I’m baffled by the move. How can one of the major data providers, a site that is basically required for local SEO, make such a significant change with absolutely no mention of it on its website (neither under its news and events, knowledge base, nor account pricing options) or in an email to its account holders? I found out about it, as I’m sure other marketing firms and webmasters will, when I tried to add a new client’s business listing.

The Logic Behind the Change and Its Impact

According to sources, Localeze eliminated its free option around mid-April as a means of ensuring the accuracy of its listings. Apparently, Localeze was receiving a huge volume of bogus listings with its free program, as well as many with mobile or VOIP phone numbers that made it nearly impossible for it to manage authentication under its landline phone verification system.

I suppose I get the logic behind the move. With Localeze one of the major data providers for local SEO, if the integrity of the information it is providing to search engines is bad, that affects us all. No one wants to be pushed out of the top spot on Google+Local or other local search engine results by a bogus or inaccurate listing. But if authentication is the only reason for Localeze eliminating the free basic listing, with today’s sophisticated technology, couldn’t it have come up with some other way to verify a listing? Google, for example, requires either phone or mail verification to ensure that the person editing the listing also, at the very least, has access to the phone & address of the business.

But what I question is the rationale. Localeze is charging us for something where we do all the work in providing and managing the business information. What are we getting for that $297? Well, according to the Localeze Knowledge Base FAQ, the difference between a basic listing (free) and an enhanced listing ($297 a year) is:

Your basic business listing contains Name, Address and Phone Number, one category and you can only claim a Basic listing if it is already provisioned in the Localeze database.

In the Premium listing, you can add more business categories as well as keyword information, hours of operation, products carried, URLs and other data that will help more potential customers find you in local search results.

We provide a one-stop shop for you to enter this information in a consistent way and we partner with nearly 150 local search platforms who contract with us for this information.

A Premium business listing costs less than $25 a month paid on an annual basis of only $297 a year per listing. This will be renewed and you will be notified prior to the renewal of the subscription.

Save time and money with a single, simple interface to enhance your business information on all search platforms. Our system powers millions of local business searches every day. In fact Neustar Localeze has direct contractual relationships with the largest network of local search platforms in the industry, over 150 in all and including: Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yellowpages.com, Twitter, Facebook, TomTom, and Apple and more.

Certainly Localeze must be getting some good income from those “150 local search platforms,” in addition to the companies that purchase its data. That income is entirely dependent upon them supplying accurate data. I can’t help but feel like Localeze is now charging us to do their job for them. So one has to wonder why Localeze couldn’t come up with a more affordable pricing structure that kept in mind businesses on a tight budget.

So what is the impact of eliminating the free option? Here’s what I’ve discovered so far:

• Businesses already listed on Localeze under the free basic listing are grandfathered in, but they can only make one edit a year free of charge.
• Localeze has not changed its policy of claiming your listing for free if it’s already in its database. But, you can only make one change a year to that listing.
• If you’re a new business, budget $297 for Localeze.

Potential Ramifications of Localeze Pay-to-List

It will be interesting to see if the $297 fee will discourage businesses from using the Localeze service. That could lead to outdated business information, which is not something Google or Apple Maps would tolerate for long.

I also suspect very few renewals. I would think once a business gets listed, there would be no reason to change the business information, short of a change in address or phone number. So why renew each year with Localeze; there’s no discounted price for keeping your subscription active from year to year. And since your business information is in the Localeze database, it’s being furnished to local search engines. It would be more cost-effective to simply pay the Premium listing fee again if and when there are any changes to the business listing information. The counter to this is that your listing could get removed from all the sites Localeze feeds to, and that may happen to some extent, but I question whether a company who’s job it is to supply accurate business information would purposely remove that accurate business information from their database.

It also remains to be seen whether doing away with the free subscription could open up avenues for opportunists to find a way around using Localeze while still obtaining the same results. As it is, businesses can circumvent Localeze by adding their business information to other major directories that Localeze uses as citations sources. Many marketing SEO firms already do that to capitalize on local SEO. After a few months, the business listing will be in the Localeze database, so why fork over the $297?

I expect a lot more chatter about Localeze doing away with its free basic listing once more marketers and businesses learn about it. At the very least, Localeze should strongly consider devising a better pricing structure and provide this information clearly on its website. Only time will tell the true impact and ramifications of this change.

Have you been impacted by Localeze’s  move to eliminate its free basic listing? How are you dealing with it? Share your thoughts and advice with us.

Caller: How much will it cost to get ranked on the first page of Google’s search engine results?

Me: It depends on your keywords and budget.

Caller: My budget is the cheapest possible.

Me: Then you’re not going to rank on the first page.

I receive these types of calls and emails daily. Everybody wants to get first page ranking on search engines. But they want it for $200 or less a month. I’m sure there are still companies out there selling turnkey SEO services (one strategy fits all), but since last year’s Google Panda and Penguin updates, turnkey SEO no longer works. Quite frankly, it’s a waste of money. It makes better business sense to put that money towards what will work and delivers the results you want. It means recognizing that SEO is a form of marketing and just like any business marketing plan, its goals and budget need to be defined.

The New SEO Landscape

The reasoning behind Google’s Panda and Penguin updates was to improve the quality of its search results. Google was getting flak from browser users that high ranking search result websites provided no value to what they were seeking, thus diminishing Google’s search value.

So Panda was designed to knock low quality sites off the top of results pages. Google defined low quality sites as those that had keyword stuffed articles, copied content from other websites, had thin content, or provided no useful information. Taking over the top spot were websites better ranked for original content and credible information.

Then the Penguin update came along with its web spam targeted algorithm that penalized sites not following Google’s quality guidelines. This update went after bad SEO tactics, like keyword stuffing, adding unrelated outgoing links to content for SEO purposes and other schemes aimed solely at influencing search engine results rankings.

As a result of these changes, a lot of businesses, particularly those who relied on turnkey SEO, saw a significant drop in visitors to their websites. They also saw their search engine rankings drop to the back of the pack. But more importantly, Penguin changed the approach to SEO in getting a site ranked. For those who used to pay a turnkey SEO service to add scripts to their site to improve rankings are forced to look at SEO as a form of marketing and formulate strategies just as they do for their other marketing initiatives.

Changing Your SEO Strategy

With search engines getting stricter with the use of SEO tactics for ranking purposes, businesses need to rethink their online objectives. The goal is no longer “to rank on the first page.” Rather, more reasonable goals might be: “Increase leads 20% in the next six months” or “Increase e-newsletter subscribers by 50% in the next year.”

