Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Best SEO Link Building Guides, Tips and Tools of 2010 (So Far)
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010Optimizing a website by incorporating keywords into page titles, headlines, text, page URLs, image alt tags and internal links will help improve the position of a site in the search engines—but it’s only half the battle. As one of the posts linked below notes, “In Search Engine Optimization, things that are happening OFF of your site can be just as important (if not more so) than things happening ON your website.” Search engines look at on-site factors to determine relevance, but at external links to gauge authority.
So how do you get more links, without resorting to spammy or questionable tactics? Find out here in some of the best blog posts and articles about SEO link building of 2010 so far.
Nine Tools for Your Link-Building Toolkit by ClickZ
Julie Batten offers nine key elements to include in a link-building toolkit–such as lists of targeted keywords and directories–to make link-building efforts more efficient and productive.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Page Rank via LinkedIn by VibeLog
In this brief but useful post, Jessica Nielsen explains five ways, such as crafting a relevant “professional headline,” to use LinkedIn to improve your company site’s Pagerank.
Raiding Your Competitor’s Backlinks by Internet Marketing for Business Owners
How to quickly find and replicate backlinks to competitor’s site to improve your site’s search engine ranking.
71 Technical Factors For Backlink Analysis (From 30 Link Building Experts) – Part 2 by Search Engine Land
For those who have waaaay too much time to spend on link building, Garrett French walks through the URL, on-page and sitewide factors to use in backlink profile analysis. Includes helpful commentary from a range of SEO experts like Eric Enge and Aaron Wall.
The 30-minute-a-day link building plan by iMedia Connection
Another piece from Garret French, this one outlining his recommended link building plan, starting with linkable asset identification: “common linkable assets include webinars, job listing pages, PDFs, blogs, forums, subject matter experts, deals, news, a community participant, contests, podcasts, and free tools.”
Top 100+ Link Building Resources by Vertical Measures Blog
An extensive list of blogs, tools, forums and other resources to assist with link building knowledge and tactics.
Simple tips for improving your website’s links by iMedia Connection
Ramsay Crooks presents guidelines for building quality links as well as low-value link building tactics to avoid.
Another Big Roundup of Link Tools by Search Engine Land
The always brilliant Debra Mastaler presents a helpful list of backlink analysis tools plus mini-reviews of several “non-standard, outside of the box link tools like Smarter Search.
Ultimate Guide to Link Building by Agent SEO
Jacob Stoops provides an excellent tutorial, beginning with explaining the process and importance of link building then stepping through different tactics and key sites of different types (directories, social bookmarking, article submission, etc.).
Build Links Backwards by Search Engine Journal
Rather than begging for links or hoping your content will appeal to a publisher, Jennifer Van Iderstyne suggests throwing the process into reverse — contacting great sites (blogs, educators, news sites, associations) and asking what type of content they would be interested in linking to.
SEO & Social Media Track: Show Me The Links: Real Life Link Building by Bruce Clay
In this guest post, Dana Lookadoo engagingly live-blogs a session from SMX Seattle featuring tips from several link building experts including Roger Montii (use target searching, don’t rely solely on competitor backlinks), Arnie Kuenn (targeted email requests, content development and promotion), Chris Bennett (infographics), Debra Mastaler (content syndication, guest blogging) and more.
The Art (or Science) of Building Links by Search Engine Watch
In her first post for SEW, Nichola Stott compares link building to expanding one’s professional network: factors like reputation, connections and relevance all matter in both realms.
Google’s Recommendations for Organic Linkbuilding by 10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Strategy Blog
In this short post, Marc Purtell shares Google’s recommendations for organic link building, which basically come down to: produce quality content.
Case Study: I Listened to Google and I Failed by Graywolf’s SEO Blog
This case study puts Google’s linking advice (see post above) to the test. Is great content really all you need?
