Interactive Marketing Blog

Found a great introduction to SEO provided by Rand at SEOmoz. These slides offer an SEO 101 approach but also do a great job of explaining some of the more complex ideas in search engine optimization that most 101 presentations fail to cover. Enjoy!

While reading some recent research around local search, I found some really interesting views on why companies should have a local search strategy and what factors contribute to ranking well in those results. Based on some recent research, it appears almost 20% of searches performed on Google are location based. GetListed.org claims it is closer to 40%, which I feel seems a bit high.

Then I began to think, since local search results also appear on the first page of Google universal search results, what other way can you gain 20% additional free exposure on Google’s first page? Organic SEO typically takes months to see dramatic improvements to reach the first page. Paid search is of course paid.

Companies with store and office locations should definitely take full advantage of this local marketing opportunity. For starters, one easy way to see if you have local listings is to check the online service “GetListed.org”. This tool will tell you if your company name is listed on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other local listing services. Try a few variations of your company name just to be sure the tool picks up the right listings. Below are a few tips for getting the most out of your listings:

1. Company Title – Make your company title simple, perhaps include the city name (ex: Jim’s Roofing – Cleveland)
2. Company Description – Include a few important keywords for your business but do not stuff this listing with keywords
3. Tagging – Tag your listing with a few important keywords but again, try not to spam the tags
4. Images – Include images of your business, the more complete your profile the higher it will generally rank
5. Reviews – Encourage happy customers to add positive reviews to your profile, these reviews will help promote your business and begin improving your rank
6. Verify – Verify your business within these services, very important step in promoting your listings

For more information on the topic, check out the websites below.

• Local Search Ranking Factors
• How many local searches in June 2010
• Get Listed

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Lately there has been a lot of discussion around social media and it’s influence on search engine rankings. Much of the chatter is around recent changes made at Google and the attention being paid to social “signals” picked up by search engines. To me, this makes a lot of sense. If you have a high ranking website for a group of competitive keywords, then your site should also have some general buzz around your products and services. If you have great content/products and people are sharing it through their social profiles, then it would make sense that “social karma” should have an impact on rankings.

What’s Next?

It’s likely signals and influential social profiles will become a greater part of search engine algorithms. Since so many other aspects of SEO are easier to influence such as links and on page optimization, search engines may have no other choice but to rely on “word of mouth” in the form of social signals.

What to Do?

Does this mean that marketers should run out and create a ton of social profiles and point signals back to their website? This tactic will likely have little value since much of the value lies in the most influential social profiles in each niche.

Example

Say you have a twitter account focused on sports and your profile has been live for over a year, posting relevant links and sharing tips. That profile has developed moderate influence for the sporting goods niche. Each link shared or brand mention is now a “signal” to search engines. These signals are collected and given some weight in determining rankings.

What type of influence have you seen from social profiles on your online marketing efforts? Do you measure and track social traffic along with your keyword rankings?

Building one way links from quality websites relevant to your industry is the most effective way to improve rankings for search engine optimization. You may be thinking “that’s great, but where do I find these powerful one way link opportunities?” The first step to starting your link building campaign is with industry leading tools that can provide you with those quality link opportunities.

Top Link Building Tools

1. Open Site Explorer (OSE) – To use open site explorer you will need an SEOmoz account. OSE uses factors like PA – page authority and DA – domain authority to help measure inbound links to a particular website. This is helpful in seeing who is linking to you and who is linking to your competitors. OSE will pull up to 10,000 of the top links to each site. I recommend downloading a CSV file and filtering out all the duplicates, press release sites and article sites. OSE is the new kid on the block but has quickly taken the lead in my opinion.
   
2. Majestic SEO – Majestic is great resource for not only pulling back data but for charting and comparing your overall link profile with competitors in your industry. Take some time to test out features like bulk URL link data and neighborhood checker to see who is in the same IP range. Are you in the “trailer park” of the internet or the “Beverly Hills” of the web? Majestic could be a little more user friendly in my opinion but has a great deal of link data you can access for free. Upgrading your Majestic SEO account will give you access to additional data if you want to take a deep dive into competitors.
3. Raven – Raven is best suited for overall SEO campaign management but has some great tools specifically for link building such as the link manager. In my limited testing of Raven, I found it very helpful in managing contacts and directory submissions. Raven also has a handy toolbar for Firefox to quickly identify link opportunities. Raven also provides link monitoring which is very helpful in tracking changes made on other sites automatically.
   
