User: OK, I am a SEO specialist and I need to create SEO plan for a new client. The task is
pretty straightforward, but there are so many options! What do I need to do firstly? And what operations don't matter?

Yes, there are too many options and it can be very hard to set primary goals that will get your SEO project to the top of search results. SEO experts are likely already provided you with recommendations that contradict with each other.

• Disregard the SEO stuff. Content is king!
• Content doesn't matter. Page Rank does!
• You need more backlinks. We will create them for you. Sign In here for $1500.00

Sounds familiar?

Things don't need to be so complicated. It's seems to be evident that you are not the first person who faced this issue and, thus, your SEO plan is not required to be a something the world have never seen.

You need to simply review sites already created by your competitors and perform the same operations they did in the past

Step #1: Investigate the Competition

Let's say you have a site that sells hats. The users find your site by entering 'buy hat' in Google. You know that your goal is to be at the first place in the search results each time the users enter 'buy hat' keywords.

What operations do you need to perform to be at the first place? Let's see how your competitors managed to do this:

1. Open Google and enter 'buy hat'.
2. Open the page that appears at the first position in search results.
   
3. Write down the PR of the page you entered.
   
   NOTE: Google Toolbar is required to get information on the PR. If you don't have Google Toolbar installed, follow the URL: toolbar.google.com.
4. Get information on the competitors' backlinks by entering the following query in Google:
   "CompetitorSite.com" -site:CompetitorSite.com and write down the value
   
5. Does the competitor has keywords in Title?
6. Does the competitor has keywords in URL?
   

Step #2: Process The Results

As a result of operations above you should have a list with neat goals. It is clear that in order to be at the first position in the search results you need to

1. Obtain PR 5.
2. Get 47,400 links to your site (gosh!).
3. Create the pages with words 'buy' and 'head' in title and in the URL.

Follow the recommendations above, get your site to the top and be happy!

PS By the way, our new tool Google SEO Recommendations performs the operations listed above automatically. It also provides you with SEO-recommendations.

Gushchin Dmitry is the creator of Easy SEO Tracking service. The service allows users to track the SEO parameters of theirs sites.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How To Create A Powerful SEO Plan In 10 minutes

It need not be that way however.

In order to demystify social media, we at Search Engine People have created the L-I-S-T-E-N acronym to help business understand the simplicity of the social media process. It’s a great acronym given that LISTENing is a major point of differentiation between old media, and social media. Each letter of the acronym stands for a different phase of the process, and builds upon each preceding step, so there’s a natural progression of activities:

Listen

Identify

Solve

Test

Engage

Nurture your Fan Base

The Base Idea

The application of this process will help companies accomplish three really important objectives.

1. Reduce the likelihood individuals will spread negative messages about your company or its brands.
2. Give marketers the opportunity to turn problems into opportunities and, even more, sales.
3. Encourage those who have had positive experiences with a company, to share those experiences with others.

Who wouldn’t want to do all of  that?

At its base level, the LISTEN process is as simple as…

• …creating a continuous feedback loop that listens for feedback and ideas,
• …making modifications based on that feedback,
• …engaging in communications with those whom give input,
• …providing solutions to the original problems as defined by those people

The biggest ROI comes from identifying the biggest fans of the company and empowering them to carry forth positive messages about the company and the solutions it provides in the form of products and services.

A little oversimplified maybe, but still a good high level overview.

Over the next six weeks we'll delve into each of the letters detailing a process that will get you found — and bring you fame & fans using Social Media Marketing.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

L-I-S-T-E-N: The Social Media Process Simplified

I’m a huge fan of ESPN’s Bill Simmons and two of his most memorable columns are when he and Malcolm Gladwell did “extended” email dialogues on relevant topics. I wanted to interview Steve Plunkett but when I realized that he had already been interviewed on both the websites where I had been posting, I thought that perhaps that doing an e-dialogue with him might be an interesting blogging exercise (and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it worked or not…)

Steve: The 3 facets of Social Media are: Value, Engagement, Genuine.
Do you provide value?
Are you engaging?
Are you real?

I keep thinking 4… but there is a place in this world for people who swear and talk sexy, not really B2B, but could be wildly successful in B2C or Entertainment.

Todd: There is a place in the world for people who swear & talk sexy = Adult :.)

What astounds me is that people feel they have to be a certain way on social media in order to be successful. Apart from some obvious uber-celebrities, the successful social media folks share a common authenticity no matter how sweet, sour, salty or bitter that authenticity is. Is there anything less cordial and commercial than @shitmydadsays? Yet, look at the value it’s provided to many millions…

Steve: Exactly.. Entertainment value… the whole reason I started “Paisley’s Cool sites” (now Cool Websites Organization http://www.coolwebsites.org), was to showcase the “cool websites” out there, I had a column in the paper, weekly interviews, weekly radio show on 4 clear channel stations, simply about what was cool on the web, from 1996 on… until 9/11 happened then I knew people who I had linked to in that month (windows on the world restaurant, north tower, WTC) and watch the web server I linked to become “unavailable”, as we watched the tower on tv fall to the ground in a cloud of dust. So I kinda stopped “link building”, (which honestly… wasn’t the purpose. I was getting 100k uniques a day for the “coolest flash website”, which at that time, people were pushing the limits for flash websites… like http://2advanced.com and others, of course we also linked to www.doggydoo.com, one of the “dotcoms” that literally sold poop, small, medium and large, hermetically sealed to send to someone you love.. LOL.

