Local search ranking factors seem to change at a fast rate, even eclipsing the normal rate of movement in what is already an insanely dynamic industry. I have been a big fan of following local search movement since I got into the industry a couple years back. Last year saw some big changes happen with local search, and I think 2013 is going to see just as big, or even bigger, changes than before. David Mihm does a survey every year with local search experts, and then releases the rankings on his blog based on the responses. Participants in the survey rank 90 possible positive factors and 18 possible negative factors that drive Google’s local search algorithms.

I am going to make four predictions I believe have a very good chance of being true when the local search ranking factors are released in 2013.

Google+ Local Pages Will Rise in Importance

This is far from a bold prediction, since Google seems hellbent on making their beloved Google+ relevant. Google+ Local was released on May 30, 2012, so the survey from 2012 still shows Places pages in the rankings. The quantity and quality of reviews are already extremely important for local rankings, and that is not going to change any time soon. More businesses are going to see how having an active, well-reviewed Google+ Local page can help their bottom line, and they are going to be making more of an effort to make sure their page stands out above the competition.

Quality/Authority of Citation Sources Will Become More Important Than Quantity

Just like everyone used to preach quantity of links over quality, quantity of citations has been more important than quality for years now with regards to local rankings. However, just like with links, I think Google is going to make a push for quality citations in the near future. It is simply too easy to submit your business NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) to any old directory you find to get a citation. For example, here in Chicago, local news sites like the Chicago Tribune or Chicago Sun-Times are going to be some of the best citations my business could ever get, because they are authority and locally-relevant. Those are the citations I want for my business, not some directory that gets no traffic and resides in the depths of the Internet.

Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain from Locally-Relevant Domains Will Go Up the Rankings

Links from locally-relevant domains are one thing that I am not going to be picky with when it comes to obtaining them. By default, local websites in your area are always going to bring high-quality leads to your business website because a) these people live in your area and b) they were interested enough in your product or service to click through to your website. Nearly all of the local websites I have come across have been ones that I would be ecstatic to receive a link from. If I see a spammy-looking local website, I simply skip over it and move on, just like I would any other spammy site. I believe the “quantity of inbound links to domain from locally-relevant domains” will go up in the 2013 local ranking factors because it is a great indicator of the popularity and reputation of businesses in the area.

Category Associations on Google+ Local Pages Will Go Down in Importance

Google has always seemed to turn up its noise at things you can easily do to influence rankings: meta keywords, meta descriptions, tags, and more. Marketers used to throw in all the keywords they wanted to rank for in the meta keywords slot, and sure enough, they usually would rank for it. Google quickly caught on and devalued meta keywords completely. Right now, if you own a restaurant and have “Brunch Restaurants” as one of your categories, it is much easier to show up in the A-G rankings for your “city + brunch” searches. I expect the category associations you include on your Google+ Local pages will be valuable for the next couple of years at least, but their importance will go down. Basically, the big G hates when you have control over something; they want their algorithm to decide what to rank your business website for, not you.

About the Author: Brian Klemm is an Inbound Marketer and SEO at Northbound Digital in Chicago Lakeview. Click here to learn more about his business. He enjoys following the Google algorithm updates and predicting local SEO changes. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.

The post Predicting 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Movement appeared first on High on SEO.

As you have seen there are numerous tactics in your SEO armour for 2013 and you should take on board and implement the suggested ideas to see a visible increase in your rankings. It may take some time to see the results but it will all add relevance for the reader and provide a solid platform for your complete SEO strategy. 

What is SEO in 2013?

A few months have gone by since 2013 began and it is now a good time to reinforce your SEO strategy for the coming months and have a strong second quarter. We have had time to digest the changes that took place in 2012 and it is now time to move forward.

SEO Needs for 2013

The main aim of websites is to be useful for the user and have value so you would in essence want to build a site for your user. However as competition is increasing you need to deploy a plan to get yourself to the top of the SERPs. Here is my list of essential tactics you will need to use:

Content – It all comes down to the value for the reader. Google has reiterated this for years now and this will continue this year also, so ensure your content is well written and relevant if you want the top spot.

A great example of this would be Wikipedia – Their entire site is based around great and unique content, and they rank for almost every keyword in the SERPbook – See what I did there?

Content Marketing – This is being called the next big thing and it has good reason to. Content marketing attracts backlinks and adds value to the reader. It is challenging as you will continually have to create new content and ensure that it is widely published with adequate social signals to gain any SEO value, but if you do it well, you’ll see the results.

