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For SEO Marketers, Is Deceptive Marketing a Necessary Evil?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 04:30:00 +0000

I saw a nice post a few decades ago called "The Reciprocity Link Building Method" by Canadian SEO Melanie Nathan, in which she explained a method she often employed to develop high-quality connections for her clients' websites. The idea, as I understood it, was to first identify a website that would be appropriate to link to from your client's site. Then you'd go over their present links to determine if any of them were damaged (went to dead pages or sites). If you find any, you'll utilize this data to start a conversation with the site owner or webmaster, and you'll eventually mention your customer's site as a replacement for one of the broken links. I thought it was a brilliant idea, a terrific opportunity to meet people in your client's business, and a win-win situation for everyone.

Nick LeRoy, a search marketer in the Minneapolis area, just published another post on the subject. Nick discussed the same general method Melanie had stated, as well as a real-life email example he had sent. He added to the webmaster in his example email that he had a favourite site where he liked to buy things for his son on birthdays and holidays. In a follow-up email, Nick cited "his son" once more, noting that he appreciated the things on this website because they made his son think. So far, everything appears to be going well, right? Nick, on the other hand, does not have a son! On the post, I left the following comment: "I had no idea you had a son, Nick (as per the emails requesting a link).

If you don't, are you advocating that people form trusting relationships with webmasters by misleading to them?" There were a lot of responses, which you should read on Nick's site. What he did was obviously not heinous in my opinion, but the situation raises a lot of questions. Was lying absolutely necessary? Isn't this the kind of behaviour that tarnishes marketing in general (not just search marketers)? Couldn't he have done things the same way he did them without lying? I believe he could have done so. According to Nick, informing the webmaster that you're looking for links on behalf of a client lowers your chances of getting the link. It would be fascinating to put that hypothesis to the test, and it could very well be correct. Even if you obtain fewer links as a result, lying in any element of business—or life—doesn't justify it. (Are they truly two distinct entities?) Deception in any form is lying. Even if it's just a small white lie, it's a lie nonetheless. Even if you receive more links as a result of it. Even if it means more business for you. Even if it makes you look better in your boss's or client's eyes.

This leads to another point: How would you feel if you were the boss of someone who used this technique? Any sort of dishonesty within your organisation should be a no-no if your corporate culture is one of honesty. I can assure you that if one of my employees did this, I would be really unhappy in them and explain why we do not engage in misleading techniques. I'd similarly be perplexed as to why I'd have to explain such a concept to an adult. What about the customer? Were they aware that their search marketing firm was deceiving them in order to get links? Is their corporate culture such that this isn't an issue? Or did they have no idea how their connections were obtained? If you're deceiving your clients on their behalf, you should seek their consent and written sign-off first, so it doesn't come back to bite you later. Personally, if I hired a corporation to provide a service for me and they did so in a way that involved any type of deception, I'd be suspicious of what else they were doing.

Is it possible that they overcharged me? Did they really have the abilities they claimed? Not to mention the unknowing webmaster who distributed the link on the other side. How would they react if they later discovered they had been duped? Would they have a negative impression of not only the marketing firm, but also the firm to which they were linking? What if they were so cheated that they decided to share the information on social media? What would the client think if they ended up with a reputation management disaster as a result of the technique? Surely I'm exaggerating here, because we're only discussing a minor white lie. Is it true, however, that the size or colour of the lie makes it less deceptive? And we're talking about link building particularly. There's a reason I despise it and refuse to do it.

As far as I'm concerned, link building is a deceitful tactic in and of itself because it's typically done to secure a phoney "vote" for a website. It's an industry that shouldn't exist, and that wouldn't exist if Google didn't put so much emphasis on links. We'd have a lot less deception (and payment) going on behind the scenes if that component of Google's algorithm wasn't in place. Because ethics are frequently viewed as situational, we can argue them indefinitely and never reach an agreement. What is immoral in one scenario may not appear to be unethical in another. Obviously, life-or-death situations differ from marketing situations. If telling a falsehood is going to save someone's life, then by all means, tell a lie! Marketing, on the other hand, isn't a life-or-death situation.

Most cultures think that lying and deception in order to gain someone's favour is wrong. This isn't a case of "black hat vs. white hat." There's nothing to do with hats in this. I don't care what approaches or methods you utilise to generate more focused search engine traffic when it comes to search marketing. There are no tactics that I believe are more or less ethical than others. I'm not interested in what Google says in their Webmaster Guidelines because I don't need to know. You won't get into trouble with Google if you understand that all they care about is that your website isn't dishonest in any way. They need to know that the information on your site and the information you supply to Google are reliable. That's all there is to it. So many ethical dilemmas boil down to one question: Is it deceitful or not? I'm concerned about search marketers who believe that lying is an unavoidable aspect of their profession if they want to succeed. It's not only wrong, but it's also a depressing reflection on our industry and probably our entire planet.

Too Much Traffic? Too Many Leads? Try Search Engine Optimization.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:26:00 +0000

Yes, you read the title right. My organization recently performed comprehensive seo on a customer web page, and the outcomes were incredible. Within a month, look for guests had reduced by over 60%. Inbound brings from look for had reduced by over 50%. And the consumer was absolutely thrilled with the outcomes.
So when is less look for guests better? And when are less brings from natural guests better?
Less guests from look for guests can be better when the website draws the incorrect type of guests, and less brings can better when the website draws the incorrect type of brings.
To give you some background, this particular customer offered a highly-specialized assistance to B2B organizations. The reputation of the organization and the great company's assistance instructed a higher dollar figure per engagement. They were THE significant player in an industry that they had practically developed. However, their before seo agency did not factor in any of these very essential concerns whilst improving the web page.
The company in question was clearly from the “traffic-at-any-cost” school of seo, and they never involved the consumer with the type of concerns that you would expect from a real business associate, such as the most concerns, such as “Who is your target market?” They were not a promotion associate – they were a guests delivery procedure. They were not definitely involved in the customer's achievements, because to them, improved look for guests was the only measure of achievements.
They certainly were not lacking in technical skill – they were able to deliver great quality positions for competitive keyword phrases. And the technique was not suppose, as all techniques were well within the conditions of all significant google. So what exactly was the consumer validated in stressing about?
It turns out they had plenty of genuine problems. Although positions and look for guests were up, revenue were down. Additionally, web type brings were coming in and the phones were ringing, but nothing was closing. The revenue agents was spending lots of your energy and energy following up on brings that were, quite seriously, junk. Confident sales had come to a dead stop because salesmen had walking purchases to follow up on inbound brings, which were certainly numerous.
After a brief research, it easily became clear what the root of the problem was. The before seo agency, with their “traffic beats all” mindset, had converted the website into a magnetic for do-it-yourselfers, small firms or individuals with very low costs, and guests looking for no cost advice.
In their pursuit to obtain the most look for guests possible, the before seo agency had erred with the most fundamental foundations of the strategy – keywords selection. Instead of carefully selecting keyword phrases that were suitable to entice the high-end customers that the consumer was acquainted to, they successfully (in the sense that they achieved great rankings) targeted keyword phrases with modifiers such as “free,” “advice,” and “ideas.” All of these keyword phrases were hugely popular, all of these keyword phrases were difficult to achieve higher positions for, and all of these keyword phrases should not have been utilized in the strategy in the first place.
When you boost for low-quality phrases (“low-quality” obviously means different things, based on a business's goals) you receive low-quality look for guests in return. When low-quality guests transmits a type cause from a web page, it makes sense that the cause itself will also likely be low-quality. This was, of course, exactly what was happening to our customer.
After our research, we broke the information to the consumer that the strategy had been essentially defective. They were not happy to hear this information, but it did match up with their experience. We also told them quite seriously that advancing, we would be focusing guests great quality over amount, and by expansion, cause great quality over amount. They were easily assured that look for guests was not the most essential measurement in a seo strategy, and were thrilled about a new, ROI-based approach.
Luckily, we did not have to throw out all of the work from the previous company. They had laid a company foundation with regards to techniques, which allowed us to recalibrate the keyword phrases and recognize outcomes in a very not much time.
So, to review our achievements, look for guests reduced by 60%, brings were cut in half, and revenue improved considerably. The reducing pace of the incoming brings was more than balanced out by the great company's brings – many brings derived from the Fortune 500 organizations with whom this customer was acquainted to working. Previously, guests from these desired organizations had been converted off by keywords modifiers such as “free” – they were serious individuals looking for a serious solution and they recognized that what they needed was not going to be no cost.
For too many individuals, such as experts, seo has a very tight meaning – acquire positions and guests from related keyword phrases. Until more organizations understand that seo is a promotion to be assessed and analyzed just like any other, there will be countless examples of strategies considered a millionaire by those who worked on them, but as breakdowns by those who have to deal with the consequences.
By: Scott Buresh

PPC Bid Optimization Without Conversion Tracking

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:25:00 +0000

Lesson 1 of running a PPC campaign: track your conversions. A simple rule that we all try to stick to. But sometimes we can't.
Not all campaigns work so easily. It may be that conversions are too few and far between to make a difference. The website may convert everything over the phone through a system to complex/entrenched to track back to keyword level.
Whatever the reason, there are two techniques you can use to help get your PPC account delivering more value, even if you can't track it.

Option 1: Engagement Metrics

This one is hopefully going to seem like an obvious first step to most of you. If you have Google Analytics linked to your AdWords account, then you can create "engagement goals" and import them into AdWords as a conversion.

Engagement goals consist of tracking visitors who meet a threshold time on site or pages visited. In the screenshot above you can see how a goal would be set up to create a pages visited requirement of greater than 1. Doing this would let you see a goal in AdWords for any visits that did not bounce.
Based on the type of website you're running you really need to think carefully about which metric (time on site or pages visited) is going to be more useful for you, and what your requirement is going to be to log it as a conversion in AdWords.
Remember! Google Analytics does not track the time the user spent on the final page of their visit. If the user read that page for a long period then left the site, you won't see how long they spent on that final page. This can make time on site a slightly misleading metric for websites where visitors won't view many pages.
If you want to log pages per visit, then decide what kind of visitors qualify as "engaged" enough to be worth logging. You will find that many visitors will either bounce, or look at everything on the site. Averages suck. Your averages are being skewed by bounces and by visits with many many pages viewed, so don't base your assessment on logging visitors who visit more pages than your site average.
Visiting more than one page (i.e., not a bounce) can be a good signal. If it takes at least two clicks to reach a product page or view a price, then your ideal threshold may be greater than two pages viewed.

Option 2: Relative Weighting

For some sites you can't even accurately track the above behavior. One page visits might still be worth a lot to an information or blog site. You may have organizational reasons that you can't use Google Analytics or other web analysis packages.
You need to be more creative in these situations.
Step 1

Take your top 20 keywords by traffic. In most cases these will account for the majority of your total clicks, but if not then take 30, or 40. Don't take too many at this stage, or you're making a lot of extra work for yourself for not too much value. Exclude any of your brand keywords from this list.
Step 2
Rank these keywords by a "likelihood of conversion" factor. You need to know your business really well here, but you have to put your keywords into order sorted by how relevant and targeted they are. A particular keyword might suggest that everybody searching for it is looking for exactly your product. Alternatively it might have other meanings or be more generic. Rank these keywords by their "awesomeness" factor.
Step 3

Give each of these keywords a score from 1 to 10 for relevance. The best and highest should be 9 or 10 (this won't always be the case, if none of your best keywords are in your top 20 by traffic) and work from there. Don't feel like you need to go all the way down to 1. If the lowest keywords have maybe half the likelihood of conversion of the highest keywords, then respective scores of 5 and 10 would be appropriate.
Step 4

Add a column to your list that indicates the potential value of a conversion. This is only really necessary if different keywords imply a different value (e.g., they might be searches for a different product). If your website sells just one service, or value is not related to search term at all, skip this step and just add "1" to this column next to every keyword.
Step 5

Multiply these scores together for each keyword, and divide each one by the total sum of all scores added together. What you have now is an estimate for what proportion of your budget you should be spending on each keyword.
Remember that these keywords didn't make up your total spend. If the top 20 keywords spent 80 percent of your budget, then these proportions you've found are proportions of the 80 percent.

