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Link Power – Flex Your Niche Muscles

July 6th, 2011

muscle_man

Recently, we read a great book called ReWork, written by the founders of 37 Signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. It’s a quirky & ballsy book that basically throws the status quo of the business world out the window, preaching mantras like “ASAP is Poison”, “Underdo the Competition”, “Meetings are Toxic”, and “Inspiration is Perishable”.

All of these staunch proclamations could potentially come off as irrational and misguided, if it weren’t for the fact that the authors have built a hugely successful software company by following these ideals. Furthermore, this book has some great takeaways for the SEO/Web Marketing world that we’d love to share.

In particular, the book preaches the good word of the power of the niche. In this Age of Information & Data that we swim through every day on the web, there are certainly web titans that can drive huge amounts of traffic to your site. These sites are of course the highly-coveted news sources USA Today, Newsweek, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. However, it’s the smaller sites that focus on particular niches that are more important in the long run.

We couldn’t agree more! These days, the true link gold for your website can be found within the niche sites of your industry. As they put it in ReWork:

We’ve been written up in big mainstream publications like Wired and Time, but we’ve found that we actually got more hits when we’re profiled on sites like Daring Fireball, a site for Mac nerds, or Lifehacker, a productivity site. Links from these places result in notable spikes in our traffic and sales. Articles in big-time publications are nice, but they don’t result in the same level of direct, instant activity.

So, in conclusion, try to flex your niche muscles! Say you sell boats:

Write a guest blog post about sailing knots and submit it to a niche sailing blog.
Feature your boats on a non-competitor site that focuses on travel in the Gulf of Mexico.
Create a social media contest focused on photos of your fan’s favorite boating memory.
Develop new landing pages that provide high-quality, informative content about every facet you can think of about boating, so you can be valued as a resource. Share these pages with your fans, and use social bookmarking to help get the word out further.
Own your niche!

Link-building is an ongoing task that requires dedication and patience, however if you keep your niche square within your sights, you’ve got a much better chance of actually gaining more and more traffic, higher SEO rankings, and yes, even a write-up in CNN or the New York Times!

Posted in Case Studies, Content Marketing, Linking | No Comments »

Keep Content Critical!

May 24th, 2011

In the ongoing battle of building & maintaining search engine rankings, one important weapon that no website owner should ever take for granted is their Content! Here are five tips to keep in mind to help you win the rankings war!

1.Title Tags & Headline Tags – Ensure that the Title Tag of each page (denoted as <title> in your source code) of your website has the main keyword phrase you are focusing on twice, both before and after the title of your website. Example: Electric Lawnmowers – Bill’s Mowers – Affordable & Efficient Electric Lawnmowers. Also, use keyword-focused <h1> Headline Tags on every page if possible, as this an important focal point for search engine robots that are indexing the code of your site. <H2> and <H3> tags should be used with keyword-targeted text when possible as well.

2 Keyword Density – Make every page of your website have effective keyword density when possible, meaning your pages focus on the keyword phrases at least 4-6 times throughout the web page. Changing up the ordering of your keyword phrases can keep the content engaging to your site visitors, but still noticed by the search engine robots (i.e. “We sell quality electric lawnmowers. “Why go electric? Lawnmowers come in many….”).

3.Keyword-Focused Landing Pages – In order to widen the net on keyword phrases your website can rank for, be sure to develop specific landing pages that are keyword focused. For example, if you had a hotel website, you’d want to build landing pages that are focused on local attractions, special events, weddings, and meetings. Another example comes from our real estate client Realty Austin:

4. Leverage Home Page Content – As your Home Page is the essential “front door” of your website, be sure to include easy-to-find text links to the rest of your content so that the search engine robots can more effectively crawl your website. Specifically, for any new pages you want to focus on, be sure to link to these pages close to your Headline, so that they can be noticed right away, as the Home Page is typically the most re-indexed page and the search engine spiders can follow these new links and index them.