As we age “professionally” linking to sites about poop, looks less professional than say blogging about the differences between twitter integration on Bing and Google for your company’s http://blog.mccom.com blog. However part of social media’s interaction with search is not about tweets, it’s about amazon, ringtones, youtube and music. There isn’t really that much search efforts around that spoken about.. or maybe it’s because I don’t blog about seo tactics, just strategy?

Todd: Networks existed well before social media…they weren’t as accessible and visible to the masses but arguably that made them more valuable. Social media isn't the end game for your message…it’s the temporal disseminator of it to where it will get picked up and acknowledged “permanently” via links which pass the value.

As to you other point, frequently your SEO Strategist and your SEO Tactician are 2 different people with two different skill sets. Articulating a SEO vision and managing its implementation is very different than doing the everyday grunt work in a SEO campaign. Visionaries tend not to be the most detail oriented folks…

Steve: That’s what I don’t get… are there actually SEOs who do not touch code… just buy links, spam comments and such without even editing the website? Then again I can see some facets of Local search that don’t’ really require you to edit a website, your thoughts?

Todd: It’s true…there are some aspects of search (certainly local) that can be done without touching code. However, to be any good, you have to have a broad based education and a variety of experiences in order to offer maximum value to anyone. I can’t tell you how many times something I’ve done years ago in a very different context has seeded my mind into coming up with an optimum solution today.

SEO isn’t just about knowledge…it’s about perception. That’s why I’m not big about learning SEO in a classroom setting. A class might teach you knowledge…it could possibly teach you how to think but it won’t teach you how to perceive. Only experience can teach you that and if you don’t have a holistic Internet Marketing background (SEO + PPC + Social Media), you’re far less likely to come up with the $$$ insights.

Steve: I just had this conversation with Robert from @SearchExchange (@NC_SEO on twitter), he was like.. “ohh.. so you’re one of those old people, like we can get you a walker to get to the stage at Search Exchange” – as in I’m a webmaster/code hacker and he understands links a different way I do but his SEO works, just not the same way I do SEO. However, recently I have had the opportunity to train someone, (Yes, I have an SEO Minion/Clone.. Be afraid, Be VERY Afraid!!), who thinks and reasons in a way that mirrors my own, with a slight difference. I taught her FTP and Notepad, the first thing she asked was “Do we really need four blockquotes?”. She picked up the “holistic” aspect of writing clean code. That is something that can’t be taught, even more with Google’s last major announcement was something concerning page load times. Strategy not just tactics are the key to good SEO, from keyword to cash register, what happens?

Todd: I’m now celebrating 10 years in Search Marketing. When I learned SEO, there were no blogs, no RSS feeds, a relatively few websites on the topic, and just a few major forums (most notably Webmaster World). While it was clearly easier to rank well naturally, you had to figure out what to do with almost no outside guidance. The education I got back then is priceless and even though the knowledge I learned is mostly out of date, the process I went through then has greatly contributed to my success now. Even the boring task of recognizing and fixing clean code offers valuable lessons and if you always use a CMS that automates that for you, you missing a major part of the learning process.

Steve: I think the old “usability” + keyword targeted copy and site structure still works every time. Google’s driving directive is to “provide the most uniquely relevant results for each searcher”, as long as you target your customers digital assets with that primary objective in mind you should do fine. Not all CMS systems are horrible for SEO. Recently we have been working on a website for a Microsoft SharePoint CMS consulting firm, SharePoint rocks for SEO as far as CMS’s are concerned.

Todd: You probably know much more about CMS systems than I do. What I do know is that the best CMS for SEO doesn’t add a lot of value if it isn’t being run by an experienced “competitive webmaster”. Excellent SEO’s when presented with a new and unique set of circumstances tend to want to tweak and tinker with what they are given to see if they can supercharge its performance.

One of the reasons I truly value my peers in this industry (such as yourself) is that their ingenuity and insight is absolutely tremendous. Whatever situations I might face, chances are someone in my extended network has successfully navigated through the problem (and chances are they are likely to share). When a group of creative, intuitive, and friendly people pool their common knowledge, anyhurdle can be overcome.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

SEO Dialogue: Steve Plunkett & Todd Mintz

"No, I'm not going to trade links with the company in Miami."

"But you work in Tampa. He doesn't overlap with your market at all, and his PageRank is higher than yours. You do the same thing in the same state."

