Perhaps one of the more troubling conundrums that SEO's face is canonicalization. Running a close second is pagination.

Here's An Example

You have an e-commerce website and you want to rank for "beach towels". Currently, you have a category page that points to a section where all your beach towel products are organized and displayed. Technically, this is archived and updates whenever you add a new towel that is beach related.

Starting out, it is just one page. But as you begin adding more products, the page lengthens until, you have a page 2…then page 3…then page 4….and so on. The problem becomes technical because although page 4 is relevant to page 1, page 1 (the one you are optimizing for "beach towels", isn't getting the ranking love. Each page could technically be ranked for beach towels.

To make it even more complex, a typical user can drill down deeper into your website by using parameter based filters (beach towels under $10, blue beach towels, etc.)

Finally, and equally important, pagination could create potential issues in regards to crawl depth and thin, near duplicate or duplicate content.

So What Is The Solution?

There are a few options to consider.

1. Add a "show all" link and then redirect all the paginated pages to the page with all the products on it.
   The caveat to this is it must load quickly. I've seen hard line recommendations for the page to load within 3 seconds. This isn't for SEO though but user experience (which is equally as important)
2. If your website is using AJAX don't cut the search engine crawlers off
   AJAX allows the visitor to never leave the page when they click to the next page producing a seamless effect. (It's also responsible for things like infinite scroll) This is a bit trickier as a crawler will not follow anything beyond a "#" hash tag. Technically, the user sees the pagination but the crawler doesn't have to index page 2, page 3, page 4, etc. because the items are all seen as one page. More on this can be found here.
3. Utilize HTML 5's latest rel="next" and rel= "prev"
   The purpose of this canonical property is when you have a series of pages all directly linked to each other in terms of likeness. So, if you have 5 pages which all serve your list of "beach towels", this fix would make all 5 pages synonymous with page #1, potentially helping the crawlers understand that the first page is the one that should be listed in search.
4. Add "NoIndex, Follow" to sibling pages in a series
   Another option would be to make it so the pages after your page that is optimized for "beach towels" aren't indexed at all. This can be done with the "noindex" command. The problem comes that you still want the links within the pages that aren't indexed to be followed by the crawlers (hence, the follow command).

So Many Choices, Which One To Follow?

The truth is that fixing pagination and canonical issues is subject to different criteria and therefore an SEO's challenge is based case by case. Here are a few scenarios for you:

• All the content is relevant (a series) but aside from the first page, none of it needs to be indexed.(solution?- Noindex, follow)
• All the content is relevant (a series ) and needs to be indexed. (solution?- If it loads within 3 seconds, rel="canonical"…if it doesn't, "rel="prev/next".
• All the content is relevant (a series) but thin, duplicate or near duplicate content- (solution?- create a one page view all page and then point them to the page using rel="canonical")
• All the content is relevant and unique within the series (solution?- "rel=prev/next).
• The website uses parameters/ filters in search- (solution? "rel=prev/next". If the parameters change the results, canonicalize to non-parameterized URLs)

Resources

• Implementing Pagination Attributes Correctly For Google
• Duplicate Content: Block, Redirect or Canonical
• 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical
• Conquering Pagination " A Guide to Consolidating your Content

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Canonicalization & Pagination 101 for e-commerce Websites

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Written by Leo Dimilo, Leo Dimilo

Different social media sites provide a different benefit for users. Having a well rounded approach to your use of these networks is key to properly utilizing them, which means targeting each with a specific approach. You have to optimize content, making sure it is shareable based on each demographic that you will be aiming for on each site.

The new kid on the block is still Pinterest, and many people are confused about how to use it. Luckily, optimizing content is as easy as focusing on improving photo quality. Here is a step-by-step guide on optimizing images for Pinterest.

Step One: Make Sure The Images Are Yours

Now, don't get me wrong, repinning images from around the web is (usually) acceptable with proper credit. Pinning from within the site is also a good way to gain followers by using content already there. But the bulk of the images you provide on Pinterest for a professional account should be your own. This will give you the best shot at having an image go viral, which is what we should all be aiming for.

Here are some ideas for you to creat your own viral images:

• HOW TO: Quote Using Text-to-Image Tools
• HOW TO: Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image

Step Two: Slap On a Watermark

Hey, guess what? People steal photos from Pinterest, all the time. This isn't usually malicious, or anything. But it can be hard to tell if the original photo came from the link it is anchored to, or if it has been reuploaded and used.