Deciding the Bids

You should now have each of your top 20 keywords with a score from 0 to 1 representing the proportion of your spend that should be going to this keyword. Achieving this takes some time. You're going to need to analyze your spend levels on a daily basis, and make changes accordingly.
Each day, download the keyword data for the previous day from the account. For each keyword in your list, work out how much it spent (proportionally) compared to your target. If the keyword's spend is too high, reduce the bid by 10 percent. If it is too low, increase the bid by 10 percent. Set a sensible level of tolerance on this, or you'll be changing your bids even if your keywords are reeeeeeally close to perfect.
The process that will occur is this: every day each keyword that is spending too much will have its bid reduced a little. If the next day it is spending correctly, then you'll stop making that change to that keyword and it's nicely on target. If it still hasn't reached target then the process will happen again.

The Inevitable Complication

You're working from assumptions based on gut instinct and guesswork. These aren't accurate and they never will be.
Don't go crazy looking to make each keyword fit your target perfectly, since your target is an educated guess at best. The process outlined above will give you a bidding strategy to meet your target but it doesn't validate it if you were wrong.
The second issue to be aware of is that every time you change your bids, the proportion of budget spent by each keyword will change. But it will affect the proportion spent by all your other keywords too.
If we imagine a situation with two keywords, "keyword a" and "keyword b". "Keyword a" spends $10 per day and "keyword b" spends $20 per day. If I conduct this analysis and increase the bids on "keyword a" so that it spends $20 per day, then "keyword b" is now spending a lower proportion of my new, higher budget. And if my budget is limited, then I may need to reduce "keyword b" to compensate.
Each action on a keyword affects the proportional spend on the others. Don't be surprised if your keywords overreact.

In Summary

Having a lack of good conversion data is no excuse for not optimizing bids in a campaign. The campaign can still perform better and deep down you know it!
The two methods in this article will give you some pointers to go about pushing your spend towards your best converters and most profitable keywords, but your overall budget must still be determined by the profitability of PPC as a whole.
Re-assess your assumptions regularly. Don't take your first best guess as fixed. Make changes and improvements over time as your knowledge grows and you can keep making the campaign better and better.
By: Alistair Dent

18 Minutes a Day to Social Media Time Management

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:23:00 +0000

There is a saying that goes something like this: “Are you working in your business or on your business?” Translate that to social media, are you working in social media or on social media? If you are “in” it, it’s time to figure out a way to be “on” it.
But what if you could improve your social media time management in just 18 minutes a day?
Let’s face it, we have a finite amount of time each day and usually we underestimate our to-dos and overestimate our time. If you’re in any type of online marketing position and reading (OK, skimming) this article, chances are high social media is part of your mantra. Bets are probably higher still that you spend more lost time in unaccountable social media diversions and distractions.
Whether you’re on the front lines, sidelines, or bylines, social media can easily monopolize hours of our day.
Scanning, curating, and aggregating content requires serious organization skills. Writing, reporting, and re-purposing content is best served with minimal distractions and maximum focus. Social media can be a 24/7 black hole or, if managed properly, a gold mine. It all depends on how disciplined, organized and aware you are of the time spent in social media.
I recently read Peter Bregman’s book "18 Minutes." It was just released last month and the result of a blog post he wrote for the Harvard Business Review that became one of the most popular and most commented posts on the site. That post, “An 18 Minute Plan for Managing Your Day,” began with Bregman’s humbling admission that we can all relate to, but here is my slightly modified version:

“Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down with my laptop and a Starbucks, checked my Facebook, Twitter stream, iGoogle and e-mail. Two hours later, after fighting several digital fires, solving other people’s PR problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my social media world via screen and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first grabbed my Mac Book Air. I’d been ambushed at social media gunpoint. And I thought I knew better...”

Bregman’s takes you through specific and actionable strategies to seriously shut down the daily distractions and open up windows of social media opportunity. As I read this book, my social media fog began clearing and my days are now busier doing social media right.

Pick Your Social Media High Five

Look at your social media year and pick five areas that will make the most difference in your business. Social media is enchanting because there are so many interesting things to read, people to meet and places to go. It's challenging to prioritize and pick just a few; so instead we end up trying to do it all.
One of the secrets to thriving in social media is to look at doing fewer things better and pick the ones that matter most. When you decide on your five areas, commit to spending 95 percent of your social media time on these things and allow 5 percent for the rest of experimental or unforeseen unknowns.

Getting the Right Things Done

I’m always busy. But I asked myself after reading this book: Am I busy doing the things that matter in my social PR life? "18 Minutes" brings us to the reality that it’s possible to be busy in social media, look busy in social media, and unfortunately … get nothing done.
Making sure we’re getting the right social media things done is key – because it’s so easy to get off track when exciting breaking news happens, like Facebook F8 developer’s conference latest updates or industry shaking news like Steve Jobs passing away last week. I lost hours of focus to the reality and shock of losing one our greatest innovators. But to me, that was my 5 percent bucket of the unknowns you have to plan for.
Once we have our five buckets of focus, the goal is to make sure we spend 95 percent of our social media time each day doing things that fit into our five most important areas. Our focus is making sure the right things get done, as opposed to making sure everything social media gets done.

The 18 Minute Social Media Day

Step 1 (5 Minutes) Your Social Media Morning Minutes

This is your opportunity to plan your social media for the day. Before turning on your computer or picking up your PDA, sit down with the to-do list and decide what is happening to make this a social media successful day. What can you realistically accomplish whether it’s writing a blog post, researching a new Twitter tool, sitting in on a webinar, or getting ready for that next conference?

Step 2 (1 Minute Every Hour) Social Media Refresh and Refocus

Managing your social media time hour-by-hour is both a discipline and a science. Don’t let the hours manage you … How many times do you all of a sudden realize you have spent the last 20 minutes reading Twitter updates, surfing Facebook Pages, or reading an article from an e-mail subscription?
Set your phone, computer or watch to ring every hour and start the work that is listed on your calendar. When you hear the beep, do a social media check up. Assess your progress and recommit the next hour to get back on track.

Step 3 (5 Minutes) Your Social Media After Dark

At the end of your day, shut the laptop and review your social media day. Ask yourself some questions: How did my social media day go? What did I learn today? Whom did I interact with? Did I meet new followers on Twitter that I should send a quick @ reply? Was there a nice RT of me I should acknowledge? Any comments on my blog I should respond to?
Building and maintaining relationships is critical in social media and it is easy to forget that it takes just a few minutes to share appreciation, congratulate someone, or offer thanks.
All that seems easy, but here are some tips to add to the 18 minute plan.

Social Media Delete

It’s very hard to say no. I get invites every day to join a webinar, take a survey, look at this press release for a nonprofit who has no money, help my brother-in-law send a logo that I have sent him 20 times already, take unscheduled phone calls, or get sucked into a technical problem with Apple support.
All of these unscheduled things can rob you from important and strategic social media time. To get the right things done, choosing what to ignore is as important to choosing what to focus on.

Social Media Calendar

Bregman emphasizes and I agree: Place the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. He also notes the power of the when and where. Statistics show that when you schedule an action item with a time and date, the chances of it getting done are far greater than letting it float.
Mastering distractions and getting things done efficiently and effectively goes far beyond social media. Bregman offers a system and practical guides of how to get done what matters most to us and our business in 18 minutes.
By: Lisa

Why Quora Is the Answer to ALL of Your Small Business Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:47:00 +0000

I often find myself typing complex questions into Google’s search box. Many times, this leads me to complex answers or a variety of pages with a little bit of the answer on each one. In my opinion, both are unhelpful. The best pages are usually the pages where the question is stated explicitly, and real people create a response based on that question (as opposed to an article out there that was written on something similar). The only problem: who knows who is answering the question? For all I know, it could be a ten year old kid who thinks it’s funny to make up answers to things online. If you find this as frustrating as I do, you’re now in luck because I have discovered the answer to our frustration—Quora.
Quora is a place where you can ask absolutely anything you wish, and highly reliable people will provide the answer. This site was created by Adam D’Angelo, the former CTO of Facebook. Many compare Quora to Wikipedia (another website I love to visit, but content I never entirely believe); however the main difference between the two is the content quality and social networking opportunities. Quora is a website you must sign up for, much like Twitter or Facebook, and you have the ability to follow people, topics, and/or questions that interest you. There is also a voting system in place that allows the highest quality answers to a question to be pushed to the top. In other words, Quora is another great opportunity to start developing that brand. Consider some of the features of this website, and I guarantee you will be blown away!
Where Do the Answers Come From?
When trying to find an answer to a question, especially one that involves your small business, it is extremely important to know that the answer you are getting is valid and credible. Quora makes this happen in a few different ways:

Anyone can answer a question on Quora; however users have the ability to vote answers up or down so that the answers can be ranked from the most useful (or most correct) to the least useful.

All answers are connected to a person so you know exactly who is answering your question. Although answers are rated based on accuracy by users, you may want to know for yourself where the answers are coming from and make your own judgments about credibility.

Now for the interesting part: Anyone can make revisions to the text of questions and the details that surround that question. In general, this helps the site become more accurate. However, all revisions are tracked and available for a user to see. Not only will you be able to track the person who wrote the original question, but you will be able to see each and every person who had ever made a revision to it.

There are obviously many topics and questions that are related, so you will find not only answers to your question, but other, related questions that you may not have even considered.

