrase assigned to it, though often the page will also rank well for associated phrases (in the example below, the page optimized for records management software may also rank well for phrases such as “records management software system” and “records management software solution”).
Here are eight ways to utilize that key phrase on a page to help search engines understand what your site is about.
1. In the body text. The target search phrase should appear at least twice in the body text of the page, and more than twice for long content pages. There’s no need to overdo this, however, and search engines may actually penalize your site for “keyword stuffing”—using the same phrase with unnatural frequency. The text should always read well to a human visitor. Mix in synonymous phrases as well, such as, in this case, phrases like “records management system” or “RM software.”
2. In page headings and subheads. Not every word on a page has equal value. Putting the main idea (your target key search phrase) in headings and subheads emphasizes its important.
3. In the meta title tag. This is one of the most important single elements for SEO, akin to the title of a book. You have (depending on who you believe) somewhere between 65 and 85 characters to tell the search engines what is most important about this page. Use them carefully, wisely and judiciously. You can find more detailed guidance on writing effective title tags here and here.
4. In the site navigation menus. Too often, websites use generic menu text like “Products” and “Services.” Using specific phrases instead is more meaningful both to site visitors and to search engines.
5. In the page file name (end of the URL). Except for the home page on your site (which has to named either Index, Home or Default), you have complete freedom (within reasonable number-of-character limits) to name pages whatever you like. Using a specific phrase helps with SEO, and also makes your page stand out in the search results.
6. In the page meta tags (description and keywords). The description title tag isn’t specifically used by search engines, but it’s value lies in “selling” your page to searchers. It should give searchers a compelling reason to click on your link. Including the key search phrase in the description tag isn’t strictly required, but can help demonstrate the relevance of your page to searchers.
The keywords meta tag is optional. The major search engines no longer use this tag in formulating their rankings (or at least they say they don’t). On the plus side, the tag may still be used by some of the smaller search engines, and it’s helpful internally for organizing SEO efforts. On the downside, it takes time to craft, and it shows your competitors which search terms you are focused on (not that they couldn’t figure this out using other methods). In short, this tag probably doesn’t help much, but it doesn’t hurt either.
7. In image file names and alt tags. These attributes help with image searches as well as regular search. Instead of naming an image file IMG02134.jpg or something similarly meaningless, use a search-friendly file name like electric-blue-widget.jpg (or whatever is relevant for your product, service or topic). Also include a descriptive image alt tag; this is the text that appears in a browser with images turned off and also used for accessibility (e.g. speech browsers for the visually impaired). But the tag is also used be search engines to categorize your image, since search engines can’t “read” the content of the image itself.
8. In internal text links. Let’s say you have one page on your site completely dedicated to “electric blue widgets,” but you use that phrase in passing on other pages of the site as well. From those pages, link the phrase “electric blue widgets” (or variations of it, such as “blue electric widgets”) to the main page on that topic. Again, these links serve as signals to both human readers and search engines that they can find more detailed information about that topic on the target page.
The most fundamental element for on-site optimization is high-quality original content. Strive to write the “ultimate page” for someone searching on that particular topic. Then use these eight techniques to provide helpful guideposts for both human readers and search engines to draw them to that compelling information.
Which PR Distribution Service is Best for SEO?
Monday, September 26th, 2011There’s no question PR (and online distribution of news releases in particular) is beneficial to search engine rankings. Links are SEO fuel and well-crafted and placed news releases can provide text-specific links from high-authority news sites. While there is some debate about how recent changes to search engine algorithms may have affected the value of these links, there is no question that they remain important. So which online press release distribution sites are best for SEO purposes?
Before answering that, a quick review of a few PR+SEO best practices:
- • Write high-quality, “newsworthy” news releases. Never write news releases only for SEO purposes. High-quality releases are more likely to catch the attention of your market, get picked up by high-authority news outlets, enhance your brand image and provide valuable backlinks than keyword-stuffed fluff.
- • Include text links within releases. In this press release for example, notice how the phrase records management software points back to a highly relevant web page for that term. This may seem obvious, but never use a press release distribution service that strips out these links. There are plenty of alternatives that will leave your links intact.
- • Use at least one paid service. While it doesn’t hurt to use free services as well, journalists tend to pay more attention to news releases from trusted, paid sources than to the free ones and paid services generally provide better placement.
Okay, so which sites are best? Answers vary depending on who you ask.