4. Yahoo Site Explorer (YSE) – If you don’t have an SEOmoz account, this is a free back link tool. YSE is limited to only the top 1,000 links so you will not get a complete picture of your link profile or your competitors. There is some debate on the future of YSE.
5. SEO Book Toolbar for FireFox – This is a must have for anyone conducting a link building campaign.
   
6. HubSpot Link Grader – HubSpot has an excellent link research tool. This tool organizes the link data by most recent linking domains which is very helpful in finding new link clean up opportunities. HubSpot can also identify issues on each content page created with a new page grader tool.
   
7. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) – Using this free tool will help you find broken links to your site (404 errors) which you can easily fix by reaching out to each website, asking them to update their link. GWT also provides you with the total number of links to each page which can be helpful in finding links to specific areas of your site.
8. Alltop – Alltop is not a tool necessarily but a resource for finding quality blogs and niche websites. Click on each topic to find good websites in your niche. From there you can branch out from those sites to see who is linking to them.
9. SEO Open Toolbar for Firefox – Simple toolbar for Firefox with quick links to important link data.
   
10. Web Analytic Referring Sites – Tools like Google Analytics can help you find sites currently referring traffic. You can then reach out to these sites to improve the page URL or anchor text they use to link to you.
    

If you are a Cleveland Cavaliers fan you are probably aware LeBron James is requesting his number change in the 2010-2011 season from #23 to #6. This will likely cause fans to shell out some cash if they want fresh threads of their star player. What does this have to do with online marketing you might ask? When a company decides to change their domain name they are essentially changing their jersey number, or brand on the web.

Most companies think the logo at the top of each web page is what people and search engines see as their company brand. For people this is partly true, we recognize the brand of a company once we visit a website and see the logo at the top. If a visitor is entering a website from search engine results, the first brand they see is the company domain name and web page title.

Changing Your Domain Name?

When changing your domain name, there are a few things to consider:

1. Do you have a strong brand name with a very old domain that has been live for many years? If so, you may not want to change your domain name. In the eyes of search engines this is almost like starting over, even if you redirect your old domain to the new one.
   
2. Does your domain name contain keywords relevant to your search engine optimization efforts? If so, consider keeping, if not consider buying a domain that includes your brand plus a keyword or two.
3. How easy is your domain name to remember or tell your potential clients? Choose a domain name that is easy to remember.
4. Try to get a .COM domain since they tend to have higher value to search engines. Careful with .NET and .INFO domains since still have a negative weight in the eyes of search engines.
   

Brand Confusion

What do you do when you have multiple brand named domains with different objectives?

“Time Warner” is a typical search when you are looking to find the Time Warner Cable. In this case the corporate site comes up as the #1 and #2 result, with the cable division ranking #3.



Time Warner has millions of cable and internet service subscribers who access their TimeWarnerCable.com website searching for account information. For many searchers this is a very confusing search engine user experience. I first went to the main TimeWarner.com looking for access to my account only to go back to the results page to find the correct site. A better search user experience would be to land potential traffic on a decision page with the cable site as an option. The ultimate search experience would be to channel TimeWarner.com link authority to the cable site with the goal of outranking the corporate website long term.

What would your SEO domain solution be for Time Warner?

How would you position this brand on the web for a better user experience?

This week’s SEOmoz whiteboard Friday talks about hiring a consultant for your SEO. One of the frustrations with buyers is the lack of transparency in strategy and tactics. This week’s whiteboard Friday does a great job of explaining what to look for when you are shopping around for search engine optimization services.

While it’s not wise for SEOs to give everything away before winning a contract, I feel consultants and firms should be more transparent in their approach. How is a buyer able to truly compare firms and services if they do not know the tactics involved or what’s being measured. Every company or service is a little different, but a majority of SEO services performed should be similar based on the size of a client’s website. Do you agree? How much information is too much?

When most folks start learning about SEO they are sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of information on best practices, tips, tricks and techniques out there on the web. They read everything they can get their hands on, from SEO copy writing to one way link building. Over time the picture becomes more clear and things start to make sense. What most SEO articles and resources fail to mention is that A LOT of SEO is common sense.