Since most people are innocently doing this, you will want to make it easy for them to see who the picture belongs to. Put a simple watermark at the bottom of all of the images you upload onto Pinterest, giving yourself credit. This could be the link to your website, or just a quick copyright notice with your name. People can still remove it/cut it out. But if they are going to those lengths they are probably going to need to be dealt with legally anyway.

Read: How to Watermark Your Images and PDF Files for Brand Awareness and Copyright Protection

Step Three: Properly Name Your Files

Each photo you upload is going to be titled according to the file name:

YOUR FILE NAME => PIN TITLE

Even though you change it on Pinterest and add a description, that initial file name is what will be used for searches. So if you have a file named DC75883768273_041, it isn't likely to get a lot of search traffic. Ditto for any images that have real file names, but aren't named properly to reflect what is in the image.

Make sure every file has a clear, concise description of what is in the picture. If it is an infographic about optimizing images for Pinterest, for example, it would be titled "Pinterest_Image_Optimization_Infographic.jpg".

Step Four: Add The Title To The Image

When someone repins your image, they can change the description to anything they want.

They can even change it to something like "LOL worst image ever WFTBBQ!". So if you have an image that isn't really clear in context, the description you upload it with won't really matter in the slightest. Only some of the users who put it on their boards will bother keeping it intact.

A simple way to get around this is to actually add text to the image itself to describe what is in the picture or link it goes to. If you have an image of a piece of carpet with a stain, but it represents a larger article on using natural ingredients for household cleaning, you might want to overlay text that says "10 All Natural Ingredients For Cleaning". It will catch the eye, immediately convey the context of the image and keep it clear what it is about no matter what the description says.

Step Five: Don't Forget Twitter

One of my favorite tips for optimizing Pinterest images is the inclusion of Twitter hashtags in the image data. I try to provide it in two places, when possible. The first is in the description of the image, but this can still be erased, as stated before. The second place is in the image text I include, which has been really great for announcing Twitter chats especially.

Step Six: Properly Organize Your Boards

While it is great to have a single image go viral, that isn't all you are working towards on Pinterest. You also want to gather plenty of followers, which means getting them to follow your main account, or one of your boards. To make this more likely, you will need to properly organize all of your boards and make it easy for Pinterest users to look through them.

Create very specific board titles, with a good image for the cover. Then only fill these boards with directly related imagery, and avoid putting in anything else. For example, my own Pinterest has five different boards for recipes. Each one covers a specific type of recipe, such as Healthy Meals, Vegetarian Meals, Guilty Pleasures and so on. Since organizing the boards this way, I have seen a significant rise in followers.

Conclusion

Optimizing images for Pinterest doesn't take that much work, just a little know-how. This is the fastest growing social network on the web, so learning how to best use it is critical in having a well developed social media strategy.

Also read these further tips on image optimzation for Pinterest.

Have any tips? Leave them in the comments!

Images: 1, 2.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Step-By-Step Guide on Optimizing Images for Pinterest

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Written by Ann Smarty, SEOsmarty.com

What marketing tools can you use to perform the task faster and easier? Well, as there are quite a few tools in the market that do similar things, I decided to break them down into 5 major types of tools that are essential for effective local biz marketing.

1. Keyword research software

People search for products and services using keywords and key phrases, so, the first thing to do would be to identify what keywords are popular with the users searching for your type of business.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google's AdWords Keyword Tool is probably the most popular SEO keyword tool out there, but if you're going to use it for local keyword research, there are a few things to remember.

• Use location markers in your initial keyword list (such as pizza New York)
• For relevant results, specify the Location and the Language that apply to your potential customers
• For more exact results, use Broad match and Exact match options in the tool
• A big share of local searches comes from mobile devices. So, get separate data for keywords searched for on mobile (by default, the tool shows stats for desktop/laptop devices)

You might also want to check out this article about How to build up keyword phrases when your research tools fail, which was posted on our blog some time ago – it has a big chunk dedicated to local keyword research.

2. Citation finder

Citations are often called "the life juice" of local SEO, and for a good reason. By "citations" local SEO folks mean different type of online mentions of a business.

