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Balancing SEO and Visitor Engagement part 2

06/13/2012 by

Part 2 of SEO and Visitor Engagement..(Read Part 1)

Safe Ways to Increase Your Search Presence

The recent Panda and Penguin updates at Google have wreaked havoc among webmasters. Nobody knows for sure what works and what doesn’t work. Some SERPs are dominated by low quality websites while thousands of high quality websites have been banished. This has all created a climate in which webmasters are afraid to make big moves.

The good news is that not all hope is lost. It is still entirely possible to build backlinks and rank well for keywords. The key is to do it the old-fashioned natural way. Buying links in bulk does not work like it used to. In fact, bulk link buying is more likely to hurt your website than it is to help.

You might already know the basics of natural SEO, but let’s mention them again:

  • Produce fresh, original content and add new posts frequently
  • Make your website worth linking to
  • Contribute guest posts to other quality websites
  • Issue press releases that actually contain news
  • Fresh Content

Fresh content is always a good thing. Google likes websites that are updated frequently and your websites has more pages that can rank for long tail keywords. The more pages your website has, the more traffic it gets.

Big Caveat: Do not add new content for the sake of adding new content. Every piece of content you add should serve a real purpose. A million pages on your website will do absolutely nothing if you get pegged as a content farm. Take your time to write every page with a purpose and to engage your visitors.

Make Your Website Worth Linking To

The whole first half of this page basically addressed this point. You make your website worth linking to by engaging the visitor. Useful websites receive links. There is no better SEO strategy than to build a website that people think is awesome.

This is the most important part of building a successful website. A truly useful resource will sustain itself for years. Cheap websites that rely on SEO and new visitors do not last. They do not retain readers and they die as soon as the algorithm boots them off the first page. Make a website that people remember and want to link to.

Press Releases

Webmasters have been abusing press releases for years now and Google knows it. As a result, the typical press release doesn’t do a whole lot of good. But, that doesn’t mean press releases are dead.

Find newsworthy content and issue press releases that are actually worthy of their own stories. For example, don’t waste your time with press releases that talk about the awesome new website you just opened. Take a survey, collect data and issue a press release that provides a unique look at an interesting subject.

Don’t look at press releases as a “gimme links now” SEO tactic. Your press releases need to give more than they take. Mention your own website in there somewhere, but don’t focus everything on your website. Give the journalists out there real news that they can use in their own stories. This gives your press release the maximum potential to get picked up by major news outlets.

This type of press release is a perfect example of balancing SEO and visitor engagement. You are giving people something they want, while also getting something you want. The old days of just taking, taking, taking are gone. You have to produce stuff that people really want to see.

Guest Posting

The same thing also goes for guest posting. Guest posting is still a great way to build links to your site and make connections with other people. Look for high quality websites that produce real content and approach those webmasters with ideas of your own. Do not write for websites that obviously sell links or websites in which almost every new post is a guest post.
Make sure to make your guest posts as valuable as possible. The better your guest post is for that other person, the better it is to you. Make your guest posts so great that they get their own links. This will not only give you more link juice, but it will give you greater recognition as an author. You would be surprised at what kind of a name you can make for yourself with the help of guest posting.

About the Author: Wes Burns is a full time freelance writer and student of SEO. He values old fashioned, high-quality content over the latest link building gimmicks. His latest project is an online storage website located at OnlineFileStorage.com.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Balancing SEO and Visitor Engagement part 1

06/06/2012 by

The traditional view of SEO is that webmasters must walk a fine line between visitor engagement and writing optimized content. This view says that webmasters must build content that targets specific keywords and find ways to keep that content interesting for readers. It’s a delicate balance between writing for visitors and writing for search engines.

I personally disagree with that point of view. The traditional view of SEO makes it out to be a battle between writing for search engines and writing for real people. The truth is that visitor engagement comes first. Search engine optimization should always come second to visitor engagement.

Bear with me. This is not another “content is king” piece. I still plan to explain how you can rank for keywords and build a profitable website. I’m just going to take a different point of view than what you see at most SEO forums.

