Tag Archives: organic

10 Ways All Employees Can Contribute to Link Building

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It’s not a hidden secret that link building is an essential part of SEO, but how you go about building links can make a huge difference in your organic visibility. Having your company buy into the fact that actively building links to your site can help your bottom line can help make your efforts a lot easier. Instead of having an in-house SEO or marketing department focused on link building, why not leverage the power of the entire company and have everyone contribute. Roles and

SEO Wins & Sins: 5 Questions with Industry Leader Joe Laratro

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Effective search engine optimization is equal parts art, science, and EXPERIENCE, so I sat down with industry veteran Joe Laratro to get the dish on what matters most in SEO. Joe is a recognized and leading expert in the Search Engine Marketing industry, and regularly speaks at industry events like Webmaster World, SMX, and Search Engine Strategies. He sits on the advisory board and is the lead moderator and speaker for PubCon . 1. What are the most common mistakes newbie SEOs make? Search Engine Optimization has changed over the years. I would say there are three distinct generations of SEOers: the meta taggers, the link builders, and the social media marketers. I have seen newbie SEOs try to choose one path for optimization. For long term success all areas and disciplines of Search Engine Optimization need to be addressed and made part of the ongoing strategy. Another newbie mistake involves trying old and dated spam tactics. I do quite a bit of teaching for the Industry. I am always surprised when someone hints at cloaking, or using white on white text. When I think about it, where is the history book on SEO? Newbie’s need a resource of what not to do and how to learn from the mistakes of Webmasters / Marketers / SEOers of the past. 2. On the flipside, are there common mistakes that experienced SEOs still make? I think to some extent experienced SEOs can make the same mistakes as my first point in question one. We cannot pigeonhole ourselves into only doing one type of SEO. Site architecture, optimized growing content, and natural link building are essential for success. I have seen SEOs that just focus on one area. If we look at link building, it is possible to rank for keywords without ever optimizing the main site. But will that cover the hundreds if not thousands of keyword variations that might drive traffic to that Web site? No. Benchmarking, analytics, and tracking SEO changes are more common problems. Clients come back and ask what SEO accomplished for the Web site? The numbers should be easy to prove – increasing search referrals and increased number of keywords driving those referrals. This has become even more important since Google’s announcement in December of 2009 of full time personalized search results. The last mistake that is fairly common does not happen because of the SEO professional. This problem lies in communication and tracking between marketing departments and technical departments. Unfortunately SEO work gets overwritten without anyone’s knowledge. It can be days, weeks, or even months until the issues are identified. Each department claims the other speaks Greek. Finger pointing flies, but the real loser is the Web site. SEO’s have to monitor their implementations. 3. What are 3 things marketers can do RIGHT now to improve their organic rankings? Have a solid technical infrastructure that is search friendly Have an ongoing content development plan to add new and useful content to the Web site Have a link building plan in place: target directories, social media sites, and related Web sites 4. What are the 5 most important elements of an effective search optimization practice? Write great subject based content – optimize the basics: title, meta description, alt tags, H tags, and links (anchor text) Make a link building plan, stick to it, and monitor it’s growth (hint – social media sites should be a large part of this strategy) Consider the value of internal linking when it comes to keywords and anchor text (navigation and in content links) Make sure the Web site is registered with Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Central. Regularly review for issues and new insights. Monitor Analytics for keyword performance and trends 5. After implementing an effective search optimization practice, how soon can marketers expect to see changes in the SERPs? Search Engines have become very adept at listing fresh content. The Search Engine Marketing community used to say wait 90 days to see the results. Some changes can occur much more quickly now. Personalized search also throws a large monkey wrench into seeing changes in the SERPs. I suggest monitoring Analytics for natural search growth and occasionally spot checking positions. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . SEO Wins & Sins: 5 Questions with Industry Leader Joe