For example, since Tom Hanks is a celebrity, you find his name on many webpages. Google uses the same logic to determine how popular a local business is with online audiences. A few things to remember about citations:

• To help search engines correctly attribute citations to a biz, make sure the same Name-Address-Phone Number-Zip Code is used across all its mentions.
• Not all citations help your site/listing rank higher. Citations from low-trafficked, low-PageRank websites won't do much good, and may lead to your site being in bad standing with Google.

Whitespark's Local Citation Finder

This app is one of the best of its kind. It has been topping the charts for local SEO tools for years now. The software will help you accomplish 2 tasks: find your own online citations and get new citation ideas for your biz.

As you can see from the screenshots, the app can either find your top competitor and let you explore their citation sources, or it will let you see your own citation sources, including the type of website they come from and the domain authority of the site they come from.

GetListed

GetListed (initially provided by David Mihm) is a great tool to quickly see if your business is cited on the most important local business websites such as YellowPages, CitySearch, Yelp, Localeze, etc.

What I also like about this online app is that it allows you to quickly check if your business name, phone number and address are consistent across different listings.

Point is, you don't have to get your business listed in each and every directory under the sun. It'll be enough if you list it in key directories, from which tons of other directories and social networks get their data.

Another thing I'd like to note is that, Yelp, a popular review platform, reportedly powers over 20% of Siri search results. Hence, it probably would be wise to make this leading review site one of your priorities.

3. Web design software

Luckily for local business owners, quite often there is no need for them to have crazy complicated websites, as their web presence will most likely be scattered across a large number of different platforms anyway.

For example, you'd probably want to pay decent attention to your Google+ Local listing, your Facebook page and other vital social media sites (including review sites) in your niche.

Along with it, it's important to have a neat-looking website of your own that contains all the key information people might want to know about your biz such as its store hours, location, the people behind the business, etc.

WordPress

WordPress is open-source content management system that lets one set up a site in just a few simple steps. It's deal for people with little to no web design background.

Don Campbell's SmallBiz Theme

If you are planning to create a WordPress site for free, it's worth mentioning that the way your site looks mostly depends on the theme you use. WordPress offers a number of free themes, however there are more professional ones designed for WordPress which you can buy, and they come relatively cheap.

One such theme is SmallBiz by Don Campbell. It's only $97, and the price includes email support. What's also great about this theme is that it automatically adapts to mobile screens, which is a huge advantage for local businesses.

4. Reputation management software

In local online business, the impact your online reputation has on the way your business performs in search is particularly great. Negative reviews can have an adverse effect on where search engine rank your website.

Reputation management basically consists in:

• "Listening" to what's being said about your business online
• Dealing with negative feedback
• Promoting positive sentiment about your brand

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a super-easy-to-use service that will deliver rumors about your business straight to your door – for free. All you have to do is create alerts for your target keywords and listen away.

Besides, you can create alters for mentions from particular sites. For example, if you create an alert for "Hilton Hotel" site:Yelp.com, you will be alerted only for Yelp mentions. By the way, quotes marks "" are there for a reason, too – they prompt Google that you'd like the results for that exact phrase.

BuzzBundle

BuzzBundle is Link-Assistant.Com's SMM and online reputation management tool. Using BuzzBundle, you can track brand mentions across a wide variety of social sites (Facebook, Google+, etc.) in one place and reply to people right from the dashboard.

5. Local SERP tracker

As many small businesses choose to leverage Google local search and also organic search for Web traffic and sales, it's important to know where your local listing or your website show up in Google. There are quite a few tools that include local SERP trackers.

PlacesScout's Rank Tracker

PlacesScout is a relative new all-in-one local SEO toolkit that has a local SERP tracker among other things. Its Rank Tracker checks rankings in both Google Places and Google Web search.

What I also like about their Rank Tracker is that it also offers the Map View of your local rankings, which is convenient for estimating your local SEO progress at a glance:

However, if you'd rather use a stand-alone local SERP tracker, you might want to try Rank Tracker by Link-Assistant.Com. In addition to supporting local and web search, it also has advanced search settings that let you specify language, location and safe search settings for your rank check.

Conclusion

Of course, the list of local SEO tools you can use does not boil down to the software pieces mentioned in this post. The purpose was rather to articulate the most helpful types of local SEO tools one can use for small business promotion.