A great way to work around this is setting up a blog for your company (on the same domain e.g. your-company.com/blog) Publishing content weekly and internal linking back to your Business pages, this’ll attract visitors from your content and add internal linking factors which Google loves.

Authorship Rank – This is a relatively new tactic and the full effects are still to be studied but it will have increasing value in 2013. It adds credibility to your website, creates a larger display of your site in the SERPs and adds authority to your domain, as well as benefiting from Social Engagement.

Example

Social Signals – These are a vital factor in SERPs and should not be taken lightly this year. Having a good amount of likes, shares, retweets and +1’s is what webmasters should be striving for in the coming year.

This also allows for great engagement in growing a fanbase and potential sharing your content to an even higher number of visitors.

Localisation – It is clear to see that Google has a preference for local websites and information; this means it will play an increasing factor this year. Therefore applying local SEO for your site will surely see your rankings rise considerably. This means making sure your Google Places listing is optimized, you have as many Directory listings as possible and a new stream of income for potential clients to grab your businesses information and make that ever important phone call.

Media – There is no question that the internet thrives off images and videos. Numerous studies have shown that content with a video associated rank higher than just content rich websites. You have to add relevant media to your sites wherever possible to enjoy an increase in SERPs.

Associating media with social signals is also a great way to achieve lead generation – Creating a YouTube channel and uploading videos on Tutorials, Guides and even Parodys can attract great attention and create sales.

Link Building – EEK! The time has come, 2012 changed the face of link building campaigns and in 2013, there’s not much difference! Creating relevant backlinks is the main 1 in our opinion, guest blogging, relevant blog commenting, social engagement, news articles and press releases are the current “top sellers” for Link Building but making sure your link profile only consists of High quality and Relevant backlinks is a must!

“Closing Credits” 

Thanks for reading this guest post, I’m Charles Floate – Owner of Rank2Bank – SEO, SMM & PPC Blog and SEO / SMM Expert for Bootcamp Media. I hope you have a successful SEO Campaign for 2013, and I hope these tips put some ideas into your head!

The post SEO in 2013 appeared first on High on SEO.

* Website content – people do well at looking after this. But do you at least have a contact page, portfolio, easy to see contact details (main page hopefully as well) Are you using landing pages for your online campaigns? If not, start at unbounce.org and test some stuff!

* Blogging – sometimes they do, often they are highly inconsistent and only blog about sessions. Learn from pro bloggers – read blogs ABOUT blogging.

* Photo galleries / portfolios – Not ONLY on your own site but on sites like Marketing Tool and Big Day Small World. When you do your own galleries, are they AS AMAZING as you can possibly upload? if not, reconsider.

* Contact page of your site – does it have a form and very little info? Go view the contact page of any major brand. If yours looks like theirs, fantastic. If not, figure out why.

* Microdata/authorship – are you using rel=author or some plugin to get authorship for your blog? (Your headshot photo should come up next to your listings. It usually results in about 20-30% increased clicks.

* Testimonials/Reviews – on Google, on WeddingWire, on theknot, on Yelp – no, not all. But what comes up when you google “your name photo” + reviews? (Hint: if you create a page on your site called “reviews” it will usually come up on page 1 then YOU control your reviews (Google highonseo reviews)

* Proofing – does your online proofing lead people to buy? Why or why not? Does it lead them to a place where someone can book you for portraits later? Or for their own wedding if they were a bridesmaid or whatnot? How are you using your proofing solution as a referral back to your own site, your branding and your awesome experience?

* SEO – are you on page 3 or below for your main keywords? You aren’t getting found, you aren’t booking that way and the money is going to someone else. How many good photographers are there? Every single one above you on Google is going to get seen before you. How many photographers would most brides look at before they get fatigued and it all blends together? If they don’t find their faves in the top 5, they may do another page – say 15-20 total. If you’re somewhere on page 6, game over for organic search traffic.

* Mobile marketing – are you doing mobile adwords? They’re cheaper usually. Do you have a mobile version of your site or a responsive web design? If not, 10-20% of your customers are gone again.

* Are you listed in local directories? Are you getting into the A-G of the map results because you’re setup properly on Google Local? Did you realize that the G result may be a “page 7″ result on a lot of searches but if they’ve done their local SEO right, they could jump EVERYONE but the A-F sites with less effort? 

