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The New SEO & Penguin 2.0, The Myth of Content Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:28:00 -0700

"What Should Lead Your Online Marketing Strategy: SEO or Content". "Why Content Marketing is the New SEO". "Is Google's love affair with content marketing usurping SEO?" "Content Marketing is the New SEO "

These are actual titles from article in the top search results for [content marketing and SEO].

Content Marketing Isn't New

CONTENT MARKETING! DO IT! It's the NEW SEO!

In fact, it's so awesome you don't need anything else! Just produce awesome content and you will be in SEO nirvana! It's like double rainbows and Matt Cutts got together and had baby NyanCats!

Old SEO is dead. This is the new SEO and it's beautiful!

Sound too good to be true? That's because it is.

Content marketing isn't new. It's just a new buzzword picked up by other industries that suddenly found out they could to "do SEO", but they didn't want to "do SEO", so they tried to make it more special. It isn't.

Content marketing has been around since SEO on Google has been called SEO. To not understand this is to not understand what Google and its algorithms measure and how this might affect your site.

Now with the arrival of Penguin 2.0, you might be just setting yourself up for a fall – right out of the rankings. And yes despite all our talk of rankings not mattering, they do, because if you go from somewhere on Page 1 (with personalization) to nowhere on page 51, you will suddenly say, "Oh no! My rankings!"

Rankings matter. SEO matters. And content marketing is SEO. It always has been, and always will be – well, at least until the search engines don't use algorithms and content, but that's a long way off.

Need more proof of the power of content? Back in 2008, I ranked a website in the top 15 for a one-word term in competitive vertical with no links, a domain that was less than a year old, four weeks from launch, with 1,500 pages of unique, solid, quality content. Every word on the site was original, even the Contact Us.

How do I know content was the reason for getting the site ranked in the top 15? Content! To be fair, I can only be 99 percent sure that content, thanks to a Google engineer at a party at an SES Conference who confirmed it was "most likely the reason".

Like I said, the importance of unique, quality content isn't a new concept.

Just What is "Content Marketing"?

If you want the best literal explanation, this quote from Quora (found via Ann Smarty and Authority Labs) works very well:

"Content marketing is the umbrella of all techniques that are used to generate traffic, leads, online visibility, and brand awareness/fidelity."

If you want the one that really gets it, then this one from Sugar Rae says it best:

"Content marketing isn't a new strategy, it's merely a new word.

Why ... do we as an industry feel the need to invent a new buzzword for the same services every few years? We've been doing "content marketing" forever.

Website = content

Promotion of that website = marketing

Website + promotion of said website = content marketing."

And there you go. It is content that you put on your website and promote. That can be text, video, infographics, images, whatever you think of and put on your site. When you release it as part of your site marketed materials, then it is "content marketing".

It's really that simple. Again, it's not new, it's just a new buzzword.

Now that we have that straightened out, what does content marketing have to do with Penguin, SEO, future penalties, and you?

Content marketing is not the new SEO. It is SEO and so are a lot of other things.

It's All SEO Now

One client's site I recently reviewed was brilliant. The company had never bought a link, was completely legit, and worked feverishly on their content marketing – yet they had 16 warnings and penalties. Why? Because while content is great and certainly a very important part of any SEO strategy, it isn't all or even most of what you need to be concerned about when thinking about the algorithm.

Taking Your Eyes Off The Ball

So while you were spending all that time concentrating on your content marketing, what were you doing about making sure you met the rest of the 200+ points on the algorithm? What about the other things that Penguin was meant to control?

How is your internal linking? Your anchor text either coming in or internally?

How about where your sites are linking externally? Where are you linking to and are you linking to other sites you own? (triangulation - crosslinking)

What about the other changes Google announced are coming this summer (which I will just term, the "no one is home" penalties for lack of a better term)? You know, like spam comment in your forums or blogs? Or your page speed and usability?

How about your page crawls? Sitemaps? Are you showing Google no one is at the helm while you spend all your time focused on cultivating the latest viral video or super infographic?

Starting to see the issue?

Content marketing isn't separate from SEO and isn't the new SEO. It doesn't replace SEO. It is SEO just like all the other items mentioned are SEO.

SEO isn't just search engine optimization anymore. It is, as Cutts suggested a little while back, search experience optimization and it covers everything on the website, either directly or relationally.

Once you realize that "content marketing" is just using good content practices and that you might have been neglecting the rest of your site SEO, what should you do?

12 Other Google Update Checks (Penguin Included)

1. Titles and Descriptions

Titles and descriptions still remain one of the most misunderstood items on any site and they are still as important as ever. Know what these mean and how to write each properly. Make sure you don't have duplicates, ones that are too long or over-optimized tags.

2. Anchor Text

Is your anchor text over-optimized with keywords? Are you using keywords when domain names should be used? What is the natural way someone would link to your site? This counts with inbound links as well as internally. Beware of over-optimized and overused keyword anchor text.

3. Links – Inbound & Outbound

Run a link check. How do your inbound links look? The threshold for spammy links was about 80 percent, it is now down to about 50 percent. That means 50 percent questionable links can keep your site or a page out of the index.

Know your link profile.

Using outbound links, make sure you are not sending out link juice on ad links, but still make sure you are doing some links offsite. Google doesn't like it when you hoard that link power all for yourself. Share with worthwhile sites, but never with ad links.

4. Links Cross or Triangulate

Sometimes by accident even, sites crosslink to other sites they own or partner with that site while sitting on the same IP addresses or C classes. Do you know if yours do? If they do, delink your sites or put rel=nofollow on those links, or Google may think you are attempting to put up a link network of your own.

Remember, Google can't discern intent, so the appearance of impropriety is all that you need to give yourself a penalty.

5. Page Speed

Google likes to say page speed is a small factor for websites and maybe for some industries this is the case, but in others our experience shows it isn't. This only makes sense. For Google, faster loading sites lower the load on Google's end, so take the page speed tool, check your site, and get it above a 90 percent if you can. That seems to be the magic threshold for most.

6. User-Generated Content Spam

User-generated content spam on your site is directly linked to a penalty now at Google. (Heard about Sprint's latest fiasco?)

It doesn't take a lot to indicate to Google "No One is Home" keeping an eye on things.

Make sure you have checked your blogs and comment areas for things like multiple https or for words such as "free shipping" with a database crawler or in Google with site:domain.com "words go here" and see, is someone scamming you?

Note: If the spammers are very good you may not be able to see it without a Google search.

7. Redirects

Get a tool like Screaming Frog and check your site pages for redirects then make sure those redirected pages have a 301 permanent redirect, which tells Google the page has been permanently moved and it should keep following it.