The answers to questions will be available in Quora forever, so Quora may someday become the database with the answers to any question a person may have. All you have to do to find the answer to your question is use the search box at the top of the site and type in your question.
You may think that this sounds too much like Wikipedia, but the answers to questions on Quora have been answered by some of the brightest minds in the industry—and Quora lets you know! Some of the people providing answers on the website include Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, Marc Andreessen, VC in Silicon Valley, and Fred Wilson, VC in New York. After all, the creater of Quora was good friends with Zuckerberg in high school.
How to Use Quora to Help Build Your Brand
Quora is yet another great way to accumulate followers and start building your brand. You will be able to add links to sites in your profile, so if you set your profile to public all of your answers will be indexed on search engines. This site also works as a social networking platform, so your small business should treat it the same way you treat Twitter and StumbleUpon—get as many followers as possible and continue to post great content. If people are interested in what you have to say, and you can offer quality answers that get you to the top of the “answer” list, your company’s reputation will only improve.
By: Amanda DiSilvestro

The End of Business as Usual: #AdaptorDie to Connected Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Every once in a while, something shows up on the Internet that creates a game-changing shift in the way we view the world. In the context of online business, this happened to me in the fall of 2008 when I first saw the Conversation Prism developed by Brian Solis.
As a social media evangelist, the Conversation Prism became a disruptive tool that inspired both fear and opportunity. I leveraged it as the star slide of every presentation I gave over the next year – and also came to recognize a new thought leader in Solis, one who was articulating the future as well as the client experiences unfolding right in front of me.
I caught up with Solis this week to talk about his new book, “The End of Business as Usual: Rewire The Way You Work to Succeed in the Customer Revolution.” The following are highlights from our conversation.
Jason Cormier: Was there any feedback or key learning’s you established from your last book, “Engage”, as a foundation for this new book?
Brian Solis: Yes. "Engage" was aimed at the social strategist, marketing and communications team, and progressive management teams that were ready to… just as the title instructs, engage.
Between the release of version 1 in March of 2010 and version 2 in March of 2011, I learned quite a bit about how organizations were or were not changing to adapt to market opportunities.
”The End of Business as Usual” is written for change agents and those fighting to compete for attention and relevance. This time, I’m also pursuing the executives who are responsible for leading their business to what’s next. And, this book makes the case for leadership teams to look beyond social media to see the impact of the connected customer on their business.
This isn’t a book about case studies on how to use Facebook or Twitter. Executives don’t use these networks so making the argument, while necessary, really was the role of “Engage”. This time, I make the case from a business level to demonstrate how running a rigid business, business as usual, will open the doors to digital Darwinism where companies that fail to adapt will become victims of natural selection.
JC: I saw Peter Guber called your new book “the map” to win the hearts and minds of customers with “new media experiences.” Do you dig into any of the practical and tactical here or would you say it’s more of a map as opposed to a set of directions?
BS: Interesting question. The book is broken into two halves. First, I make the case for the future of decision-making and how connected consumers are influencing and influenced by interest graphs (those individuals connected by keywords, shared relationships, and expressed interests).
The second half of the book focuses on how to build an adaptive organization that’s optimized to learn, engage, adapt, and lead. It’s part map and part step-by-step directions.
JC: I caught your interview with Radian6 CEO, Marcel Lebrun, last week. In the context of “what’s next,” I like how he talked about the shift of how we must line up for our customers instead of the traditional mindset of how they line up for us.
He was using the idea of waiting on the phone in a support queue as an example, but was obviously referring to much more of an encompassing business concept – one he believes we’ll spend “the next 10 years” trying to figure out. What’s your take on his statements, and how might your book address them?
BS: The entire book is based upon the premise that businesses are stuck either reacting to customers or developing products or services in a vacuum that may or may not deliver against needs or aspirations. That’s business as usual and perhaps it will suffice for traditional consumers.
But for connected consumers, businesses have to focus beyond “figuring it out” to getting in front of customer experiences in order to shape and steer them. “The End of Business as Usual” looks at the “why” and also the “how” to help businesses rethink the infrastructure of the organization, the culture, processes, systems, methodologies, and decision trees to improve the internal collaboration needed to promote external collaboration.
You can’t engage externally if you can’t engage within. Employees, like customers, are stakeholders – and their support, input, and passion are critical ingredients in the recipe of tomorrow’s relevance.
JC: Over the years, you’ve referred to the “uh-oh” moment or “a-ha” moment as one that will ultimately lead companies into social media. What are the most common uh-oh moments you are seeing at this point in time?
BS: It’s amazing. Still today, businesses are thrust into social networks because of the “uh oh” moment. What’s even more amazing is that many businesses that are currently engaged in social media are also vulnerable to unsuspecting moments that blindside them into the new reality.
Businesses are not in control of customer experiences because they’re wrestling with the idea of what control really is. Broadcast marketing, screaming louder than consumers, buying media that tells people what to think, again, that’s business as usual.
Facebook currently houses 800 million active residents – that’s the size of the entire Internet in 2004. There’s no going back. Yet businesses today believe that they don’t need a social presence because that “might” invite negative interaction or operate social media in a silo while they wonder why they’re getting service related questions or complaints on a Facebook page dedicated to CSR activity.
JC: Earlier this year, Shiv Singh said, "When it comes to digital marketing I believe marketers need to be more strategists & research minded than idea evaluators and implementers." What’s the first thing that comes to mind regarding how your new book might help marketers (inside of brands or within agencies) best address the ever growing demand for strategy in social media?
BS: Shiv is right. If we examine many successful social media initiatives today, we’ll learn that great ideas connected with consumers to spark word of mouth, interaction, and desirable outcomes.
But in reality, this is yet another example of implementation. And, when you really think about it, there’s very little that’s truly social in everyday corporate social media campaigns. Sometimes I jokingly refer to social media as a great oxymoron.
One of the greatest advantages of social media is to listen to conversations to learn about mentions, context, sentiment, and reach. But when we really hear what people are saying and why, we start to peel back the layers of significance to research, learn, and adapt to new opportunities.
The insights that we extract simply by listening, hearing, and feeling what’s transpiring in social networks helps us translate empathy into action. The result is campaigns, service strategies, products, and so much more. By default, relevance is earned simply by reflecting customer behavior, wants, and opportunities. #AdaptorDie!
By: Jason Cormier,

9 Characteristics of an In-House SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:40:00 +0000

One question I get asked a lot is “Are you more of a ‘technical SEO’ or a ‘marketing SEO’?” This question used to puzzle me a bit in the beginning as in my head the answer was pretty clear: I’m a marketer with a technical bent of mind.
This question then led me to think about some of the common characteristics that make a good in-house SEO. This helped me a lot too when making hiring decisions on what characteristics I should look for in an in-house SEO.
The other fact is SEO as an industry has matured over the years. As a result, what is expected out of an in-house SEO has changed as well. Companies don’t want to hire someone who can get them top rankings or create some monthly reports – that is a given now.
Increasingly, in-house SEOs are required to be more analytical and ROI focused. This evolution of SEO clearly demands SEO’s to have a good left brain and right brain combination. That said, there are definitely some peculiar characteristics of an in-house SEO, so let’s go over few of them.

1. SEO as a Thought Leader

Many times people outside the SEO world may not be able to visualize the business benefits you can drive from a successful in-house SEO program. An in-houser can open many new opportunities for a business and generate new streams of revenues.
Simply put: an in-houser can help people understand what SEO can do for their business. So in every conversation, in every meeting a SEO has the opportunity to display their thought leadership in search.

2. SEO as an Influencer

As an SEO you have to be an influencer. Influencer of new ideas, new ways of generating traffic, new set of processes, and so on.
In every organization, big or small, there are certain sets of processes that people follow. To integrate SEO into that process, you need influence many stakeholders.
Remember, when you add something new like SEO to an existing process you will encounter resistance. What you need to do: communicate and influence many stakeholders. After all, you’re inserting SEO for the greater good of the business and those convictions can drive you to become an influencer of people or ideas.

3. SEO as a Salesman

Gosh, aren’t we always selling something? Moreso with SEO as you are selling ideas, ROI projections, tools, projects, or even agency partners or consultants. Most of the times in order for SEO to get a seat at the table you have to be that salesman and build your case why SEO is integral to your overall business objectives.

4. SEO as a Collaborator

Over the years I have realized that SEO is baked as part of a bigger project with tens or hundreds of stakeholders and you need a team to climb those big mountains. An in-house SEO works with different sets of teams, stakeholders, and business objectives.
In a typical day you could end up collaborating with tens of different groups – collaboration becomes the key. A classic example is collaborating with your IT team. Another example is baking your SEO part into an agenda of a larger meeting. Sometimes to get those 10 minutes in a meeting you need to collaborate closely with the product or project managers so that you can give your SEO “update.”

5. SEO as an Educator

So much of SEO is viewed as a black magic in the outside world that the onus is on SEOs to bring transparency to the process. Once what we as SEOs do is transparent and stakeholders understand why you recommend the type of changes that you do, it creates a lot of buy-in as well.
SEO education is essential to getting buy-in. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself doing multiple rounds of SEO training across the organization.

6. Analytical SEO

Marketing is analytical in nature and as marketers we base our decisions after looking at analytics reports and then optimize our targets. SEOs have to do forecasting, look at product or keyword level ROI, work with finance, do budgeting, and most importantly also work with your analytics group (if you’re at a large org). As with many things, you need to be clear when working with analytics on not just what reports you want but how to extract the data that will help you in optimizing your campaigns.

7. SEO as a Logic Builder

This is where the power of your left brain comes in and that is logic. Software developers and programmers use their strong logic skills to create software flows and endless loops of if and then statements as an example.
SEOs need to have a logical mind as you would be dealing with programmers and also working through the code yourself. Plus, if you aren’t from programming background, then start learning languages as you need to understand codes. Once you understand code, then you will start forming logic.

8. SEO with Patience

You definitely need boatloads of patience. Depending on the size of the organization, there would be times where a straightforward title tag change could take weeks if not months!
Then you have designers, IT, business partners, and all other elements that your SEO recommendations won’t just move at the speed you desire. In situations like these, you have to exercise patience and push through to ensure that even after few months your recommended changes are done. If there are some bigger projects, then multiply that number by 4!

9. SEO as a Synthesizer

SEOs make many recommendations (e.g., changing URLs, replacing graphics and Flash with text, adding new content, pagination), but not all of your recommendations will be implemented. There could be business or other (political) issues that could come in the way and your job is to synthesize different viewpoints in order to get SEO requests accomplished. This makes SEO a synthesizer of ideas and different viewpoints.

In Summary

The above reads like a long list, but SEOs do wear many hats both in an agency and in-house role. These were just some of my insights into characteristics (or qualities) of an in-house SEO. What would you add to the above list?
By: Bob

9 Not-So-Great Points About Adwords Sitelinks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:11:00 +0000

In September, I shared 11 great points about Google AdWords Sitelinks. As with all PPC features, there are a few cons to go along with the pros. My PPC colleagues on Twitter were quick to share the not-so-great aspects of sitelinks. Here’s the list.

1. Conversion Tracking is Painful

If you use the free AdWords conversion tracking, forget about seeing conversion data for sitelinks. It isn’t there. You’ll have to track conversions via your web analytics software. Even then, third-party conversion tracking is glitchy. This is probably the biggest con of using sitelinks – it’s quite difficult to tell if they’re actually converting.

2. No Click Data for Individual Destination URLs

Along the same lines, Google doesn’t display data for each individual sitelink. Instead, data is summarized by campaign – making it impossible to optimize for the best-performing sitelinks using AdWords data alone.
Again, you’ll need to set up tagging in your web analytics program to be able to tell which sitelink is driving traffic to your site. However, bear in mind that you won’t get impression data from your web analytics tool, so it’ll be impossible to figure out what your click-through rate is. This is yet another huge hole in the sitelinks reporting picture.

3. Sitelinks Are Only Available at the Campaign Level

Sitelinks will display for all ads in a campaign that qualify for the top-of-page spot. Therefore, it’s necessary to make sure your sitelinks are relevant to all ads in a campaign. Several of my Twitter colleagues expressed the desire to set up sitelinks at the ad group level, which makes a lot of sense.

4. Relevance can be a Problem

This issue is related to the campaign-only issue above: unless your PPC campaigns are tightly themed, your sitelinks may not be relevant to every ad in your campaign. So if you’re planning to use sitelinks, make sure you keep them generic enough to be relevant to all the searches.

5. Sitelinks can’t be Paused – They can Only be Deleted

This is yet another huge failing of sitelinks. Let’s say you’re an ecommerce advertiser who’s using sitelinks to promote specific products. Let’s also say that one of these products is temporarily out of stock. The logical thing to do would be to pause that sitelink until the product is in stock again. No can do.
You’ll have to either leave the sitelink active, thereby killing your cost per conversion and irritating customers who want to buy the out-of-stock item; or you’ll have to delete the sitelink and re-create it when the product is back in stock. Why can’t we just have a pause option instead?