Writing for the Readers vs. Writing for Search Engines

Let’s start with writing for the readers. If you don’t write for your readers, your website is doomed in the long run. What I mean by “writing for the readers” is writing content that other people actually find useful, entertaining or controversial. This is how you create a long-lasting website.

The other way you can go is to write specifically for search engines. This means you do lots of keyword research, you base new content ideas on keywords that you want to hit and you try to stick your keyword in the content as often as possible without getting dinged by an over optimization penalty.

The problem with writing for search engines is that it places your website at the mercy of search engines. The next time Google changes its algorithm, your website might be knocked off the map forever. And since you never wrote for the visitors, it’s unlikely you will get much return traffic or type-in traffic. As soon as your website disappears from page one, it is forgotten by everyone.

When you write for your readers, you build a search engine-proof website. You can handle the minor ups and downs because you get traffic from a variety of sources. Your visitors have you bookmarked, people recommend your site in forums and people come back to comment on old articles. This is also known as building an authority website.

A Healthy Balance

Write every article with the visitors in mind first. Even on your high converting pages, make the content useful. Give people your honest opinion and explain their options. If your conversion pages come across as salesy, it will turn people off and search engines will rank it poorly.

And speaking of which, not every piece of new content has to be designed to get more sales. Don’t be afraid to write content that serves no purpose other than to serve the reader. That alone is a good purpose. You will build good will among your visitors, Google will see that not every page is riddled with ads and other people will be more willing to link to you.

For example, I run an online storage website (here) whose goal is to earn money by referring visitors to online storage services.  If you visit that site, you’ll see that not every page tries to sell storage space. I have written long how-to guides about encrypting files, downloading music and increasing computer security. The purpose of these articles is to give visitors useful information, not to sell storage space.

Read more in Part 2

About the Author: Wes Burns is a full time freelance writer and student of SEO. He values old fashioned, high-quality content over the latest link building gimmicks. His latest project is an online storage website located at OnlineFileStorage.com.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

The Success of Indie Developers

05/03/2012 by

The arcade and console gaming industry was established and spurred on by creativity and true genius in its early years. The late 70s and early 80s saw an explosion of games based on the abilities of individual developers or small talented teams skilled in graphics optimization and backed by conscientious investors. Everyone remembers and loves the likes of Brick Breaker, Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Unfortunately, the industry is in the grip of a decades-long cycle of repeats in concepts and name upgrades. Year after year the “top” gaming prospects are determined by the companies that win by having loudest voices and the brightest colors.

The beginning of the 21st century, however, has seen a rise in more of the buck-the-system styles of independent–or indie–developers. As a result variety is seeping back into the market and there seems to be more of a place for those looking to express creativity.

But why now, when everyone is being driven toward big money? A few possibilities beg for our acknowledgement. Mass platforms like Facebook have become convenient outlets for gamers. No more jostling for a quick demo in an elusive limelight. Developers can now play all the cards. This is the story of smaller squads run by guys like Jonathan Blow, creator of the Braid game. Another reason for the growth of indie game development is the influx of developers from the mainstream sector. This exodus, while not exactly pilfering the mainstream markets of its talent, gives indie game developers a tint of viability.

So, you’re an aspiring developer; and you have enough business sense to understand that skill with coding and stand-out creativity will not be enough to keep you afloat. We have a few tips that may be helpful to you.

Find a Niche

Knowing where you are and what you have offer will give you sure footing in the development game. The strength of indie game production is in niches. The best and brightest produce a game that helps them stand out. Most game devs who go indie are attracted to it because of unique concepts that aren’t available except in the developer’s chosen outlet.

Don’t Go for it Alone

Build a solid team around yourself. Although it could be rewarding to hock out an award winner all on your own, it’s not likely. The best indie games are produced by teams built of passionate experts in their field, and use already-established graphics optimization companies. You may not be the best at what you do and you may not be able to get the best sound developer or designer, but you can put together a solid and dedicated team.

Capital, Capital, and more Capital

Yes “capital” is a dirty word in the world of indie gaming, but you must come up with creative ways to fund your projects. You and your team have to eat. Keep your day job. Try and raise capital investors from interests groups that line up with your concept interests or avid gamers that you know.