It's rare you need a different type of page redirect and if you do, then remove the page from the index with a noindex tag in the header. (There are rare cases where this won't be the case, this is just the general rule.)

Also make sure you have your canonicals in place and that they are correct. This should go without saying, but not all sites do it.

8. Over-Optimization on Non-Content Items

A common type of over-optimization happens in the navigation, the header or footer.

This is where someone either adds a keyword to every (or almost every) word to try to rank for the term or where someone adds an overabundance of header or footer links to "help" a site position for known keywords. This won't help and is likely to give the site a penalty.

9. Alt Attributes

How are you using the alt attribute on your images? Don't stuff keywords into this text. Using good alt text, especially when images are replacing text in links, can be very good for a site. In fact, Google will treat this alt text as actual text in these cases.

Go to http://webaim.org to learn the rules for "alt text" content generation.

10. Ad Issues

Google doesn't like it when a site seems to only be there to support the ads on it, so an overabundance of above the fold ads can cause the site to receive a penalty.

What is too much? Google is a little obtuse about this, but find out what is above the fold for your screen size (not your screen, but the site screen size), then hold up a post it note, if it takes up more space than the note, it is probably too large.

11. Crawl Issues

When is the last time you got into your Webmaster Tools and checked how your crawls were going? How is your crawl rate? Are the spiders having any crawl issues?

We once had a client who had 28k crawl errors. These will affect your site strength and authority with the "No One Is Home" devaluations. So keep an eye on your crawl rate and if it is not crawling well, find out why as quickly as possible and fix it!

12. Malware or Rogue Sites

For the most part, we're fortunate that Google will email us and tell you that you have malware on your site – but be careful: this isn't always the case. Periodically you want to do a search for your site, see if you trigger malware warnings in a site search or mobile, then check your analytics to make sure no one is running anything untoward on your site like say a rogue Viagra site. If you want to see how prevalent this is, go to Google search and put in ".gov" Viagra.

Not only can these sites be doing things on your site that could be causing you "hack" issues, but also sending links to their pages on your site causing your link profile to be damaged.

What Else?

This was just a partial list to get you started. We haven't touched authorship, structured data, URL construction or a whole host of things you should be doing these are just some things you need to be checking, but hopefully you get an idea that myopic SEO is not SEO at all.

If you haven't been doing much more than content marketing and thought there was something called the "new SEO" and the "old SEO" was dead, my best advice is with the arrival of Penguin 2.0 and several other changes still on the horizon, is to conduct a site audit.

This is going to be the summer of change on Google, and this article has only touched on some of the items known to be part of the Penguin and Panda algorithms and the coming attractions. Don't get caught with your proverbial pants down, wondering, what happened?

With SEO proactive is always better than reactive, because only a small percentage of sites hit by the first Penguin have ever fully recovered. If (or when) your site gets hit, sometimes all you can do is start again.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com

Email Marketing Mobile Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:40:00 -0700

Mobile email optimization might seem intimidating, but, as the smartphone market continues to grow, so will the need for emails tailored to mobile screens. Since 2010, the number of smartphone owners using mobile Internet has grown 45%, and it’s showing no signs of stopping now.

Smartphones take over

Not only are smartphone users becoming more prevalent, usership registers at 40% and higher among age groups under 55. One in four people over 55 years of age are also smartphone owners. In the U.S., three of every four people use their smartphones for email.

Email design can be challenging enough, but the changeover from desktop caught a lot of people off-guard. The technology is there, so customers expect the market to keep up.

Tech-savvy businesses have met this challenge by usingmobile optimization and communication software to engage their customers. Just as they’ve used traditionalemail marketing, they’ve now included mobile-optimized email marketing in their campaigns.

With the swell in smartphone use and ownership, an automated email campaign that isn’t optimized for mobile could hamper any initiative.

Mobile opens on the rise

According to data we collected in the nine months between June of 2012 and March of 2013:

mobile email opens increased more than 30%
iPhone and iPad email opens grew from 3.88% and 2.99% to 17.50% and 8.93%, respectively
Android opens swelled from 5.04% to 8.46%
BlackBerry email opens went from 0.01% to 0.24%, (which doesn’t look like much, but is a huge leap, and indicates just how important mobile email marketing optimization is).

Mobile design tips

The first step to mobile optimization is keeping it simple. From the subject line to email content, follow the rule of the shorter it is, the sweeter the return will be.

Clear up any clutter that may bury links. Which is worse: the customer missing the link, or the customer having a hard time clicking the link? Fingertips are much fatter than cursors. Apple^®interface guidelines recommend at least 44×44 pixels as a minimum for a target area.

For design, simple things like font size can be tricky. Again, this can differ across platforms. Apple automatically increases font size to 13 pixels, and anything between 16-18 pixels is rendered as either medium or large on Android™ devices. The rule of thumb from designers is: 14 pixels for text, and 22 for headlines.

When focusing on Android and non-iOS^® platforms, you do need to watch your dimensions (Apple will automatically resize). On Android and Kindle devices, that means keeping the calls to action visible at about 320px for smartphones (the limit for Kindle Fire is about 600).

Test, test, test

The best practice of all is to test, not only on desktops, but on a variety of devices. Make sure your content is easy to read on any screen. Make sure you catch any differences between platforms—Android and iOS might be making the same function happen, but not in the same way.

Examine the email. What does the subject line say? Limit subject lines to 60 characters. Are there symbols that don’t show up correctly? Adjust accordingly.

Don’t forget your landing page!

Once you’ve optimized your email marketing campaign, don’t forget the next important step—optimizing your landing page. You don’t want to send subscribers to a page that takes forever to load; they won’t hang around. Replace heavy data codes like Flash with HTML5 or CSS.

Time to get mobile

Understand that mobile devices are just that: mobile. Ensure the messages you send are concise, and get right to the point. If customers are reading on a tablet or smartphone, they’re most likely multitasking, or on the move. Use analytics data to determine when the majority of people check their email, and schedule blasts with tools like GetResponse autoresponder programs to catch your customers at the best time—and with the right content.

Above all, email optimization for mobile platforms depends on your understanding of the recipient’s habits. Mobile users spend only 5.3% of their time on email or instant messaging. That means you only have seconds (or even part of a second) to grab attention with a subject line or a header.

With nearly half of the mobile market dominated by smartphones, effective mobile email marketing is essential for companies looking to create a successful presence in today’s information-driven marketplace.

Are you optimizing your emails for mobile?