5. Submit New Content to Search Engines - Whenever a substantial amount of new content is created for your website, be sure to submit it manually to the search engines to ensure that all new pages can be indexed, in order to see an update in your search engine rankings. Simply Google the phrase “submit URL to Google” to find the link. To check to see if a page has been indexed, type in the domain into a search engine and observe the Title Tag that is subsequently displayed. (Note: re-submitting should be only done sparingly and after significant updates, as Google will ignore repeated consecutive re-index requests)

Tags: Content Marketing
Posted in Content Marketing, Search Engines, Site Structure | No Comments »

SXSW 2011 SEO Recap

April 5th, 2011

At this year’s South by Southwest 2011, Google of course had a huge presence. The above photo is one of the “lightstick cups” that was handed out at the Google party at the GSD&M Advertising Agency on west 6th street.

Previously that day we had the chance to attend an SEO Q&A panel with Matt Cutts from Google and Duane Forrester from Bing. It was nice to hear insights from Google & Bing’s most well known “SEO spam policemen”, yet as expected they could only say so much. Here are our notes from the panel:

Q&A with Google & Bing
3/14/11
12:27 PM

Matt Cutts is here!
-Matt’s role is basically “SEO police”, helping keep Google results delivering search rankings based on white-hat methods, and not black-hat
-Duane Forrester is also here, SEO police from Bing

Q:Is affiliate linking an effective SEO strategy?
-buying links is frowned upon in SEO, affiliate linking is a good example of a link-strategy that typically won’t provide SEO value, in fact it can potentially hurt SEO strategy, ensure that the affiliates come from HIGH quality sources
-#1 thing search engines search for is quality content, if the affiliates are providing a website that is an authority on their niche, a site that Google can value, then that affiliate can potentially provide SEO value

Q: JCPenney was recently punished for buying links by Google. How long does Google punish websites for black-hat SEO techniques?
-At Google, we take a response that is in proportion to how black-hat and nasty the SEO black-hat strategy is. The more deceptive and manipulative, the worse it can get.
-If you get blacklisted on Google, you can send a “reconsideration request” via google.com/webmasters (another method is to utilize Google Webmaster Forums)
-Google is starting to broadcast more and more when people are using deceptive and manipulative SEO techniques

Q: Due to the recent penalization of JC Penney and others, webmasters are nervous about link-building, specifically afraid of being part of a “linking scheme”. What does Google consider a “linking scheme”?
-Dmoz & Yahoo Directories are still great links because they involve editorial control. However, press releases that you are paying for can dilute your PageRank, because they are less genuine. If you’re finding ways to have original content being shared and utilized on authoritative sites, the better.
-The more you have great content that people love, the more opportunities you have for people to really push out your links
-Take your area (even it’s uninteresting like plumbing) and MAKE it fun, interesting, and engaging. Example: turn your plumbing home page into an HTML5 piping game

Q: How important is the age of your domain to your SEO strategy?
-Age is very important, but it’s not the only thing we consider to rank the site. It still needs to be topical, relevant, authoritative, and honest.
-Reputation and topicality (relevance to your niche) are very important, they make the search engine’s job a lot easier in determining your rank.
-Social sites are starting to have more an influence (if indirectly).

Q: Will there be any transparency between website owners and search engine webmaster tools to alert website owners when there are fraudulent links?
-Webmaster tools will show you thousands of inbound links (which can be exported) to see which patterns are appearing. For example, if your anchor text is always the same or is all completely irrelevant, it’s a way to determine that you need to reevaluate where you are receiving your links, and potentially reach out to those sites to update your alternate text.

Q: What do you if your site does not have a definitive page structure, and instead uses Site Search for navigation?
-First thing, go to SiteMaps.org and make sure you have a clearly defined XML Sitemap defined and ready. Reference that site map within your HTML code on your home page. Next, make sure you find a way to expose those links to the search engines. Seriously consider making “tier pages” that allow you to organize all of your content in high-level pages that provide some guide/organization to the search engines.

Q: I’ve got an .org site that is an online community for poets.Â How do you compete with sites that have tons of user-generated content?
-The fact that you have a .org site that has editorial content is an advantage, so encourage those authors that are strong influences in their realm and get them to publish on your site! Having 20 powerful influencers post is much better than 500 nobodies. Build strong link bait that can have value for your readers, help boost content link-sharing. Consider reaching out to individuals that come from sites with high authority, such as journalists from publications associated with your niche.

Q: How you do account for an application/site that creates content by pulling in APIs to develop syndicated web content.
-Typically, this is a really bad technique, because it doesn’t allow the search engines to have something to hold on.