* Are you listed on small business sites? Are you linked on the BBB with a good score? Have you ran a Groupon so you have a link from Groupon to your site? Are you using Paper.li, Scoop.it or Storify to create other ways for clients to find you? Have you ever even heard of those things?

* Major wedding sites – WeDJ, knot, WeddingWire, StudioLocator, bride.com, projectwedding, and other listing sites. WedAlert, local wedding boards (syracuseweddings.com, etc.) 

* Have you done the commentstorming I recommended over a year ago?http://www.highonseo.com/2011/07/commentstorming/ 

* Have you ever published a press release for hires, speaking engagements, etc?

* Better one – have you ever done a speaking engagement, teaching session or anything unrelated to WPPI or Imaging? State PPAs love guest speakers. Have you contacted a single person in the last 3 years to ask about speaking for their organization? Contacted any mom groups, church groups, local craft stores/shows, etc. about giving a photo class that you didn’t run through Groupon or Craigslist? Or did you even do one through those two? ANYthing resembling getting your name out?

* Do you publish blog posts to Google Plus? We know and i’ve mentioned a LOT how great of an investment of time G+ can be. Yes, not all your friends are there. So you have to meet NEW people? *gasp* That’s the point!

* When was the last time you seriously talked to 10-100 business owners in your area and offered them some photography service? Restaurants? Putting up prints in the doctors or dentist office in your small town? 

* Ever offered a jeweller cards to give to newly engaged couples to give them a free e-sesh? Sure it sucks to “give stuff away” – and it sucks to shoot 11 weddings next year. If you’re AMAZING, surely you could turn 80% of those or more into bookings. What if you had 15 new brides contact you because they were given a free esesh or even disk of images (value $500+!) if they booked you. 

* Facebook ads, Pinterest pins, Twitter conversations, are you in Flickr Groups, are you doing bridal shows? Handing out Moo cards is fun. Handing out 500 cards this year instead of 50 will make you a THRIVING success. Made some packages with videographers? Combine your services to book both at once? 

* Have you guest posted on a wedding (wedding planning, wedding photo, etc.) blog?

Clearly this stuff gets me riled up. This isn’t direct at anyone in particular but if you’re unhappy with the number of weddings you have for 2013, you didn’t do all this stuff. Remember Matt McGraw’s 300 thread? He talked about vendors, newsletter (are you collecting email addresses and if not, are you insane? lol) Are you advertising online? Offline? Are you focused on SEO? Are you getting published in the local paper? Do you still have a joke of a flash website that needed updating two years ago but you haven’t gotten around to it because you “will do it when you get editing caught up” and you haven’t managed it in 25 months? 

How many business cards are you currently carrying from other people’s businesses? Now how many are you carrying for yourself? Clear?

I’m going to repeat this until I’m frikking dead but what is your USP? Unique Sales Proposition – what makes you worthy of booking? It’s *NOT* PRICE AND PRODUCT. I’m sorry. I know that’s AN answer. And it’s an EASY answer. But it’s a terrible, freaking bad, obnoxiously soothing answer. You FEEL good that you have great product and a nice personality but you don’t make MONEY on that. Money comes when you really figure out what brides want, why they want it and how you can give it to them more, better, faster and smarter than everyone else.

Next time you do a bridal show, have a signup sheet for three pizza parties. Find a time that works for you and just invite 10 brides per time slot over for snacks or drinks. Whatever. ASK them what they were looking for. Ask them what they did NOT see. Don’t ask them if they want to sign up for an appointment to give you money. Don’t be foolish. Nobody wants to “come give you money.” But they probably DO want to come give you their opinions. People have LOTS of those. Especially brides. 

I’ve said before about blogs – “blogs can be great marketing if you have a call to action on them. Otherwise it’s a historical record.” Are you producting a piece of marketing or a historical record? 

Learn the stuff you want to know from experts. Stop learning how to market from photographers who booked 8 weddings in their career. Stop learning to blog from people who blog 10 weddings and that’s it. Stop learning sales from some photographer at WPPI. Learn from EXPERTS. 

Read, read, read, read, read. Read marketing blogs, sales blogs, advertising blogs (and if you think marketing, sales and advertising are the same thing, start there.) Read Seth Godin. Read Jay Levinson. Read Primal Branding. Read Selling the Invisible, Good to Great, Brand Aid, Never Eat Alone and read a crap-ton of blogs. Can’t find a good blog on what you want to learn? Search Twitter. There are links to billions of blog posts there about every topic you could ever want to learn. You can’t “learn” marketing from me in 30 minutes but I’ll be damned if I’m going to enjoy watching all my best friends in the world struggle because I didn’t spend a couple hours typing up what’s already in my head. 