Source: http://blog.getresponse.com

Potential iOS Market For Google Now Is 2.5X Larger Than Android “Now” Base

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:13:00 -0700

Google Now for iOS and Android are almost identical in their look at feel. And aside from a few “cards,” the same is true of their content. But, there are some differences behind the scenes worth noting: one of them is the fact that with its launch on iOS this morning, Google Now is available to roughly 2.5 times more people than it is on Android.

Google Now for Android is only available on those devices that feature Jelly Bean 4.1 or 4.2 (4.3 is apparently coming). What that means as a practical matter is that fewer than 200 million people out of more than 750 million Android devices activated can use Google Now.

In March, Google CEO Larry Page said that there were 750 million Android activations (on their way to 1 billion this year). Jelly Bean 4.1 and above are only on 25 percent of Android devices,according to the Android developer site. The Android marketplace is highly fragmented.

What that means is Google Now for Android is only available to this 25 percent or roughly 187.5 million devices. By comparison, Google Now for iOS is available to all devices running iOS 5 and above.

According to statements in Q1 2013 from Apple CEO Tim Cook, there have been more than 500 million iOS devices sold to date. At least 300 million are running iOS 6. Fewer than 5 percent of iOS devices are running a version of the operating system that pre-dates iOS 5. That’s according to Chitika data released last year.

Accordingly, that means roughly 475 million iOS devices can potentially use the new Google Search app with Google Now. That marks a huge expansion of the audience for Google Now.

On a more technical level, Google Now for iOS won’t be continuously syncing in the background (except for location), and it won’t use the iOS notification center, as it does on Android (according to The Verge). However, Android Jelly Bean users who also have iPhones won’t really notice much of a difference between the two user experiences overall.

Google Comes to iOS: iPhone & iPad Users To Get Google Now

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:06:00 -0700

Previously Android-only, Google’s “predictive search” tool Google Now is now available for the iPhone and iPad. It’s part of an updated Google Search App for iOS.

Google Now for iOS had been anticipated since March, when Engadget discovered a promotional video suggesting it would make the leap. Until its release this morning, Google Now had been available exclusively on devices running Android 4.1 (“Jelly Bean”) or higher.

I have written multiple times about Google Now in the past. But, if for some reason you’re unfamiliar with it, Google Now is the company’s “search assistant,” offering “predictive” or “anticipatory” search by combining dynamic contextual information with structured data, presented on nicely formatted “cards.”

Danny Sullivan has written a companion article, The Amazing “Google Now” — When Google Searches Before You Think To, which provides additional background and a reintroduction to the service.

The images immediately below are screenshots provided by Google illustrating how Google Now results will look on the iPhone — essentially identical to the Android version.

Google Now cards offer information on traffic, weather, sports scores, nearby places, currency conversions, movie showtimes, package tracking and considerably more. It’s a growing list of categories and data sources. Google Now will even prompt you to continue searching on previous search topics (e.g., flights to Kona). The chart below shows the full range of content and information available via Google Now.

Because we didn’t get early access to the app, we don’t know whether Google Now will operate differently on iOS vs. the Android version. It’s a safe bet, however, that you won’t be able to “swipe up” from the bottom of the iPhone (or iPad) screen to launch Google Now. (But, see postscript below.)

As a general matter, in the iOS version, Google Now will provide essentially the same content and functionality that Android users have been enjoying. The major difference is that the full range of information “cards” won’t be immediately available for iOS. We understand they will eventually come over, however.

Source: Google

Google Now is a compelling product and has improved since its launch last year. It also illustrates how the future of search will be different from its past. The combination search/Web history, data and context enable Google Now to give users lots of personalized information about lots of things without having to ask for any of it.

Back in 2010, Marrisa Mayer (then at Google) was promoting the idea of “contextual discovery,” which would “push information to people” based on their location and what they are doing. Before that, in 2009, she was talking about “the perfect search engine” as one that would have a more holistic understanding of user needs and would be able to deliver data or content in an “informative and coherent way.”

Google Now embodies both of those sets of aspirations. However one question is whether iPad and iPhone owners will actually use it.

An online survey I conducted in June of last year (n=503 iPhone 4S owners) found that most people either searched from the Safari toolbar (using Google as the default engine) or went to Google.com on the mobile Web. Just under 20 percent of respondents said they used the search app.

Which of the following do you use MOST OFTEN to search the web on your phone?

I visit Google.com to search: 44.9 percent
I use search in the Safari toolbar: 26.4 percent
I use the Google mobile app: 19.3 percent
I use Siri to search the web: 11.1 percent
I use Bing and/or Yahoo: 6.6 percent

These survey responses shouldn’t be seen as definitive, but merely indicative, that most iOS users don’t currently use the search app as their primary way to access Google. In that context, Google Now for iOS can be seen partly as a bid to get iOS users to both sign in (which is a requirement) and search more.

Beyond all the “under the hood” capabilities, Google Now translates the otherwise basic mobile search experience into a richer and more dynamic app-based experience.

Postscript: Google Now on the iPhone does appear on first blush to be nearly identical (save the missing “cards” above) to the Android version. One accesses Google Now by swiping up from the Google Search app home page in the same way as on the Android version.

Postscript 2: See Potential iOS Market For Google Now Is 2.5X Larger Than Android “Now” Base for more side-by-side of Google Now on Android and iOS plus how today’s launch makes Google Now available to more iOS users than Android ones.

Google Now on your iPhone and iPad, with the Google Search app

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:58:00 -0700

Many of us can no longer imagine life without our smartphones. We use them for all sorts of things, like getting reminders of important calendar appointments (say, a first date), and driving directions to the Italian restaurant where your table for two awaits. Today, with the launch of Google Now on iPhone and iPad, your smartphone will become even smarter.

Google Now is about giving you just the right information at just the right time. It can show you the day’s weather as you get dressed in the morning, or alert you that there’s heavy traffic between you and your butterfly-inducing date—so you’d better leave now! It can also share news updates on a story you’ve been following, remind you to leave for the airport so you can make your flight and much more. There’s no digging required: cards appear at the moment you need them most—and the more you use Google Now, the more you get out of it.

Google Now for iPhone and iPad is available as part of the updated Google Search app. Together, Google Now and voice search will make your day run a little smoother.

In addition to the handy cards in Google Now, the Google Search app still gives you instant answers to all your questions. Try tapping the microphone and speak to your phone—you’ll get quick answers spoken back to you. For example, ask Google, “Do I need an umbrella this weekend?” and you’ll get the forecast. Or ask “Who’s in the cast of ‘Oblivion’?” to decide if you want to see it. Voice Search is particularly handy on the go—try "Show me nearby pizza places" and you'll see a map of restaurants around you with directions, phone numbers, ratings and hours.