Book Review: Maverick Marketing
Monday, May 17th, 2010In Maverick Marketing: Trailride into the Wild West of New Marketing
Hayes, Managing Partner and Principal at the New England Consulting Group, draws on his experience working with midsize to large clients across healthcare, consumer packaged goods, retail, energy and other sectors to illustrate both the theory and real-world examples of trailblazing marketing campaigns and practices. Along the way, he explains why maverick marketing is becoming essential, citing research from Yankelovich that 60% of adults say they feel overwhelmed by commercial messages, are interested in skipping or blocking ads, and feel the volume of marketing is “out of control.” In this landscape, maverick marketing practices are required to reach consumers in a manner that will be welcomed rather than viewed as just another advertising intrusion.
Traditional television advertising, for example, comes under the whip. A study by the Association of National Advertisers revealed that three-fourths of large marketers believe their television advertising is less effective now than it was just a few years ago. Another study from McKinsey concluded that traditional TV advertising has lost a third of its effectiveness over the last 20 years. Hayes concludes that “media, and particularly television, is taking on the role of General George Custer of the Little Big Horn, glorified as a past hero…but under attack.” He notes that going beyond reaching to actually engaging consumers is a much more complex and difficult task than traditional advertising, an observation that applies equally well to b2c and b2b marketers.
Hayes notes that as the six-gun was the great equalizer of the Old West, putting small farmers and townsfolk on equal footing with the biggest, baddest cowboys, so the Internet today significantly equalizes the marketing power of small firms with large global brands. Hayes writes that “Many marketing experts…concur that a brand should not even contemplate national advertising without a $20 million war chest for television and $10 million in print. This creates an effective barrier to entry to many marketers and startups. In contrast, with the Net, tiny niches and slivers of segments can be reached in an affordable manner for smaller ‘mavericks.’” The New England Consulting Group even coined a name for this phenomenon: “Netralization,” the equalization of marketing power between big and small firms enabled by the Web. And as with the six-shooter, the results can even be fatal; online music services like iTunes killed giant music retailer Tower Records, and NetFlix has wounded–perhaps mortally, time will tell–video rental chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
In the author’s analysis, a maverick marketing program “must include at least three of seven key components: marketing innovation, consumer engagement, buzz or public relations, new media usage, a viral aspect, promotion, or opt-in marketing. Tying this back to his Old West theme, Hayes notes that pioneers learned there were two ways to hunt: you could aggressively march through the forest hoping to flush your game (traditional marketing), or you could, like the Indians, study the feeding habits of your prey, set out bait, and then wait for the target to come to you (maverick marketing).
Even if Hayes didn’t share so many valuable marketing insights here, the book may be worth buying just for its trivia value. For example, after noting the ubiquity of brand names Motorola and Gatorade on the sidelines of every NFL game, the author points out that “Motorola does not even make headsets, and Gatorade is not necessarily in those green buckets.” And there’s much more:
- Viagra was originally developed as a heart medicine, but when its most notable, er, side effect, became apparent, its marketing was reoriented. Erecticle dysfunction was not a medically acknowledged disorder at that point, but it become one due to Pfizer’s marketing efforts.
- Research has shown that the average lifetime value of a customer acquired through search is roughly 70% higher than for customers acquired through other channels.
- Although most consumer marketing is geared toward younger age cohorts, retirees control two-thirds of all the wealth in the U.S.
- Coca Cola failed as a cough syrup before becoming the world’s most popular soft drink. Post-Its were the result of research into extra-strength adhesive tape, and Kevlar was originally developed as a material for panty hose.
Intentionally or not, Hayes hilariously points out the hypocrisy and outright stupidity of many in the “green” movement with reference to Ben & Jerry’s and, most entertainingly, Whole Foods: “Whole Foods smartly (?) takes the offense (with regard to not stocking live lobsters in its stores) and wraps itself in a flag of `ethical sourcing.’ It utilized a study from a European Animal Authority, think PETA, which indicates that lobsters may have feelings and can learn. This is despite the great weight of evidence from biologists and oceanographers, from numerous prestigious marine science universities, who point out that lobsters have no brains and only an insect-crude nervous system…In expressing its `animal compassion,’ (by selling only frozen lobsters, which are often sourced from large, migratory lobster breeders rather than small lobster operations), Whole Foods’ action very well have the unintended impact of harming the entire species. In fact in Maine, it is illegal to sell these ‘breeders,’ which are most likely to be sold, frozen, by Whole Foods.”