Penalties, Bans, and Paid Search

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There are numerous posts on PPC vs SEO , who gets more money, and all that mumbo jumbo. To me, it’s right up there with “SEO is dead” type posts, good for attention, but there should not be any versus in that relationship. (Note: Most of the more recent posts point out that both are beneficial) The two have more in common than both sides would care to admit sometimes. One thing that they do have in common is the infamous and often feared Google ban/penalty. Yes, if you haven’t heard yet, you can get penalties and banned from AdWords. The new Quality Score system has penalties built in that reflect in your quality score for a keyword. The lower your quality score, the more potential there is for higher costs and lower placements. That is the equivalent of a sudden drop in rankings. When it comes to bans, it is actually harder to return from a ban in AdWords than being de-indexed on the organic side. This could change but for now if your account is banned, you cannot just make a new one, and there is no form to ask for re-inclusion after the issues are fixed. There are ways around this of course , but just like making a new website, on a new domain, on a new host using new information and all, it takes time to get the historical wonderfulness that might have existed before. There has been nothing “official” on the AdWords Blog that I can see, but a WebmasterWorld thread did feature a response from AdWords Advisor – a long time Google AdWords employee and generally helpful person to the forum members at WebmasterWorld. The AdWords team acknowledged that bans were being put in place for those advertisers that were seemingly deceiving the end user. How to Not Get Banned in

SEO without the SEO

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Competition is stiff these days. It’s getting harder and harder to achieve optimal search engine rankings, at least without professional help. So how to compete in a space where it might not be feasible to increase rankings for your most competitive keywords? Believe it or not , there are actually plenty of ways to leverage existing visibility to increase traffic. To name a few: Test Meta descriptions . This is one of the easiest ways to increase traffic even without increasing rankings. Obtaining a first page ranking for a given keyword is just one step to getting more traffic because there are still nine other organic competitors on that page. So take the time to test different marketing messages within the Meta description to improve your organic click through rate.  For starters, make sure descriptions are relevant to page content and ensure competitive differentiators such as price and quality are included. If running paid search, take the highest performing ads and test them in the organic space. By overlooking how your listings are displayed in search results, you are passing up one of the easiest ways to capture new visitors. So start testing those Meta descriptions because you better believe your paid competitors are doing it. Run PPC on branded keywords . It’s the old 1+1=3 saying. Coupling organic visibility with paid search visibility has been proven to improve click through rates within both spaces. Consistent messaging and prominent display improves trust among searchers – especially for those that might not yet be familiar with your brand – thus increasing their likelihood to click. Manage sitelinks . Check to make sure these are displayed in an ideal manner. If non-relevant sitelinks are being displayed over more useful ones (About Us vs. Book a Room, for example) then log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and block the sitelinks that are not adding any value. This will make room for the more valuable sitelinks to be displayed. Utilize rich snippets . Again, it isn’t always about how well content is ranking. It’s how content is ranking. In other words, take full control of how your content is displayed. One way to do this is to use rich snippets to provide more information and context about your products and services directly from the search results. These can be used for reviews, individuals, events and videos. Structured data will play a key role in the future of search, so this is not something to be ignored if you have the type of content that is currently supported with this format. Tweet strategically for real time search . Now that Google is integrating dynamic streams of real time content into their search results, much of which comes from Twitter, this represents a huge opportunity for additional traffic.  Use relevant keywords in your tweets so that these will rank in real time search results and you can gain additional (albeit short lived) search engine visibility. Now I’m not saying to halt all search engine optimization efforts. Just remember that there are quite a few tactics that can be deployed in conjunction to SEO that will help to garner additional traffic. By taking advantage of all opportunities, large and small, you should see a lift in new visitors. Rachel Andersen works for the Portland based SEM agency Anvil Media, Inc . She has expertise in all aspects of search engine marketing and specializes in SEO for large sites. Andersen has been responsible for the development and execution of dozens of search and social marketing campaigns over her time spent with Anvil. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . SEO without the

Writing for Attention: Ammunition for Personalised Search

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Personalised search is Google’s latest tactic of boosting rankings for domains that users have shown they are more likely to visit based upon their search history. It can be disabled, but when it’s on by default, search (and click-through) history is stored in a 180 day cookie meaning personalised search comes into play only on that browser and machine you are using; the information in the cookie cannot be passed between multiple browsers/machines. There really is only one way to react to personalised search [besides encouraging people to jump through hoops and volunteer to search for you in Google rather than simply typing in your web address] and that is by improving the quality of search listings to maximise click through rates. This should be part of your SEO task list already, but it is now more vital than ever to ensure that your search listing is as enticing as possible to ensure you get that first click. Therefore, should users go back and perform subsequent searches, your website is now more likely to get a boost in rankings due to the history stored in Google’s cookie. How do you do that? Here are some optimisation techniques that are vital for improving search listings. Make sure you’ve got them on your SEO check list: 1. Page