"I don't care. I might want Miami to be a part of my market someday, and then he'll always outrank me there."

Being handcuffed like this means that I'm willing to take a step back on my expectations for grabbing the best backlinks. For these types of clients I turn to the link wheel.

What is a Link Wheel?

A link wheel is a series of sites and pages that all link to each other, in an effort to build up the ranking of a single site or page. You're effectively building the base of the pyramid, the top of which is your most important page.

Here's a simplified version with four hubs and a single target page.

Link wheels will often include many more hubs, sometimes dozens.

A typical link wheel will use free services like Wordpress or Squidoo to build the individual hubs, and then link them all together.

The Problem with Using a Link Wheel Service

I've communicated with a couple of services that build link wheels. That's their only job, to build your link wheel.

You'll notice that I'm not linking to any of them here. That's because their writing is abysmal. I'm not sure who they're farming out their services to, but they need to check to make sure that they've completed middle school.

Asking an untrained writer to discuss a topic that they have no knowledge of is only going to lead to tears for everybody. Don't give up too much control over the content. You either need to write it yourself, or communicate clearly with a talented writer to make sure the content produced is up to snuff.

Recently Michael Gray gave a review of TextBroker.com. He discussed the importance of being clear with your instructions to the writers you hire if you expect great results.

Natural Links are Always Better

Let's not pretend that link wheels will ever trump the power of natural links. Sometimes though, when you have that particularly difficult client that refuses to share, I don't think there's anything wrong with building a custom link wheel as long as the content is not spun and provides useful information.

Will Reinhardt is the administrator at SEO Keyword Ranking, where he helps professionals track their keyword rankings over time.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Be Your Own Link Wheel

A solid start is important. This way you can quickly meet people who will than share your message, link to your content and grow your resource.

However doing it right is not that easy: we don't talk about any traffic here. It is not a problem now to drive people to visit: but they will come and go. We need visitors that will come, read, subscribe, share and the return.

Let me share how I launch new projects and get people learn about them.

1. Make sure you have good content to promote

The fact that you are launching a new site should mean that you have already done some research in the niche, know your competitors (and maybe friends) and can imagine what people like or dislike reading on that topic.

So assuming you already know the niche fairly well, make sure to create something worthy which get people interested.

A good piece of content that will ensure a solid start should be useful in the first place. Be sure to spend some considerable amount of time on doing some solid research and come up with something that will make readers appreciate it.

Don't try to invent something unheard, don't try to chase after the WOW affect – this will only prevent you from creating a really high-quality piece. Better focus on usefulness.

Here are some ideas and resources to help:

• A solid how-to article. This almost always works. MUO has a good, detailed guide and tool collection on how to research the topic properly and create a perfect how-to article.
• A detailed and helpful infographic. A good infographic helps to mind-map and organize massive amounts of information. Here's a good example: Affiliate Marketing Review Report Card
• A useful list. People love lists: they are eager to bookmark them as a good reference. Creating just another list like anyone in your niche won't help. Work on something more complete and better organized than anything that has already been published on the topic. Something of the type I once did listing free SEO tools.

2. Step 2: Find best places to get the word out

If you are an established user on some general social networks, you don't have any problem looking for places to share your new content.

But what if you are a newbie or just entering a completely new niche? Where to start?

Some people will recommend buying some traffic by advertising on Facebook or StumbleUpon. I wouldn't start there.

Instead, I'd better start with smaller tightly-targeted niche social networks. They won't send you thousands of visitors – they will only let a few people come to your new website. But those few people are well worth thousands. They will expose your posts to many more interested visitors. They will promote your site in plenty of ways you've never heard of.

Back in 2007 when I was just starting blogging and was clueless about what is going on in that public SEO sector which seemed so huge and powerful, I wrote a short post branding your domain name. Looking at that post now, I see nothing special about that: but at that time it turned out to be fresh and useful.

No one was visiting my blog then, so I went ahead and dared to submit it to Sphinn. It got something like 7 Sphinns but one of the Sphinn referrals came and discovered the post on StumbleUpon.

Voila! Thousands of people coming from some mysterious referral (stumbleupon.com/refer.php – I had no idea what that was but I soon knew!). But most importantly, that submission to a tightly-targeted niche network (which never went hot) put me into contact with first valuable contacts in the niche.

Those people started visiting my blog, commenting at my posts, voting for my staff – they encouraged me to move further and are still my best friends and partners.

The Bottom Line

Now, the point of the whole post was that you shouldn't try to draw thousands of visitors to your new site. Start by little and you'll achieve much more than you have ever expected.

Post images by Phil McElhinney and twid

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How to Generate Traffic to a New Site – Focus on the Niche

Click the witter icon to tweet a quote

Search engines went from a spam mess to being quite relevant. Now the emphasis seems to be on pushing out the most recent status update or Tweet as fast as possible. Why is that? What's the use?