Now GO DO SOMETHING!!!!! *rant, rave, pumped up!* 

A few links from the blog to help you, as well:

2013 Marketing Guide for Photographers - http://www.highonseo.com/2012/12/2013-marketing-guide-photographers/

Local SEO data & comparison - http://www.highonseo.com/2012/11/photography-seo-data-comparisons/

Who are you optimizing for? http://www.highonseo.com/2012/11/who-optimizing-seo-for/

SEO vs. Marketing – basic strategies:http://www.highonseo.com/2012/07/seo-vs-marketing-strategy/

The post Marketing Brainstorm for Photographers appeared first on High on SEO.

Marketers race far ahead of other online shoppers in purchases made using email, Facebook & Twitter and deal sites like Groupon and GroceryRun.  We small businesses may be more closely aligned with our target audience than a mega-brand but still, we aren’t exactly flying the flag of “normal consumer behavior.”  When trying to sell your own products, you may want to spend some time thinking about what the consumer wants, not what you want to sell them.

Marketers vs. Consumers By the Numbers

Check out this great infographic by ExactTarget and compare us SEOs and digital marketing magnates with our more “typical” consumers.

The post Marketers vs. Consumers By the Numbers [infographic] appeared first on High on SEO.

Part 2 - Tweepi + Listorious

This is part 3 of our series: 2 Apps are Better Than 1.  Today we are going to make 1+1=3 for the second time by combining Evernote and Dropbox  to help you save and backup professionally.  In this case, we’re actually using 3 Apps – Evernote, Dropbox and IFTTT.  Let’s get into it.

What is IFTTT?

Oh, let’s start with the fun one.  If ____ happens, do _______.  If this, then that.  Yes?  That’s what IFTTT is.  If something happens in one of your online accounts, do something in another.

If you update your Facebook profile photo, then automatically update your Twitter profile photo.

If you upload a photo to Flickr, then put a copy of that photo in Dropbox. (Just gave away the post, didn’t I?)

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a free online cloud storage space that lets users save and share documents, photos, and other files between computers.

What is Evernote?

Evernote allows you to save “notes” – text, images or webpages.  You can search, sort and save these notes on your own computer or online via a browser or smartphone.  Evernote lets you save “clips” of text or full pages.

So how’s this going to work?  IFTTT: Flickr to Dropbox to backup images

Evernote and Dropbox, as we said, allow backups and redundant saving automatically.  Do you want to backup every photo you upload to instagram?  Or every email you receive with certain text?

1) Sign up for an IFTTT account and login. Sign up for Dropbox (affiliate link, use dropbox.com if you care.)  Sign up for Evernote.

2) Click on “Create” (on IFTTT.com) or go to https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/new

3) Decide what you want to backup.  Let’s take photos as our example.  You want to backup every image you upload to Flickr and Instagram to Dropbox so you can be sure you have them.   You will see a link on if “this” so click the blue underlined “this.”

4) Now select Flickr.  Connect your Flickr by pressing Activate and then connecting through.  Now you can see all 5 triggers for Flickr.  Keep it simple “Any new public photo.”

5) There are no fields in public Flickr photos so click “Create Trigger.”  Now we’re up to “That.”  So press the blue underlined “That” and then add Dropbox and activate that channel like you did Flickr above.

6) Select “Add file from URL”  Continue on and you will see “Complete Action Fields” – these are normally filled in properly and you only need to press “Create Action.”

You should now see something that looks like this:

If you upload a photo to Flickr, then add that photo to Dropbox.  And this happens automatically once you finish by pressing “Create Recipe.”  You can deactivate recipes at any time, add new ones, browse, etc. and find other great uses.  Now we know you can backup photos.  Instagram works the same way.  Create a new recipe that has If (new photo upload) to instagram, then Dropbox.  Same thing.

Let’s talk about another use.

Google Reader to Evernote to save blog posts

You want to save an article in Google Reader to have accessible later.  Maybe you want to create a folder of great marketing posts for 2013.  Create a new recipe and for if this, use “Google Reader.”

Now we are going to create several folders in Evernote.  Create these:  Great Blog Posts and Read Later.  Let’s create our first recipe.