6. Sitelinks can’t be Tested

Unlike ad copy, there is no A/B rotation of sitelinks – you have to craft the copy and hope for the best. In fact, this is kind of a double whammy because data for individual sitelinks isn’t available in AdWords, you’re really winging it here (unless you have tracking set up in your web analytics program). This omission is particularly puzzling to me, because AdWords offers so many other testing options – why not for sitelinks?

7. Sitelinks Trump Other Extensions

If your campaign includes not only sitelinks, but location or product extensions, sitelinks will trump the other extensions. This means you’ll need to think carefully about which extensions are going to add the most value to your campaign’s performance – and remember, you won’t get granular data from AdWords, so you’ll have to guess carefully.

8. Sitelinks can Distract From Ad Copy

One of the great things about sitelinks is their visibility – and it’s one of the not-so-great things about sitelinks, too. If your ad copy includes a special offer or other unique selling proposition, you’ll probably want to include it in your sitelinks too, or else the offer may not be noticed.
Again, remember sitelinks show at the campaign level, so that offer needs to apply to all ad groups in your campaign. Is your head spinning yet?

9. Sitelink Performance May Vary

Several of my Twitter colleagues said they’ve seen huge jumps in click-through rate as a result of implementing sitelinks – but that sitelinks also brought an influx of non-converting queries. I’ve seen this in our client campaigns as well – in some instances, we saw a huge increase in cost per conversion after implementing sitelinks. With limited tracking and no testing, this is a big concern.
While sitelinks can be a powerful addition to your PPC campaigns, it’s clear that there are several factors to consider before implementing them.
By: Melissa Mackey

Successful SEO Tactics: Reporting & Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:09:00 +0000

As we close out our four-part series on the SEO Tactics chart, we touch on the most powerful of all of the pillars – measurement, reporting, and analytics. This is the subject I’m most passionate about as it lies at the core of a solid organic strategy and ultimately the long-term success of an organic program.
It’s striking that there is still such casualness when it comes to the discipline of SEO. There are still a remarkable number of companies that can’t differentiate organic traffic from direct load and referring traffic.
If you’ve managed or been close to paid search campaigns you understand the degree to which measurement and analysis impacts successful efforts. One of the first pieces of advice I give to clients and colleagues is to apply this same mindset to organic search.
Data is useless. Insight, and then action, is the key to advancing your program. This article will highlight some of the more important, and underutilized, metrics that can help you find performance breakthroughs, as well as discuss exactly why it’s so critical that you get this part right.

Justify Your Existence

If you aren’t tracking conversions, then you’re probably in for a short ride. Rankings will only get you so far.
Justifying your retainer (agency) or salary (in-house) is going to be difficult without demonstrating the business impact you are making. We’re talking about revenue, leads and margin – not rankings.
Be persistent about the need to track these metrics before you engage with a company. If the tracking isn’t present and they aren’t willing to put forth the effort to measure these goals, you should pass on the opportunity until the proper tracking is in place.

Understand Causality

Without taking the time to analyze data it becomes incredibly easy to chase your own tail. Chances are you’re putting forth a ton of time, energy, and effort to make an impact on your program.
But what’s really moving the needle and what’s simply an effort of futility? If you find yourself asking this question, slow down half a pace, execute, monitor, measure, and make note (as best you can) of which tactics indeed moved the needle.

Conversions, Then Traffic, Then Rankings

Focusing attention on keywords that have the highest likelihood to convert to a sale or lead isn’t always synonymous with high traffic terms. Spend the time in your analytics package to understand the difference and apply more pressure to keywords that will increase revenue/leads. As mentioned earlier, if you keep your eye on conversion, you have a better chance of keeping your job.

Differentiate Between Brand & Non-Brand

In relation to measuring keyword-level conversion (and in proving your value), be sure to clearly differentiate performance of brand and non-brand terms.
Non-brand growth is the leverage point in most programs. If you’re analyzing, or worse presenting, data that is only rolled up as overall organic traffic, it’s possible to be misleading yourself and others. If the overall organic program experienced a 36 percent year-over-year lift in traffic and 14 percent lift in conversions – ask yourself why and where. Was it driven by brand terms as a result of an aggressive offline campaign that is running?
Know why, take credit for your efforts, and be transparent when you’re riding the wave of brand terms. Transparency and honesty go a long way.

External Influences

It’s easy to get caught up in your own site and analytics and forget about external factors that impact your program’s performance. One of the most critical is seasonality. It can impact everything from traffic volume to competitive pressure and conversion rate.
Many verticals have peak seasons, some more dramatic than others. These peaks are sweet spots, and you should be planning around them.

The graph above is an example of peak query volume for a client in the home services vertical. Knowing that 45 percent of the annual query volume occurs within a three-month window is critical knowledge and impacts both what you do and when you do it. Google Insights for Search is a great tool to model this data.

Benchmarks & Baselines

Early on in my SEO endeavors I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and capture benchmarks that I missed as I was begging to work on a program. Live and learn.
Fortunately, you’ll have many of the most critical KPIs captured within your analytics package. Obviously you will want to capture a benchmark of the rankings of keywords you are focused on.
A few suggestions: Use SEMRush to capture a more holistic view of all keywords that are ranking as you begin. You might be surprised at what you find here. Download this, and keep it! Watch the growth in non-brand terms that rank over time. Consider the same for inbound links. It’s a snapshot in time, so be sure to take the picture before you begin. Open Site Explorer makes it easy. Do the same exercise for major competitors so that you can track their velocity versus your own. These all become compelling stories over time.

Track Your Calls

Whether your goal is to be driving leads or revenue, you should be taking credit for organic conversions that are resulting in the call center. More than 90 percent of the businesses we’ve encountered have overlooked this – even in instances where they are tracking call center conversions from paid search.
The technology is there (e.g., ClickPath), and if your business model is reliant on call center activity for conversions, the information available through this tracking typically opens up new opportunities and gives you a much more accurate view on the entirety of the results you’re driving.
This is just a snapshot of some of the tracking and analytics themes that are performance drivers, but certainly not the entire list. I welcome you to add to it through your comments, as your insights can likely help others who find interest in this topic.
And that wraps up our four-part series on Successful SEO Tactics. If you missed them, check out Keyword Selection, On-site Optimization, and Off-site Optimization. Hopefully, you’ve found the information relevant and useful. Good luck in your organic efforts!
By: Ryan Woolley,

Top 10 SEO Myths… Dispelled

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:05:00 +0000

In continuation to a relatively popular article I wrote last month on top web analytics myths, I thought I would expand upon the theme of dispelling myths again this month. This time, I turned to some fellow Search Engine Watch contributors to help crowd-sourced a list of favorite SEO myths we've heard over the years. In no particular order, these are our top 10 SEO myths… dispelled.

1. [Insert Fortune 500 Company] does it that way, so it must be right.

If you're looking to the Fortune 500 for SEO tips or reverse engineering their “SEO campaigns”, stop now; F500 doesn’t “get” SEO. Unfortunately, this fact was made famous in several Conductor Research studies over the years, but hit infamy when news hit about bad linking practices at JCPenney earlier this year.

2. Onsite SEO doesn’t matter.

Internal links, title tags, semantic mark-up, and clean code are just some of the onsite SEO factors that will contribute to significant improvements in rankings, usability, and indexing.

3. Paid links are bad or buying links can get you banned in Google.

Paying for links is not always bad. Consider products and services that cost money to use but generate links to your website. These may include directory listings, advertorial content, sponsorships, press releases, etc.
In addition, the relatively recent argument that using paid links will spell doom and gloom for your site should be taken with a grain of salt. Are there ways you can sink your rankings using paid links? Absolutely. Are you going to get banned on Google for strategic placements of paid links? Probably not.
Obviously there is a white hat/black hat/gray hat blur on this point, so please feel free to discuss and comment below.

4. Keyword density doesn’t matter.

This myth is a no-brainer: search engines use algorithms to calculate relevance of content on a page. How would anyone expect search engines not to use keyword density on that page to determine subject matter?

5. Look what I did in [insert non-current year here].

Old SEO tactics are about as useful as worn car tires. Will they work? Maybe, but you’re better off spending time and money to improve your content, fix technical issues, and build links rather than spinning your tires on lame tactics.

6. Matt Cutts [or insert Expert Name or Blog here] said it [insert year here] so it must still be true.

It has never been more obvious that Google’s search algorithm changes significantly several times per year. In addition, hundreds of other signals can influence rankings with varying degrees of weight and decay unevenly over time.
Anything written by Matt Cutts or SEOmoz several years ago should likely be stricken from the record as the game has indeed changed. Google has also changed their tune in terms of public relations with respect to SEO, with Cutts appearing and speaking in greater frequency on expert panels and in videos posted to the official Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel.

7. Content is king.

This mantra has been echoing through the vast conference halls of online marketing for far too long. While content, site architecture, social media and even technical intricacies can contribute to search ranking nirvana, they pale in significance compared to the SEO power of links. Although this argument may be a little “chicken and egg”, it should be noted that we didn’t rule out the possibility for a balance between content and links in the organic search monarchy.

8. Stop paying for keywords that you rank for organically.

There has been a long-standing debate on which is more important – SEO or PPC – but the truth is success in either is mutually beneficial. Rather than turning off paid search completely as organic rankings improve, try to leverage high organic rankings for higher quality score (and therefore lower cost per click).

9. Meta tags have a huge impact.

One might argue that meta descriptions have some impact on search rankings, if Google chooses to utilize them in the search results, but meta keywords died several years ago. Please let them rest in peace.

10. You can’t hurt a site with bad links

In general, bad links scattered across your inbound link profile aren't generally going to hurt your rankings. However, if you're the unwitting recipient of a significant amount of bad links overwhelming the good and you don't do something about it, you could be in for some trouble.
The best protection against spam links or bad links is to be proactive. Measure inbound links on a routine basis, keep an eye on unusual inbound linking, and enact a good link building regimen.
Thanks to SEW contributors Michael Bonfils, Rob Chant, Thom Craver, Simon Heseltine, Kristine Schachinger, and Frank Watson for sharing their SEO myths.
As usual, we're anxious to hear from our community of readers. Heard a doozy of a myth lately? Disagree with one of the above? Let us know!

By: Garry Przyklenk,

PPC Ad Optimization: This Week, Don’t Diss the Tweak!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:05:00 +0000

When it comes to PPC ad copy optimization, there are generally two schools with few practitioners working both approaches.

Fresh Approachers: The school of wholesale rewrites and the testing of new approaches, alternate messaging, and creative ad copy.
Tweakers: The school of one-variable-at-a-time, refining what’s already proven to work, and making small tweaks to language.