Well I certainly cannot speak for Google, Bing or anyone else, but I personally feel it was a bit of pressure and a reactionary move to the success of Twitter and Facebook. 

Clearly people like and want real-time information, which partially explains the amazing growth of Twitter and FB, so the search engines figured they would give it to us.  However, “what’s the use?” is a good question.  I don’t see much use in it myself. 

If I want Twitter updates I go to Twitter or my favorite Twitter app.  I am not sure I have ever clicked on a real time results in a SERP.  The implementation has been so clunky, I usually hate to see them there as they just get in the way of what I am really looking for. 

In fact, new studies indicate that most users look right past the real-time results.

High level, how do you see these real time results folding back into link building campaigns? Just keep on repeating a certain tweet until enough people see it?

I don’t really see them affecting link building campaigns at all unless you are using Twitter to promote link worthy content.  In that case, sure, Tweet away and hope it hits the search results and that people click through to the content. But practically speaking, I don’t think that is the right approach or a very good use of our valuable time.  (Not to mention the spam factor.)

We played with that a little here, and unless you have just the right opportunity it’s pretty hard to match up a client’s content with the right Tweet and have it displayed on a regular basis in the search results. So we tend to just ignore that whole side of the equation right now.

There's always a lot of talk about how this or that in SEO, in Google, changes but unless it's painfully "in your face", there's not a lot of talk about what's changing in link building. As a self styled link building expert — what has changed and what is changing?

No doubt in the last year, off-site or off-page optimization went through the biggest change.

The part of the Google algorithm that calculates link juice is getting more and more refined making it more difficult to achieve success with “traditional” link building methods.

If a
link
is easy
to obtain, Google
knows it,
and discounts itThe methods we used for link building in previous years are almost impossible now, unless you are able to tolerate a higher risk level which is another way of saying paid or rented links.

I often say that if a link is easy to obtain, Google knows it, and discounts it accordingly.

Most people think of Vertical Measures as a link building company, and for the most part that is still very true, however, we have dramatically changed our methods to obtaining links for our clients over the years.  Today, our link building strategies always include promoting link worthy content via social media and other viral techniques to get high quality and diverse links for our clients.

Going forward the old saying “content is king” is going to move from slogan to reality. 

Between the “push” technology that is on the horizon, and constant improvement to the algorithms, content is going to be a huge factor in backlinks and ultimately rankings.

Facebook is growing to be "almost" as large or important a traffic driver as Google. Game changer or "whatever"? And — why?

Game changer might be a pretty good word for it. 

But first a little disclosure: I am not much of a Facebook user, and we have some experts on our staff who implement our FB campaigns for our clients, so I am not anything close to a Facebook expert. 

But I do have an opinion… I see our staff and my wife engaged on Facebook every day, morning ‘til night.  I have never seen this before and I have been in the tech business for more than 25 years.  Any time you have this much traffic and engagement you have a serious player. 

I am certain Google does not want to be relegated to a “research site” where people go to find information, but this is clearly possible with the rapid development of FB and Twitter. 

Google is still the best site in the world for B2B and even B2B conversions, but if they are losing Internet time in a significant way to other sites, we could see a bit of a change in the game.  After all, there are only 24 hours in a day and how we use it really matters to all of the major players online.

"You get what you pay for" is a common warning among link builders. So, if a shady link building company would simply raise its price from $10/month to $2000/month — how would a business site owner know what to look for to determine the good from the bad?

Wow that is a great question Ruud. And a really difficult one to answer.  We lose some prospects to the “low cost” providers.  We try to warn them, but most people just have to learn on their own.  I can’t fault them either. 

link building is problem solvingOver the years we have tried it all.  A couple of years ago I even went to India in hopes of setting up an SEO team inside of a call center to build links for us.  It didn’t work.  SEO and link building is a lot of problem solving.  What we found is that the “cheap” providers want to crank out links like they are a factory.  A few years ago that worked, today, it just does not work. 

Sure you can always find examples of site ranking and all you see in their backlink profile is tons of free directories and cheap blog posts, but 95% of the time the way you get ranked is having a really solid on-page SEO strategy coupled with a high quality backlink profile.

So how does the average person know the difference up front?  We tell the prospective client to call the link building company before you hire them. Can’t find their phone number? Big red flag.  Find a number, but no one answers during business hours?  Not a good sign.  Now if someone does answer, ask them if they can create a custom link building campaign for your specific website.  Most of the time they will recommend directories and articles, nothing special and nothing that will truly make a difference.

You gauge the value of links, for sure. You're not just throwing links at a site until something sticks. That means that you know what you're looking for. What are some quality indicators you can share that people can use to determine if the links *they* are getting are any good?

This is also a bit difficult to answer in this format.  There are so many different factors that can determine a quality backlink. It takes many months for us to develop a link builder.  We know they are a professional link builder when they can “eyeball” a page and determine the value of a link from that page. 