Ranking high on search engines is now focused on specific goals tied to ROI. For example, ranking on the first page for your business name is easy and inexpensive, but how valuable is it to gaining paying customers? A more specific goal might be a first page ranking for your product or service, which is a bit tougher to achieve and costs more. Likewise, the timing to reach your goals needs to be more realistic. Panda and Penguin did away with quick results from SEO strategies. Now it could take anywhere from six to 12 months to begin seeing results.

SEO that works goes far beyond keywords. It’s a strategic process that involves research, planning, testing and analysis. It’s about finding areas of profitability, personalizing the visitor experience, delivering expectations and having landing pages that deliver value to visitors based on their needs or the reason why they are searching in the first place. A solid SEO marketing campaign that delivers long-term results encompasses your type of business, your target market and your business goals.

So getting back to the original question: How much should SEO cost? It all depends on how much you are committed to a long-term, quality SEO marketing initiative. It’s not about a fixed price or per site price. It’s about how much return on investment you receive from your SEO campaign. So SEO should be viewed not as a cost, but as an investment. Therefore, the question should be: How much ROI did my SEO efforts deliver? If the amount is below the mark, then your SEO marketing firm should be held accountable.

Going forward, consider SEO not as something that will get you instant top page ranking, but rather a marketing initiative that turns visitors into paying customers and provides your business a solid return on investment over the long haul.

How It Works

Here’s an example of content that requires the user to complete the survey before reading the rest of the article.

Google is partnering with Web publishers, such as content providers, video creators, online news sites and app developers, to place Google consumer surveys on their sites in exchange for compensation based on survey clicks. Visitors to these sites must complete the survey question in order to access the remainder of the content for free.

Businesses or organizations that want to use Google Consumer Survey need a Google account. If you have an existing Google account, then you can get started at the Google Consumer Surveys Home Page.

Google developed an interactive platform with screen prompts for creating an online survey. You begin by choosing whether to poll any Internet user or a targeted demographic group. Google limits each survey to one question, but you have 12 format options for your question, among them multiple choice, side-by-side images, image with drop-down menu options, open-ended text question, or five-star rating scale. According to Google, one question surveys receive more accurate responses and a higher response rate – 15 to 20 percent compared with the 0.1 to 2 percent industry standard.

Screenshot of Google Consumer Surveys interface – organizes the survey creation process into four steps.

Google also gives users a lot of options in creating their surveys, such as how many responses you want to list for the survey question, whether you want to use an existing template or create your own, and the number of responses you want to receive.

Another beneficial feature of Google Consumer Surveys is that you can see the raw data as it’s coming in using Google’s online interface. Google also automatically aggregates and analyzes the responses so you can view results in chart format, and provides geographic and demographic comparison insights based on respondents’ IP addresses gathered by Google.

An example of survey results presented in bar chart format.

Price Structure

Probably the most attractive thing Google Consumer Surveys has going for it is the price. Considering online market research surveys can run anywhere from $600 to $3,500, Google’s price is pretty affordable. Google offers three separate price plans. The general population survey costs $150 for 1500 responses ($0.10 per response). It allows you to poll a general representative sample of the Internet population in the U.S., Canada, or United Kingdom. The demographic targeting survey is $250 for 500 responses ($0.50 per response). It allows you to target a subpopulation defined by gender, age, or U.S., Canada, or United Kingdom geographic locations. The custom audience survey enables you to target a specific population by using a threshold question first, such as “Do you play golf?” followed by your survey question. The cost is $0.50 per response for follow-up questions or $750.00 for 1500 responses.

Great Marketing Research Potential

For many businesses, using Google Consumer Surveys makes sense, especially if you have a small marketing budget and need consumer input to tweak a marketing campaign or product branding/packaging before rollout. The surveys can be conducted and completed within 48 hours and provide you with some good, credible data.

Google Consumer Surveys can be used to gauge consumer behavior, public reaction, or customer preferences to just about anything. Just off the top of my mind, some good surveys to run that would provide a good return on investment would be:

• Asking a question about product brand preference so you can determine customer satisfaction between your brand and the competition.
• Finding out which feature in a particular product is most important to people.
• Gauging online public response to new marketing materials, such as which logo they like better?
• Determining how much Internet users would pay for a specialty product, for instance, you can target pet owners to determine price points for organic dog biscuits.
• Verifying how well your brand awareness campaigns are working.
• Discovering which news topics online users have heard about.
• Evaluating the type of information consumers what to see on product packaging.
• Finding out which color people prefer on product packaging.
• Measuring how important a particular service is to consumers.
• Determining the average number of text messages sent from a phone each day.
• Planning future product development.
• Gaining key insights on how people feel about national issues, which can be used for elections data or research.
• Getting a feel for which display ad would have a better response.

Let Us Help With Your Survey Planning

If you’re short on time, unsure about what types of surveys to run, or just stuck on how to word your survey question to get the results you desire, we can lend a hand by running your entire market research campaign or assisting with certain parts of it. Get in touch today to get started on complementing your marketing strategy with market research.

NAP Spamming In a Nutshell

Businesses use their NAP information to submit to directories like Yelp, Citysearch, InfoUSA, Yellowpages, 411.com, Foursquare, etc., as a marketing strategy to authenticate their existence, thereby ranking high in local search engine results. Search engines cross-reference NAP information across numerous directory sites, like those mentioned above, to verify that you are an actual business. Since spam sites don’t have a physical address or phone number, they’re stealing NAP information from websites of legitimate businesses. Then they use the information to submit their spam site to third-party sources, probably the same as those used by the legitimate business. But as far as search engines are concerned, the spam business is now legit because it has verifiable NAP information attached to it.

What Search Engines Are Doing About Citation Spam

Google appears to be the first search engine to take action against spammers using NAP information of another business. Currently, Google ranks local business queries by extracting data from third-party sources, such as Yelp, Manta, YellowPages.com, Superpages, etc. Google map information for a business-related query is also gathered from other sources and complements what the business has provided. But right now, Google has no way of knowing whether this other source information is accurate or spam.

In working to devalue citation source spam, Google has applied for and received a patent called “Determining Spam in Information Collected by a Source.”  The patented method will allow Google to compare data from various other sources to check for spam. The patent indicates two methods to be used:

• Measuring the frequency of occurrence of each element or phrase in the citation.
• Using various criteria to determine if the source is “trusted” or “untrusted.”

SEO Marketing Implications

For Google, the end goal is to prevent spammers from using NAP information to gain top listings on Google+ Local queries. It plans to penalize Google Places and Google Maps local listings according to the number of off-page citations it deems to be spam by lowering their rankings.