In How to Select the Best Wire Service to Distribute Your News Release, Robert Beadle places PRWeb and PR Newswire (following upgrades to its website) at the top of his list for most organizations. He notes that Business Wire is also very strong, but is the most expensive of the “big four,” is most suitable for large, publicly-traded companies and the PR firms who serve them. He places MarketWire at the bottom of his list, though it is reasonably priced and has strong distribution for more localized and IT-related news releases.
Ted Weismann, in What Do You Know About Your Wire Service’s SEO Practices?, notes that PR Newswire initially took a search traffic hit from Google’s Panda update, but has since made changes to its site to regain lost ground. Business Wire has also addressed Panda. It’s not clear what other PR distribution sites have done to respond.
Search guru Lee Odden, in the SlideShare presention SEO + PR Tactics and Measurement (which also contains some excellent general guidance on optimizing news releases for SEO benefit), favors PR Newswire, though he notes that all of the big four provide SEO value. UPDATE: Lee actually endorses PRWeb for SEO. See the comments below.
This Press Release Wire Service Comparison from Clarity Quest ranks PR Web on top, and echoes Robert Beadle’s conclusion that MarketWire is a viable alternative for budget-conscious local firms. Unlike Beadle, however, the team at Clarity Quest doesn’t view Business Wire as an expensive, big-company-only alternative, stating that “Through their partnership with PR Web, you can get one of the best deals on the Web…For smaller B2B companies and startups, we use the BusinessWire package with PR Web.” The post goes hard on PR Newswire, but it’s not clear if this opinion reflects the recent changes PR Newswire has made to address SEO issues.
Based on traffic trends from both ComScore and Experian, PR Newswire leads all of the service in search engine referral traffic, followed closely by PRWeb, then in order Business Wire and MarketWire. Globe Newswire comes in the bottom of both graphs.
So much for the experts. What do actual PR practitioners think? According to this LinkedIn discussion on What is the best Press Release Service for results? Free or Paid, PRWeb (owned by PR monitoring firm Vocus) is the clear winner, followed by PR Newswire. Business Wire and MarketWire get honorable mentions, as do a few other lesser-known fee-based and some free PR distribution sites.
The bottom line? All of the big four do a pretty good job at helping with news release links for SEO. Which is the “best” service depends on your particular situation. PRWeb seems worth checking out for almost any company, and is a no-brainer for those already using Vocus. PR Newswire is another strong service, though slightly more expensive. Business Wire is likely the best choice for large firms with correspondingly large PR budgets, though its package with PRWeb is worth investigating for smaller B2B vendors as well. MarketWire appears best for budget-conscious companies and those primarily concerned with local news release distribution (and is also effective at reaching targeted industry publications).
Have a different opinion, experience or perspective? Comments are welcome.
Book Review: Marketing in the Age of Google
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011There’s no question that search has dramatically altered the marketing landscape; the traditional yellow pages are now viewed as a colossal waste of paper as 70% (and climbing) of consumers go online to find local businesses and more than 90% of B2B purchase cycles start on the web. But is it reasonable to say that search has changed everything?
That’s the contention of Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy
This is not just another “how to do SEO” book for practitioners. (There are plenty of excellent works in that category, including Website Optimization by Andrew King and The Truth About Search Engine Optimization by Rebecca Lieb.) Rather, this is highly informative, strategic overview of search written for executives who need to understand the business impact of search without unnecessary detail about the mechanics.
Fox makes a strong, meticulously researched case for the centrality of search to business strategy right out of the gate, noting that:
- • “86% of searchers start at a major search engine when shopping and 70% of those product-related queries are for categories, such as digital cameras.”
- • “Online advertising triggers $6 to be spent offline for every dollar spent online and the in-store sales boost from search is three times greater than online display advertising.”
- • “In a WebVisible/Nielson survey, 82% of respondents said that they’ve used the internet to find local businesses; 80% say they’ve researched a product or service online before buying it locally. Yet, only 44% of small businesses even have a website.” (!) While those figures are now a couple of years old, it’s astounding that as recently as early 2009, more than half of small businesses still lacked a basic web presence.
- • “Most prepurchase activity involves generic terms and…brand searches tend to happen only close to purchase.”
Fox also makes a compelling case for using paid search (PPC advertising) and organic SEO in tandem:
- • “56% of Google queries show no paid ads at all, so if you’re counting on paid search to provide all of your visibility in searches, you could be missing half your audience.”