Consider Seeking Out and Joining an Already Established Team or Start-Up

If you are confident in your skill level, you may be able to go the route of some of the professionals who got their start in the mainstream. Although you won’t have as much of an appeal there are probably more than a few budding teams that share you drive and determination but lack that necessary ingredient: a team member like you.

Above All, Stay Positive

As the indie industry grows so will the competition. But staying positive will allow you to continue to develop in your skill area, suffer setbacks and move forward until you see daylight. Don’t be discouraged at this, but you may have to go through a few teams and projects before anything chalks up to a worthy gaming experience on the other end. Keep the faith and go forward.

Filed Under: Blogging, Contributors Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Google Plus SEO: Search Results pt 2

02/17/2012 by

This is the continuation of Google Plus SEO: Search Result pt 1”

Gaming the Search

Gaming the search, otherwise known as the search algorithm, is optimizing your posts for Google; knowing what Google looks for.

First is simple text. Google does a simple text match in the search queary. Of course this leads to keyword loading your posts instead of writing for quality. However, since your post is all the text you can provide you still need to make sure the writing is quality. Because even if you show up in the search, your text is what will get someone to click your link.

ex. “pink socks. red socks. blue socks. socks. I love socks. knee high socks. ankle socks.” will not likely get you a lot of clicks, but it might get you in the search results for socks.

The good thing is the text match is restricted to people who are in your circles, which does limit the potential for SEO spammers. Additionally, people you engage with more will show up higher in your search results.

Public or Private

So should your posts be public or private? Public posts rank higher than private ones. So if you want to increase the potential visibility of your posts, and reach people beyond your immediate or extended circles, make sure your posts are public. (You can make your post public when you write the post. Where you have the option to add your circles you can also choose “public”).

Most Recent vs. Best of

When you do a search you will notice that they are sorted into two options, most recent and best of. Most recent is simply that. These will be the most recent posts. If it is an active topic you will see your search results refreshing frequently to stream recent topic related posts. You can hit the pause button to freeze the post.

The best of search results will show you the posts that have larger ripple effects. So if you are looking for viral content, you might want to look here.

Plus Button

I have mentioned that the plus button does not have as big an impact on your SEO as a share does, though this is true this is not to say that the plus button is not integral. In fact it is key to Google Plus’ SEO.

When someone gives web content a plus, it is loaded into Google+. Now that post can be found on Google+. The more people give web content a plus, the better your internal search results will be on Google Plus and there for on the Google search engine.

Make sure that your web content: web site, blogs, etc. Have the plus button added so people can easily plus your content.

Filed Under: Featured, Google+ Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Google Plus SEO: Search Results pt 1

02/16/2012 by

SEO and searching on Google Plus, the next installment of the Google Plus SEO Series. Last part was implementing SEO on your profile.

Google eliminated social search last year, it has been replaced with Search+. This is Google’s integration of Google+ with its search engine.

Search+ delivers search results based on your circles, engagement and activity on your page. However you can turn the personalization off if you don’t want your user history to be factored into your search:

Click the icon of a person in the top right of the page. Then select “do not use personal results”.

Search Plus settingsSearch Plus is not just being used while you are in Google Plus. Any time you are logged into to the network and use the Google search engine, your results will go through the search plus filter.

This is why making sure your profile is set up properly is important. Now you profile and your posts can show up in search results on Google.

In the results you will be given a list of potentially relevant people and pages. These will be a mix of people you have already circled and ones you have not. If they are not in your circle you have the opportunity to add them.

So how do you come up in the search results? Truth be told circle count greatly affects. So the more people who have circled you the better chance you have. Unfortunately this does encourage people to buy followers just for the SEO boost.

Of course your optimization will affect but currently it does seem that Google Plus has “curated” lists. AJ Kohn from Blind Five Year Old goes into detail on what a curated list means. In a nut shell it means that Google has picked specific well known people to appear in the top of the list. Though they are trying to improve these results a bit by including more of an expanded list.