It is yet to be seen how Google’s patent will impact SEO marketing strategies. But there seems to be some holes in this methodology.

• It appears that keyword rich descriptive words, such as “best,” “sales,” “discount,” “cheap,” added to the main title of your business as a means of gaining a higher rank in local search results could be a red flag under Google’s new methodology to flush out spam businesses. As a result, the legitimate business could be penalized for manipulating search results.
• It looks like Google will begin classifying a citation source as “trusted” and “untrusted” using a methodology that looks at consistency among citation information. So unless the same NAP consistency is used across all local citation sources, Google will view it as an “untrusted” citation and you’ll lose Google+ Local ranking. Furthermore, if your business information appears on more “untrusted” source sites than “trusted” sites, Google could deem it as being spam even if it’s not.
• What defines a “trusted source” and what form of reliable authenticity checking do these “trusted” sources use? And because it’s a “trusted” source, Google is less likely to check the accuracy of the information. So NAP spam could still occur because Google would create a new listing using this “trusted” (yet really spam) information.
• How will Google deal with false positives? According to the Google patent, the focus is on the category of the business, however the name of the business could also be impacted depending on terms in the actual business name, such as “Discount” or “Sales.” How will Google determine whether these words are spam or actually part of a legitimate business’s NAP information?

What Marketers Should Do

1. Search the web for your company’s NAP information to see if spammers are using it in blog comments, review sites, directories, etc. Spammers probably made slight spelling differences in your company name or address to create a duplicate listing. Request that any spam citation sources be removed immediately.
2. Check your company’s profile information on all the directory accounts you opened and be sure it is consistent across all of them. For instance, if the legal name of your bakery business is Steve’s Baking Company, be sure the full name is used across all directories, rather than just Steve’s Baking. The same holds true for your address. If you have a suite number or a directional identifier like Southwest, whether you decide to spell out the full word or abbreviate it, make sure you enter it the same way on each directory.

While Google is heading in the right direction to stop NAP spam, it could also impact SEO keywords and local marketing strategies. To what extent that will occur remains to be seen. Stay tuned for new developments as this new patent methodology rolls out.

Tag, you’re it! DIY tagging is what the new Google Tag Manager is all about. It empowers marketers (even those with no technical background) to add or update website tags (site analytics, conversion tracking, remarketing, etc.) themselves rather than rely exclusively on IT folks or web administrators. The free tool switches the tagging environment from site code access to a Google web interface. For businesses using RLM Web Design & Marketing, the Google Tag Manager goes hand-in-hand with our content management system by giving you the ability to make website updates yourself, if you prefer, without having to go through a web developer.

So Many Tags, So Little Time

During an introductory webinar, Google Product Manager Laura Holmes provided some interesting background as to why Google developed Google Tag Manager, or GTM as it’s being called. The purpose of the tool addresses three main issues that Google extracted from comments regularly received from marketers and IT professionals:

1. Long delays in getting tags live on a site because of differences in priorities between marketing (who are defining marketing campaigns around data collection tags) and IT (who has to deploy the tags but priorities are site enhancements and keeping the site running properly). The delays result in loss data and missed opportunities in translating the data into sales.
2. Too many tags on a website slowing it down. It’s not uncommon for websites to have as many as 20 different tracking tags at one time. If tags start loading slowly, they can prevent other tags from firing, thus skewing the amount of data being collected.
3. Inaccurate data collection. Tags are technical in nature and often times it’s challenging for marketers to properly explain in IT language how the tag should work. As a result, tracking tags might not be properly implemented or could be collecting the wrong data.

Enter the Google Tag Manager. The tag management solution switches tags to a hosted service that keeps track of the tags and tag-firing rules.

Is GTM Right for Your Business

If you run a wide range of digital media campaigns to drive visits to your site(s), if you want to run marketing campaigns that are beyond the scope of the basic Google Analytics tag, or if you invest in display advertising or affiliate marketing, then the Google Tag Manager is useful for your business.

Google Tag Manager has a lot of good features and its usefulness is apparent almost immediately. Probably its biggest benefit is taking all the various tags for different web pages and consolidating them into a single tag called a container snippet. This container snippet basically replaces the tags for Google Analytics, AdWords, Floodlight, etc., without interfering with your site’s HTML coding. The container snippet you embed on applicable web pages connects each page to Google. When someone visits your website, Google sends the necessary tags and firing information to that person’s browser.

Here’s an example of a container snippet (the GTM-XXX coding is replaced with your container snippet ID).

<!-- Google Tag Manager -->

<noscript><iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-XXXX" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript><script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&#038;l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src= '//www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f); })(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-XXXX');
// ]]></script>
<!-- End Google Tag Manager -->

So with Google Tag Manager, you are working with one snippet of code deployed across the whole website instead of editing site codes. Not only does this make tags easier to install, but it also enables anyone with authorized user access to the GTM interface to add, update and administer tags instantaneously from the Google Tag Manager rather than wait for the next IT update.

Another useful function caters to those who want to go beyond basic code implementation. Google Tag Manager accommodates customizations by using a data layer that gets added above your container snippet. It gives GTM variables for when to fire a certain tag. For instance, here’s an example of a data layer where the variable is set on the signup page to identify a high-value customer:

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
dataLayer = [{

'pageCategory': 'signup',

'visitorType': 'high-value'

}];
// ]]></script>

You can set up data layers for when a visitor clicks on a particular button, link, or Flash component, makes a certain dollar purchase, uses a site widget, or leaves a particular page without taking the action you desire. With GTM, marketers are able to better manage digital marketing efforts because they have direct control over traffic tracking and website usage codes.

Some Other Pluses:

This Google-powered process lends itself to some nice benefits:

• There’s automated error checking.
• Pages load faster and tags fire correctly.
• GTM works on mobile websites.
• There’s a Debug Console and Preview Mode so you can check that any new tags you add are working properly before you publish them.
• Error recovery features are built in so if a tag crashes the site, a previous version can be deployed immediately.
• There are workflow tools so you know immediately whether the tags are providing the type of information you want and if they’re not, revise them accordingly.
• It forces you to think about the overall goals for your website in terms of what data you want to collect and what events you want to track.

Getting Started with Google’s Tag Manager

To use Google Tag Manager, you need to open a Google account. You can have multiple websites under one Google Tag Manager account. After establishing an account, you can then create a container snippet, select the types of tags you want to add from the drop-down menu and establish rules for when each should fire. Once completed, remove your site’s existing hard coded tags. Press the GTM publish button and you can now manage all your tags from the GTM interface.