Factors like traffic, backlinks, cache date, Google pagerank, the number of outbound links on the page, location on the page, and anchor text all help determine the value of a link.  There are also some great tools now that can help you quickly determine a good page for a link.  We use SEOmoz tools and their Mozrank to help us quickly determine the value of a link. 

With all that said, I think the first rule of thumb would be “are you proud of that link?” If not, it’s probably not worth much.

I imagine link building as its own competitiveness scale, but then one based on linkability. Is that true? Is it easier to build links for a beer site than it is for a life insurance one? And; does that reflect on pricing?

Yes, linkability is a huge factor in determining the ease of getting links, which certainly has an affect on pricing. 

You see us talking a lot about link worthy content.  We look at a client’s site to see if they have content that people might want to (voluntarily) link to.  If not, we often develop content for them.  As I mentioned above, a lot of what we do is create link worthy content, not just Linkbait, but real content, then we work hard to promote it.  Most of the time the links will come.  Not always, but maybe 60-70% of the pages we promote will draw a decent amount of backlinks.  The more fun or educational or interesting the piece, the easier it is to promote. 

Beer, and related content, will probably be easier to promote than say insurance.  If we have a lackluster or more highly competitive market, and nothing special to promote, the job is much more difficult and often times much more expensive.  Remember, the site you are asking to get a link from wants to know what’s in it for them.  If the link is not a great experience for their visitors, they will often want something in exchange.  And I think we all know what that means.

If link spikes are tempered in value, which we suspect, is running viral campaigns in some cases something you would wish *not* to do?

I think the only time a viral campaign is a bad idea is when you just do it once, it works, and it’s the only thing you do to gain backlinks.  Our recommendation is to be consistent in whatever approach you take to obtaining links.  If it’s viral campaigns, keep at it. Better yet, try several different methods so that you are building links from a variety of sources.

The New Poor, the New York Times calls them: the millions of people who'll be unemployed for years to come. Part of the reason of these Q&A's is to give enough value to maybe help some of those people out. Today is your chance to *click* with someone and help them change their life. If they were to make the step to making a living online then what should they be doing the coming 6-12 months in regard to link building?

We have hired quite a few people that were laid off from industries that cratered over the last couple of years.  Some with minimal experience in our industry.  And I don’t just mean the link building industry, but the search marketing industry in general. 

What we look for are really bright people who have accomplished something significant in their life (graduating from college could be one example) and demonstrated they wanted to get into the search industry.  We ask them questions like “What blogs do you follow?”, “What are your 3 favorite SEO websites?”, “Can you show us your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts?”, “How familiar are you with the terms anchor text, backlinks and title tag?”, “Have you set up a blog?”.  All of these are things someone can do from home and demonstrate their sincerity in becoming an online marketing person. 

So my recommendation would be to go out and do those things so you can answer questions like that, you can learn an incredible amount about our industry online.  You will be much further ahead than most.

If you wouldn't be working, you'd be…

First of all, my wife tells me I will never retire, at least never stop working.  But if I were to do so, I really enjoy fishing, especially bass fishing.  I also love to golf, but almost never have the time to.  I cannot tell you the last time I was on the course.  I also like to read and travel.  So if I could do anything I would travel the world, fishing, golfing and reading – with my best friend – my wife.  A man can dream!

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Ruud Questions: Arnie Kuenn

How to install it

Bing offers a comprehensive guide to setting it up

How to use it

Once installed you will be eager to get started and crawl your first site.

One of the features offered up by the toolkit is Site Analysis. This was the first feature that grabbed my attention and I quickly set about crawling a site of mine to see what it would present me with.

Depending on the size of your site this might take a bit of time, so grab a coffee after you set it to work. For this example i used my own site (SEO Begin). It did not take too long to run, about 3 minutes.

The first thing grabbing your attention is the number of violations.

Violations?! What violations? I thought that my site had squeaky clean code and it was fast to load; what possible violations could these be?

There were a load of broken links and the respective referring pages. Link Sleuth and others offer similar functionality so this was not really too much of a eureka moment.

What I liked though was the way it returned the results within the report.

Get your hands dirty

  SEO`s on the whole tend to have a great understanding of HTML and we are not afraid to get our hands dirty by diving into the code of a CMS or opening a page or two in Notepad.

Whatever your editor the IIS SEO Toolkit offers the solutions to the problems your site poses and presents them in easy to read reports for you to act upon.

It offers HTML errors at a glance and via in depth reports. There are a number of tools online that also do this for free. SiteReportCard.com works on a page by page basis and reports errors within your code. It presents you with alternative corrected markup.

The IIS SEO Toolkit does not offer you corrected markup, however, what it does offer is a sitewide scan with reports on all HTML errors.

Yes there are other tools out there that offer the same, but so far so good.

SEO Errors

Wait a minute, you are telling me where my SEO errors are? OK, let’s run with it. Tell me where my SEO errors are!