If … “New item tagged …”   This lets you tag a post in Reader before acting on it.  So let’s create a new tag called great.   Create Trigger. Click “That” and then Evernote.  If you want to change the Notebook (which folder in Evernote you are sending to) that’s fine – name it whatever you’d like, then Create Action.

How do we use this one?  Login to Reader.  At the bottom of each post you will see a G+ button, G+ share, a few other buttons and then “Edit Tags.”

Edit the tag, add a tag called great and press Save.  This post will now be saved to Evernote.

If you understand what IFTTT is doing and how this is all working, you are probably well past the point of needing me to explain.  You have the idea.  You can create any tags in Evernote and save any number of posts automatically.  Simply tag a post great, keep, read later, comment later, save to lists for end of the week wrapups, etc.

Want more ideas for IFTTT recipes and combinations?

Bitly to Evernote – to save a copy of every link you share.

Weather to Email – if it’s forecasted to be below 32 F / 0 C tomorrow, then send me an SMS to my phone.  If it’s going to rain, call my phone.

Twitter to Facebook/LinkedIn – If I change my Twitter profile photo, change my photo on Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress.

Browse and search public IFTTT recipes for more ideas.

The post 2 Apps are Better Than 1: IFTTT, Evernote + Dropbox appeared first on High on SEO.

This is part 2 of our series: 2 Apps are Better Than 1.  Today we are going to make 1+1=3 for the second time by combining Listorious and Tweepi to help you grow your social media following legitimately and quickly.

We know one great way to get noticed is to follow others.  They check out your profile, may follow you, and you gain a new follower.  Repeat often and you can easily grow your Twitter account legally (within the rules and within expected norms.)

What is Listorious?

Listorious has the best Twitter people search on the web so you can find anyone by topic, region or profession — powered by data from the tens of thousands of list curators. Once you find the right person, you can interview them by asking questions over Listorious.

Listorious lets you search by keyword for lists on Twitter.  You can find huge lists (up to 500 users) in almost any niche.  For instance, a simple SEO search shows:

• SEO-SEM-SMM list with 491 users
• Writers-SEO with 484 users
• SEO Companies with 478 users

Clearly Listorious is a great way to find new users to follow. A quick search for Melbourne, photography, travel agencies or bloggers results in hundreds of lists with tens of thousands of Twitter users in your niche.

What is Tweepi?

Tweepi is a Twitter account management tool that lets you add, find, follow, remove, or cleanup your Twitter followers.  You can add new users by searching someone else’s followers or those of just one user.  You can remove inactives, those who haven’t tweeted in a long time, or users without a bio.  The most important part of Tweepi for us is “Follow List Members.”

So how is this going to work?

Find a list on Listorious that you want to follow. I’ll use the SEO Companies list above as an example.  Find the Twitter username associated with the list.

Curated By Sunbizar

Login to Tweepi and navigate to Follow Tweeps > List Members.

Type in the list owner name: Sunbizar and press Enter.

Tweepi will load every list the user curates.  Find the SEO-Company list.  That’s our target.

Click “Get me that list.”

Now, we are trying *not* to spam Twitter and just add anyone so let’s find out who is active. Sort this first page by “last Tweet” – sort it soonest to latest so you see those who have tweeted today at the top.  You should see about 25-30 who have tweeted in the last month.  Near the top left of the table, click “Columns” and then “Bio.”  Turn this on so you can read what users have written about themselves.

Click anywhere in the white space of each row for every user you want to follow.  Read bios, check follower numbers (no point following someone with 13 followers or if you are trying to create interaction only, someone with 150,000.)   Now, top left click “Follow.”  This will follow your selected users from this list.

Now what?

You have now seen a quick way to find new users to follow in your niche.  You have two options now.

1) Follow a couple hundred people per day, remove those who don’t add you back after a week or so.  Repeat until you have thousands of followers.

2) Use Listorious + Tweepi to find new users you want to follow and keep them regardless of whether they follow you.  Have conversations with these users, get them interested in who you are, have real conversations and as they talk about and retweet you, get new followers from their friends & fans.

We use a combination of the two.  We follow more Twitter users than most (almost 15,500 as of today) but we only follow users we want to have conversations with and read more from.  We don’t “read everything” but we read our stream frequently to find interesting news in our industry, see what conversations and Twitter chats people are having, and find plenty of content to retweet to our own followers.

So create a strategy that works for you and your brand.  Follow it regularly and use these tools to grow your social media account quickly with great focus.