- • “When a brand appears in both the organic and paid results, the searcher clicked on that brand 92% of the time, compared to 60% of clicks when the brand appeared in only one location.” That’s why it’s important to buy branded terms in PPC campaigns—it increases clicks, plus the cost is generally low and the conversion rate high.
She points out that the largest expense associated with organic search is in developing original, relevant and useful content for your customers and prospects. This of course is not only helpful for increasing search traffic, but also helps your site visitors, builds your credibility as an industry expert, and ultimately increases sales.
Fox is a noted speaker and expert on the strategic use of search, and provides a wealth of insights in this book such as an outstanding taxonomy of search types (navigational, commercial/transactional, informational/research, prepurchase research and action); how smaller companies can capitalize on the use of Google Search Suggest to find popular but less competitive search phrases for targeting SEO efforts; how search engine users process search results (and why a well-written meta description tag is critical); and, quantitatively, how important first-page rankings are to driving search traffic.
Beyond making the business case for search, Fox explains—in high-level, non-nerdy terms—how to implement a search strategy, how to get your business strategy and SEO technology in sync, how to separate actionable information from the mass of search and web traffic data generated by analytics tools, how social media marketing affects search results, and key search trends on the horizon.
Her writing style is straightforward but engaging; there’s no flowery prose or cutesyness. Fox keeps the narrative moving along briskly, deftly navigating between being too superficial to add value and too technical for her executive business audience. She explains how search engines rank results, without getting too geeky about algorithms. She warns against black-hat SEO “professionals” who try to use manipulative tactics to game search results (as sites like J.C. Penny and wiseGEEK have recently discovered). She emphasizes the role of high-quality, original content for search success and how to evaluate searcher behavior and goals in order to develop valuable content.
Fox notes that “Marketing, social media and public relations can help your link profile considerably,” which is a core tenet of web presence optimization (and our agency’s approach to SEO and online marketing). Her clecklists for hiring SEO talent, whether in-house or through an agency, are helpful guides to the key criteria to consider (and what to avoid, such as “guarantees”). Her take on which metrics are unimportant in SEO reporting is questionable (the percentage of overall site traffic driven by search isn’t important?!), but what’s more critical is simply doing actionable reporting: according to Fox, “only 23% of sites have an analytics package installed, and only 1% are doing A/B or multivariate testing.”
There’s much more, on how to use social media effectively, how to use articles and forums to expand you web presence beyond your website, how online video affects search results, and Google’s plans for the future of search.
Fox has written a highly readable and informative book that can benefit several different audiences. SEO practitioners will gain strategic business perspective on the importance of their work. Marketers not directly involved in search will understand how they can contribute to the firm’s online visibility. Executives will find logical arguments and sound data on the importance of understanding search, at a high level, as a key component of overall business direction. To return to Vanessa’s contention on the book’s cover: has search really changed everything? Read Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy
New Tool Helps SEO, SEM Consultants Pinpoint Local Clients
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011The SeoQuake team, the group behind the SEMRush tools for SEO and keyword research, recently released a new tool to help SEM consultants and agencies find local clients. SEMRush Geo displays Google AdWords advertisers on a Google Maps background, enabling users to identify the businesses within any geographic area who are running AdWords campaigns.
Clicking on any businesses opens a small pop-out with additional information (which is also displayed in the left sidebar). Clicking the SEMRush icon within the pop-out or sidebar opens a new window displaying the keywords bid on by that company, and for each keyword the average cost per click, destination URL, percentage of AdWords traffic driven, percentage of AdWords costs and more. The free link displays only partial data; a Pro subscription to SEMRush (at $50 per month) is required to view all of the AdWords data, plus organic keywords, history and export capabilities.
For companies using AdWords, it may seem almost a bit creepy that there is this level of detail about their SEM activities available publicly. But it’s a good reminder for all of us that what we online is, usually, there for the world to see if one knows where to look. For SEM agencies and consultants, the SEMRush Geo tool is a prospecting goldmine. Used properly, the tool can help agencies generate new business and advertisers improve the effectiveness of their AdWords campaigns. For consultants and agencies that provide SEM services, this is definitely worth checking out.
FTC Disclosure: SEMRush provided access to their tools to assist in conducting this evaluation but did not provide any direct compensation for writing this post.