Your meta descriptions are too long! (78 characters).

The title must not exceed 65 characters Ok, fine my title tag is too long for Bing (not forgetting that this is a bit of kit for optimizing for Bing) whereas the title tag length for Google would be 70 characters long. Again from SEOmofo and its snippet optimization tool we know that the total length of the description for Google should not exceed 156 charactors. But in Bing it is 150 (Yahoo 72/161).

This information is not new but nice of the toolkit to remind me when i may be exceeding the recommended lengths for title and description tags. Still good let`s move on.

The page contains multiple H1 tags. Ahh bugger… no wait a minute didn’t Google’s very own Matt Cutts discuss this in a webmaster video? So fine use the h1 tags sparingly but ideally just once. Still going ok, what`s next?

Warning! The page contains invalid markup/ Now I know this is a bane of contention across SEO practitioners; some say it has no bearing on how you rank and others swear by it. But at least it has alerted me to it. Still good.

The Link text is not relevant. I will give you the exact quote from the toolkit;

"The link to "[link]" has the link text "read more". It appears that this is generic text that does not provide a relevant description for the destination URL of this link. Search engines process the link text as a description of the content of the page to which the link points. Without link text, the target page has no associated keywords and, therefore, no relevance." Recommended action; Change the link text to include relevant and descriptive keywords that accurately represent the content of the page to which the link points.

That makes total sense, we all knew that didn`t we? Yet again it has offered a relevant recommendation.

The page was excluded by a nofollow attribute. Ahh the pagerank sculpting stuff, one that needs immediate attention me thinks. Cheers for that. Still going strong.

The main focus of violation categories are;

• SEO
• Content
• Performance
• Standards

Personal Overall Thoughts

This IIS SEO Toolkit actually makes site audits so much quicker. It will never replace the human side of what we do.

I tend to run the kit on at least a monthly basis when reviewing client sites.

It can help you with site audits for potential clients to give you further insights into the fundamentals.

In short it is an addition, not a replacement to your current SEO toolkit.

The hardest part of using this toolkit was actually the installation of it.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

IIS SEO Toolkit What is it?

Whilst any self-confessed SEO enthusiast is now featuring on Twitter and Facebook, there is one social media website that perhaps hasn’t been getting as much attention as it should have been from those working in the online marketing industry.

As the 2nd most searched search engine behind Google, YouTube offers a whole host of opportunities for search engine optimisers looking to market their clients’ websites.

Detailed below are the three main reasons why I think that business owners should ensure that they have videos on their website and a presence on YouTube;

Varied Content – Search engines love varied content that is updated regularly and so do internet users. Whilst a page of black and white text may not seem appealing to those browsing a site, a video offers the opportunity to access information quickly and easily, without the visitor having to put in too much work themselves.

A video could even increase the chances of individuals that land on a website, spending more time on the site. In turn, reducing bounce rates from the website.

Accessibility – One thing to consider when designing a website is its usability. The website should be easy to access by a wide range of individuals; this may mean having the option to increase the size of the text or to play an audio reel that sums up the copy on the page.

A video offers those that would otherwise have difficulty reading a webpage, the opportunity to access the information relatively easily. What’s more subtitles and scripts can include keywords that the company is optimising for, enhancing their search engine optimisation.

Google Universal Search – The final, and arguably the most important point of all is the fact that Google indexes videos from individual websites and YouTube in a separate search function.

Clicking on the show options tab, Google enables internet users to disseminate information by media type. There is currently the option to search results that are in an image, video format or those specifically from blogs, news sites and social media websites.

As an example, if a tiling company posts a video on YouTube entitled, ‘How to lay floor tiles,’ and an internet user searches for this on Google and opts for video results, it is likely that the companies post will appear.

This goes to show that YouTube is another valuable platform for business owners to market their business.

Are there any other social media websites of SEO tools that you use on a regular basis that you think could benefit an online marketing campaign? Share your tips and advice by leaving a comment below.

Jenny works for the UK SEO company The Creare Group

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Twitter, Facebook; How About Using YouTube As Part Of Your SEO Campaign?

There is a reason why SEO sucks for many, many people. It seems SEO is HATED even, in many cases. I usually ignore that SEO Hater stuff because many, many people don’t really understand what SEO is, and some people like to foster SEO F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty,  Doubt… the same stuff that sells backup systems and certain unnecessary insurance policies). Whatever.

SEO Lovers versus SEO Haters

I pondered on how the world splits between SEO lovers and SEO haters.  Google Insights provides some help here if you compare how people are clicking on SEO love and SEO hate.

Perhaps surprisingly SEO love provides the 100 benchmark here and that reflects the current view.  Over the years, SEO love has been gradually picking up its adherents.

• 2006    25
• 2007    31
• 2008    47
• 2009    62
• 2010    75

'SEO hate' was not even on the radar screen with a 0 reading until this year, 2010, where it now has a score of 7.  Clearly something is stirring here.