Flickr image courtesy of Ed Yourdon.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

5 Essential Local SEO Tools for Marketing a Small Business Online

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Written by Alesia Krush,

Google changes their requirements up to 500 times a year so trying to build your site around what Google wants would be a very difficult task so this old dog would instead like to make some suggestions on how to keep people on your site and encourage visitors to contact you.

How To Keep People On Your Site

Think of your site as an art gallery. Visitors enter the main doors of your site full of hope. They hope you have the answer to their question. That they will be able to solve their current problem.

When they land in your front foyer and have no idea where to go to get the answers they need- they will turn on their heels and walk out (or in other terms, hit that dreaded BACK button). You don't want that!

Clearly State What You Do

Think of the top three questions people will ask when searching for your product or services and make sure you answer them easily and clearly right there on the home page.

If you are a dentist say "Family Dentist", "extended hours" "Automated insurance submissions". If you are a custom home builder say "over 100 happy home owners live in our homes" "built on time and on budget" "Design, permits and construction services all in one shop"… Does that make sense?

Put Your Contact Information Up Front

Now that you have their attention, make sure you direct the visitor to where they can get more information.

Clear navigation; phone number in the top right corner so they can call you; address under the phone number if they will need to come to you; a request info form so they can ask you to contact them.

Show Them You Can Be Trusted

Now they know you do what they need, and can contact you easily; you should let them know that you can be trusted. Include some testimonials of clients or logos of reparable companies you do business with.

Conclusion

NOW you have a website WORTH paying attention to. Visitors will now feel comfortable to browse around your site and find out what ELSE you do. You have given them a clear information booth and tour guide to your business and they will want to do business with you.

What's the best thing you've done for your site?

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Website Foundations That Make Customers Come In And Stay

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Written by Pamela Taylor,

Many businesses are "gating" their online content as part of their marketing strategy, collecting email addresses and personal information about their site visitors in order to develop profiles of their customers or leads.

This is a strategy that can also be applied to your social media marketing efforts – why not ask users to share your content or follow your social profiles in order to access premium content?

This strategy becomes even more important when you consider that social signals are becoming a component of your site's Google rankings. Increasing your company's social shares and followers by gating content is an effective way of boosting the shares your original content receives.

There are two options when it comes to social content gating:

1. Require users to share your content on a social network before they receive access.
2. Require that users Like you on Facebook, or Follow you on Twitter to access your content.

Choosing the Right Content to Gate

In order for your social-gated content tactics to be successful, you have to choose the right kind of content to gate. The quality of your content must be higher than what you typically give away for free on your site – more than just a blog post. Here are a few things to consider when deciding what kind of content you should gate:

• Is your piece really "premium" content that can't be found anywhere else? Is it a neatly packaged and presented eBook, whitepaper, infographic, case study or presentation with valuable information?
• Why would someone share this content or follow your social profiles in order to gain access? Will they be comfortable sharing with their social networks that they've downloaded this piece from your site?
• Was your content piece created with a specific customer persona in mind? Will anyone actually download your content?

How to Implement Share or Like Gating

One of the easiest ways to implement these gating techniques is through the use of WordPress Plugins. Here are a few of note to check out:

Like, Google +1 or Tweet to Unlock
Social Content Locker for WordPress
WP Share to Unlock

Or, a basic Like to Download button embedded on your page will work too.

Supporting Your Social Gating Strategy

It's not enough to just have users liking and sharing your content – you've got to have the social strategy to follow it up with. Once you've increased your follower count, you now have the opportunity to market to these users on an ongoing basis. After you've launched your social gating campaign, make sure you have a supporting strategy outlined for your company's profiles.

Remember – social gating is great for impacting your social shares or follower counts, but it won't have any impact on your overall marketing efforts unless you're actually using your company's social channels.

Consider the types of Tweets or Facebook posts you'll be making that will be targeted to those same users who downloaded your premium content. Offer them educational resources related to your premium content piece or try to engage with them on a more personal level to be successful.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Increase Your Social Media Followers and Reach By Gating Premium Content

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Written by Alicia Thomas,

Firefox add-ons can provide great tools for bloggers, web-designers, SEOs, and other netizens to ease their job. Some of these add-ons may be very simple while others may introduce features that can compete with professional software.