Powerful Searching

Google does give priority to items being shared in Google Plus, however to make sure you content qualifies for their results you need to make sure your content is easily sharable.

The most powerful element of boosting your search results is making sure you have good amplification. You want people to be plussing and sharing your posts. The more people share your content the better your SEO both on and off the network.

Not sure what you amplification is? Google helps you understand the ripple effect of your posts with Google+ Ripples. Ripples will show you the amplification of your shares. The graph below shows a post that was shared by Good Morning America. The arrows off their profile show all the people who publicly shared the post. The one big circle shows another circle inside the larger one. This means that one person shared the post and then someone shared her share. In this case Laetitia shared the original post then Ogla shared Laetitia’s post.

RipplesNotice that I did say publicly shared posts. People have the option of sharing publicly or privately. Privately means they only shared it with their circles and the post is not publicly searchable. Your amplification data from Google only includes the public shares, though they do you tell you the total shares.

If you see someone who shares a post and then has  number of other people share their share, that is someone who has good personal amplification. It would be a good idea to reach out to that person and work on engaging them. They could be an influencer. If they continue to share your posts you could increase your “ripple effect” greatly.

The more people who share your posts the better it will come up in search results. So do pluses affect in the same way. Unfortunately no. This is not to say they have no value, but a share is weighted significantly more.

 

Filed Under: Featured, Google+ Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

We Never Indexed You!

01/17/2012 by

Some interesting things have been coming out since Twitter and Google started to fight. Since Google announced that they are including Google+ pages in their search results Twitter has been expressing extreme dislike with this new development. Twitter seems to be upset mainly because Google will not be giving as much weight to other social networks as they do to Google+. Ironically, Twitter was the one who chose not to renew their agreement with Google for real time search. But the fight is causing some interesting things to be revealed.

Google announced that they never indexed the @ symbol. This is the symbol that precedes the mention of a specific twitter handle in a tweet. This means that the @ symbol branding did not carry the SEO weight on Google that we all thought it did. So if you do a search for @mybrand on Google it will not turn up the brands twitter page. But if you do a search for +MyBrand it will turn up the Google+ page.

Though Google is not indexing the @ sign, Bing, Yahoo and and AOL are.

What is concerning though is that Twitter has a lot more relevancy and influence that Google+. So a Twitter account for a brand is much more important than a Google+ page for that same brand.

Despite Twitter and Facebook making it notoriously difficult for their networks to be indexed by Google, the shift to giving SEO weight to the Google+ pages over any other network does bring to question the validity of search results.

If Google is no longer indexing based on true relevancy will they make their search engine irrelevant?

 

 

Filed Under: Featured, Google+, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How to Give your Page an Edge on Google+

11/09/2011 by

Now that Google+ Pages has launched you might be asking yourself, do you really need another page for your business?  The answer is yes.  Though there is a lot of debate on whether Google+ is going to be a truly competitive social network for Facebook, there is one area that Facebook cannot compete and that is SEO.

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the most powerful tools that Google+ has to offer a business.

  1. When you create a page you are instantly indexed
  2. You are creating more backlinks to your website
  3. Direct Connect – Google’s new way to search online

Direct Connect is one of the more interesting elements of the SEO boost. It is trying to give pages more visibility in the search engines. Now if someone is searching for you page all they have to do is  add “+” before your business name, ie. “+Your Business “, and they will pull up your page.

Harnessing Pages for Your Business?

Lets walk through setting up a basic business page and then we will look at how to give your page an edge.

Google+ Pages Create a Page1 . Sign up: Go to: http://www.google.com/+/business/

  • Click “Create your Goolge+ Page”
Google+ Page Categories

Select your category

3. Category: Select the main category for your page.

  • Local Business or Place- this is for if you are primarily local or have a physical location.
  • Product or Brand- if you are creating a page for one specific product item or for a brand. Tip: Bloggers this is where you want to be!
  • Company, Institution or Organization- this is the general business category
  • Arts, Entertainment or Sports- anything having to do with these categories, though often these are people like artists and musician or groups of people like a sports team.
  • Other- If you just don’t quite fit anywhere, you can assign your own category. Tip: I don’t really recommend this unless you have to because you are missing out on the “category” search benefit of Google+.