But the good news is that you don’t have to be an exclusive subscriber to either. Enough writing and testing will show you that optimal improvement requires both approaches, though I often find a fair amount of resistance to the worth of the tweak. It’s almost as if some clients feel that small changes can only produce small results, or that it isn’t worth paying for merely “tweaked” ad copy. (Stop nodding, your neck will hurt!)
So this week, I want you to look those tweak-haters in the eyes and say:
First, it’s psychological change in the prospect, not the physical change in the ad, that’s important to results.
The question in evaluating an ad tweak is not, “how many words or phrases has the writer changed?” but “how much does the new ad improve or alter that ad’s meaning and persuasive power within the mind of the searcher?”
For example, the difference between, say, “Put money in your pocket” and “Puts money in your pocket” in terms of a headline for a metal detector, isn’t the difference of one measly letter, but the difference between an invitation for an opportunity to do some work, and a gadget that’ll seemingly do the work for you (at least on a connotative level).
Physically it’s one letter; psychologically, it’s a much bigger difference than that!
Second, if you’re not testing both fresh approaches and tweaks, you’re probably testing great approaches with inferior wordsmithing.
In other words, what’s to keep from your testing a bad execution of an optimal approach, but passing it over for a better execution of an inferior approach? Nothing! Because you’re never tweaking the execution to find out.
So if you’re not testing tweaks, it’s very likely that you’re not getting the mileage you ought to be getting out of all those “fresh approaches” you’re testing.
Taking this into account, check out the tweaked PPC ad below:

Only two words distinguish the winning ad from the losing ad:

“Enhance” vs. “Improve,”
“Fun” vs. “Scientific”

What impact do you think these minor tweaks had on improving the ad’s CTR? Five percent? Ten percent?
No, the winning ad improved CTR by whopping 30 percent because the difference between “enhance” and “improve” isn’t just a slight tweak between synonyms. After all, advertisers sell male enhancement products, not male improvement products, right? “Enhance” doesn’t imply the need for improvement, but “Improve” does.
And when you’re looking to play Brain Training Games, “Fun” is more promising than “Scientific.” Yes, you want the games to be scientifically proven, but that’s not the same thing as “Scientific” is it?
So take a tip and this week, don’t diss the tweak! Always make sure you’re cycling in both fresh rewrites and tweaks for your PPC ads to make sure they reach their optimal performance
By: Noran El-Shinnawy

Our Top 10 Picks for WordPress Plugins

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:03:00 +0000

Wordpress is one of the most popular web publishing platforms due to its ease of setup, low cost and customization potential. Since its inception in 2003, it has been downloaded over 25 million times and because of its mass appeal, developers have created a whole host of plugins that add increased functionality and flexibility to the already robust platform.

As of the time of this article, over 16,500 plugins are available with over 222,386,280 downloads and counting. Which plugins are top rated? Which ones will help your website perform optimally?

Though your specific type of website will outline the various plugins you will need, there are some top picks we feel you should consider.

If you have a favorite plugin that isn’t mentioned, please let us know in the comments!

1. Wordpress SEO by Yoast

With over 540,000 downloads and a near perfect rating, Wordpress SEO by Yoast is one of our top picks for SEO plugins. Here are some of its features:

Post Titles & Meta Descriptions -You will also see snippet previews of what your description will look like in the search engines

Robots Meta Configuration – You can adjust nofollow options on a per post basis.

Breadcrumb menus

Robots.txt and .htaccess - You can edit your .htaccess and robots.txt files using the built-in file editor.

301 Redirects

RSS Feed Options

Many more features…

Here is a snapshot of one of the admin screens:

2. Jetpack

JetPack is a plugin bundle that includes visitor stats, social media sharing tools and short codes. More features are planned for the future as well. See the screenshot below of what it looks like after first installation:

3. Disqus

Disqus is a comment system which allows for a more interactive blog commenting experience. The system promotes online communities with ease of sharing and interaction.

Some of Disqus’ features:

Threaded comments and replies

Twitter mentions

Approval or rejection of comments via email

Aggregated comments

Subscribe and RSS options

SEO friendly comments

Increased exposure and readership

4. WPTouch

With the newest technologies taking the mobile world by storm, this plugin can't come at a better time. I have not downloaded this plugin personally but with over 2.5 million downloads and rave reviews, it is worth a mention.

WPTouch transforms your Wordpress site into a mobile-friendly version when viewed from iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung Touch and Blackberry devices. You can customize your website's appearance and give your visitors the option to switch back and forth from WPTouch view and your regular theme.

5. WP Greet Box

This plugin promotes a more welcoming user experience for visitors by displaying messages for them when they land on your site. You have the ability to customize these messages based on the the website from which your visitors came. For example, if a user visits your site from Twitter, you can customize a message for them to tweet your post. You can also create default messages for new visitors who are not referred by another site.

Here are some of the default messages that come with the plugin. You can edit and customize as needed as well as remove the function from individual posts:

6. W3 Total Cache

Recommended by some of the top minds in the industry, this plugin improves the user experience of your site by enhancing your blog’s performance, reducing download times and protecting your blog from unexpected high traffic surges.

Some of the benefits as listed on the plugin page:

At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in YSlow or significant Google Page Speed improvements) when fully configured

Improved conversion rates and "site performance" which affect your site's rank on Google.com

"Instant" subsequent page views: browser caching

Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly

Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages

Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods

Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds

7. Limit Login Attempts

If you are a current Wordpress user, you most likely have experienced at least one hacking attempt. To combat this heinous activity, this plugin limits login attempts once a specified number of times has been reached. You can customize the number of login attempts as seen in this screenshot of the admin panel.

Without this plugin, Wordpress allows unlimited login entries, which makes it easier for hackers to discover passwords.

8. Akismet

Akismet is the most popular plugin to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. You can review each comment and approve/disapprove them before they are published. The plugin comes default with every Wordpress download. You will simply need to activate it and follow the instructions to retrieve and save your API key.

9. Contact Form 7

This plugin is simple and effective and gives users the opportunity to display a contact page without messing with any code. The forms are customizable and support CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering.

10. Sharebar

Sharebar adds a customizable share box to the left side of a blog post. I like this box because it moves with you when you scroll down the post and it is easily recognizable. You can also remove the sharebar from individual posts as well. When Auto mode is set to ON, the Sharebars are added automatically.

A Few More…

There are a few more plugins I must add to the mix. Every marketer needs to track visitors and stats to improve and grow. Here are my two top picks for analytics and visitor tracking:

Google Analytics for Wordpress
WP-Click-Tracker

By: Jenna Scaglione

فیس بک کا مستقبل خطرے میں؟

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:27:00 +0000

اکیسویں صدی کو آئی ٹی کے عروج اور مقبولیت کا دور قرار دیا جاتا ہے جتنی ترقی اور اصطلاحات آئی ٹی کی اس صدی میں آئیں اس سے پہلے کبھی نہ دیکھی گئیں اور آئی ٹی کی وسع اور تیزی سے مقبولیت اختیار کرتی ہوئی ایجادات میں سے انٹرنیٹ سر فہرست ہے ۔انٹرنیٹ کی مقبولیت کی وجہ یہ ہے کہ وہ اپنے اندر منفرد سی سحر انگیز دنیا بسائے ہوے ہے ایک اندازے کے مطابق روزانہ اربوں ڈالروں کی سرمایہ کاری ا نٹرنیٹ پر کی جاتی ہے یہ صارفین کو E-Marketing, اور E-Commerce, E-Learning, E-Banking جیسی بہت سی کار آمد سروسز آن لائن گھر بیٹھے فراہم کر رہا ہے یہی وجہ ہے کہ جو دنیائے عالم کو مقناطیس کی طرح اپنی طرف کھینچ رہا ہے۔
انٹرنیٹ کی مقبولیت کی ایک وجہ سوشل نیٹ ورکنگ بھی سمجھی جاتی ہے جو ایک عرصے سے دنیائے عالم کے فاصلوں کو کم کرنے کے لیے کوشاں ہیں جن میں مقبول ترین سوشل نیٹ ورکس Twitter, LinkedIn اور MySpace سمجھے جاتے ہیں جو صارفین کے دل جیتنے کے لیے دنیائے عالم میں اپنا قلیدی قردار ادا کر رہے ہیں۔ حالیہ ہی میں دنیائے انٹرنیٹ کے مقبو ل ترین سوشل نیٹ ورک Facebook نے آ کر نہ صرف دوسروں کے دانت کھٹے کر دیے ہیں بلکہ سوشل نیٹ ورکس کی دنیا کو چار چاند لگا دیے ہیں۔
ایک محتاط اندازے کے مطابق دنیا بھر میں آٹھ ارب سے زائدکے لوگ فیس بک استعمال کرتے ہیں اور صرف پاکستان کے صارفین کی تعداد ایک کروڑ سے زائدہے ۔فیس بک کی اتنی مقبولیت کی وجہ اسکا آسان فہم اور پر کشش انٹرفیس ہے یہی وجہ ہے کہ وہ چند ہی سالوں میں سوشل نیٹ ورکس کی دنیا میں سر فہرست آ گئی اور سالانہ اربوں ڈالر کا منافع کمانے لگی مگر آج اتنی ترقی و مقبولیت حاصل کرنے والا سوشل نیٹ ورک مستقبل میں گرتا اور ڈوبتا نظر آ رہا ہے۔
حالیہ ہی دنوں میں دنیائے انٹرنیٹ کی ایک اور مقبول و معروف کمپنی گوگل نے اپنا نیا سوشل نیٹ ورک Google Plus کے نام سے متعارف کروایاہے ۔ ماہرین کے مطابق جو مستقبل کا سب سے مقبول اور جدید سوشل نیٹ ورک تصور کیا جا رہا ہے اس جدید سوشل نیٹ ورک کے منظر عام پر آنے سے قبل ہی کروڑوں لوگوں نے اسمیں شرکت کی درخواستیں دائر کر دیں۔ا سکی اتنی مقبولیت کی وجہ اسکا جدید انٹرفیس جس میں وڈیو کانفرنسنسگ، گوگل پروفائل ، گوگل سرکلز جیسی بہت سی دوسری سروسز کا متعارف کرانا کے ساتھ ساتھ ایک وجہ لوگوں گا گوگل پر اعتماد بھی ہے یہاں یہ بات قابل ذکر رہے کہ گوگل اس سے پہلے گوگل سرچ انجن، Youtube,اور Blogger, Gmail, Adsense, Adword جیسی اور بہت سی سروسز سے صارفین کا دل جیت اور دنیائے انٹرنیٹ میں مقبولیت حاصل کر چکا ہے ۔ماہرین کے مطابق گوگل اپنی ان منفرد خصوصیات کی وجہ سے یہ بازی بھی جیت جائے گا اور اسے فیس بک کا حریف بن کہ مقبولیت حاصل کرنے میں دشواری کا سامنا نہیں کرنا پڑے گا جسکی وجہ سے اربوں ڈالروں کی سرمایہ کاری کرنے اور اتنی مقبولیت حاصل کرنے والی فیس بک کا مستقبل اب خطرے میں نظر آ رہا ہے اور سوالیہ نشان بن کر رہ گیا ہے۔

حافظ محمد عثمان

8 Durable SEO Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:48:00 +0000

Recent changes to Google’s search ranking algorithms and highly publicized search penalization of well-known brands, have caused much angst in the SEO community. However, Google’s changes to its algorithms aren’t new.
Seasoned SEOs have experienced major algorithm changes over the last decade. In fact, Google has confirmed making on average at least one change per day to its search algorithms. Clearly change is here to stay.

How do you minimize the impact of these inevitable changes? Focus your efforts on the durable elements of SEO. These are the cardinal elements of SEO that will stay true regardless of Google’s ongoing improvements to its algorithms.
These eight durable elements will withstand the test of time because they are aligned with Google’s explicit statements and implicit motivations. Here’s a rundown of these elements and practical steps you can take to align your website with them.