Today I'm going to explore some the best add-ons for web research. This tools may be useful for professionals as well as people that want to broaden their knowledge.

Duckduckgo Plus

DuckDuckGo (DDG) is unusual search engine in the sense that it avoids personalization for the sake of keeping users' privacy. Now, In order to compensate this limitation DDG offers different tools like ambiguous terms clarification and !bang suggestions.

DDG Plus is an official DDG's Firefox add-on that adds DDG as the default address bar, search bar and right-click search engine. Previously, I enumerated the advantages of setting DuckDuckGo as the default address bar search engine. In addition, one may tweak the browser to show the DDGs Zero-Click Info box on top of Bing and Google search results or to access websites from the address bar by only without typing their full URL (through the 'I'm feeling ducky' feature).

Search Bar Add-ons

Firefox Search Bar was designed to abbreviate the process of web-search. However, for people who used to search in multiple search engines this feature is inefficient. "Dr. Evil's" fantastic add-ons challenged this issue and turned Firefox search bar into a one-stop for web-searching. First, the Organize Search Engines add-on enabled the hierarchical ordering of engines. Second, Search on Engine Change combined the selection of search engine and actual search into one action.

The Web Search Pro (WSP) extension integrates the previous add-ons in addition to some other features. One of this extension features is the ability to hilight a text and send it to one of the search bar engines through the context menu (like the Context Search add-on). WSP also integrate the developer's original addon Drag & DropZones. In addition it has some tweaks like clearing the search bar and returning to the default search engine after every search, and reusing tabs for repeated searches.

WSP support three file formats: Mycroft, OpenSearch, and Sherlock format. The last is not supported by Firefox and so the Sherlock search plugins it recognized only by the WSP search bar (The other two formats plugins will display in both Firefox and WSP search bars.) In addition, WSP has a plugins directory that has some integration with the add-on. However, as the developer discontinue the maintenance of this add-on it will probably go down in the near future. In addition, the directory contain only Sherlock plugins and as far as I know they are not supported by any live software. (Although they may be converted into Mycroft plugins with minor modifications.)

Searchbar Autosizer is a good add-on for people who like to formulate complex queries streight from the search bar. This add-on will expand the search bar gradually as you type or immediately on the first strike. It also has an option to clear the search bar or revert the default engine search after each search.

Manage Your Information With Categorize

Categorize is a one stop shop for personal information management. This add-on will add toolbar with buttons for one's bookmark, read later, and history lists. In addition, one may filter these lists by keywords or even customize buttons with predefined keywords. Categorize will also provide a convenient interface for switching between bookmarks, history and external sidebars like Diigo or Delicious.

However, the main agenda of this add-on is its method to categorize bookmarks. Although it looks innovative, this method just provides alternative way to manage the bookmarks tree. Using a syntax to articulate the position of a node in the bookmarks tree (e.g. SEM>PPC>AdWords>Bidding>"Why Google Adwords Advertisers Should Tweak Their Bids"), this method supposed to ease the management of brunched bookmarks trees. Since this method maps the tree in a textual format, one may search for a path by keywords in order to to find the right folder for his bookmark. That way one may find duplicate or folders and restructure the tree on the fly.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Firefox Add-ons for Better Search

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Written by Yaniv Kimelfeld, Topical Search Blog

Of Landing Pages and Themes

Fortunately long tail keywords tend to match the subject of the landing page, and can also be grouped by common terms. Assuming the content is tightly themed and the searches it appears for are relatively focused, treating the landing page's organic traffic on aggregate can be a viable strategy. This approach will leave out a lot of detail, such as qualifying terms that indicate different intents from the user. However (Not Provided) won't cause any issues with this model, as it is assumed that they are much the same as the other search terms sending traffic.

In practice, this model can be used to assess the effectiveness of a Long Tail (or Content) strategy by what areas of the site are gaining traffic, how productive it is and which distinct query group it receives traffic from. While it is less affected by (Not Provided) traffic, it is also overly broad and does not provide insights for future optimisation work, and it really one works if each page ranks for one theme, such as "Red Thingy's". Pages that get traffic for "Blue Thingy's" as well will require more work.