Get the Google Search app with Google Now from the App Store. Drag it to the tray, open it, sign in and you’re ready to go.

Source:Google

The Periodic Table Of Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:37:00 -0700

Want to understand all the ways that Google Analytics can help you learn how people are interacting with your site? A new “periodic table” may prove useful.

Created by Jeff Sauer, the table from his company Jeffalytics covers everything from “As” (AdSense Reports) to even stuff Google Analytics can’t report — “Np” for Not Provided.

Here’s a look:

Be sure to visit the actual Periodic Table of Google Analytics page, where you can get a PDF version of the chart to print, embed code to put the chart on your site plus an interactive version that lets you hover over an element to understand more about it.

Related, if you’ve never seen our The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors, be sure to check that out.

Application Optimization in APP Store: 8 Tips for Higher Rankings

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:27:00 -0700

For app developers, App Store optimization is an incredibly important yet frequently overlooked opportunity when trying to create traction and growth (i.e., more downloads).

Not surprisingly, there’s quite a bit of overlap between App Store optimization and traditional SEO, but it’s important to remember that the App Store is in relative infancy when compared to its big search counterparts.

What foolows is an outline of the most important factors that can impact app store ranking, along with a few tips to ensure long-term improvement.

On-Page Relevance Factors

Based on a study of more than 200 app searches, it would appear that the following on-page factors are the most important within the app store.

App Title: Keyword usage in the title appears to be one of the most important relevance signals. It is currently unknown whether it's a direct signal (keyword usage means higher ranking) or an analogous one (keyword usage results in higher click-through rates).
App Description: Appropriate keyword usage should also be used within the body copy…errr app description.
Keywords Data: A good old keywords tag, you ask? Yes, but it appears Apple is already de-weighting its impact. Expect keywords tag to get phased out altogether as app development becomes even more accessible to a mainstream audience.

Off-Page Relevance Factors

Unlike Google, Apple has total access to everything that happens within the confines of an application, which means there’s a boatload of data to determine user appreciation. The following signals can be used to compare apps within similar categorical clusters:

CTR: What is the click-through rate when served in a higher position?
Usage Weights: What is the average frequency of usage within the app?
Discard Rates: How frequently is the app deleted? What is the average life of an app on a desktop?
Downloads: How many downloads does the app have?
Reviews: What is the average review score and how authoritative and authentic are the reviewers?
App Updates: How fresh is the app? Is it continuing to create new features and optimize for new OS releases?

Possible (But Unknown) Factors

I believe Apple would be silly not to incorporate the following signals:

Social Signal/Incoming Links: What kind of ripple in the traditional web ecosphere is this app making?
App age: Are users consistently and reliably using this growing app? (Think of MS Word as a desktop comparison)
App Speed: Is the app responsive when compared to its competitors or is it a heavy experience?
Brand Trust: Is the app released by a maker that has a trusted arsenal of popular/successful applications? This would likely ensure that the app has undergone a significant QA (quality assurance) process.

Where App Store Optimization is Heading

Like any search engine, the App Store appears to be transitioning from one of semantical relevance to the deeper and more powerful KPIs that revolve around user data (nearly every algorithmic shift thus far appears to support this notion).

As the entire industry matures (and becomes more competitive), success and failure in ranking will be much more focused on the quality experience of its users.

8 Tips for Improvement

Here are a few tips to help you rank better in the App Store:

Focus on natural incorporation of keywords in the title and description data
Use conversion optimization techniques and push notifications to ensure more prolific usage of the application
Keep the application “top of mind” through email and social media integration. Give your users a great reason to share, like, and follow.
Offer heavy users the opportunity to review the app. A simple push with the opportunity to rate can give your ambassadors a platform to evangelize the product
Try traditional PR to improve download rates and a bevy of quality content regarding the site
Use event tracking and some iteration of “last state” tracking to prevent users from bouncing
Use open graph (wisely!) to help spread the word.
Make an absolutely killer app (if you’ve done that, feel free to ignore most of the above).

SEO Tactics for App Stores, Mobile App Website Pages & Local Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:23:00 -0700

The world of mobile apps is foreign territory to most online marketers.

Developing apps require different skills than traditional website development. Mobile app creation forces marketers to understand the limitations of different platforms, devices, and tracking.

Once an app is developed and ready for download, the biggest challenge, just like with websites, is to get users to find it, or even know of its existence.

Your app is one of a million, with 700,000 available in Apple’s App Store, and an equal number in Google Play.

Traditional SEO Tactics to Improve App Discoverability

Users can discover and find apps in two ways: searches through the app stores as well as searches on search engines. Optimizing mobile apps to be more easily discovered by users isn’t that different from optimizing a website for that same purpose.

The two SEO elements to focus on for mobile apps and the app stores are content and links.

SEO for websites primarily includes three things;

Getting your site crawled.
Optimizing the content.
Building authority through links and social media endorsements.

The SEO difference for mobile apps is that the page on which the app lives is what needs to be optimized, not the app itself. Search engines don’t crawl inside mobile apps to learn what it is or why people want to download it. The content on the page around the mobile app needs to provide the context to give relevant cues for what the app is about.

An app usually has two pages to optimize: the app store page and a marketing page on the business’s website.

Optimizing for App Stores

The descriptive content submitted with the app is vital to the app’s success in the app store when submitting an app to app stores.

The title of the app determines the URL and title tag of the web page the app is hosted on. Choose a title for the app that reflects the brand and also the app’s function. This allows your app to be found by your brand name as well as the purpose of the app if brand isn’t top of mind for the user.

The category an app is submitted to is also important for better visibility in searches. A lot of times an app can fit into several categories. If there is no one best fit, choose the category that best fits the app’s purpose but also contains the least number of competing apps.

The keyword field influences the search results because there is far less text to indicate relevance of an app than there is for a traditional web page. Just as Google and major search engines frown on keyword stuffing on websites, stuffing the keyword field with unrelated keywords can get an app rejected from app stores, so play fair – stick with descriptive keywords that are relevant to the purpose of the app.

The description field is the largest area of the page and acts like the main content on a web page. As with traditional SEO for websites, the description for the app should be written for the target audience and be optimized with relevant keywords.

Linking the app store page to the official app page on your website, and reciprocating that link from the website back to the app store page, will reassure the user that they’ve found the official app from the brand, not a fake or parody app.

Optimizing for Mobile App Pages on Websites

The app should also have a page on your corporate website for cross-promotion and linking.