1. Basic On-Page SEO Rules

The basic keyword SEO rules per the Google Webmaster’s SEO Guide are easy to communicate and easy to follow. Google wants you to follow these rules, because it makes crawling easier for their bots, which leads to better results for users, and in turn, helps Google with market share.
Make sure your pages are optimized for these basic SEO rules. Include target keywords in your URLs, titles, meta tags, H1s, etc. Determine which pages rank for which keywords. Then use the right keywords to double-down your efforts on these pages.

2. Inbound Quality Links

An inbound link from an external website to your website signals to Google that the content it’s pointing at is relevant to the subject surrounding that link. Quality inbound links aren’t easy to amass and they require your content to be good enough for someone else to reference. For these reasons, quality inbound links are believed to have the biggest impact on ranking.
Continue building your inbound links through white hat content syndication and promotions. Create unique content that others will want to reference and link to. Build relationships with other web writers, so they are aware of your content.

3. Authority

Google’s Internet is a meritocracy and authority is essentially your assigned status within this order. To date, Google has confirmed using only Google PageRank and social media authority as the two types of authority signals in their ranking algorithm.
A website’s authority is factored into rankings. There will always be those who attempt to game the system rather than advance on merit, so diminished authority is one way Google punishes fraud.
Build your authority by creating unique content and follow white hat practices. Build relationships with authoritative sites and users. Pursue links from them to benefit from their authority too.

4. User Experience

Google wants their users to be satisfied. If Google gives high ranks to bad websites, with terrible designs, slow page load speed, and difficult-to-navigate pages, users will look for alternative search solutions.
A fast page load speed and a low bounce rate are two measureable indications of a good user experience. Additional qualitative measures include a nice design, easy navigation and a good UI.
Basically, anything that makes a user remain on your site and read more. Keep your site updated, measure your bounce rate and page load speed, and create clear alignment between the keywords you target, your content and the experience you’re creating for your visitors.

5. Freshness

If relevancy is the name of the game, then freshness is its nickname. The world is evolving and so is the web, and freshness of content will always be an indication of a site keeping up with the world. Freshness is a supporting factor to a site’s authority and plays a huge part in news ranking.
Keep creating new content as well as updating existing content. Link to it internally from indexed pages as well as syndicate it on social media. Register your site and submit a sitemap to Google. If you have a news site, register to be on the Google News Index.

6. Diversity

To borrow from the capital investment world, diversification minimizes your systematic risk allowing you higher overall return on investment, and it would appear Google follows this rule. Google prefers diversity in the format and content of its results.
Use multiple formats to deliver your content on the same page – video, presentations, images – and publish unique pages for diverse content to optimize for long tail terms. Submit a unique sitemap to Google for formats other than text.

7. Feedback

In order to gauge their effectiveness, Google must collect feedback on its work. From machine input, like click through rate and bounce rate, to human input, like human evaluators, Google’s “manual intervention” and Google +1, Google will keep collecting feedback to improve its results.
Use only white hat tactics, be relevant and optimize your pages to the actual content on them. In addition, syndicate, promote and give people an easy way to share their feedback.

8. Compatibility with Updated Technology

Being compatible with new technologies such as new browsers is important to the overall user experience. Freshness is always good practice when it comes to being on top.
As an example, consider mobile devices. With the emergence and rapid growth of the mobile market, we can see how and why, in the future, Google will discount sites that aren't mobile device-compatible.
Make sure your site is up-to-date with the latest mainstream technology. For example, verify that your mobile site is indexed by Google and submit a mobile sitemap.

Summary

These are the eight durable rules of SEO. Follow and implement them on your website to maximize your SEO results and maintain your website rankings over time.
By: Erez Barak

4 Things to Consider Before Investing in SEO Software

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:55:00 +0000

SEO software is a great tool for the DIY site owner or in-house employee looking to take control over their site’s SEO. It can help streamline the components of on- and off-site SEO, bring all your SEO activities into one place for you to more easily manage and more. There is no shortage of great SEO software available for purchase either. But before you jump the gun and download the latest and greatest SEO software you have to ask yourself, “is this the right decision for me and my site?”
Here are 4 things to take into consideration before purchasing SEO software:
Might be as expensive as hiring an SEO consultant
Some SEO software platforms can be incredibly expensive; you might find yourself shelling out hundreds dollars a month for any given SEO software platform. At what price point does it just make more sense to forgo the software and hire an actual person to handle your SEO? While the cost of an SEO consultant might vary on what kind of campaign you’re trying to implement, it might be more cost effective in the long run to hire an SEO services provider instead of buying the software.
For one thing, the SEO provider is a real person dedicated to the success of your website. They’ll be able to build a custom campaign that takes your business goals and assets into account. While SEO software might help streamline the process, it can’t do your SEO for you—an actual person will take the full load off of your shoulders so you can focus on other things. An SEO provider will also know how to leverage your other online activities such as social networking and your business blog for SEO so you get even more value for their work. SEO software might not be able to that as easily.
Account for the learning curve
Just like any other software you’ve ever used (either in your professional or personal life), you have to learn how it works before you can take full advantage of what it has to offer. You have to remember to factor in that learning curve into your SEO calendar. Do you have the time to set aside a few hours every day so you can learn the ins and outs of your new SEO software? If you don’t understand all the facets of your SEO software, then you aren’t able to take advantage of all it can do for you, meaning a good chunk of the price of purchasing that software is going to waste.
For comparison, consider Microsoft Excel. Just about everyone can make a list of numbers in Excel and add them up, but how many people know how to really use Excel to perform complex calculations and equations? Not nearly as many. If you want to use SEO software well, you need to become an expert at it. That isn’t going to happen overnight.
Do you have the time to really use it effectively?
After you factor in time for learning how your new SEO software works, you also have to remember that you still need to use it! If the software is just going to be sitting on your desk, what was the point? Don’t buy the software in the hopes that one day you’ll figure out how to work it into your schedule. If you don’t have the time to implement and use the software now, chances are you won’t any time soon. It would be better to invest the cost of the SEO software in an SEO consultant who can take all the work off your hands.
Still have to learn the basics of SEO
SEO software is a tool, but you still need the basic SEO knowledge to make it work for you and your site. For example, Microsoft Word can’t teach you how to write, but it makes the writing process easier—that’s what an SEO tool can do for you. As a site owner, you will still have to learn the basic vocabulary of SEO, learn to identify white hat from black hat link building techniques, figure out how to integrate your SEO and social media marketing efforts and more. Your SEO software is only going to know what you do!
By: Nick Stamoulis

What cool new websearch ideas should Google launch in 2012?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:07:00 +0000

Even though this year is nowhere near finished, a lot of people at Google are already thinking about things to launch next year. So I wanted to put the question out: what cool things would you like to see Google launch in 2012?
For example, in 2011, we launched hundreds of search quality changes that might not be noticeable, along with a few high-impact changes. But we also added new ways to search, like the ability to search by image and search by voice. We’ve beefed up our social search, and continued to make search faster.
So take a minute to think about potential search features, products, or changes that we could launch next year. As a user (not as an SEO/webmaster/publisher), what cool piece of technology would you like to see Google launch in 2012?
By: Matt Cutts

WordPress Sucks: Impress Search Engines With These Alternatives

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:13:00 +0000

With the recent WordPress security vulnerabilities, hacked themes, exploits, and all sorts of madness floating around, it was only a matter of time before search engines started to pipe in and penalize “vulnerable” sites.
If your site is clean and clear, you have nothing to worry about, right? I don’t think so.
Considering that WordPress is so blatantly easy to install, configure, and get up and running, it has become the spammers choice for mass site deployment.
You only have to dig so deep to find services like LinkFarmEvolution and other mass WordPress posting services that offer to get your article “syndicated” to more than 5,000 websites instantly.
In essence, WordPress is a PC. Everyone uses it. With that, everyone is trying to exploit it for gain.
There are tons of other content management systems out there, the Mac’s of the CMS world if you will. Let’s start looking into some of them.
Note: You can fix most of these problems with WordPress by simply staying up to date, and, a variety of other methods which I will talk about at a later date.
For now, let’s talk about one reason why you should move to something other than WordPress: It isn’t WordPress and search engines will love your site moreso for not being WordPress.
Think about it: effort = reward. If you slapped together a website using a cheap theme and launch it on the web, do you really deserve to be ranked higher than someone who invested time and money into a designer, writing, and well structured thought out compliant code?
So here’s my short list of “CMS” or “blog” like systems that will get your website up and running almost as quickly as WordPress, without being WordPress.

OctoPress: Sophisticated, made for hackers, and it has “press” in the name. What more do you want?
Jekyll: OctoPress is based on Jekyll. You can even import your existing WordPress site into Jekyll using a script.
Textpattern: Easy to use, very flexible, feels like WordPress.
MovableType: Before WordPress there was Greymatter and MovableType.
FeinCMS: Django based CMS.
Notepad (or TextMate): Yes, it isn’t a system, but sometimes hand coding is simply the best way to go.

By: Gary-Adam Shannon,

Now Google Could Make Your Wallet Lighter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Early today Osama Bedier Vice President of Payments announced through the official Google Blog that the Search Engine Giant had delivered on its May promise to create an app that would make the fat consumer wallet stuffed with credit cards look thin. Google Wallet opened its account on a limited scale with its first partner Citi Master Card using Sprint and First Data. The tap and pay Google Wallet does not require you to use your phone and the Near Field Communication. ( Below Photo posted at GigaOm )

The video clip showing a demo of Google Wallet in action using a Sprint Nexus 4G phone, had a satisfied customer offloading his overstuffed wallet packed with credit cards, claiming ‘ it is serenity now’.
Google also announced that it will soon go full throttle after the required incorporation of ‘air update’ and further up gradation of software for the next roll outs. It confirmed that Visa, Discover and American Express have made available their NFC specifications that could enable their cards to be added to future versions of Google Wallet. It also introduced the Google Prepaid card, which can be funded with any existing credit card and added a $10 introductory bonus to early activators who would set up their Google wallet Accounts before end of the year.
Google Wallet had announced its intent to set up an open commerce ecosystem, a statement that has been differently interpreted by analysts. While most have taken the announcement at face value understanding that it was the ease of operation that Google was talking off, a few have interpreted it as an add on venture for using Google’s mountain of cash pile that exceeds $ 30 billion as of date.
They claim that Google could mean effectively that it would want to get into the consumer driven credit card market and enable interest rationalization in credit transactions for merchants and users, something that could give headache to the existing credit card companies. Whatever be the outcome, the Google Wallet business seems a promising diversification for the search engine giant in search of new avenues for its global domination plan.
By: Sandip Sen

What Might Google+ Improvements Mean for Marketers?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:23:00 +0000

It’s been about 90 days since the Google+ project began and the proud parents of the bundle of joy are still oooh-ing and awww-ing over their 3-month-old. The site has seen more than 100 improvements, the most recent of which rolled out Tuesday. Let’s examine a few of those improvements and what it can mean to marketers.

Phone Hangouts

In a Skype inspired move, Google+ now offers live hangout streaming on your mobile phone. Only supported on Android 2.3+ phones with front facing cameras, this app is now available in the Android Market for download.

Broadcast Hangouts

Speaking to a large audience just got a little bit easier. The recent launch of Hangouts On Air allows you to interact with a large group of your Google+ buds, or just view as a spectator. There’s even an option to record your session.
Think we’ll see Google+ only webinars, free training sessions, and even live concerts? Of course!