Themes, Entities and Intent

Wagging the long tail

There is a difference between a search for a "Red Thingy" and "Adjective Red Thingy", or "Location Red Thingy", not to mention the difference between "Blue Thingy" and "Red Thingy". Each phrase can signal a different intent on the part of the user, and as a result, probably should be treated as a part of a distinct group, based on it's attributes.

A search term has a number of attributes including the number of words, subject or entity it refers to, stop words and descriptive terms that put it into context or communicate the searcher's intent. What these will vary from industry to industry, but they often include words like the city or state's name, adjectives like "cheap", alternative descriptive terms and verbs.

Unfortunately natural language processing tools are not as widely available as we would like and frankly word clouds just do not cut it. This leaves us having to find some kind of a workable kludge to make sense of the information Google Analytics provides. In this case, it is going to be Excel's formulas. A sample spreadsheet is provided at the end of this post.

Once you have exported the data you need from Google Analytics, creating a word count column is easy:

=IFERROR((LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","")))+1,0)
This formula displays word count by adding one to the number of spaces in the phrase.

From here however it becomes a little more involved. You will need to create a number of arrays of words. Each array should be of words that rarely appear together in a search phrase and relate to one subject area, such as location or product. Excel supports array formulas such as the one below. This will search a cell (A2) for one of a list of words (I$2:I$3) and add it to the cell the formula is in. The formula is not perfect and if it finds more than one word from the list in the targeted cell, will return the one lower down the list.

The formula finds the row number of the matching word from the keyword and with the array set just after INDEX to display the term it found. If you want to group similar words together or account for variant spellings, simply use two columns, with one of the words you want to find and the other as what you want displayed for them. Change the column reference at the start of the INDEX formula to match to the second column.

{=INDEX(I$2:I$3,MAX(IF(ISERROR(FIND(I$2:I$3,A2)),-1,1)*(ROW(I$2:I$3)-ROW(I$2)+1)))}
This formula will preference the last item in the array it is searching from. It is an array formula and after editing it in a cell, you must click CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

As per the attached screenshot, this will give you a few columns labelling each keyword with a term from one of the arrays you create. Using CONCATENATE to merge more than one of these columns into a new label can be useful for creating labels for classifying keywords and creating groups of aggregated data for related terms.

While this approach does not allow for (Not Provided) it makes it relatively easy to define query groups by common shared words and possibly even user intent. While it can be hard to analyse long tail keywords individually, grouping them can make this easier and applying the same rules over time simplifies tracking the effectiveness of your long tail strategy.

Taking it Further

There is a limit to how small each group can be. The less data available to determine the distinctiveness of a group, the more likely that its differences from another a merely the result of chance. There are a number of different ways to check top see if the query groups developed for analysis this way actually do represent distinctive behaviours, the Chi square test being one of them.

Download the example spreadsheet

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Using Excel Formulas To Group Your Google Analytics Long Tail Keywords Into Themes

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Written by Anthony Contoleon, Contoleon.com

Speak Klingon/ : Just in time for your next dinner party or debate over when to disobey Starfleet's General Order number 1, the Prime Directive, were releasing Klingon to Bing Translator. Now in a few simple clicks you can translate text from English to Klingon (and vice versa!) Available via the web here and also as an update to Bing Translator for Windows Phone 8. You can read more about the feature from the Microsoft Translation Team here (Klingon version here.)

Check out the features on Bing and hit theatres on the 16^th. On a side note if anybody is thinking about attending SES Toronto, Bing Ads is sponsoring it and has a coupon that is redeemable for up to $400.00 off an SES Toronto Full Price Pass. Just type in TORBING in the priority code.

If you attend SES Toronto stop by some of the Bing Ads sessions to say Hi. Until then Live Long and Prosper!

- Andrew Yang

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Qapla'! The Bing Klingon Translator (and get $400.00 off at SES Toronto)

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Written by Andrew Yang, http://community.bingads.microsoft.com

Most blogs you read focus on the first two steps of the model above: the importance of creating content, strategies on how to promote content, and the like. Not that I want to understate the importance of these first two steps in a content marketing plan, but for this post, I'd like to focus more on the third step: converting your website visitors to leads. Besides, isn't that what we're all after?

Several content marketing techniques play an important role in increasing engagement and converting visitors to leads. And because so few professional services firms truly understand or use these techniques, it is a great way for your firm to master them and gain a competitive advantage.