For example, somewhere in the app description you should provide a link to the your desktop website. The website should also link back to the destination of the mobile app in the app store(s). Linking between the app store and the website boosts the app’s SEO value and also confirms that the app is authentic, not an imposter.

Other than cross-linking with the app store and using specific metadata attributes, optimizing the content on the page that the app lives on is no different from optimizing content on any other page on your website.

Optimizing for Local Markets

Although the United States app store market is the largest revenue opportunity, users from other countries can benefit from an app that supports their native language and country. Just last week, Apple sent its developers an email reminding them of the importance of localizing apps and marketing material:

The process of doing this is called localization. Apple offers clear steps to help app developers internationalize and localize apps to capture the opportunity of more revenue, by attending to the native user experience of other countries worldwide.

When investing resources in localizing your app, be sure to know your target audience. It would be a waste of resources to localize for every country and language.

A recent Flurry study found that usage for a particular category of app is different based on countries. Find out which countries your app is most popular in to determine the biggest impact for your localization efforts.

For example, in China more people use action game apps versus music game apps, but in Japan it’s the exact opposite.

You do have to consider the incremental downloads and revenue you can gain from internationalization and localization strategies, but initial studies are showing that localization will be a smart investment for expanding your app installs and revenue internationally.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com

You Might Have Missed Top 5 Google Analytics Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 7 Mar 2013 21:15:00 -0800

If there is one section of web marketing that seems to be ignored over and over again, it's analytics. Even for people who pay attention to their site's statistics, it's very common for those users to leave everything on the default settings and just pay attention to what is in front of them without even thinking of how to delve into things that might suit them better, like Custom Reporting.

Five recent changes to Google Analytics can lead to a more effective and accurate use of the toolset and your metrics. They can save you time and headaches and make your data more meaningful.

1. Google Tag Manager

Are you in the position of having to ask your IT department or web developer to make changes to your site? Do you deal with Google Analytics, AdWords conversions, remarketing tags and more? Are you sick of having to wait for weeks for your requested changes to take effect only to find out that your developer didn't do something correctly?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then Google has been working on creating a tool to help you out.

Enter Google Tag Manager! This tool from Google allows you to organize all of your various Google tracking tags into one piece of JavaScript code.

This means you only have to have your developer (or IT department) put one piece of code onto your site and then you are free to create new tags and manage existing tags in one easy to use interface.

Only have Google Analytics now but thinking about doing AdWords or retargeting in the future? This is for you.

Resources:

SEW's own Thom Craver describes the Google Tag Manager in more detail
Google Tag Manager Official Implementation Video and Description

2. Google Analytics Custom Dashboards

Google Analytics can be difficult. With so many reports and options, many people freeze up, unsure of what to do with all the data and what to look at.

With a few simple changes in the interface you can make even your executive dashboard glances much more meaningful. Although the Dashboards have long been customizable, there have been several changes recently that make that process even easier and the layouts more robust.

I would almost guarantee that if you were to spend 15-30 minutes dealing with these new functions, you would be able to come up with reports that meant more to people in your organization with only minimal knowledge.

You can now add a Custom Dashboard Layout to configure how reports will display on the screen:

And customize this further with easy to use analytics widgets:

If you're feeling more daring and want to dig deeper, Google has tapped into top Analytics users and is now providing downloadable Dashboards, Custom Reports, and Advanced Segments that can be plug and play according to your needs.

Resources:

3. In-Page Analytics – Enhanced Link Attribution

If you've spent any time in Google Analytics at all, there's one complaint that comes up time and time again while trying understand traffic patterns. That complaint revolves around the fact that you might have two links on your page that lead to the same place but your not sure which gets the most clicks.

Before now, we've had to just rely on In-Page Analytics to show us a fancy overlay that only works based off of percentages to guide us. It looks something like this:

Enter Enhanced Link Attribution! By enabling Enhanced Link Attribution in your Analytics account and slightly altering the Google Analytics code that resides on your site you are now privvy to a wealth of more detailed statistics that can give you precise numbers around individual links on pages and how they performed.

Was the link more valuable in your navigation or in your content? This can give you the information you need to make your pages better.

To set this up, just go to Admin --> Property Settings. Then check the box next to Enhanced Link Attribution.

After you make a slight alteration to your Google Analytics Code, you're good to go!

Resources:

4. Google Analytics Change History

For years the Change History menu in Google AdWords has been the first place that people should go to understand what has been done in their account. Match up actual changes with dates and those responsible for making those changes and you can really start to get a grasp on how your PPC dollars were spent and why.

The same can't be said for Google Analytics. Changes are made:

Based off of data and conversations.
To get more accurate results.
As new options are rolled out.
As goals and websites change.
By various people.

Six months later you look back and your data appears differently than it did last year. But you can't remember who did what or why. Move that even further back and two years from now are you going to accurately remember why certain changes were made to your analytics account?

For most people, I doubt it.

So Google is in the process of rolling out Change History for their Analytics accounts. Fewer than 30 percent of sites I've encountered have this currently but it is coming to all accounts very soon! When it hits your account you should be able to view your complete account history by visitng your Settings and looking at the following tab:

5. Tie Google Webmaster Tools Data to Your Google Analytics

While this feature has been around for quite a while, it's somewhat shocking to log into account after account and not see these tied together. This happens all the time.

Tying these two accounts together gives you detailed statistical information that Google only gives to webmasters and make it actionable by combining this with your Analytics reporting. If your Google Webmaster Tools Account is already set up and verified then tying it to your Analytics account should take less than 30 seconds.

This gets set up in Traffic Sources --> Search Engine Optimization

You click the button and Google walks you through the process.. easy as can be.

Source:http://searchenginewatch.com

Maximizing Google Analytics Insight for SEO with Custom Reports

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:15:00 -0800

Google Analytics - one of the most powerful tools for any SEO, assuming you know how to get the data you need from it. One of my favorite things about Google Analytics is how many tools that put at your disposal for quickly analyzing the data you care most about. But again, that all assumes you know how to get it.

A custom report in Google Analytics is similar to their custom dashboard features in a lot of ways. Remember, the dashboards are meant as snapshots of what's going on with your campaign, these custom reports are what you should be using to fully analyze the results.

To start, you should consider setting up Custom Report categories to organize your reports by subject. You will find this to be the most aggravating/irritating/infuriating part of the process as you attempt to drag your first custom report into your new category folder. The secret is to drag your report slightly to the right while hovering over the category you want to place it in. Then let go and hope for the best. Once you have one report in there it gets much easier.