Google is promising the unveiling of additional features to GTM in coming months. They include reporting on tag firing, support for AB testing tags and more templates for non-Google tags.

With the Google Tag Manager, it is Google’s intent to make a better tagging world. So far, it appears they’re off to a good start.

How link attribution used to work

Prior to the change, In-Page Analytics would give you the percentage of clicks based solely on the destination URL. While this method told you how many people clicked through to the destination page, if you had more than one link on a page going to the same destination URL, it didn’t tell you which one the person clicked.

How enhanced link attribution works

For example, let’s say you have a link to your contact page in the main nav and another link in the footer. If 20% of people clicked the main nav link and nobody clicked the footer link, In-Page Analytics would show a 20% click-through rate on both links. Obviously this isn’t entirely useful. With enhanced link attribution enabled, In-Page analytics now shows the correct 20% click-through rate on the main nav link and 0% on the footer link.

With enhanced link attribution, click percentages are broken down by specific elements on your website, whether it’s a button, link, icon, or other content, used to reach that destination URL. This is a great enhancement because now you actually know which elements are attracting click-throughs and can modify your web design accordingly.

Before and After Analytics

Let’s take a look at a visual example of Google Analytics before the enhanced link attribution feature is applied and after. As you can see, the website shown in the example uses a variety of marketing elements to encourage visitors to click through to other web pages in the site.

Before Screenshot without Enhanced Link Attribution

In-Page Analytics without Enhanced Link Attribution

Notice that, without enhanced link attribution, the “Home” nav item and the logo (both point to the homepage) are both 0.8%, even though we know the same amount of people probably did NOT click the home nav item as did the logo.

After Screenshot with Enhanced Link Attribution

In-Page Analytics with Enhanced Link Attribution

Notice that the “Home” nav item and the logo have different click-through rates. Now we know how many people are actually clicking each of those links.

Here’s a more simplified Before and After look of the In-Page Analytics:

Before: Click-through information by destination URL only.

After: Click-through information by actual link and/or other elements.

With enhanced link attribution, you receive click percentages broken down according to which element a site visitor clicked on to get to the destination web page instead of one percentage number that represents total clicks to the same destination.

How Enhanced Link Attribution Works

As noted earlier, the enhancement is part of Google’s In-Page Analytics feature. In-Page Analytics gives you various statistics for any page on your site, including where visitors clicked. However, the In-Page Analytics feature is limited in distinguishing between multiple links on the same web page going to the same destination.

Enter Google Analytics enhanced link attribution. It lets you tag your pages with enhanced link tracking functionality so you can obtain individual stats for links that share the same destination URL. For example, if there are two links on your home page that both lead to the About Us page, you can now view separate click percentage data for each link. You’ll also be getting separate data for a page element, such as a Search button, that leads to many different destination pages, as well as elements that use JavaScript.

To add enhanced link attribution to a web page, you need to use Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code snippet. The new, two-line tag should be added to the tracking code as shown here:

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
var pluginUrl = '//www.google-analytics.com/plugins/ga/inpage_linkid.js';
_gaq.push(['_require', 'inpage_linkid', pluginUrl]);
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-Y']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

Next, go to your web property settings using the Admin link found at the top of any Analytics page and enable the enhanced link attribution.

This enhanced link attribution code adds an event handler that checks for a click target ID, as well as a destination URL, with every click. If there is an ID, it temporarily stores it as a _utmli cookie. The link ID information is recorded and sent to the _trackPageview before clearing the cookie.

How Will the Change Impact Your Site Performance?

The most obvious impact is more accurate and detailed click-through information. This speaks volumes in designing a website that will drive traffic and get the results you’re seeking. It will allow you to look at your site performance with more knowledge about how visitors are using your site. For example, you’ll get clear answers to important marketing analysis questions, such as:

• Which links are site visitors clicking on?
• Are my calls to action effective or do they need to be more visible or powerful?
• Is the site layout ideal for what I want visitors to do on the page?
• Are visitors being attracted to the content I want them to view?

By knowing which elements are working better than others, you can adjust the layout of your site content accordingly to optimize the performance of your site pages. With the enhanced link attribution feature, Google Analytics is providing a more sophisticated tool to better track and analyze your website traffic. And when it comes to enhancing your website results, the more tools the better for achieving success!

TL;DR

Enhanced link attribution is an improved feature of Google Analytics’ in-page reports that show you the real click-through rate of links on a page, rather than the click-through rate for each destination URL on the page. Enhanced link attribution must be turned on manually by adding a bit of code to the standard analytics tracking code.

If you’re in the Cincinnati area this coming Tuesday, August 28th, and are interested in learning about link bait, I’ll be speaking at the local SEO meetup. Check out the meetup page here to learn more and please register and RSVP at Meetup.com if you’ll be coming so our gracious hosts know what to expect.

1. Ad extensions increase your ad size, the amount of information your ad contains, and generally turn it into an overall badass.
2. Ad extensions include additional business information in the ad, such as your address, phone number, links to interior web pages, product information, etc, making your ad much more useful to potential customers.

Unfortunately, while ad extensions are well-known by AdWords “pros,” most companies with existing campaigns have no idea they exist or how to implement them. If you’re not using ad extensions, you’re losing clicks to your competitors who are.

Why you should be using ad extensions

So let’s have a quick look at what ad extensions for the uninitiated. I did a quick search for “dentist” and this is the first ad that showed up:

Sample AdWords Ad with Location and Sitelink Ad Extensions

And here’s the second ad:

Basic ad without ad extensions

Notice the difference? The first ad has an address and phone number with “Directions” link, as well as links to interior pages on the site. Overall it’s much bigger, taking up just about double the space. Whether AdWords, print, TV, whatever, the “louder” you can make your ad the more likely it will grab someone’s attention.

Now have a look at this ad:

AdWords ad with star ratings

In addition to a location, this ad includes a star rating from the company’s Google+ page. Obviously ads #1 and #3 are significantly larger and more attention-grabbing than ad #2.

And the point of all this, of course, is higher click-through-rates lead to higher quality scores, which lead to lower costs per click.

To keep things simple, I’m just going to cover how to interpret statistics for sitelink, location, and call extensions, but this should give you enough information to interpret the other extensions’ stats as well.

Why ad extension stats are confusing

I’ve found that the confusion arises from the expectation that, when on the Ad extensions tab, Google is showing stats for ad extensions…makes sense right? Well that’s not exactly how it works. What actually happens is Google is showing overall stats for ads that were displayed with ad extensions…not just the stats for ad extensions themselves.