What was SEO?

Before we pile too much analysis on here, it is important to define what we're talking about.  Danny Sullivan, SEO's defender if ever there was on, has just weighed in with Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?

I’ve found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes SEO. That’s not how I defined SEM — search engine marketing — back 2001. I’d still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. …

SEO has been the term used for gaining natural listings and also for people or companies who do such work. The letters stands for Search Engine Optimization. No, SEO is not about spamming the search engines. It’s an acceptable practice that search engines actively encourage. In the search world, SEO is equal to PR in the “real” world. Good SEO can’t guarantee good search engine “coverage,” any more than good PR can guarantee a favorable newspaper article. But it can increase the odds, if done within acceptable boundaries.

He goes on with some interesting information on what this all may mean.  However it focuses on definitions and perhaps the real discussion should pick up some wider issues.

What is SEO?

That simple question is as difficult to answer as an exactly parallel question, What is Marketing?  There are no clear cut, black and white answers when you try to tackle apparently simple issues like this.  Every individual has by now built up a whole set of associated concepts and emotions.  Here we have prime examples of that old picture of the 7 blind men standing around an elephant and trying to explain to the others what this elephant thing is: it's a wall, it's a tree, it's a tube and so on.

When it comes to marketing, no one has been trying to promote the concept in a major way so whatever it currently is has arrived by an evolutionary process.  Different views have been debated and worked with and in society we now have a very wide mix of how people view marketing.  This society view is even to an extent created by the actions of marketing practitioners.  Hear the word marketing and some will think instantly of trying to force our children to overeat sugar and of unwanted telephone calls just as you're sitting down to supper.

The evolution of how SEO is now interpreted by the individual or entrepreneur in the street is even more complex.  SEO has not just evolved naturally by the interaction of a host of players.  In this case there is a huge gorilla sitting in the corner of the room.  For many people, SEO is synonymous with having a high ranking on the Google search engine report page (SERP) for important keyword queries.  Google sets the rules for that although it is somewhat elusive in giving guidance on how to achieve those high rankings.

How then does Google define SEO.  Here is what they currently offer:

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.

Although many people will not have read the Google definition, perhaps that growing score for 'SEO hate' shows that more and more people are feeling as Google does and moving to that end of the scale.  What is causing society to increasingly accept that view of SEO?  Perhaps the biggest factor is the most obvious factor – how SEO gets marketed.

SEO Marketing defines SEO

Marketing is all about communicating with prospects and clients.  If there is a great deal of marketing activity, then it would not be surprising that this has a big influence on society's views and perceptions of a topic.  In this case, there are two major influences In SEO marketing.

The first major influence in creating the demand for SEO is Google itself.  It has been extremely successful in suggesting that keyword searches are the way to find information.  The word is out: your website must be visible in important keyword searches.  Having planted that idea, Google then has built a huge business on this foundation by selling ads that will help you be visible when people do keyword searches.  Unfortunately at the same time, this marketing has created a large measure of FUD.  That stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.  Google understandably cannot give out too much information since then all would know how to be at the top.

Unfortunately the Google algorithms are not perfect and do allow spamming websites created merely to be at the top of keyword queries to succeed, at least for a time.  Google may warn against SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.  They often promise thousands of content web pages and thousands of back-links for surprisingly low costs.  Such methods may work for a time but will result in long term harm.  Google is clear on this:

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Despite all this, the SEO market place is largely defined by these high output/low cost SEO 'experts'.  It will not be surprising to see that 'SEO hate' grows even more.

How to preserve your SEO Sanity

One might be depressed by this worsening situation for SEO.  So many thought SEO was the magical silver bullet that would bring Internet success.  How does one keep whatever good may be represented by SEO and ignore the irrelevant and possibly damaging aspects of SEO.

It really is very simple.  It is important to remember:

SEO is necessary but not sufficient.

SEO is only part of the toolkit that must be kept in the marketing box.  There are many other aspects to developing websites that perform and achieve a company's goals. It should not be a company goal to get a high ranking in a Google keyword search.  It should be a company goal to be in contact with as many potential prospects as possible and convert as many of them as possible into customers who make purchases.

This involves the look and feel of the website, the usability of the website as visitors explore what is there and the ability of the website to create trust and convert visitors to buyers.  All these other dimensions must be optimized in a way that does not jeopardize the search engine friendly aspects of the website.

Perhaps a final confirmation of this view can come from Google itself.  It provides tools for measuring a website's performance with its Google Analytics metrics.  Here is how they describe what they measure:

Improve your site and increase marketing ROI.