Creating a Custom Report

There are two key components to a custom report:

Metric: a numeric measurement (like number of visits).
Dimension: a description of visits, visitors, pages, products and events.

There are also two types of Custom Reports you can create:

Explorer: Allows you to drill down into sub-dimensions and includes a timeline where you can compare metrics in the same graph.
Table: Allows you to compare dimensions side by side, with metrics also populated within the table. There is no timeline in this report.

Creating the custom report is easy. You choose from a drop-down menu of metrics and dimensions that you're interested in segmenting your report by.

You can also create tabs in your report to keep it organized. Any filters you setup on one tab will automatically apply to any other tab that you setup (there isn't a way to turn them off for the other tabs).

Another great feature of custom reports is your ability to use them cross-profile and to share them. To share a report, all you need to do is click the Actions drop-down menu from the Custom Reports overview page, and click share. You will then be able to share the configuration (not the data) of the custom report you just created.

SEO Custom Report Examples

If you'd like to save time in your SEO analysis, consider creating custom reports similar to the ones outlined below. I've included the share link for each custom report so you don't have to rebuild it yourself. I tried to mix up when I'd tailor the report to look at e-commerce data, and when it would only look at goal data. You'll need to customize those aspects of the report to best meet your needs.

Also, don't forget to modify the keyword filters I've added. You want to make sure to replace our branded keyword (book) with your own.

Audience Custom Report

Understanding your audience's demographics is an often overlooked SEO practice, but it can go a long way in making certain aspects of SEO (like link building) that much easier.

There are two components to this custom report:

City and Language Overview - this part of the report looks at what cities and languages you receive the most visits from and make the most money off of. You may be surprised to see languages your site isn't even translated in yet that are very profitable.
Keyword Targeting - this part of the report lets you drill down all the way to the keywords that are used by each country and language visitor demographic, and calls out how profitable they are for you. This is a great way to refine your keyword targeting.

How this can help you from a link building front is seeing what foreign languages your blog/linkbait content is most popular in, and then translating it. You could then distribute the translated content for links to popular industry blogs in that language.

Add the Audience Custom Report to Google Analytics

Content Custom Report

The purpose of the Content Custom Report is to identify which content is performing the best with organic traffic. I've set this report up as a Explorer Custom Report so you can drill down and see which keywords are sending traffic to a specific Landing Page. This is a great way to make sure you're targeting the right keywords on the right pages in your SEO campaign.

There are a number of engagement metrics I have this report looking at. One in particular I think is important to have with this report is the Social Actions metric. This is a great way to see if the number of social actions correlates with increases in traffic and conversions.

You might consider adding an additional filter (or creating a new custom report) that only looks at your blog content. I'd keep similar metrics in the report so you can quickly identify which blog posts perform the best so you can try and duplicate the results in future content. You may also want to add any event goals you've created to the report, especially if you've set up a event to track comments on your posts.

Add the Content Custom Report to Google Analytics

Keyword Analysis Custom Report

I think this is one of the most valuable custom reports you can run, and it's one of the bigger custom reports that I like to create in my accounts. There are three components to the report: targeting, engagement and revenue.

Targeting

This part of the report is pretty straight forward. It's a Flat Table report that places the Page Title and the Keyword that is sending it traffic side-by-side. From there I've added a handful of metrics to determine if I am targeting the right keyword on the right page. Perhaps I'm getting a lot of traffic for this particular keyword, but the majority of people are going elsewhere and/or not converting. This may lead me to do some testing around changing which page I'm optimizing for this particular keyword.

Engagement

Similar to the Content Custom Report, this component focuses on how engaging visitors are when they visit the site via a specific keyword. I love traffic just as much as the next guy, but if that traffic isn't doing anything on my site - what good is it? This report will help you identify problems and opportunities for keywords that have low/high engagement rates.

Revenue

Just how much money is a keyword making you? This component of the report looks at the number of transactions, the revenue generated and the per visit value of organic traffic for each keyword.

Add the Keyword Analysis Custom Report to Google Analytics

Link Analysis Custom Report

Which of the inbound links that you've built are sending you the most quality traffic? Don't forget, there's much more to links than rankings, they are also opportunities for sending high quality traffic to your site that may even convert.

This custom report looks at which of your referrals are sending you the most engaging traffic. Knowing which links are sending you the most quality traffic will help you determine if you should be going back for more or if you can find other sites just like it to get links set up on.

If you're investing a lot of time in getting specific links built, you may even consider tagging them with Google's URL builder tool. This will allow you to track the effectiveness of your link building campaign.

Add the Link Analysis Custom Report to Google Analytics

PPC Content Custom Report

I'm a big fan of using paid search as a way to test which landing pages you want to target your keywords on for relevance. The goal of the test is to determine if you were to target a specific keyword on that page, would the visitor find what they are looking for and convert? This is a great way to minimize the risk of focusing on the wrong keyword on the wrong page and investing months of SEO work to get it traffic.

You can use this custom report to look at just that: which keyword/landing page combinations are the most effective from a revenue perspective. Even if you don't run a test like the one I just described, you can still get a pretty good grasp on this just by pulling the report and looking for these opportunities.

Add the PPC Content Custom Report to Google Analytics

PPC Keywords Custom Report

Continuing with our holistic custom reports, the goal of the PPC keywords custom report is simple: identify high performing keywords from your paid search campaigns that you could consider targeting in your SEO campaign.

The report calls out a couple qualifier metrics, including how much money bidding on the keyword is costing you, and what your cost per conversion is. This is a great way to decide if you can't afford to target the keyword via PPC, can you make up the loss of traffic via SEO?

Add the PPC Keywords Custom Report to Google Analytics

Social Media Custom Report

We've seen the influence social media has on SEO, and now it's time to make sure we're well-informed of any social media data that can be leveraged to improve our campaigns.

This report uses a filter created by Site Visibility to look at all referring traffic from a variety of top social sources. With this filter applied you can look at which social traffic is most engaged with your content.

If you're tracking social actions you can quickly see which content you've created is being shared the most, so you can figure out what they like about the content and duplicate the results.

I also like to see which social media is converting the best so I can determine if we should be increasing our participation efforts on that social network, or even start experimenting with advertising on that social network.

Add the Social Media Custom Report to Google Analytics

So there you have it, seven custom reports to help you analyze your analytics data faster and easier.

Source: seobook.com

Search Marketing Integration: The New SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:05:00 -0800

Every year, somebody proclaims that SEO is dead simply because Google has made some changes to its algorithm. But don’t worry, this post won’t be declaring that SEO is dead, dying, or even coughing up blood.