Screensharing

Additional add-ons include screensharing. Need to teach a lesson, share photos, or whatever else might be on your screen? Hangouts now have the addition of screensharing to make your experience more seamless.

Sketchpad

Hangouts now come with the additional functionality of a sketchpad. Certainly will come in handy when you’re trying to show a client, friend or family member a concept that can’t be put into words.
I can see this helping with creative content projects like Infographics or ad copy: real-time mockup in Google+. Also – quite an entertaining way to play hangman with Grandma.

Google Docs

Google+ has finally integrated Google Docs into Hangouts. Work together on a project, update an editorial calendar with a client, or explain financials in real-time. Heck, even get your taxes done in real-time and see how the numbers compute with your accountant in a hangout. Connect with a freelance writer and see how they are progressing with an article, piece of ad copy, or project you have contracted them for.

Named Hangouts

Have a need to talk to others in a particular industry or with similar interests? Look for a public hangout about that topic and connect. Or create your own. This is a great opportunity for an up and coming designer looking to reach out to fashion bloggers, other designers, or to collaborate on designs to do so no matter where they are in the world.
Use these hangouts to meet up with a support group and invite others to join in on the conversation as well. Hold an online networking event and connect with prospective customers too. The possibilities are endless.

Hangout API

Something developers will likely jump for joy over is the basic set of hangout APIs being previewed. Building real-time applications for Google+ hangouts is now within reach. Games are certainly on the horizon for Google+!

Search

Certainly something you’d expect would have already been integrated into Google+ from the search engine giant, but search is now available. Relevant content and connections will show up in addition to relevant posts. Easily sort through and find content related to what you’re looking for.

Open to All

Finally, after 3 months, Google+ is available to all. Anyone has the ability to join, and over the course of the next few days the entire globe can join Google+.
Additional Updates on the Way
We certainly haven’t seen the end of Google+ updates. Some on the horizon include:

+1ing comments from your iOS device
Improved support
More personalization options

By: Kaila Strong,

The 4 Ps of Search Engine Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:22:00 +0000

If there is any one reality to SEO, it’s that there are winners and losers. There are certain qualities that are necessary for any winning SEO strategy that can be broken down into the 4 Ps of SEO: proactive, persistence, perseverance, and patience.

Proactive

Being proactive is fundamental to being a good SEO for a couple of key reasons:

Latency Effect Between Work and Results

Any SEO work done today likely won’t affect traffic or revenue today. When it comes to SEO there is a latency effect as new changes to your website or your off-site profile (backlinks, social activities, etc.) get indexed by the search engines and filter into the SERPs.
How long the latency period is depends on the situation. If you put up a new targeted page on your site that gets indexed quickly, you could indeed start to see some new traffic from new keywords within a day. If you’ve made a lot of sweeping on-site and off-site changes to your website, it might take a month to see the results you’re looking for.
The idea here is that it will almost always take longer than you would like to get the results you want from the activities you’re doing today, no matter how hard and smart you work. Think and plan ahead. Make sure you factor in the long-term into your day-to-day activities.

Actionable tip: Use a calendar to plan all SEO activities ahead. Compare this on an ongoing basis against results tracking to make sure your plan is consistent with your SEO gains. This may also help you see whether you have space for innovation within your tactics.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

The other key point here is to be proactive as opposed to reactive – do your best to keep yourself ahead of the curve. Time and time again I see knee-jerk reactions to changes in the SERPs, and that is the worst thing you can do because new changes are made to the search algorithms all the time.
Firstly, you should have seen the changes coming and changed your strategy months ago. Secondly, if it’s already too late, you’re just going to need to accept reality and adjust your strategy accordingly.
You might be able to get back to where you were before, but it won’t happen overnight – sorry. Engaging in a huge flurry of SEO activity immediately following an algorithm update, for example, has a good chance of doing you more harm than good.

Actionable tip: Meet with your team regularly to discuss the trends and whether your strategies require adjustment. Where do you see the industry in two years? Five years? Make sure your strategies are in line with long-term trends and are built to last. That way you’ll be more likely to ride out the future Panda-type algorithm updates with no trouble and stay ahead of the curve.

Persistence

SEO isn’t something you can spend a few weeks doing, and then sit back and watch the money roll in. In just about any given niche, several or even dozens of other individuals or groups are attempting to beat you.
In competitive niches, the competition is going to be doing something every single day to reach that goal. Unless you’re doing the same or better, you’ll simply fail.
You need to work every single day at something that contributes to your SEO success. That could be something as simple as publishing new content or developing your branding, but it should all be considered within the scope of your global SEO strategy.

Actionable tip: Work harder than the others! The minute you stop working is the minute you stop winning, even if it takes a few months for it to become apparent.

Perseverance

No matter how strong your SEO strategy is, you don’t control the SERPs, the search engines do. What that means, fundamentally, is that you’re investing resources into something you have absolutely no control over. Yes, you can influence it (sometimes very heavily), but you can’t control it.
What that lack of control means is a high potential for volatility. Inevitably, you’re SEO campaign is going to have highs and lows. You might have huge successes, with money pouring into the coffers, followed by catastrophic losses that set you back months or even years (think of some of the Panda losers).
OK, those are extreme cases, but you need to be prepared to not always be winning, and to ride out the tough times. Those who persevere in SEO are those who eventually win.

Actionable tip: Ensure that you are prepared for possible periods of no-growth or decline. Preparedness will help you understand the reasons behind the poor performance, which in turn will help you to respond faster and more effectively to get back on track.

Patience

This is maybe the toughest of all the Ps. No one is really patient, especially in business – everyone has bills to pay, executives to report to, investors to satisfy… considering that financial planning typically works on a quarterly basis, it can often be difficult to justify SEO spend in one quarter when results might happen the next quarter.
The fact about SEO is that results happen on their own timetable, and that’s just the way it is. Results sometimes come later than expected, particularly if you are taking a softer, lower-risk approach.
You really want results next month? Sure, go ahead and build 200 new backlinks this week with the exact same anchor text for the big-money keyword… and see what happens (hint: don’t do that).
Want to win in SEO? Create a solid foundation and gradually – patiently – build on it.

Actionable tip: Take the evening off and smoke a cigar. You’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow and if you’re smart about it, the eventual payoff might be big.

By: Guillaume Bouchard

Understanding htaccess: Rewrite and Redirect

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:19:00 +0000

One of the tools available to system administrators that will work to make their job easier is their becoming conversant in .htaccess. This ability allows you greater control of your server's configuration and allows you to make changes without adjusting settings for the entire server. These changes are not only completed for the directories, but are picked up and used by subdirectories as well making your job easier and on the fast track to completion. Some favorite tools and tricks used by experts in system administration include redirects and rewrites.

Using Rewrites & Redirects

For redirects using optimal Search Engine Optimization (SEO) implementation, you first need to determine whether you want your redirects to point to the "www" or the "non-www" page of your website. It is crucial that whichever option you choose that you stay consistent.

This code below redirects non-www to www

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You can use this code sequence to direct any traffic from one website, a blog for example, and redirect it to another site permanently. This can be installed using this code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule .* http://www.newdomain.com/ [R=301,L]

Another similar tool that is used frequently for redirects is using a 301 redirect:

Redirect 301 /formersite.html http://www.yourdomain.com/bloghome.html
Redirect 301 /formersite2.html http://www.yourdomain.com/folder/Security

This code sequence changes a simple website page into a secure one with the use of SSL, assuming you have a dedicated SSL certificate available. Customers will be secure in the knowledge that their personal information is safe, especially on an e-commerce website. To implement this, use this coding:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Setting Website Access With .htaccess

Concerns about website security cannot be overlooked in today's technological world. Using .htaccess easily controls who has access to any part of your website. This includes development, testing and administrative access. To accomplish this, initially it is required that a file is set up to install a username and password. To build this file visit (http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/password/) and use the following coding to set a password protection for a specific directory on your website:

AuthUserFile /home/dave/.htpasswd
AuthName "My Personal Login"
AuthType Basic

require valid-user

Disallow Hotlinking For Optimal Security

One mistake that should never be overlooked is to allow hotlinking on a company website. Hotlinking allows copying of website content such as videos or images and enables embedding it into another website. This pulls on your bandwidth each time the website loads. This is easily avoided by preventing files from being hotlinked and stops the hijacking of bandwidth by thieves by using the following coding:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/handsoff.jpg [L]

Error 404s And Custom Error Pages

Another major tool used frequently in the use of .htaccess are custom 404 error pages. This script sends visitors landing on a bad page with a redirect to a valid page. These pages typically include a sitemap and/or search bar rather than the dead end typically found on 404 error pages. By creating an error page that actually assists visitors, you will help avoid frustration and keep visitors returning. Building a custom error page can be done by using this code:

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/badrequest.html
ErrorDocument 401 /errors/authreqd.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/forbid.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/notfound.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/server.html

Learning to use .htaccess will give you the options you need to administer and control your website to provide great customer service and an efficient, easy to manage website.
By: Site Reference

'The Power of Google' Senate Hearing is Must Watch TV Today

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:31:00 +0000

People should be watching the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights hearing on "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?" today. Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt will testify along with a number of his competitors who claim Google has hurt their business. NextTag, Yelp, and Expedia will be represented.

The Power of Google

The UK Guardian thinks Schmidt will "argue the company offers a level playing field for rival products – and is increasingly facing competition from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. He will argue that Google's position as the world's No 1 search engine belies a rise in alternative ways to find information online, pointing to Facebook and other social networks. Research from Nielsen last week showed that US internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other website."
Additionally, All Things Digital reports Schmidt will testify that “Microsoft’s Bing launched in June 2009 and has grown so rapidly that some commentators have speculated that it could overtake Google as early as 2012.”
What is being overlooked here is one is not the same as the other. Google isn't a social network - even with what they have on offer in Google Plus – it is a search engine. Comparing it to Facebook is like comparing radio and TV – true one impacted the other but they were different mediums.
Regardless, Google has prepared its own website, Facts about Google and Competition, which Google is calling a "viewer's guide" to the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee's hearing. Featuring seven talking points, Google preemptively tries to spin the following topics in their favor:

Google is a gateway to the web and controls what people see.
Google favors its own content.
Google's search ranking changes hurt a certain website or caused them to lose traffic.
Google deters other companies from innovating.
Google is hurting small businesses.
Google used third party reviews improperly for its Place Pages.
Google limits choice in the Android mobile operating system.

Startup search engine Blekko offered support to Google yesterday. In a blog post, "Blekko's not afraid of Google, why is Washington?", CEO Rich Skrenta noted that the products Apple has brought to market have done far more damage to Microsoft than the Department of Justice lawsuit they faced in the 1990s.
"The success of Google should be applauded on Capitol Hill, not derided," Skrenta wrote. "Let’s let entrepreneurs, technology and good old-fashioned innovation deal with Google. Consumers will always be the winners in that scenario."

How to Watch the Hearing

In the early days of television Senate subcommittee hearings were as popular as soap operas. "From the 1950s through the 1970s, televised Senate hearings played a major part in shaping public opinion on topics ranging from organized crime and alleged communist infiltration of federal agencies to the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandals," the U.S. Senate site explains.
Sadly, yet realistically, we no longer keep that close an eye on our public and corporate officials. The major networks aren't covering it live – we'll have to see how many minutes it gets in the news.
If you want to watch the Senate is streaming it and cable channel C-SPAN3 will air the hearing live at 2 p.m. ET. I wonder what most of the monitors will be tuned to in Mountain View today?
I'll be watching and I hope they discuss their impact on the analytics market when they bought Urchin and started giving away a service numerous companies were making a living charging varying fees for.