Interpreting Ad Extension Stats

By default, your location extension stats will look something like this (FYI we’re not using AdWords for conversion tracking on this campaign):

Default location extension stats (click to enlarge)

These are not the stats for your location extension itself, rather, these are the cumulative stats for all of your ads that were shown with a location extension. This view does not segment clicks (or any other metric) on the “Directions” link vs clicks on the headline of the ad itself; that’s were the confusion usually lies in part.

In order to break those stats down we need to segment them by click type. To do that, click the “Segment” dropdown and select “Click type.”

Now you’ll see something like this:

Location extension stats segmented by click type (click to enlarge)

You can see we’ve added 3 rows of data.

1. Headline – Stats for the ad headline
2. Sitelink – Stats for the sitelinks shown with the ad. Important note: Since we’re viewing stats for our location extension, the sitelink row is showing stats for sitelinks that were displayed along with our location extension.
3. Get direction – Stats for the “Directions” link.

I mentioned something above that’s really important so I’ll say it again. Since we’re viewing stats for our location extension in the image above, the sitelink row is showing stats ONLY for sitelinks that were displayed along with our location extension.

If you want to get stats for all sitelink impressions, whether they were shown along with a location, phone, etc extension, you’ll need to click the “View” dropdown and select “Sitelinks Extensions.” Then the Sitelink row will show stats for all sitelink impressions. This is an important distinction you should be aware of and it’s why you’ll see each rows’ stats change when you change the extension view.

Learn by example

To drive this point home, let’s illustrate this with an example from our Sitelinks extension for this campaign. Here are the stats, segmented by click type:

Sitelink Extensions with Segmented Statistics (click to enlarge)

And here’s what the numbered callouts mean:

1. This is our overall CTR for all impressions of our ads that were shown along with our Sitelinks extension.
2. This is the overall CTR for clicks on the headline of all ads that were shown along with our Sitelinks extension.
3. This is the overall CTR for clicks on the Sitelinks themselves. In other words, this is the percentage of people who clicked on a Sitelink after seeing an ad with Sitelinks.
4. This is the overall CTR for clicks on the “Directions” link of all ads that were shown along with our Sitelinks extension. Since the “Directions” link only shows up with a location extension, this can also be thought of as the CTR for clicks on the “Directions” link for ads that were shown with both Sitelinks and Location extensions together.

Call Extensions

Call extensions deserve some extra attention. When creating a call extension, Google asks if you want to use a “call forwarding number from Google to get enhanced reporting.” If you select this option, the phone number shown with your ad will be a forwarding number rather than your actual phone number. The benefit of this is that Google provides a report that gives you a lot of insight into calls resulting from your ads. You can view the report shown below by clicking the “Dimensions” tab and selecting “Call details” in the view dropdown.

Call extensions call details report (click to enlarge)

Now this report is cool…it shows you exactly when a call was made, how long it lasted, whether it was missed or connected, the caller’s area code (blurred here), whether the call was manually dialed or click-to-call from a mobile phone, and the cost of the call. As you can see, Google deson’t charge you for mobile clicks-to-call (those are billed as a normal click) or missed calls. It appears Google doesn’t charge for shorter calls (short enough that they couldn’t have been productive), however, I’ve seen manually dialed calls over 150 seconds not be billed so if anyone has any insight on that I’d love to hear it. Based on the numbers, I suspect the limit for billing is 30 seconds and any longer calls that aren’t charged are deemed call fraud or something like that.

Ad extensions can dramatically improve your click-through rate and lead to lower costs per click and conversion, but it isn’t immediately obvious how to read the stats correctly. Once you understand how to read the numbers, you can get a much clearer understanding of the performance of your ad extensions and act accordingly.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Video transcript:

Hi, I’m John Crenshaw, founder of Razorlight Media. We’re a search engine marketing company based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. In this video, we’re going to cover how to get anchor text distribution from Majestic SEO. Majestic SEO is a great alternative to Yahoo Site Explorer. Yahoo Site Explorer was free. We all loved that, but now it’s all gone. The days of that are over. So, we’ve got to use something else. Majestic SEO is fantastic. It also gives you way more data than Yahoo Site Explorer would give you. You have to pay for it. It’s about $50 a month, but indispensable if you’re doing SEO on a regular basis.

Why do we need anchor text distribution? Well, there’s two reasons. First of all, is competitive analysis. Take a look at the top ranked competitors in your niche, and find out what their anchor text distribution is. That will give you an idea of what Google looks for when ranking sites in that niche. Every niche is going to be slightly different as far as what Google accepts for anchor text distribution. How many links can you have with one particular set of anchor text versus another phrase in the anchor text? By examining your competition, the top ranked competition in your niche, you can get a good baseline to work off of.

Now, I’ve found this isn’t totally accurate, primarily because depending on your niche, your competitors could have terrible anchor text distribution. It could not be the ideal that Google’s looking for. So, if you follow what they’re doing it may be an uphill battle to try to get in front of them. Whereas you may have been better off if you distributed your anchor text a little more naturally, or didn’t really follow the competitors that closely at all. But it’s a good place to start. The other thing you can do is quickly determine your competitors linking strategy. You can pretty quickly determine, are these guys pumping out tons of spammy links with the same anchor text? That will give you good ideas of where you stand compared to them.

You could also use it for your own adjustments on your own sites. Obviously you don’t want to get slapped. This Penguin Update made it so that if you had too much of the same anchor text, you’ll get nailed for that. So, you don’t want that obviously. You want a good variation of anchor text, a good distribution. Obviously you want to get as close to what Google thinks is perfect in your niche as possible. Analyzing your anchor text distribution will kind of keep you on track to do that. In addition, it will give you some ideas for better anchor text distribution. When you’re building links to your site, and you’re thinking what anchor texts do I want in this link, knowing what you already have, knowing what your anchor text distribution is already, you can better plan out your strategy.

Let’s have a look at it. First of all, we’re going to enter a domain in Site Explorer. Obviously you’ve got to log into Majestic SEO if you haven’t done that already. You’re going to enter a domain. We’re just going to use Majestic SEO for this example. The first thing you see up here is summary root domain. Next to that, there is a button that says “Create Report”, so we’re going to hit that. Create a report, and we want a standard report.

It tells us our report has been created, click here to go back to your reports page. Now, back at the reports page, we’re going to select our report that we just created. This is actually pretty simple. All you have to do is go up to the domain drop down. Select “anchor text,” and there you have it, the anchor text distribution for majesticseo.com. What’s cool about this is you can really quickly see the most used anchor text.