However, the days of SEO as a distinct, independent discipline are certainly numbered. SEO is fast evolving into a more creative, diverse, and challenging profession.

Over the last few years the changes to search algorithms and user behavior on the Internet have made “old” SEO almost redundant. It’s even gotten to the stage where any so-called “SEO” who’s still using the same techniques from 5 years ago will actually be doing more harm than good. These days, search engines and consumers want quality, engagement, and social proof.

The SEO landscape has changed, and the current shift can be defined by a single concept:integration.

Search Marketing Integration (SMI)

This is a term that we will start to hear a lot more in the world of search. As the search engines widen their gaze and perfect the techniques they use to measure content quality, brand sentiment and relevance, the optimization of a site for search will increasingly overlap with other marketing disciplines.

Over the next couple of years SMI will become a pre-requisite for a first-page listing on Google. SMI will revolutionize the entire organization’s approach to sales, marketing, PR, branding and everything in between.

For an SMI practitioner, success will be tied to the ability to integrate SEO tactics across an organization’s marketing department. Politics, leverage, and action will be equally as important as title tags, link building, and keyword themes.

Let’s take a granular look at how SMI will impact the various areas of the marketing landscape:

New Ways to Search

Social search is in its infancy. Twitter’s integration into Google’s results ended last year, and Google+ has since provided the antidote to that broken relationship. Just a couple of weeks ago Facebook also launched its own enhanced search engine. Things are evolving at an exciting rate.

I have no doubt that social-oriented search will continue to make headway. As a result, social signals will continue to exert influence on SERPs, and SEO techniques will have to be applied to social properties.

I also believe that social properties like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora will eat away at Google’s market share … or get bought up by Google itself. Imagine a search engine that incorporates the data from a platform like LinkedIn with the accuracy and scope of Google! Google… I hope you’re listening.

Branding

One key element in Google’s Penguin update was the inclusion of an organization’s brand reach as a factor in SERPs. This means that the greater your brand popularity, the higher the probability of achieving a first-page position. Therefore, an SEO must keep branding initiatives carefully aligned with an overall strategy.

Additionally, link building, which has historically been focused on individual product keyword phrases, must now include a healthy percentage of branded anchor text phrases to support branded traffic and incoming links. Savvy link-builders will have strategies for building out natural link profiles with a sprinkle of brand, product, and SEO keyword links.

PR

SMI, or “new SEO,” will lean very heavily on traditional PR channels. Over the last few years most print publications have been busy trying to find ways to win back their share of the digital market.

Due to the reputation and authority that they brought with them from the print world, many of these publications have quickly gained great authority online. Due to this authority, the relationship that brands and organizations have with these magazines and newspapers will have a significant effect on search visibility.

Press releases, interviews, and relationships with magazines are a big part of SMI. As more companies wake up to the integrated nature of the new SEO and recognize the link-building potential of traditional PR opportunities, their value will only increase.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The relationship between organic search rankings and paid ads is one that’s been debated for years. Though no concrete evidence shows us exactly how paid ads impact a site’s organic listings, we have seen websites rank better organically while running SEM campaigns.

One possible explanation for these findings is the reported relationship between display, video ads, and branded search queries. A 2010 report by ComScore suggests that display and video ads can increase brand-related search queries by up to 3 times!

While this may seem like evidence enough that your organic and paid campaigns should be closely integrated, there’s more. A recent Google study suggested there’s a strong relationship between ad click-through rates (CTR) and the presence of an organic listing on the first page of results. Put another way: If you have a high organic listing for a particular search term, your paid ad for that same term is going to get a much higher CTR than if you didn’t.

Lastly, the intelligence gained from running SEM campaigns should be directly applied to organic. This includes which keywords generate sales, which landing page techniques create conversions, and identifying which trends are important by testing new phrases and products.

Video Marketing

Video is fast becoming one of the most influential factors in all aspects of digital marketing. Its influence now reaches deep into SEO territory.

One of the most influential search movements of the last few years has been the integration of different types of content directly into the SERPs. If Google sees it as relevant to a particular query, you’ll now see images and videos outranking the organic page listings and visually dominating the page.

This can be particularly useful if you’re targeting a long-tail query. If the query relates closely to a visual concept that could be better explained in a video than a blog post, you will almost certainly gain a better search position by producing a video.

A Forrester study from January 2010 showed that a webpage with a video on it was 53 times more likely to gain a page-one position in the SERPs. Additionally, 1 in 3 tech B2B decision-makers are turning to online video for information (Google). Viewers of videos are also 64 percent more likely to purchase after watching a product video. These figures show that search visibility and performance are directly improved by the integration of video and, as a result, video should be integrated into all digital campaigns.

Thought Leadership

Every industry, sector and niche has thought leaders to provide guidance, commentary and inspiration. Are you that person? If not, who on your team can fill this role?

If you are providing a service or product that delivers genuine value to those who buy it, youshould have people within your organization who have a capacity for producing informative, persuasive content. This content is the backbone of any successful SMI campaign.

Your ability to create compelling content will govern the success or failure of your SEO, social and marketing automation (MA) campaigns. Without it, everything comes to a stop.

You should produce content that lives both on your own site and elsewhere on the web. Everything you produce should be of the highest possible standard and be shareable, search optimized and link worthy.

Don’t just stick to a blog. Create videos, white papers, eBooks and online presentations. Then syndicate all of this content through your social channels and use it as part of your MA campaigns to help prospects through the sales funnel.

The Social Web

I specifically saved “social” until last. The social web has changed the game completely. Your social strategy should impact all your marketing channels and campaigns. With search engines increasingly using social signals in their algorithms and measuring “brand sentiment” more accurately by the day, the SEO world can’t ignore the importance of a well-managed social presence.

Social media should be the lynchpin for all your marketing, sales and after-sales activities. It’s an area which has an impact on everything from top-of-the funnel lead generation to after-sales service and customer retention.

Social media directly impacts search visibility and provides a primary channel for distributing your invaluable content. This impact is also trackable beyond just visibility.

Facebook’s conversion tracking capabilities can be set up in under an hour. Google Analytics can display social conversions as well. If you want to get your head around how SMI should be working for your organization, start with social.

Conclusion

Over the last few years a number of different factors have changed the way the Internet works. Old marketing techniques are irrelevant.

There’s no reasonable argument against the fact that all your marketing efforts should be integrated into one single, agile, engaging strategy. The tough question is how you implement this. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer.

No two organizations are the same. You might use external agencies, have numerous internal departments and ever-decreasing budgets that all form challenging obstacles. Each organizational situation is unique.