4. Sub-Category: After you select a main category you will be able to select a sub category that best describes you.

5. Page Name: Enter in your page name. This is what everyone will see as your page name and how people will find you. Do not make it too complicated and keep it to something that is easy to remember.

  • Though vanity URLs are not currently available, they will not be long in coming and you would rather have plus.google.com/mywebsite than plus.google.com/dontyouwishyourwebsitewerecoollikethis as your URL. Keep it clean and keep it simple!

6. URL: Enter in the URL for your website.

7. Age Restriction:You can opt to have age restriction on your page. This is good if you talk about mature issues, alcohol or drugs. The ages restrictions available are 13+, 18+ and 21+.

Google+ Page Profile Photo

Your profile image has a square aspect ratio, pick a photo that looks good cropped to a square.

8. Profile Photo: Your profile photo is your face to the world. You may want to put your logo in here, or a picture of you. But whatever you decide make sure that the picture is square. Unlike Facebook, Google+ Pages give limited real estate to your pic.

9. Tag Line: This is where you get to put some quick little tid bit about your business. Think of this as your elevator pitch. You want something that describes your page and essentially draws someone into the page. Tip: Give yourself an SEO boost and use keywords in this tag line.

Once you are done you will be asked if you want to share your page on your Google+ profile. Go ahead and say yes. This is a great way to share your page with your various circles.

Give Your Page an Edge

You may be thinking that the set up process was really easy, and wondering why you did not have to fill out a ton of questionnaires about your business, information, description, contact information, etc.  That is because you don’t have to have any of that information on your page. But trust me, you want all that information on your page.

Once your page is set up, you will want to go view your page profile and start editing information.

When you click the edit button (a blue button on the top right of your page profile) it allows you to edit nearly all sections of your page.  All you need to do is click on a section to edit.

Google+ Page Description

  1. Introduction: Write something descriptive about your business. This is your space to make your first real introduction and tell people what you are all about. Make sure you use key words that are related to your brand to given an even bigger SEO boost.
  2. Contact Info: You can add an email address or phone number. To protect your privacy, I recommend just an email address. You don’t necessarily want anyone who can find your page able to call you.
  3. Website: This is where your website URL will be.

A note on Privacy: you can set the level of visibility as you set up these fields. You can control whether you only want your circles to be able to see this information or if you want it completely public. If you are worried about privacy you should restrict your visibility to “only circles” or even custom circles.  For your website, I recommend leaving this viewable by anyone.

Linking Relationship

Google+ offers another way to build good relations with other websites. Like a blog, where you can share your blogroll, you are able to share your recommended links. This is to the right column next to your information. If you have websites that you particularly like or support, this is a great way to share them with your followers. Plus this is a great way to breed good relationships with those websites. If you link someone, make sure you reach out to them and tell them.

Photo Strip

Google+ Page Photo Strip

The photo strip is one of the most powerful visual aids of your page. You can add any photo that you like on this strip, and unlike in Facebook, you can place them in any order you like. All you have to do is upload the photo directly into the Google+ Page Circlephotostip. Once they are loaded you can drag and drop them into any position you like.

With a little creative photography you can make your photostrip be an excellent brand ambassador for you page….or you can just have some fun with it and create a really interesting panoramic.

Get Social!

The number one power of any social network is the ability to be social. Pages is no different. Similar to Facebook, you can use Google+ as your page. You can go and add other pages to your circles. You can comment on their posts and interact them.  Though people can add your page to their circle, pages cannot add people to their circles.

On the left column of your page, you will see your profile pic, a button to share your page and then a section showing who is in your circles and who has added you to theirs.  By looking at this section on other pages you will be able to find a lot of relevant and interesting pages to network with.

The more you network with other pages the more they will network with you. Ultimately the more people who have circled you, the more people who are reading your posts. So get out there and network!