Below are 5 common sense tips for SEO:

1. Why would you name your website “ABCcorp.com” if you sell widgets? Why not buy a domain name “ABCWidgets.com” that includes one of your most important keywords? Unless your company is a household name like Apple or Pepsi, branding is not that important to your domain name.
   
   
2. You use file folders to keep track of important documents at work and home. A website is no different. Organize your website into a hierarchy of main folders (categories) and sub folders (categories) so people and search engines can more easily find your content.
   
   
3. If you sell widgets, why not include the term widgets in your navigation? It will help users and search engines know what deeper categories and pages mean before clicking through to the next page.
   
   
4. Does your customer want to be told how great you are and how cool your company is to work for? Maybe, if they have an hour or two to burn while stuck at the airport. Most customers want to hear what you can do to help solver their problems or make their day easier to manage. Create content that speaks to your customers needs.
   
   
5. When talking to a friend or spouse about cool products you like, do you say “try this new ABCcorp XRB-11 II Widget – Azure”? You would say, “try this new Blue Widget I found online, here’s the link”. Use the language your customer use to describe your products and services.
   

When performing SEO or hiring a consultant, most online business owners are concerned with improving their rankings for specific keywords. If they don’t know what keywords to target, they look to an SEO consultant to help them find the right mix of keywords to begin targeting for optimization. The hope is that improving rankings for the right keywords will result in increased traffic to specific areas of their website. Increases in website traffic means more potential sales.

Since much of the success of a website is measured on traffic and conversions, are we too focused on keyword rankings and not enough on overall site traffic? Should we consider overall site traffic as a measuring stick when performing organic search engine optimization? I have listed some thoughts below on the topic with pros and cons for each.

Cons of Measuring Traffic and Organic SEO

There are many factors to consider when measuring SEO performance with site traffic. Does your site have other external marketing that effects your overall traffic? (social media, email marketing, monthly deals, seasonality, radio, billboards) Some of these non-SEO marketing tactics can lead to natural linking, which improves SEO. Non-SEO marketing tactics also lead to brand awareness, which contributes to increased click through rates on organic search results.

Pros of Measuring Traffic and Organic SEO

By using traffic to measure performance, is the shift in focus now to generating traffic through viral tactics? Viral tactics tend to have a greater immediate impact on gains in traffic than do other more long term SEO tactics. If we are too focused on moving keyword rankings, we lose sight of the ultimate goal of bringing in new visitors.

More Thoughts on the Subject

• Measuring SEO Traffic Success from Search Engine Watch
• Measuring SEO Success from Practical Ecommerce
• Measuring SEO from Yoast

Found some interesting slides from SEOmoz that detail the pitfalls of buying links to improve your search engine rankings. The slides below suggest that buying links is a “quick fix” or instant gratification that can come back to haunt your site in time. It also recommends other tactics that will help you build your brand and gain natural links through SEO best practices.



One of the most interesting charts is on slide #34, the cost of paid links over time. The graphic below suggests natural links offer the best ROI of any link building tactic. Paid links will continue to cost the site owner hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a fixed result. Natural links, over time, can grow exponentially to outweigh the benefits of paid links for much lower cost.



If you are a business owner or an SEO looking to get the most exposure for your money, look to natural link building tactics. Building a user friendly website with valuable content is the best way to attract links in a natural way. Search engines will love you and your site for it.

What natural link building tactics have you used to gain traction in search engines?

This week I stumbled upon an interesting forum thread on Google Webmaster Central. It appears that Google Webmaster Tools has removed the PageRank metric from their site reports. In the post, a Google employee provides details on why PageRank was removed from the tool:

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.

More details on why not to obsess over PageRank here:

http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq–crawling–indexing—ranking#pagerank

Time for some sleuthing. It has been known for some time in the SEO world that PageRank is simply a helpful indication of a website’s authority, but not the entire picture. The point above reinforces the idea that you should not focus on metrics like PageRank when looking for linking opportunities or your website’s search engine rankings. It’s important to keep the “big picture” in mind when building your site. Creating good content that people would link to naturally is the ultimate goal.

Is your company consumed with the PageRank on it’s website? What metrics do you use to help measure success?