The post 2 Apps are Better Than 1: Tweepi + Listorious appeared first on High on SEO.

What is Tweriod?

Tweriod is a free twitter tool that helps you make the most of Twitter by letting you know the best time to tweet.

This tool looks at up to 1000 users (free version) and helps you analyze when they are online and participating by when they tweet.  This should give you a good idea when you should be tweeting back to them.   The timezone listed in your Tweriod Report is based on your own Twitter settings.

What is Buffer App?

Easily add great articles, pictures and videos to your Buffer and we automagically share them for you through the day!

At it’s simplest, Buffer is a queue for your pending social media posts.  Drop them into your “Buffer” and they are tweeted out according to your preset “best tweet times” throughout the day. For most users, the free version (which lets you schedule up to 10 updates across 3 networks = 30 social media posts) will be fine!

Adding Tweriod to Buffer

I said these would be quick tips and I mean it so let’s get it done.

1. Signup for both Tweriod and Buffer (or sign in using Twitter oAuth).
2. Run your Tweriod Report.
3. Click “Hourly Graphs” then “Combined”   You can now see your best post times for weekends, weekdays, etc.  Although we expect most of your patterns will be the same, if they’re not, take note of what times are best on which days.
4. Now, click the “Connect with Buffer” green button and follow through the authorizations.  This will automatically push your “best tweet times” through to Buffer.  Click “Send to Buffer” and you will see a confirmation message that says “Your timings have been optimized on Buffer.”

Now what?

Install the Buffer add on or plugin for your browser and start dropping content into your Buffer.  Look at the Complete Guide to Using the Buffer Web App for more info on using Buffer.

What did this all do for you?  We used two apps to generate one excellent result!  Using Tweriod to find your best tweet times and Buffer to schedule them, you simply have to find content you love, put it in your Buffer and voila!  Your tweets will be scheduled for the optimal time, no fuss, no muss.

This is a simple way to combine two apps.  These 2 Apps are Better than 1 posts will get a bit more complicated but create very useful outcomes.  Try to check them out all this week!

The post 2 Apps are Better than 1: Buffer App + Tweriod appeared first on High on SEO.

Let’s skip all the background and blabber and show you some results first.

How long did this SEO take?

Admit it, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t hate ranking in the top 6 for 9 of your top 11 keywords, right?  So how long did this SEO take and how much did this client invest in the process?  When we started the process, this client wasn’t in the top 200 for ANY of her keywords.  So how long do you think?  A year?  6 months?  3 months?

6 days.

(I’ll wait while you close your mouth and get a napkin for that drool.)

Ok, so that’s not the WHOLE process – but we worked on the site behind closed doors for a week.  3 days after release we took one set of rankings.  They were rankings from 6-20 mostly.  Take our current ranking and go the other way – “wedding planner in upstate SC” went from 9 to 3 (2nd in the local block.)  3 days later, these were the updates.  My client has become one of *the* main players in her niche (Greenville wedding planners) in under a week.

Aren’t these “easy keywords”?

Yes, somewhat.  That’s what we’re talking about today – ranking on SEO for easy keywords.  Yet these keywords should be almost as hard to rank as “Greenville wedding photographer” which I’ve had a friend struggling to crack for years.

Here’s the chart:

As points of comparison, Greenville wedding photographer has much, much higher competition and ranks 40, the same as “wedding planner in south carolina”  On the other hand, a national niche like “credit card debt” ranks a stunning 70.  The term “SEO” has a keyword difficulty score of 87.  Imagine my joy.

Pop this one open and consider this – my client is #7.  She has the lowest DA and below average PA. This is a new “theme” not a new domain – we are not seeing the results of a new site & freshness bonus.  The site has had content for awhile.  Our theory is that the variety of DA and PA is on purpose (by Google.)  Have you noticed that most searches, even the most competitive, showcase one or two sites with low statistics but good on-page SEO?

Remember how competitive SEO is?  Well, “Melbourne SEO” is very competitive as well.  Yet this company is #2, very high on page 1.  Their Domain Authority is 14, Page Authority 28, with … 14 links?  This site is clearly an exact match domain so we would think they wouldn’t necessarily rank as high.  Google is obviously happy to give some newer/younger/less authority sites a chance to be seen.  Sometimes stats lie (I’m currently writing a post for SEOMoz on why so I won’t get into it here.)  But check these stats for a page one result:

 
Can you improve my small business SEO this fast?