What Will Be Covered?

Search rankings will obviously be the large focus of the hearing. Given Expedia is represented by counsel, the purchase of ITA will no doubt be front and center. Yelp will be able to tell how their information has been usurped and dropped by Google, while NextTag will be able to present their case for loss in rankings.
While Google addresses the U.S. Senate they are also dealing with numerous antitrust issues in Europe and have court dates in numerous countries.
"Today Google, like Microsoft then, is both admired and feared. Google has used the riches from its dominance in search and search advertising to expand into video distribution with YouTube, smartphone software with Android and Web browsers with Chrome. It has added online commerce offerings in local retail and restaurants, comparison shopping and travel, and folded them into its search engine, prompting complaints that Google is giving its businesses preferred placement in search results," the New York Times noted.
What they are missing is they are buying into those areas where their major advertisers are. That Google knows conversion numbers of successful advertisers cannot be denied, whether they use such information for developing programs and products is unknown.
Have the manipulated results for their own benefit? There are numerous types of articles on this issue. The fact Google laid a trap for Bing by manipulating their results shows they can do it... whether it is done any other time and for what reasons is the big question.

Must Watch TV

People in our industry need to watch this hearing, as should the generic public, to understand exactly what this company does. Their latest Droid phone ad even plays with the attitude of them taking over. We really don't need a Big Brother and this may be the start of the break up of a dominant force in everyone's lives. Either way, it is must watch TV.
by: Frank watson

Basic SEO for Facebook Fan Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:19:00 +0000

Many have tried, and failed, to write a good post about how to SEO a Facebook fan page.
For example, optimizing the filename of your profile picture is one popular piece of advice that doesn’t really matter, considering Facebook just renames the file something like 198135_10150109366....jpg. Another popular tip: you should link to your main website from your Facebook page. Yes, you should for visitors. But this doesn’t optimize your fan page because Facebook just nofollows, redirects, and clusters your URL in a mess of code anyway.
So let's take a different approach to Facebook SEO today.
I want you to imagine that your Facebook fan page is your website – or another website for your brand at least. While it may not ever rank first for a keyword, you still want it to be optimized.
If you want to keyword optimize your Facebook fan page, these are the areas that actually pull SEO elements from your page's content for additional optimization.

Your Facebook Fan Page SEO

SEO title: The name of your page plus | Facebook.
Meta description: The name of your page plus the About description of your page, followed by | Facebook.
H1: The name of your page.

This is like the search optimization of the homepage of your fan page / website. If you didn't consider keyword optimization when you created it, and you have less than 100 fans, you're in luck. You can still change your page's name.
Two things to keep in mind aside from search optimization includes:

Branding: It may be more important to have your page as a recognizable brand than a specific keyword phrase.
Appearance: Whenever you comment as your page, or people tag your page, your entire name will come up, so if you're page is Your Brand - Keyword, Keyword, and Keywords it might look a bit excessive (and lead to less tagging).

Your title can be as long as you choose, but keep in mind the standard length of SEO titles (70 characters) before getting too crazy. Also, since your page name is also a part of your meta description, you might not want it to make it too long and overshadow that.
To edit your About information to make a great meta description, go to your page and Edit Page > Basic Information, and fill in the About field with a 140 character description like you would with any website meta description.

Facebook Fan Page Updates

SEO Title: The first 18 characters of your update.

If you’re posting a standard status update, the SEO title will be pulled from the first 18 characters (approximately 18 characters, sometimes a bit less). The following update by Search Engine Watch's fan page has a title of Yahoo Search, which is pretty good.

If you're posting a link to your fan page wall, you'll have an option to "Say something about this link..." – the first 18 characters of what you enter in this field are going to be the SEO title for the individual page of that status update.
If you don't post something there, the SEO title for your update will just be Facebook. Plus it won't take up as much real estate in someone's news feed, which means it will be less noticeable. So I would suggest that, regardless of whether you care about the SEO, you fill this part out when adding a link to your wall.

If you’re concerned about optimizing your updates while considering them as individual pages for your overall fan page / website (click on the timestamp for any update to see it on its own page), then you might want to consider sticking some keywords right at the beginning of your comment.
Using the above example, I could simply put the post category / main keyword as start the update such as Google Analytics and then write the rest of my comment. If I continued this trend with my updates, my fan page would have lots of "pages" underneath it optimized for my main keywords.
The best part is, unlike Twitter status updates that don’t go that far back, you can see your Facebook fan page updates at least two years – mine go all the way back to when I created my fan page, which was in February 2009.

Facebook Fan Page Notes

SEO Title: The title of your note plus | Facebook.
Meta Description: Your page name wrote a note titled the title of your note plus | Facebook.

Facebook notes – they don't get a lot of love anymore, but they do have a more controllable SEO title when you create them and, of course, they add to the additional "pages" underneath your fan page / website. Notes allow you to add lengthier updates to your fan page without having to take your fans offsite to get more of your content.
Some people use them to syndicate their blog posts on their fan page, but I find this feature is a little inconsistent. Unique notes, on the other hand, could add more value to your page.

Facebook Fan Page Discussion Topics

SEO Title: The title of your discussion's topic | Facebook.

Ever wanted a little forum / discussion board, but don't want to invest in forum software? Facebook has an often-overlooked discussion board, with each topic giving you a little SEO title credit.

It might be a nice place for you to have discussions with your fans that they don't necessarily want on your wall. If you don't have one on your profile already, you can get it by going to the Discussion Board and using the Add to My Pagelink to add it to your pages.
by: Kristi Hines

How To Improve A Sites Conversion Rate

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Building a successful and profitable site will ultimately depend on the amount of traffic your site receives. The content you produce and how much effort goes into promoting your site will help attract visitors and dictate the quality and how targeted that traffic is, but ultimately, how well your traffic converts will be the deciding factor in whether or not you have a successful and profitable web site.

Conversion rates are well documented as being poor across the internet. Between 1 and 3% conversion rates seem to be an almost standard rate across the web. Calculating a sites conversion rate is relatively straight forward; If 2 visitors out of 100 convert then your site has a 2% conversion rate. Most marketers will accept this and then focus on increasing the levels of visitors to their site, which in truth is never a bad thing. But it is important to remember that it is often easier to increase a sites conversion rate rather than its traffic and here are some of the best ways of doing that.

The road to increasing a sites conversion rate lies with the traffic it already receives, how that traffic got to your site, what pages they landed on, the keywords they used and the pages they viewed once they did hit your site. To get a clear view of your traffic you will need Google Analytics and you will also need to set up goals, conversions and funnels for your site. The data stored in your analytics program will help to give you a clear picture of your traffic and what they are doing on your site. You will also get to see what actions lead to a conversion, the pages they landed on before converting and the content they viewed that prompted them to take the action that you wanted them to. Replicating the elements that are successful will help to increase conversion rates on other sections of your site.

Google analytics will paint a picture of why some visitors converted while others didn’t. Using another tool by Google called website optimiser will also help your conversion rates. Your Analytics program will tell you which pages on your site helped to convince a visitor to take the action you wanted them to. Google’s website optimiser will tell you want elements on that page and in what combination will return the best conversion rate.

How to test?

If you are new to Google optimiser, then use a simple A/B test, this will allow you to test 2 versions of a page against each. Once you add the java script to the pages you want to test Google will begin to show the competing pages to your visitors and once it has gathered enough data to make a comprehensive decision on which page has yielded the best conversions you will have a winner. A/B testing will allow you to familiarise yourself with how testing works and the processes involved, to move your testing to a new level you will need to test the different pages elements and what combination of these elements will work best and you can do this with a multivariate test.

Test every element on a page and test multiple versions of each element

Google will take a lot of work out of putting these tests together. But it’s very tempting to set up multiple elements and just let the test run. Unless the page you are testing gets thousands of hits a day you will wait a long time before the results of your tests are in. Keep your tests small and you will see results and improvements in your conversion rates much sooner.

Improving your conversion rates is usually a slow process and to do it successfully you will need to have in-depth knowledge of your site, the traffic it receives and what has convinced your visitors to convert in the past. Once you know this you can build on this success and further improve your conversion rate.
By: Site-Reference

Avast Ye! Talk Like a Scurvy Pirate wit' Facebook, Twitter n' Google

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:13:00 +0000

This day is International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2011. Woefully ye noticed all ye pirates be speakin' a little different? Yarr, bein' a Monday, the grog fest be early this year, but yer mateys p'on the good ship Search Engine Watch wanted to give ye a jolly way to hoist the colors afore the moon haunts the seven seas. So, we made 'tis guide to be tellin' ye how to change ye Facebook blabber settin's to scurvy pirate speak, squawk on Twitter, 'n bring ye treasure huntin' on Google a wee bit more o' a ruckas.

Changing Your Language Settings on Facebook to Talk Like A Pirate

It's incredibly easy to change your language settings on Facebook. Simply:
1. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and locate the Language Settings link, which will display the current language setting you are using.

2. Click the link and a dialog box will appear. Click English (Pirate) to change the language setting change and then click 'Close'. Shiver me timbers, Facebook is now all piratey!

A warning comes with this salt-blastedly savvy tip. Turning your Facebook account language settings to English (Pirate) is so funny that you may never change back your settings again. The hazard being that you grow an unnatural habit for calling your friends wenches and sea dogs, refer to your family as kin and robustly congratulating newly-weds for "gettin' anchored".
Not only could such antics be construed as rude, but speaking from experience, you might find yourself wondering why no one else 'gets' your rampaging witticisms. The reason is because changing your language settings only changes what you see - not everyone else's. So, unless you encourage your friends to change their language settings too (which I heartily recommend you do), you may find yourself sharing a giant in-joke... with yourself.

Squawking on Twitter

Twitter's language settings does not currently support English (Pirate). However, if you cut and paste your tweet into this nifty little website, Post Like A Pirate, it will automagically get translated into pirate-speak right before your very eyes.

Click the Twitter link and it creates the tweet for you. The embedded Bit.ly link takes a user back to Post Like A Pirate, which should help your followers join in the shenanigans. After all, it's no fun raving like a lunatic on your own, right?

Treasure Huntin' on Google Pirate

Google, "Tha Old Seadog", has always maintained a swashbuckling version of their flagship at Google Pirate, which now has gleeful translations of their (relatively) recently introduced universal sidebar and plusbar.
There are many other silly versions of Google to be spied here, but as yet, there is no Gmail theme for pirates. Yet, there is a ninja theme. This has proven to be such a carbuncle in the backside of pirate fans that some are petitioning Google.

One Dastardly Tip for Ye Blackbeard SEOs

For those of you who prefer not to run any risk of walking the plank, a fun way to celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day, could be to translate your hand crafted blog posts into English (Pirate) using the plethora of translation tools available (there are subtle differences between the translations).
However, if you are feeling a little churlish this day, then you might want to weird out the web analytics teams in your competitors crow's nest by linking to a piratey translation of their site. The linked translation will force a dastardly duplicate copy of the site to persist on some 'inferior' search engines, such that said site may rank well enough to get traffic from search phrases such as "Blimey, That's Good", "I Needs Ya Gold", and "Stab that Crustacean!"
Such a motherload of curious search terms will surely have those landlubbers scratchin' their bonces!
By: Jonathan Allen,