We can see here “Majestic SEO” with a space, without a space, is by far their most used anchor text. In addition to that, you can export this to excel if you want to analyze this data a little bit further. You can create charts, graphs, whatever you want to do. Analyze that data as much as you want, and really dig into it and get some great insight from it. So that’s it. It’s actually really simple getting the anchor text distribution from Majestic SEO. It’s obviously a pretty killer tool. You can find a ton of insight from the data you examine here. Thanks for watching. I hope you guys get some use out of this.

In this part, I’m going to introduce you to perhaps the simplest of link building techniques…

Blog Comments

By far, the easiest thing you can do right now to build backlinks is to go leave comments on blogs. Most blogs allow comments on the articles, and most of those blogs also allow a link back to a website of the commenter’s choice.

Here’s a comment from our blog…notice the commentator’s name is red (the color of links on our blog). That name links back to the commentator’s website (although it could be any website the commentator specifies when entering her comment – more on that later).

Sample blog comment from our blog

So on this particular link, the anchor text is “Sandro;” probably not the most useful anchor text unless this person is trying to rank for the term “Sandro.” We’ll get into more detail about that shortly.

How to leave blog comments

It’s pretty easy. Find a blog about any topic you want to comment on. Don’t know how to find blogs? Try Technorati’s blog directory.

Obviously if you comment on an article, you should make it a relevant comment…there’s nothing bloggers hate more than people leaving unrelated or gibberish comments just to get a link.

When you go to leave a blog comment, you’ll see a form that looks like this:

Standard blog comment form

The thing people don’t realize about this is that when you submit your blog comment, the name and website are combined to form the link. So, the name becomes the anchor text and the website is where that link will point to. So, let’s say I wanted a link to our company Facebook page, with the anchor text “RLM”. I’d put “RLM” in the name field and “http://www.facebook.com/rlmseo” in the website field. Pretty simple.

Blog Ettiquette

So, some of you may be wondering why the commentator on our blog pictured above chose to use “Sandro” as the anchor text. Many blogs, including ours, have policies that keywords should not be used for the comment name. The reason for that is any blog owner will tell you the vast majority of comments are left exclusively to get a link and don’t add any value to the conversation. So, if you try to comment on one of those blogs using a keyword instead of a name, the comment will likely get thrown out. So, in those cases, it’s best to use a name. It’s not as good as a keyword, but it’s better than nothing.

Many blogs are no-followed

Another thing to keep in mind about blog commenting is that most blogs add the rel=nofollow attribute to their blog comments. This is another step to combat blog comment spam. If links are nofollowed, commentators looking for a quick link are inclined to look elsewhere, whereas commentators interested in genuinely adding the article won’t care too much that the link is nofollowed.

But wait, didn’t I say Google doesn’t pay attention to nofollow links? I did and that was mostly true. What I didn’t tell you is that part of building a natural link profile includes building nofollow links. Think about it…if you’re commenting on blogs because you’re genuinely interested in the topic, you’re going to have mostly nofollow links on those comments and maybe a few dofollow links from blogs who don’t nofollow their comments. Google knows this and, while you don’t have to match that profile exactly, you do want to add plenty of nofollow blog comments into the mix.

Do-Follow Blogs

The good news is there are plenty of blogs out there that, for one reason or another, do not nofollow their blog comment links; these are known as “dofollow blogs” and you can find plenty of them to comment on by searching Google for dofollow blogs, dofollow blog directory, or some variation of that.

Why blog commenting sucks

First of all, blog commenting is super easy so that’s great; anybody can start doing it fairly quickly. The downside is that it’s boring, tedious, and not super effective. I mean, let’s face it, we all know even most of the good blog comments out there are only dropped to get a link and I’d be lying if I said I cared about every article I’ve ever commented on.

The best strategy

When it comes to blog commenting, the best approach is to commit to leaving 10 – 15 comments per week at first. Just take 5 – 10 minutes a day and leave a comment or two. Get a good mix of do-follow and no-follow links and stick with it. It’s not going to get you to page 1 by itself – although it might if there’s very little competition for your keywords – but it will give you a solid base of links and move you up in the rankings a bit. Not to mention the fact that if you leave good comments on high traffic blogs you can get direct traffic from other readers clicking your link.

Hire us or just give us a call to chat!

If you have any questions or would like to find out how we can help you get ranked much faster and without all the boring blog commenting request a quote or give us a call at 513-549-7355.

Starting in this third part, I’m going to explain how to get these all-important backlinks. This is an incredibly in-depth topic, however, so I’m going to break this up into several parts.

We’ll start with the basics, but today, it’s important to understand a very important concept.

Not all backlinks are created equal

There are literally thousands of different methods to build backlinks, but no two methods will result in the same benefit. First, let’s remember that the entire purpose of building backlinks is to get your website ranked at the top of the search engines. Second, let me use a dramatically simplified example to explain the idea that all backlinks have different values in helping you acheive this goal of getting ranked…

Let’s say you’re currently ranked #30 for the keyword “Cincinnati Landscapers.” Then, one day you build a single backlink using one of the methods we’ll discuss later. Depending on the link, your rank may rise to #29, or it could rise all the way to #5, or it could actually drop to #50. I’m just making these numbers up for the sake of demonstration. The point is, Google views each and every backlink differently depending on certain characteristics. In order to understand why backlinks are treated differently and how to recognize good backlinks, we need to understand what those characteristics are.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the actual text found within the link. Here’s a screenshot of a snippet of a random article I found online with a link in it:

Anchor text screenshot

It should be obvious that the blue, underlined text is the link. In this case, the anchor text is “Freebase, a service that Google Owns.” Likewise, here’s a screenshot from a comment on that same article:

Another anchor text screenshot

In this case, the anchor text is “http://Imgtfy.com/?q=http%3A%2…”. So, the anchor text can be any text at all…in fact, anchor text can even be an image, in which case the term “anchor text” is a little misleading and the term “link anchor” would more appropriately apply (the logo at the top of this email links to our site…that’s a perfect example of a link with an image anchor).

So what’s so special about anchor text? Well, Google uses the anchor text to determine what keywords you should rank for. So, in the example above where the anchor text is “Freebase, a service that Google owns,” that anchor text will help the linked web page rank for the exact phrase “Freebase, a service that Google owns.” It will also help the linked site rank for any terms contained within the anchor text, but to a lesser extend. So, the linked site above would rank a bit higher for “Freebase” or “Google” as well as the full phrase.