We would love to try!  These results are not typical of most of our clients. We generally work on keywords in the difficulty range of 40-60, as most small businesses fall in there somewhere.  Small business SEO is sometimes fast and easy, sometimes much more challenging.  If your niche is less challenging than a 30-35 keyword difficulty, chances are we can rank you *very* quickly for your main keywords.

If you are a small business in a small niche, we would love to give you our best shot at a quick ranking improvement.  We are specifically looking to work with local businesses: gardners and lawn mowing, florists, DJs and musicians, bands, wedding limo services, tour operators, or any “micro businesses” on this About list.

Are you the best dog walker in Melbourne?  Email us today and get started on quickly improving your “easy keywords” and get High on SEO.

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Let’s start with the obvious – you should focus more on your own content, site, products and services than you should on your competitors.  Make them chase you, don’t chase them.  However, it can also be incredibly useful to analyze your competition and reverse engineer their SEO.  If someone is ranked #1 for your main keyword and several related keywords, chances are high that whatever they are doing works and some level of emulation could help you.

Understand that you will never *surpass* your competition through emulation alone.  If you are not leading your niche, driving innovation and getting involved where possible, copying will only get you so far.  However, taking what others are doing right and applying it to your own site?  That’s just smart.

Get the tools to analyze your competitors in Google

Let’s grab a few tools, first.  These were made by far more technical minds than mine so we’re just going to link dutifully and give credit to great SEOs.

Open this Google Doc, click File > Make a Copy.  Now you have your own to play on.

This is the Google Scraper v1.2 by Seer Interactive.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apam75iNJI9idHkteFpGYjNhcjRBeUxsRWI0VER6ZWc

Next, grab the Competitor Discovery Array here and make a copy of that as well:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj-47DJPuWFodGpqMEl1OXhVOGNJZG05bEItd3pDYmc&authkey=CIi7j8gN&hl=en&authkey=CIi7j8gN#gid=0

Finally, open WordPot in a new tab:  http://www.wordpot.com/KeywordTool.aspx

So what’s the process?

I am a big fan of combining tools.  In fact, one of my big series of posts coming up will combine online tools to great effect.  So here’s what we’re going to do.

1) Find your main competitors.  Open the Google Scraper 1.2 from the first link above.  Enter Results: 30, and type your #1 keyword into cell B1.  Press enter.   This will create a list of the top sites for your main keyword.  Copy cells C2-C31.  Right click in cell E1 and use “Paste Special” and then “Paste Values Only.” This is an important step!  Then press copy again.

2) Put them in the Discovery Array.  Drop these competitors into cell B3 of the second link (Competitor Discovery Array) from above.

3) Add keywords. If you already know your keywords, enter them on the Competitor Discovery Array from cell A3 on.  If you do not know all of your keywords yet, open Wordpot (third link above.)  Enter the “basic” form of your keyword (no location).  If your keyword was Melbourne SEO, simply enter SEO.  If you run fishing tours in Charleston, just use “fishing tours.”  Copy the list of keywords into a notepad or Word document and remove the location keywords you don’t care about (ie. Alaska fishing tours).  Use a few of your top keywords if necessary to create a list of 20-40 main keywords.

Once your list is created, copy and paste it into cell A3 of the Competitor Discovery Array.

4) Skim the cream.  Look in Column C - Occurrences in the Top 20.  Which sites have the highest number?  These are the sites that regularly show up in the top 20 for your top keywords.  Sometimes a site has optimized very well for one keyword and doesn’t show up on much variety.  This method of competitor discovery will separate those who are #1 for one keyword but fail on everything else from your true competitors – those who are top 20 for the majority of your keywords.

Find your competitor’s on-site SEO

This one’s a download – very safe as far as I know.  Go get a free copy of Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider.

Install and open the program.  At the top you will see “Enter a URL to Spider” – enter the competitor with the most Occurrences in the Top 20.  Press Enter.

As the program runs you will start to discover some valuable information.  Screaming Frog has 12 tabs starting with Internal.  Look at the Title, Description, headings, Word Count (far right), In and Out links (very far right).  What information can you get from this?  What are they doing right?  Is there a lot of variety in their page titles?  Longer pages than yours?  What is different and why may Google value that more than they value you?

Use this tool on a few of your top competitors and then on yourself.  What differences can you see between them and your own site?  Patterns should be easy to spot.  If their pages are *all* larger than yours and they vary page titles more, consider doing that on a few new pages.  Do they have many more inlinks per page than you?  Anything you can glean from their results will help you.  Play Sesame Street.  ”One of these things is not like the other.”  If your site is being ranked lower than these competitors on average, the things they are doing right will help you decide what changes to make.