Google wants you to attract more of the traffic you are looking for, and help you turn more visitors into customers.  Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

There's not a mention of SEO there, even though many of the resulting improvement ideas may fall under that topic.  That's the way to love SEO.  It has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

SEO – Love It or Hate It

Read previous parts here:

• Part One: How To Get Social Media ROI
• Part Two: The 4 Functions of Social Media

Part Three: Repurposing Linkbait To Get Social Media Marketing Results

If you're not familiar with linkbait, it's essentially a way of getting links for SEO purposes by creating viral content. It grabs attention, gets passed around, and gets linked to by bloggers and social media people. It can be wildly successful, as it was with Mingle2 (100,000 links in 6 months leading to a top 10 ranking, and several millions visits, for a new dating website; and dating is not an easy niche to penetrate).

In the above slide from my Social Media ROI presentation, you can also see screenshots of:

• How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take In a Fight?
• How Many 90 Year Olds Could You Take In a Fight?
• MGM Grand Sins

The linkbait approach can be repurposed for Social Media. I've taken the liberty of naming two variations:

• AttentionBait
• RevenueBait

Before going any further, I need to say that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here. This is simply an evolution of the work that Matthew Inman (Oatmeal) and Todd Malicoat (Stuntdubl) have done on LinkBait for years. Those guys are the gurus you should start learning from. Then continue to evolve toward RevenueBait.

How do you know if it's LinkBait, AttentionBait, or RevenueBait?

It's all in the intention of the creators.

• LinkBait is usually created by SEO's, it targets bloggers, and the goal is to quickly attract lots of inbound links. You also could call something LinkBait in hindsight if it garners mass links.
• AttentionBait is more the provenance of branding and PR folks. They only care about the AI or AID portions of AIDA.
• RevenueBait is for ambitious direct marketers.

AttentionBait

As you gather from the above examples, all variations of "bait" try to grab attention like the cover of The National Enquirer or Cosmopolitan Magazine. Shock value and edgy humor are key.

With AttentionBait, the goal is to get your brand some eyeballs or mindshare. You don't particularly care about SEO or Revenue at that point.

An example of this would be the the 2007 Boston Bomb Scare related to an Aqua Teen Hunger Force promotion.

[One of the ATHF promotional items that lead to the Scare.]

It appears it was not the promoter's intention to induce panic. In retrospect, targeting only people who were familiar with the ATHF brand would have avoided the panic. Regardless, it got them a lot of attention, and in their target demographic, it enhanced their brand. In fact, it might be that the ATHF fans think that people who would panic about these promo items are ridiculous- the controversy may have solidifed the ATHF fan-base by create an us-vs-them-and-they're-stupid situation.

As you can see, all Bait involves risk, and each company's risk tolerance (or that of the decision makers) must be considered. Bait brainstorming results or rough drafts should be reviewed with key decision-makers before putting all your resources into the final product.

Another great example of AttentionBait is I Love Local Commercials. Here's how they say it works on their website:

"It's simple, you nominate a local business that you think is worthy of attention and, if it's one of the more inspiring entries, we'll help them get that attention. We'll do whatever it takes (funny songs, crazy antics, perhaps even some amateur pyrotechnics) to make the best local commercial on whichever side of the Mississippi you happen to reside."

And here's an example, which is now my favorite commercial ever:

That's a real commercial for a real business, and it has received more than 1 million views on YouTube since its posting 4 months ago. It's a masterpiece. Even the title of the video, "Painfully Honest and Epic Mobile Home Commercial", is high-impact.

The "I Love Local Commercials" guys now own the SEO keyword "local commercials", so if they want to get paid to do that, they're set.

How to Fail At AttentionBait

Some organizations are destined to fail at Bait.They have too low a risk tolerance to do anything interesting. Your only hope, if you're the Bait creator, is to find something a bit less cool than you'd like to do that they'd accept.

Here's a trick: come up with the idea you really want to use, and then come up with one or two more that are much crazier. Present those on either side of the one you really want to do. Now you preferred idea seems less crazy.

RevenueBait

The goal of RevenueBait is sales. Refer back to AIDA in part one. This is for you if you think:

• Attention isn't good enough
• Links aren't good enough
• Rankings aren't good enough
• If it doesn't make the cash register ring, it's a failure
• Grumpiness is fun

Ok everything except the last one (grumpiness can be fun but you don't have to be grumpy to be a direct marketer).

So let's review how we get to revenue in Social Media:

To be RevenueBait, your campaign/bait must significantly increase the ROI of visitors. This can include up-selling and cross-selling previous customers.

I'd love to give you seven hundred examples of this, but I think this is a weakness in most Social Media campaigns right now.

People want and plan to get:

• Friends, fans, followers
• Clicks
• Comments
• Testimonies

But not revenue.

We have a few things in development for Fuel Interactive clients, but I can't share results yet. One campaign involves a purchase and random winners, but in order to not be considered a lottery, we can't make purchase the only way to enter.

My advice is to consult the Incentive Planning slide above and make sure your campaign plan gets prospects all the way to the sale.

Brian Carter is Director of SEO, PPC, and Social Media for Fuel Interactive, cofounder of TweetROI, and a passionate keynote speaker.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Social Media LinkBait, AttentionBait and RevenueBait