 

Google+ Pages for business is not hugely different than Facebook Pages. However, the SEO value they add is reason enough to get a page set up for your website. The pages are easy to set up and offer the opportunity for more exposure to your website. So go out there and set up a Page and make sure to tell everyone about it!

Syndicated on BlogHer.com

 

Filed Under: SM3 Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

SEO Killer! Google is the Primary Suspect

10/26/2011 by

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the primary way to drive traffic to your website. It is what facilitates you coming up in search results and therefore facilitates people going to your website. But Google might be trying to kill your SEO.

SEO primarily operates from the use of keywords. These words are used strategically in your site to help the search engines find your site and match it with appropriate search terms. The better your SEO the better you will turn up in the search results. Really good SEO can result in you being one of the first few websites found in a relevant search.

Google is jumping on the privacy train, but not in a way that users will actually know. They are making it so if you do a search, and you are signed into Google, your search will be encrypted. What does this mean? Good question! This means that the information about your search, keywords and the link you clicked to get to the website will not be shared with the website.

What this means to websites:

When someone comes to your website from a search engine, they use a search term to find your site. That gives them a link to a page on your site. They click the link and go to your site. As obvious as this is, this information is important to your SEO strategy. You want to know the words people are using to find your site. You want to know the links that are bringing people into your site.

The data you will not be receiving due to the new encryption is:

  • Referral Data – This is the link they clicked to get to your site.
  • Key Words- These are the search terms the used to find your site.

This information will not be withheld on ads or sponsored listings, so if you pay for your listing you will still know how the user found you.

Whats the upside?

This is only affective when people are signed into their Google accounts, which is roughly only 10% of the users. So 90% of your organic traffic will deliver data to your analytics. The other 10% will show you that the user came, but not the how’s, what’s or where-from’s.

Why are they killing my SEO?

Good question. The primary argument is this is a step towards increased privacy. Google has often been criticized for being too invasive. They gather and share information about their users. This is giving users the option of increased privacy in their searches. Of course, Google still has this information and that information is still feeding into their ads, sponsored links, stories, etc. So you will not likely notice the increase in privacy.

From the users point of view nothing has changed. From the websites point of view, they are being denied some valuable data.

Filed Under: SM3, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello..Hello…Hello…Is anyone out there? and Other Blog Traffic Questions

10/10/2011 by
Blog Traffic

Is your traffic quality or quantity?

Traffic. Traffic. Traffic. This is what everyone wants. You want to know how to get it and how to get more of it. Of course you do. You don’t want to write and feel like the sound of crickets chirping are the only thing coming back. So lets look at how you get traffic; how you understand your traffic; and why you shouldn’t care.

How do you get traffic?

The best way to get traffic to your blog is to post frequently. You should be blogging AT LEAST 3 times a week. Many people don’t like this answer. But content if content is king then frequency is the entire monarchy. The more you post the more current and relevant you appear. You will also get better SEO results, because the search engines will crawl your site more frequently. Also frequency builds familiarity. People will start seeing your content more often and will be more likely to start reading you.  The top blogs in the world all post more than 5 times a day. Not saying that you have to become Mashable, but if you want traffic you need to generate content.

Other things that help are using keywords to boost your SEO. Give yourself the “thumbs up” on Stumbleupon. Give yourself a “plus” on Google+. Tweet out your blog posts at least 3 times a day and post it on Twitter. Social sharing is a very powerful tool for getting the word out there and getting people to your site. But still…mainly get out there and write.

Understanding your traffic

I admit that I have spent many hours pouring over my analytics on Google and Statscounter. I have gotten really excited when I see a post cause a spike in my traffic.  But these numbers are not the end all be all of your traffic. Despite what many people say, blogs do not live and die by these numbers.

Analytics are a great way to understand the flow of traffic to your site. You will see a lot of information about where you organic traffic is coming from, like Google, Twitter and Facebook. However it does not account for all the ways in which your readers can consumer your blog.