Hayes maintains his Old West theme throughout the book, frequently illustrating his points by throwing in references to wagon trains, life on the prairie, square dances, saloons, Boot Hill, the town marshal, horseshoes, lariats, sarsaparilla, cookouts, the general store, smoke signals, the open plains, etc. In the hands of a lesser writer, this style could quickly become irritating, but Hayes is deft enough to weave these references through his narrative in a manner than illuminates and entertains but never annoys. Each chapter helpfully concludes with a list of “trail markers,” the key points and takeaways from the chapter.
The book has a few faults. The sections on social networking are dated. He states at one point that “no ‘promotional consideration given’ notification is required on the Net,” which is no longer true. As a byproduct of being continually updated and produced using print-on-demand technology rather than traditional publishing, the book contains numerous typos. Only 22% of consumers read blogs (the actual figure exceeds 70%). Most bizarre is the claim that Google receives 25.7 million unique views per week; the true figure is close to 1 billion per day.
Still, such minor errors aside, Maverick Marketing
The One Effective Use of Facebook for B2B Marketing
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010You’ve seen the eye-popping statistics: Facebook now has more than 350 million active users. If it were a country, it would be the third most-populous on earth, behind only China and India. TechCrunch predicts that “by this summer (2010) well over half of all Internet users will likely visit Facebook each month.” It’s now the second most-visited site on the web, behind only Google.
Given that level of popularity and traffic, it’s no wonder that marketers have embraced Facebook in a big way. What’s curious, however, is that of the top 50 brands on Facebook according to Slate magazine, not one is a b2b vendor. Not even close. And as Mark Schaefer has noted, b2b Facebook success stories are notoriously hard to come by (he found one).
With a mammoth audience and the acceptance, even embrace, of brands there, why is Facebook success so elusive for b2b marketers? It isn’t demographics. Granted, the potential pool of customers for most b2b companies is minute compared to that for major consumer brands, but given the sheer size and ubiquity of Facebook, there are still a lot of b2b buyers using it.
The challenge rather lies in the way Facebook fan pages are used. I’ve heard countless people, within the b2b community, express the sentiment that “LinkedIn is for business, Facebook is for friends and family.” As such, it’s not surprisingly that many of the entries on Slate’s top Facebook list are lifestyle brands. If you buy a new Audi, you might use Facebook to show it off to your friends, but if you’re part if a buying team that just acquired a new enterprise software system—eh, not so much so. And as one more bit of anecdotal evidence, I have my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook badges all displayed in the left column of this blog. I pick up a lot of new Twitter followers here, and a fair number of LinkedIn connection requests, but rarely a Facebook invitation.
Still, this doesn’t mean that Facebook can’t serve any purpose for b2b marketing. It can serve one helpful role: humanizing a company. As a very wise b2b sales executive said to me several years ago, “people don’t buy from companies. They buy from people.” With the emergence of social media as a marketing tool, that sentiment is arguably even more true today.
Because of the intimate, informal nature of Facebook, it is the ideal venue to showcase personal content related to your company that may not be appropriate on a corporate website or even a LinkedIn profile. Many employees within b2b companies have email communication with customers and prospects, but never actually talk to them. Or they have phone conversations but never meet face to face. Facebook provides an excellent means for sharing photos and even (limited) personal information, to help put a human face on an organization, and “put a face with the name” or voice of an employee for customers and prospects.
Just a few examples of content that work better on Facebook than in more formal settings are:
- • Photos of employees in casual office settings;
- • Photos of employees and customers interacting, or casual shots of a customer using a product (with permission, of course);
- • Trade show photos;
- • Pictures of employees working on community service projects;
- • Company executives speaking, accepting awards, meeting with VIPs, etc.;
- • Photos of production facilities (for manufactured products);
- • Photos taken with resellers or channel partners;
- • Informal or even humorous videos, such as HubSpot’s spoof of The Office or Resco’s “border battle” video shot before last season’s first Vikings-Packers game;
- • And of course, interaction! Most customers and prospects probably won’t want to interact with your brand on Facebook, but for those who do, it’s important to engage them through this channel.