So, to summarize, the important things to remember about anchor text are:

• Google uses the anchor text to determine what keywords you should rank for
• A link with the anchor text “Cincinnati Landscapers” will help you rank for any searches for “Cincinnati Landscapers.”
• That same link will help you rank for the term “Cincinnati” and the term “Landscapers,” but both to a lesser extent then the exact phrase “Cincinnati Landscapers.”

So, the goal when building links to your site is to get the anchor text to match the keyword you want to rank for exactly. The closer it matches, the more that link will push you up the rankings for that term.

PageRank

PageRank is a number Google assigns to all pages it reviews (PageRank is abbreviated “PR”). Remember in Part 2 when we discussed how Google looks at links as “votes” for a website? Well, Google also adds up the relative values of all those links and the resulting number is called the PageRank. It’s on a scale of 0 – 10 and is a measure of the overall importance of a particular web page; the higher the number, the more “votes” that site has, and the more important Google thinks that site is. Facebook, for example, has a PageRank 10, CNN.com has a PageRank 9, our site has a PageRank 6, and a new site has a PageRank 0. The vast majority of websites on the internet have PageRank in the range of 0 to 3.

So why does PageRank (PR) matter? Because a link from a PR 10 website is significantly more valuable than a link from a PR 0 website; the higher the PR of the site where your backlink is, the more that link will push you up the search results. In fact, a single link from a PR 6 website, with exact-match anchor text, can be enough to get you to the first page for a particular keyword if there isn’t too much competition. It may take 200 links from PR 0 websites to have the same effect.

Incidentally, PR can be checked using a browser addon. If you’re using Firefox, try this. And if you’re using Chrome, try this. If you’re using another browser, just do a Google search for a PageRank browser addon for your web browser…they’re available for most browsers.

So, the goal when building links to your site is to get the anchor text to match the keyword you want to rank for, AND to get links on the web pages with the highest PageRank you can.

This tends to be the trickiest part for most link builders. The reason being, sites with high PageRank know their links are extremely valuable and don’t just give them away willy-nilly. It generally takes a lot of work to get even a single link on a high PR site. We’ve developed a few tricks over the years to make it much easier, but this is no doubt a challenging thing to do for most people.

Do-Follow / No-Follow

This is another important characteristic Google considers when determining that value of a link. In the code of a web page, a link looks like this: <a href=”http://some-site.com”>Some anchor</a>. In this case, the link is pointing to “some-site.com” with the anchor text “Some anchor.” However, because Google puts so much weight on backlinks, people started gaming the system and writing software to automate the creation of backlinks en masse. To combat this, Google announced it would start looking for a particular bit of code in the link that the website owner could use to tell Google whether or not it should pay attention to that link or mostly just ignore it altogether. That bit of code is called the nofollow attribute and is in use on most big sites that allow users to post links.

Here’s what that link above looks like with the nofollow attribute added: <a href=”http://some-site.com” rel=”nofollow”>Some anchor</a>. What this does is tell Google to, for the most part, ignore that link when determining search engine rankings (it’s a little more complicated than that but that’s the gist of it).

Like I mentioned, many of the bigger sites that allow users to post links make use of the nofollow attribute; Twitter and Facebook are just a few examples of such sites. Here’s a screenshot of a link someone posted on Twitter:

Actual Twitter link with nofollow attribute

Wow, obviously links can include quite a lot of information and be really complicated, but I outlined the important part in red that says ‘rel=”nofollow”‘. That little, seemingly insignificant bit of code means that this link will not help the target site rank at all.

So, the goal when building links to your site is to 1) get the anchor text to match the keyword you want to rank for, 2) get links on web pages with the highest PageRank you can, AND 3) get links that DO NOT have the nofollow attribute (also known as “dofollow” links).

Conclusion

So these are the 3 major characteristics that determine a link’s value. It’s important to remember that this topic is significantly more involved than I’ve detailed here; in fact there are quite a few books written on the subject. There are also quite a few more link characteristics Google considers, but these are the most important.

Future parts…

Obviously, link building is a complex subject. In addition to everything we’ve discussed here, Google is constantly adding, removing, and tweaking the weight of all the factors that make up it’s ranking algorithms so it takes a lot of expertise to be able to build links most effectively.

We took a bit of a sidebar in this part to cover the 3 major link characteristics Google looks at, but it’s important that you understand these ideas before we continue in Part 4 to introduce the different methods to build links.

This was the third part in our series educating businesses about internet marketing. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how RLM can help you generate more business online, feel free request a quote or give us a call at 513-549-7355.

In this second part, I’m going discuss backlinks in a little more detail because they are probably the single most important factor in getting ranked at the top.

What are backlinks?

If you’re asking this question, you’re going to be hitting yourself when you realize how simple this is. To some extent, the internet was built upon the concept of links. Links are like the “citations” you see in a book. One website writes about a particular subject, then adds a link to another website that also talks about that subject or perhaps covers it from a different angle or in more detail. Links are literally EVERYWHERE.

And they don’t have to be links to other websites. If I’m a landscape designer and I have a web page on my site about caring for your lawn in the winter, I may link to another page on my site about caring for your lawn in the summer. Links are the backbone of the internet because they allow you to jump around from page to page and from site to site.

If you’re still not getting it, here’s a picture…it’s worth 1,000 words. This is a screenshot I took of a Wikipedia article on SEO; I circled the links. The standard web color for links is blue, but the website operator can change that to whatever he or she wants.

In the case of Wikipedia, most of their links point to other Wikipedia articles. So if I were to click “Analytics” in the above screenshot, I’d be taken to the Wikipedia article on “Analytics.” Wikipedia usually has citations at the bottom of every article where they link out to other websites on the topic. The point is, links can point anywhere….to another page on the same site, or a page on another website.

Just to drive this point home, here’s a screenshot of Google’s search results for the term “Cincinnati SEO.”

You can see here that Google’s search results are absolutely packed with links. You can also see that the colors are different…some are blue, some are purple. Google uses the standard colors for their links. Blue represent links you have not clicked on before, purple represents links you have clicked on before. It’s important to note that the website operator can choose any color for links so you obviously won’t always see them in blue, but they’re usually called out from the rest of the text on the page with some color that makes them pop.

Why are links important?

So now that I’ve beaten that dead horse hard enough and we know what links are, why are they important? To understand that question, we need to understand why Google has become so successful.

The (Brief) Story of Google

Google really started to take off around 2001 (seems like a lot further back than that) because they realized something none of the other search engines at the time fully understood.