Here is an overview of each content marketing conversion technique:

1) Usability Testing. This is simply the testing of user experience and interaction. So when looking at online content, make sure your website's blog or content is laid out in a format that makes sense and is easy for your audience to navigate through. The functionality of the piece of content needs to make sense as well. This means the registration and download process for content makes sense and is easy to operate.

2) A/B Testing. This technique tests the effectiveness of offers, ads, and landing pages to improve conversion percentages. You need to create two concepts, concept A and concept B, changing one element in each. Once the concepts are live, you can then collect data on the success of each. After analyzing the results, it will become clear which concept performs better and what you should replicate for future offers, ads, and landing pages.

3) Web Analytics. There are several tools that you can use to track online activity, but the most common is Google Analytics. Some of the most important items to track when it comes to online content include content downloads, conversion rates, page views, social referrals, and most viewed blog posts. This will help you see how your content is performing.

Continuously monitoring and tracking your online content performance will begin to uncover trends you wouldn't have noticed otherwise and could possibly reveal new strategies to take with your online content.

The results of our recent research on online marketing was clear and compelling. As your online marketing machine gets fired up and well oiled, it will start to have a dramatic effect on the growth and profitability of your firm. Don't let the number of online marketing tools own you. Instead, dominate the tools and techniques and make them work for you and your content marketing plan.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Use a Content Marketing Plan to Increase Traffic and Convert Visitors

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Written by Katie Sanner, http://www.hingemarketing.com/blog

SEO and public relations both come from a past of scumminess and irresponsible behavior. Since PR is an older industry they've had the time to improve their reputation and establish itself as a necessary marketing component for every company. SEO, on the other hand, is less than 20 years old and is still trying to paint the black hat white.

SEO is starting to look more like public relations. "The truth is SEOs, PR, and others are all talking about the same stuff from a different angle," said Joe Cardillo in a comment on Spin Sucks. SEO and PR tend to keep to their own sides and ways of thinking. In doing so, they miss out on the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Rand Fishkin talked about why we can't just be SEOs anymore. The SEO bubble has popped. There is more to SEO than link building, site architecture and keywords. Search engines are looking at usage data, brand signals, offline data and social signals to determine ranking. Rand encouraged SEOs to recognize this different way of doing SEO and eventually take on these new positions.

SEOs have the chance to broaden the definition of SEO and improve its reputation by combining PR techniques.

4 ways SEO can improve using PR

1. Quality: There is a reason SEOs are sometimes frowned upon. They have the tendency to focus on building links quickly, leaving a gap in quality. This is most evident when using linkbait, such as an infographic with non-reliable sources or a catchy headline to a mediocre article. A poor quality infographic associated with a client's logo can be damaging to their reputation if discovered.

2. Relevant: A completely relevant article to your client doesn't mean it's purely promotional. Customers like brands that are willing to help them, not just sell to them. If your client is a security disability attorney then write an article about social security on a financial website (don't just randomly mention their name like I'm doing right now). Not only should the content be relevant to your client but the blog or website you are publishing on should appeal to your client's audience. Topically relevant blogs increase the amount of link juice to your client's website as well.

3. Newsworthy: Besides self-help articles, SEOs can capitalize on client news. Newsworthy topics include: new products, hiring an employee, winning an award, or whitepapers. Yes, it does take more work to create relevant content on both the SEO's and client's behalf. But Internet public relations is well worth the hassle if it means a greater return on investment.

There are two additional bonuses to using client news to gain links. The first is that news sites typically have a good page rank that will push more link power to the client's site. Secondly, unlike blogs, news sites aren't as dogmatic about original content. Your press release can be reused on multiple news sites without the trouble of writing different content for each. SEOs should double check the sites that picked up the press release to make sure they kept the links.

4. Build Relationships: Many SEO companies have already taken steps toward public relations by hiring online PR specialists to build relationships with bloggers, influencers and journalists. The formula to good ranking in Google comes from a mixture of various kinds of links (directories, social signals and content). Since a link in the content of an article is one of the more influential types of links, making friends with high domain authority sites is key to your clients' success.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Combining PR with SEO: How to kill two birds with one stone

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Written by Alicia Lawrence, MarCom Land