In short, Facebook provides a place to show the human side of your company, to cut loose just a bit and have some fun. While it may produce a lead now and then, it isn’t a very effective lead generation vehicle. Instead, by humanizing your company and giving a glimpse inside, it’s business value lies primarily in lead nurturing—helping move leads through the buying process. It’s more about making current sales cycles more productive than about generating new potential business.
Because the ROI is likely to be difficult to measure with precision, it’s best to keep the “I” fairly modest. Still, with realistic expectations, using Facebook as a means to put a human face (or faces) on a B2B brand can be one effective component of an overall social media marketing strategy.
Book Review: The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
Monday, March 1st, 2010Despite being a quick, almost breezy read (how often do you read that said about a book on SEO?), The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
What’s most notable about this book, however, is that it’s an SEO book written for a broad audience. Unlike typical “how to do SEO” tomes, this book is more about what SEO is and how it works, in plain business language. Though it certainly contains instructive content, it can be read by and provide value to everyone on a web development team: designers, copy writers and developers, along with the entire marketing team, as well as line of business managers who aren’t directly responsible for site optimization but can benefit from understanding how it works and why it’s important. Rebecca deftly weaves together all of the important elements of SEO, from keyword research and link building to the role of social media, without excessive insider jargon or getting into the weeds on topics like file naming conventions, PHP vs. Javascript, or canonicalization.
Why is it important for executives not directly involved in search to understand more about it? As Rebecca explains in the book’s foreword and introduction:
“SEO…is the foundation, the bedrock of online marketing. It isn’t just the foundation of search marketing; I submit to you that it is the foundation of all marketing. This is exactly because we live in a world where increasingly, Google dominates the search landscape and Google has taught people to love search…In the 12 years or so since search engine marketing has been in existence, we have learned this one truth: Al media, all marketing, and all communications have one thing in common—they all drive people to search. And in a recent study conducted by Jupiter Research, of all the people who were stimulated by an offline cause to go online and search, some 40 percent of them actually made a purchase…A well-optimized website, therefore, is something akin to the Holy Grail of marketing. It provides the right message to the right person at the right time…Search long ago became the second-largest online activity (after email). Search has evolved from merely providing answers to stated problems and queries. Today, it’s the way most people navigate the Web.”
In her chapter on “learning to do the Google Dance,” Rebecca notes the similarity between SEO and public relations: both can help you influence the information that prospects find about your company and its products or services, but not control that information. Maybe your news (or your website) will make the front page, or maybe it will be buried several pages in. As she notes, “If you want to guarantee that your message will appear (exactly)…the way you want it to and where you want it to be, buy an ad.” In other words, SEO, like PR, can be important in terms of influence, but it’s unreasonable to expect complete precision.
(Interestingly, on the topic of PR and SEO, Rebecca writes that “Although many PR professionals still don’t know about or understand the concept of SEO PR, a handful of SEO-savvy boutique PR agencies have sprung up recently. These PR agencies specialize in optimizing and releasing news for their clients with the goal of increasing search engine visibility.” Actually, KC Associates, the agency I work with, has been doing this for years, and though we focus on b2b technology clients, I’m not sure we qualify as “boutique.” And having been around since 1988, we certainly haven’t “sprung up recently!”)
To put the challenge of SEO into perspective for marketers, PR professionals and line of business managers who may not appreciate its difficulties, the author notes that “with hundreds of billions of sites out there—and more every day—no matter how obscure or arcane your website is, chances are you have more than a healthy amount of competition. Heck, more than 2 million page in Google’s index are about beekeeping.”
Though the book doesn’t specifically address web presence optimization, it does touch on elements important to SEO beyond meta tags and directory links. For example, email can play an important role (through maintaining an online archive of search-friendly archived newsletter content), as can personal and corporate reputation management, online advertising (ads are links!) and social media activities.