Every blog has an RSS feed. RSS stand for really simple syndication. People can use RSS readers to subscribe to your feed or they can receive it by email. People who use readers or get your blog via email are called subscribers. Services like Feedburner are RSS managers, making it easier for you to track your subscriber traffic. They will let you know how many people are subscribing. However, this is not entirely accurate. There are readers, like Mac mail, that are not counted by Feedburner.

Subscribers are not counted by your analytics unless the person actually goes to your blogsite. Subscribers have the ability to read your posts in their email or through their RSS reader without ever going to your site. So they are still consuming the information, they are just not giving you the hits to your site.

Why you shouldn’t care

Quality is what matters not quantity. If you have a small but dedicated following on your blog, then you don’t need thousands of hits. Hits don’t mean that people are reading. Hits just mean that people are coming to the site. You want readers. Readers will come in the form of subscribers. They are the people who comment on your posts or retweet your links on Twitter. They are your newsletter recipients and the people who comment on your Facebook posts.

So stop dwelling on the numbers. Focus on creating quality posts and the traffic will come!

Filed Under: Blogging, SM3 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

I heart SEO: Why Quality is King

09/14/2011 by

I heart SEOHow to Organize Your Marketing Budget for SEO

In a world where it seems content marketing, social media and SEO change faster than it takes you to read this blog post, it’s more important than ever to nail down the your marketing budget’s top priorities in terms of what you’ll allocate to SEO. What works? What’s Google looking for these days that will help me rank? How is that different than what they were looking for a year ago? And most importantly, what web solutions do I need to allocate resources to that will most help my company’s SEO performance?

Industry-leading search engine optimization software developer, SEOMoz, published their 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors report earlier this year. The report can be an essential guide into what search engines are valuing these days. Their analysis should help point us in the right direction when we’re looking to allocate resources to managing our company’s SEO.

One of the most interesting things about the 2011 report was how different the factors are from findings published in the past. For example, in 2010, if you had an exact match domain that included a keyword, you were probably in pretty good shape to rank. Today, that correlation has dropped significantly.

Here are a few things to consider when you’re dividing up your marketing budget:

Quality and Quantity Content

It’s no longer enough to simply have pages that point back to your site with links. It’s also no longer enough to have a ton of low-quality content stuffed with keywords. In the old days of SEO, you could get away with these habits and win some searches. Now you can’t cut corners with your content. Keyword stuffing or hiding won’t work. Creating large volumes of original, relevant, sharable content is more important now than ever.

Google’s crawlers analyze whether your content is relevant to both your website and the sites you link to.

In a sense, our marketing tools have come full circle. Earlier this decade, we were told that unique content was the key to driving traffic to our websites. After all of the SEO shortcuts people have tried to take the past few years, unique content that is relevant to your audience is, once again, king.

If You’re Ignoring Offsite, You’re Missing a Huge Part of the Pie

Offsite SEO accounts for nearly 40% of the SEO pie. If you’re only concerned with what you’re saying on your domain, you’re only doing about half of the work. Things like external links, domain and page authority and social media all play a huge role in how Google perceives you.

It used to be that if you had an external link with anchor text was highly regarded by Google. Not so much anymore. Similarly, if you buy a domain that includes an exact keyword, it’s not as helpful as it used to be. Search engines want to know the context of your domain and content. Links are nice, but what’s the context of the content surrounding them?

User Experience

We all want to find what we’re looking for easily. No one likes feeling like they’ve been tricked into finding a website. People are online looking for answers to their questions or problems, and they don’t want to feel mislead. Google has taken notice and places a value on user experience.

Google analyzes things like clickthrough rates and bounce rates. If people are coming to your website and are bouncing off quickly, chances are, it will affect your SEO. Similarly, if people are clicking through your ads to your website and stay there, you might see a boost.

With the smart phone boom in recent years, more sites are seeing traffic come from mobile users. If you aren’t optimized for mobile, your traffic probably isn’t as successful as it could be.

Today, Google values unique content and context. Those two are the biggest factors in how you will be ranked. Do your marketing resources and investments reflect the prioritization of valuable content, offsite SEO and your site’s user experience?

Justin Shimp is a digital handyman and content author at Smallbox, an Indianapolis web solutions consulting firm.

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