Analyze your competition’s offsite SEO

If you are a full time SEO or working for an agency, you likely have an SEOMoz subscription and OpenSiteExplorer.  That makes off-site analysis simple.  Let’s pretend you don’t have that so we can work with the free tools everyone can use.

Go to Google and search your first competitor using this search:

“http://www.competitorsite.com” -site:competitorsite.com

This will find links to your competitor that do not include their own internal links.  For instance, one of the top SEO companies in Melbourne is ROI.com.au

“http://www.roi.com.au” -site:roi.com.au

I see 165,000 results – FAR more than our own.  Now consider this: Google is applying their *same* algorithm to this type of search that they do most organic results.  That means that the top links here are the “most related” to your competitor’s domain.  Google finds them relevant, influential and valuable.  You should too.

Analyze the results for your competitor.  What sites are they getting links from?  Is the link in the description or the page’s URL itself?  (The number one result for ROI as it in the domain, the #2 is in the description.)

If your business is not on the domains you see, you clearly need to be.  On our test ROI search, that means LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the usual suspects.  Let’s see what isn’t “usual.”

The 5th result is http://www.localbusinessguide.com.au/find/online-marketing/  - click that link and see the “Add your link” in the top menu?  This is the *exact* type of website you need to be listed on.  It’s a highly ranked competitor site with loads of value for your competition.

(Just for the record, we follow our own advice:  http://www.localbusinessguide.com.au/business/high-on-seo/  I also think this is an appropriate time to note that ROI isn’t really “competition” for us – they serve a much different client and are a much, much bigger company that we respect greatly.  We use them as a “competitor” here because they control many of our important industry keywords.)

That should give you a start as you analyze your competition in Google.  Grab all the tools and dig in!

Did I miss anything?  How do you analyze your competitors?  Let us know in the comments!

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Google did not have a particularly stellar third quarter, with earning reports that did not live up to expectations. This led to a 10 per cent decrease in stock values of the search giant.

The reason behind this, as revealed by Google, is that the revenue from people clicking on paid search results was down by 15 percent compared to the same period in 2011, which suggests that fewer people are clicking promoted links (as overall costs to advertisers have not decreased by 15% in the same time.)

Analysts believe that the dip is not as a result of consumers falling out of love with PPC search results, but rather because the medium through which they are conducting their searches is shifting.  The growing use of smartphones and tablets means that monetisation of ads is half as valuable as it is on desktop platforms.

This is due to the portable nature of the devices, which means that people use them when they are out and about and are necessarily involved in some other, simultaneous task. This means clicking an ad is less alluring on a mobile platform, because you have less time and attention to dedicate to it. (Matt’s note: also, Adwords lets you remove mobile from your ad campaigns and 80% of my clients have me removing mobile clicks completely.  They don’t value them at all.)

In addition, the small screen search experience that typifies smartphones means that there is less space available to commit to promotional links and ads, while natural search results are being given a more prominent position.  As such, there has been a dip in clicks on paid ads, which is giving Google and its shareholders a bit of a headache at the moment.

However, for webmasters, this news must also indicate the fact that organic search ranking is much more important on mobile devices.

The switch to mobile has not lessened the number of searches that are being carried out, but has simply impacted the likelihood of an ad click. This means people are paying even more attention to the high ranking sites for a particular query, which should, therefore, show just how important it is to conduct thorough SEO, in order to improve the amount of traffic that your site generates.

One of the benefits of targeting the mobile market is that more and more people are actually using location based searches to seek out business sites that relate to nearby operations. About a third of all searches made on mobile devices have location-based intent, according to SEOMoz, which means that there is a particularly significant opportunity for sites to optimise towards a local audience to achieve good mobile search ranking.

Of course, achieving an organic search rank that makes your site highly visible to mobile users is just half the battle. It is also important to look at whether or not your site has been properly tweaked to cater to those who are accessing it from touchscreen devices. (Thus the rise of responsive design websites or mobile versions of your site for both the consumer and SEO purposes.)

With the arrival of the touch-oriented Windows 8, this will be a pressing concern for all webmasters. An influx of tactile devices will make traditional sites less likely to connect with their intended audiences.

Abbas Hussain is a blogger who researches and talks about the seo industry for Integrity SEO Experts

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