Back in the day, search engines were using all kinds of factors to determine where a website should rank in the search results. Most of those factors had to do with the content on the website itself. There’s an inherent problem with this.

Relevance

Let’s say I have a website about Dogs where I talk about my dog Jacky Boy. Now, what if I woke up one day and decided, “You know what? I think I want to rank at the top of the search engines for ‘Insurance’ because people looking for insurance might want to read about my Jacky Boy…I mean who wouldn’t want to read about Jacky Boy?”

So, being a huge web nerd, I decide that instead of writing about insurance, I’m just going to stuff a bunch of insurance-related words into the footer of my site. I’ll make those words white to blend in with the background so my visitors don’t see the words, but the search engines will find them.

After a few days, the search engine bots come roaming through my site, read all these insurance-related terms and decide my site must also be about insurance. And the word “insurance” appears like 200 times so it must really be about insurance. So the search engines start ranking me really high for “insurance.”

Well, what happens when you decide to go looking online for insurance? You find my site at the top, you click the link and you find nothing about insurance at all; instead it’s all about some mangy mutt named “Jacky Boy.” What the hell? If this happens enough you may start looking for a new search engine.

What Google realized is that if they wanted to be the biggest search engine in the world and make all that internet money they had to give their users what they wanted. And what they wanted was to find sites that were as closely related to whatever they searched for as possible. This is called relevance.

Well that’s obvious, right? Obviously people want to find what they’re looking for. The problem is, how do you give it to them? How can a computer program read a website and accurately determine what it’s about? In spite of all the advances over the years, computers are still really dumb.

This is where Google made it’s money. They realized that instead of relying on the content on the website itself to determine where that site should rank, they would rely on other websites to determine where it should rank. Google basically created a referral system for determining rankings. They realized that the most effective way to determine where a site should rank is simply by “asking” other websites where it should rank. In practice that means the Googlebot started visiting other websites and counting up the number of links to every other website on the internet. The sites with the most links ranked the highest.

This dramatically improved the relevance of the search results. If we consider my website about Jacky Boy using this method, we’ll see it’ll never rank for insurance-related terms because no other insurance-related website is going to link to it because, as far as those insurance website operators can tell, it’s not about insurance, it’s about my dog.

This incredibly simple idea and the PageRank patent is the foundation on which the entire empire that is Google was built upon.

Fast Forward to Today

Nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to find any traditional search engine that doesn’t rank websites this way. They all realized that was, by far, the best way for a computer to determine where a website should rank in the search results and so they all do something very similar.

And now you understand why links are so important

So now it should make sense why links are so important. Because search engines are all about relevancy, and to show the most relevant results for any particular search, they all consider links to the website as a huge measure of where a site should rank.

So when we work to rank a client’s website at the top of the search engines, we target Google first because it’s generally the toughest. Once you’re #1 in Google, if you’re still not #1 in Yahoo and Bing, we’ll do some extra work specifically targeted toward those search engines.

Future issues…

I hope this was all clear, but if you have any questions, feel free to respond…I love talking about this stuff .

The big question a lot of people always have about links are how do you get them? Obviously they’re important, but how the heck do you get other websites to link to yours? We’ll cover that in part 3 so stay tuned!

This was the second part in our series educating businesses about internet marketing. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how RLM can help you generate more business online, feel free to reply or give me, John Crenshaw, a call at 513-549-7355.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing are pretty much all the same

One thing to remember is that all 3 of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) all rank websites the same way. There are tiny little differences between the 3, but the general principals are the same across the board.

Rank in one, rank in the rest

In practice this means that when you rank in Google, you generally rank in Yahoo and Bing, although the positions may be slightly different. You may end up at #1 in Google, #3 in Yahoo, and #2 in Bing; but if you rank high in one, you generally rank high in all three.

So when we work to rank a client’s website at the top of the search engines, we target Google first because it’s generally the toughest. Once you’re #1 in Google, if you’re still not #1 in Yahoo and Bing, we’ll do some extra work specifically targeted toward those search engines.

How Search Engines Work, in General

All the search engines rank sites automatically. Meaning they don’t have a group of employees deciding where a site should rank, rather they use and “algorithm,” which is nothing more than a big collection of computer code that automatically browses your website, tries to figure out what the topic of each page is, and then checks to see what other sites are linking to yours. The algorithm then calculates where you should rank compared to your competition based on a number of factors. All the search engine algorithms are programmed to consider, for the most part, the same set of factors, which is why once you rank in one search engine you tend to rank in the others. What differs is how those factors are weighted; each search engines weights certain factors a bit differently. Let’s illustrate this with an example…

An example

Let’s say you’re a dentist in Cincinnati and trying to rank for “Cincinnati Dentist.” All the search engines will count the number of times the phrase “Cincinnati Dentist” appears on your website. They’ll also apply a filter that will ding you if that phrase appears too many times. So Google might prefer to see exactly 1% of all words on the page to be “Cincinnati Dentist,” whereas Yahoo might prefer to see exactly 1.2%. As you move away from that “preferred” percentage, you’ll be less likely to rank for that phrase. It gets a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it.

On Site vs. Off Site

The number of times a particular phrase appears on your website is considered an “on-site” ranking factor; because, you guessed it, it’s on your site. Search engines also consider off-site factors, which include:

• Do you have a Facebook page linking back to your site?
• Do you have a YouTube videos linking back to your site?
• ** Are other sites across the web linking back to your site? **<– this is big!!
• …and many others

I put the words “linking back to your site” in bold because when it comes down to it, the only off-site factor that really matters are links. Without a link from your Facebook page, how will Google know it is, in fact, your Facebook page?

Links (or “Backlinks”)

Backlinks are the single most important ranking factor. You can do everything else wrong and still rank if you have enough links. Likewise, you can do everything right and not rank if you don’t have any links. Think about links as “votes” for your website. When the search engines find a bunch of “votes” for your website on other websites, they assume your website must be a good one and deserve to rank higher than the rest. Obviously this is a dramatic oversimplification of the process, but it should give you a basic understanding.

Future issues…

We’ll dig deeper into all these details a bit more in future issues, so I hope you found this interesting and continue to read our future issues.

This was the first part in our series educating businesses about internet marketing. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how RLM can help you generate more business online, feel free to reply or give me, John Crenshaw, a call at 513-549-7355.

This videos covers how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) works – website marketing tips.

Learn more about our website marketing, SEO, PPC, and web design in Cincinnati and around the country.

It’s targeted toward small, local businesses, and in post I’ll introduce you to AdWords Express and talk about whether or not it’s good or bad for small businesses as well as AdWords agencies.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.