Q: Are you going to beef up the amount of competitive ranking information provided in Google Webmaster Tools? Right now, we have to use rank-tracking and position tracking software to accommodate this data, which is radically changing.
- Ranking reports can be “guessing” a lot of the time, so it’s best to rely on webmaster tools to provide insights on what people are searching on for your terms. Don’t scrape search engine results. Pageviews, unique visitors, conversions – these are all metrics. Consider that search rankings aren’t metrics, but insights.

Posted in Case Studies, Google News, Search Engines | No Comments »

Quora & Public Forums in 2011

February 4th, 2011

As social networks continue to rise and take on new forms, one of the oldest social networks around, the forum, has seen a nice recent rise in popularity. Leading the charge is Quora, an open Q&A based forum that allows you to connect with your peers & the general community with ongoing discussions. Partly due to it’s founding by well-connected names in the start-up world, including Adam D’Angelo (Facebook’s former CTO) and Charlie Cheever (a former engineer at Amazon & Facebook), Quora has seen a dramatic rise in traffic over the last few months. Here’s a peek at their traffic numbers from August up to January 2nd, 2011 (as provided by Quantcast):

Known commonly as an “online knowledge market”, Quora has flourished because its network is a completely open wiki, that allows people from all walks of life to learn from others. It still manages to stay a social network (you can follow & find your Twitter & Facebook friends) but it takes away the barrier of having to be “officially connected” to ask questions, and allows for conversations to take on lives of their own.

Lately Quora has been all over the press, and all of this media attention is sure to bring more new developments as the company continues to grow and add more functionality. Competitors are already trying to find ways to beat out Quora. Facebook already has its Q & A forum about to go live in a few weeks, Facebook Questions. Yahoo’s successful Q&A Forum, Yahoo! Answers is looking to revamp it’s image and functionality to compete. StackExchange (StackOverflow’s newest iteration) is continuing to refine their user interface to attract more users.

It will be interesting to see which company comes out on top in 2011. So far, Quora’s unique integration of external social networks and it’s clean organization of topics & questions is keeping some of the biggest names in the web world using their service. For now, there is not a better site to potentially get an answer from someone within a big company than with Quora. Examples include former AOL CEO Steve Case & SEOMoz founder Rand Fishkin.

What kind of answers can you expect to receive from Quora? Well, for now at least, they are mainly in the tech space. Here’s a cool infographic that shows the most frequent search terms associated with Quora (graphic by Sysomos):

Tags: Add new tag
Posted in Social Media, Tech News | No Comments »

Advertising with Social Activity

January 25th, 2011

Up to now, most online display advertising has been angled towards catering to what advertisers hope people want, based on their specific interests & preferences. In 2010, as geo-location services began to gain a massive following, businesses jumped on the bandwagon by offering social advertising in the form of giveaways & discounts to individuals who checked in. While this was a great utilization of a new medium to attract new customers, it had a limited reach and typically had the biggest impact for brick & mortar businesses that offered food or nightlife.

Up to this point, there hasn’t been an advertising model that truly tried to harness the power of online social activity. Yesterday, Facebook announced a new advertising platform that takes a new approach to social advertising, by allowing it’s users’ activities to be used as advertising tools. Specifically, these activities include likes, check ins, Page posts, & actions within custom apps & Pages.

In other words, when you go about interacting with businesses that have a presence on Facebook, this activity can now potentially be selectively displayed to your friends by the advertisers themselves. Here’s an example of how this can look, with Starbucks as an example:

As Facebook gets closer to 600 Million Users, it’s not surprising that they are trying out new advertising models. It will be interesting to see if the proven model of building up a user fanbase (with or without the help of Facebook Ads) and then building that fanbase by providing quality content and engaging with your fans will trump the new model.

Either way, as of today, (January 25th, 2011) all users will be able to try out this new advertising model, and we highly recommend jumping on board early to test this out before it potentially becomes over-saturated by advertisers. Typically, when Facebook releases a new feature like this, there is a bit of a backlash. Yet, as this hilarious Oatmeal comic points out, Facebook users are usually quick to adopt to the new features shortly thereafter.

Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

The Local Search Conquest

December 30th, 2010

As the new year approaches, Google local search is still a crucial asset for small businesses to help market themselves on the world’s largest search engine. In fact, this target market has become so coveted that Google has hired hundreds of sales representatives to call up local businesses to push a new $25 a month special that allows you to “tag” your Google map listing with a coupon, photo, video, or links to important pages like menus, service pages, and pricing. (It’s important to note that while these Google Tags can help your listing stand out, they don’t have an impact on your local business’ search ranking.)

Quick on the heels of Google, media company Yext is debuting it’s own Local Search tag competitor, “Yext Tags”, which allow local businesses have their listing stand out on a variety of local-focused websites, including Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, SuperPages, White Pages, MerchantCircle, Topix, MapQuest, Yellowbook, and more. The price tag for this service will run at 4x times the Google price tag at $100, however Yext is hoping to convince local businesses that it’s worth the extra $75, as it can help the users show up on multiple sites, as opposed to Google’s SERPs which can easily become over-saturated.

To add more competition to the mix, geo-location services like Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook Places are all trying to convince more brick and mortar small businesses to advertise specials on their sites for free.

Which is the best route to take? It really comes down to breaking down your site analytics and reviewing where the majority of your site traffic is coming from, and which sites are converting customers. If it turns out that YellowBook, Yelp, MerchantCircle, and MapQuest are all driving more conversions for your site, it might be best to try Yext. However, if the majority of your conversions come from Google and there is little to no one currently tagging their local businesses for your niche, it could be worth trying Google Tags. Plus, if you are a bar/restaurant that is in a hip area of town, geo-location service specials are a free and easy way to attract more visitors who are “checking in” nearby. Depending on your business, a combination of these options may work best as well. January will be a great time to test out all three, since Yext Tags launches on January 3rd and Google Tags has just launched!

Posted in Local Search, Search Engines | 5 Comments »

Charting the New Direction of Search

November 1st, 2010

As the Yahoo/Bing merger is coming together and Google continues to dominate the search landscape, there are new players emerging in the search landscape who are hoping to re-define the search experience.

One new player that could potentially carve out a unique niche in the search world is Blekko, a new search solution that focuses on quality over quantity. Noticing a growing trend that search results across different engines are starting to deliver more and more “spammy” types of posts, Blekko seeks to clear out the spam with “slashtags“. Having researched the industry, Blekko found that the majority of spammy results fall under seven big categories (health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes, and hotels). After extensive crowd-sourcing research & development, Blekko appended slashtags to high-quality websites that fall under these categories, and now they autofire whenever search terms associated with these niches are passed through their engine.

As they have future plans to extend beyond these seven categories, this “slashtag search” is a unique take on filtering searches like healthcare, which serves up over 77 million searches on Google (a large percentage of sites that most likely have spammy content).

In the SEO world, Blekko is a good example of one way to combat black-hat SEO techniques like cloaking & link farming. At the end of the day, a search engine’s success is dependent on the quality of the search results it provides, and Blekko hopes to prove that a nifty algorithm that analyzes over 200 factors may not be the only way to deliver quality results. Let’s just hope it doesn’t go the way of Ask Jeeves, who is now a popular zombie Halloween costume!

Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »

Google Instant: Faster Than a Rocket Turtle

September 8th, 2010

Well, it’s finally here. We’ve seen previews and clones over the last few months, but as of today, Google Instant Search has been officially announced and has started being rolled out to users in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy this evening.

rocket-turtle
There is a slight catch. Like personalized search, users have to be logged into their Google accounts in order to see the letter-by-letter search results. While this is a nice way to convince more web searchers to open up Google accounts and keep using Google products, that extra step may be just enough to keep people in a hurry from logging in.

Of course, the jury is still out on Google’s most recent development. From an SEO standpoint, Google Instant Search could stand to help more websites gain new traffic, as certain pages can rank higher in results for specific letter combinations (even if they are optimized for longer phrases). Due to web searcher’s notorious short attention spans, this could help websites start receiving new traffic from search terms that typically drove much less volume with standard speed search.

Here’s a good interview from Google’s Sergey Brin discussing his thoughts behind Google Instant and upcoming Google developments, including Google TV in Fall 2010.

And, here’s a demo of how Google Instant works, using Bob Dylan as an example:

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Link Power – Flex Your Niche Muscles

Keep Content Critical!

SXSW 2011 SEO Recap

The Local Search Conquest

Charting the New Direction of Search

Google Instant: Faster Than a Rocket Turtle

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