There is a wealth of wisdom packed into this compact book: search is something to consider from the very start of a website project, not as an afterthought. Companies can no longer afford to build static “brochureware” websites—to be successful in search, sites must “now be ever-growing, changing, and evolving platforms for publishing content, news, and information about products and services.” Search is no longer simply even about website content, but has fragmented into local search, video search, blog search, image search and news search among other categories. Search is an ongoing activity, not a one-time event: results aren’t achieved overnight, and developing quality links in particular is a process that happens over time. Although, as noted, the book isn’t overly technical, the importance of technology isn’t ignored: the author touches on the importance of being careful with drop-down menus, using CSS in place of tables where possible, maintaining a relatively flat file structure and utilizing breadcrumb navigation to help both search engines and human users better understand your site’s layout.
From a pure how-to standpoint, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets
Still, these are minor quibbles. Overall, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
NOTE: Still with me? Thanks! Here’s a reward: the publisher sent me an extra copy of this excellent book, so I will give it away to first person who tweets this review. Your tweet MUST include @TomPick, ad I’ll be the sole judge of the winner based on what shows up in my Twitter #replies feed. I’ll even pay the postage to send it you.
The Insidious Nofollow Tag: An SEO Rant
Sunday, February 14th, 2010I’m normally a positive, upbeat kind of guy, and as someone who’s been writing professionally since the days of disco, rarely at a loss for words. Yet mention the “nofollow” tag, and that all changes. I, like many other many other web marketing professionals, am left sputtering with a mix of disgust and rage, fumbling for an adjective that conveys sufficient contempt: despicable, vile, loathsome, abhorrent, abominable, wretched, odious, detestable, downright evil.
The nofollow tag was misguidedly inflicted upon the online world by Google in 2005. According to Wikipedia (among the worst nofollow offenders), “The nofollow HTML attribute was originally designed to stop comment spam on blogs. Blog readers and bloggers were well aware of the immense problem. Just like any other type of spam affects its community, comment spam affected the entire blogging community, so in early 2005 (Google and Blogger engineers) designed the attribute to address the problem and the nofollow attribute was born.”
Though the originators of WordPress have developed a far more elegant and inoffensive solution to the comment spam problem with Akismet, the execrable nofollow tag remains with us, like a cancer impervious to drugs or radiation.
The justification for the continued use of this repugnant scrap of code is to prevent passing link juice from listings on directory and social bookmarking sites to spammy or other objectionable content. But, to be charitable, the nofollow tag is to the world of web links what “let’s just be friends” is to romantic relationships. It’s a way for site owners to say: “I’m happy to use your content to build my traffic, but not to reciprocate. I don’t want anyone to think we’re together.”
An alarming number of once-respectable social bookmarking sites—Digg, delicious, Mister Wong, Reddit, Mixx, Bibsonomy, Jumptags, Faves, Yahoo! Buzz, Simpy—have now instituted dastardly nofollow tags. It’s easy to determine if your favorite site should now become an ex-favorite, just “view source” in your browser and search for rel=”nofollow.” If it’s there for any reason other than Pagerank sculpting (e.g. nofollowing pages like “Contact Us”), move along. If you’re trying to promote your own content, it won’t work. If you are trying to promote some else’s, you won’t help them much.
Hey, here’s a novel idea: if someone is using your blog, social media site or directory to link to spam, porn, hate speech, discount online pharmaceuticals, miracle weight loss nonsense, or work-at-home scams—DELETE THE LINK. Why is okay to have such crap listed on your site, regardless of whether or not you’re passing link juice?
In fairness, this pernicious string of characters once served a purpose, as a less-than-ideal solution to a serious problem. But today, Akismet solves the link spam problem on blogs. The community can be used to solve the problem on social bookmarking sites. A little bit of old-fashioned work can deal with issue on directory sites.
I’m not alone on this. It’s time to demand better, to rid the world of the reprehensible, insidious nofollow tag once and for all. Ideally, Google should announce it’s no longer recognizing the tag. Absent that, site owners should boycott it. And if they don’t, users should walk.
Note: This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in October 2009. But it all remains true.