One thing is for sure: When it comes to adopting the SMI model, there’s no time like the present!

Article Written by: Brad Miller

Source: searchenginewatch.com

Optimize Your Google Play Store App Details Page

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 4 Jan 2013 01:26:00 -0800

We’ve been talking a lot about App Store Optimization on the blog. While some posts had some advices for both the App Store and the Google Play Store, the focus has been mainly made on the iOS app details page so far. Since Android apps are definitely not something to ignore (in fact, there are some good arguments about why you should start developing on Android first) here is a wrap-up of the tips to optimize a Google Play Store app details page and be found more often by potential users.

Search is important (duh!)

First, here is why optimizing your app details page for search is critical on the Google Play Store: search represents 80% of high quality organic downloads. I’ll admit that “high quality organic download” is a pretty vague criteria, but still.

How to optimize your app page

The good news is, there are several things you can do so that more users find your app:

Putting your main keyword in your app title. According to Fiksu, this could dramatically improve your position (80-100 spots). They even recommend to put your app name on the app icon and use the app name for your keyword. I have mixed feelings about that, because I believe it’s not such a good thing to have words on an app icon and because it poses a branding problem. I’d rather think about an app name that contains the main keyword.
Using your keywords 5 times in your app description. Unlike on the App Store where the app description is not searchable, on the Google Play Store you want to make sure to repeat with a good frequency your main keywords.

Having a beautiful design and screenshots. Just like on the App Store, you want to have the best screenshots possible to convince potential users to download your app.
Having a demo/promo video. That’s an awesome thing on the Google Play Store: you can add a youtube video to promote your app. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to really show what your app is worth. When looking at an app’s page on an Android Smartphone, the video is in the first screenshot slot.
Getting (good) reviews. Since ratings are part of the rank and search algorithm (see below), you want to do everything you can to get positive reviews.
Increase usage frequency: have an awesome app that users will be addicted to and use on a regular basis.

A little more about the Google Play Store rank algorithm

Just like Apple’s, no one knows it. But people do try to understand it better. Here are the main criterias:

Number of ratings: how many people have rated and reviewed your app.
Ratings: how high (or low) they are
Amount of downloads: how many app downloads
Downloads growth: the growth of downloads over the last 30 days
Uninstalls: how many people uninstall the app
Usage: frequency with which your app is used (reported by some developers)
Update 2/9/12: Links to Play Store page: “Getting people to write about your app improves your search rankings in the Play Store” (Google I/O June 2012)

Some advices about ASO (App Store Optimization) are valid for both the App Store and the Play Store, but there are some specifities to the Google Play Store like a searchable description and the fact that you can display an app demo video. Don’t miss out on these improvement opportunities!

Source: http://www.apptamin.com

Five Linking Myths That Need To Go Away In 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:36:00 -0800

Five Linking Myths That Need To Go Away In 2013

Goodbye 2012, hello 2013. For Eric Ward last column of the year, Eric selecting five link building myths that Eric hope go away completely in 2013, and giving his rationale as to why they should be gone.

The only reason he picking five is because it’s the day after Christmas, and if he had written about all 500 myths his wish would vanish, you would not be reading this. Five seems like a digestible number in a post-holiday haze, so grab an Eggnog and let’s get to them.

1. Infographics Are Awesome For Link Building

Completely true and completely false, because they completely ignore the larger point. Any infographic that helps make a complex subject easier to understand, and which has been created by someone with some background in the subject and some artistic talent will have the chance to successfully attract links. Those links can, in fact, help your search rank as well as (and perhaps more importantly), click traffic.

Take a look at these examples. On the other hand, if all you do is take a block of text and use a pretty font, and add some clip art, then don’t expect much. You get back what you put into it. Like anything else, there are brilliant and there are terrible examples and executions. As a linking strategy, infographics are alive and well. For those that know how to do it properly.

2. Infographics Are No Longer Effective For LinkBuilding

See above, and then look at this search result for link building infographics. It’s been effective for me now for over a year. And all I’m doing is curating.

3. Links Pages & Pages With Links.html Or Links.php Aren’t Trustworthy

This one has been around for so long it’s become almost impossible to change people’s minds, no matter how well constructed the argument. So, rather than construct another argument , I present you with two link pages below.

Visit each one, then tell me if one of them is not helpful and if the other one is absolute gold for the right pursuing site.

There. Myth exploded. Links pages are not bad just because they are called links pages or because they have the letters l-i-n-k-s in their URLs. If that were the case, no company related to sustainability would pursue a link from the Harvard site above; and that, my friend, is just plain silly. The effective use of this search operator is all in the hands of the searcher.

4. Inurl: Submit

The classic Google operator that allows you to potentially identify sites that accept submissions, because they also put the letters submit in the submission page URL.

The conventional wisdom (and he have heard this one at more than a few SEO conferences) is that any site that actively seeks submissions via a submission form is not likely to be very credible. Baloney. It’s all in the intent and credibility of the content owner curator. Again, he provide an example.

You can’t get much more credible than commarts. How did I find that page? Via this search:library best web picks inurl:submitsite

5. Guest Blog Posts No Longer As Helpful As Before

Another knee-jerk reaction to a few webmaster videos and anecdotal results. But, put aside the empirical aspect of this. Forget what you think is measurable, and let’s go with common sense for a moment.

What separates an effective guest blog post from a useless one? Let’s start with the target blog. Is it a blog that has been around a while? What is the blog’s primary purpose? Is it comprised only of guest blog posts? What are the topics of the blog posts? Gambling, currency trading, Canadian pharmacies, electronic products, brothels? I’m kidding, but not really.

Eric's dad used to tell him you are known by the company you keep, and this is true in the guest blog posting world as well. So, the way to use this tactic effectively is to think of it not as a mass shotgun approach, but a laser target approach. And that means a highly selective approach. I’ve heard some folks say that if a blog has the words “blog for us” or “be a guest blogger” that it means the site is worthless. This is another sub-myth of the guest blogging myth. Here’s an example.

As long as there have been SEO’s or link builders making claims that come across as absolutes, I have argued vehemently that absolutes are a trap. You give me the topic and tactic, and I can find useful, or useless approaches. Call it link tactic profiling. Sadly, once a tactic gets labeled as worthless, it’s hard to fight that label.

This also represents a great opportunity for the forward-thinking link builder, because while others abandon a tactic they have incorrectly deemed as useless, you can deploy that tactic in a more nuanced and smarter way that will make it quite useful, indeed.

Have a good linking year!

Source:http://searchengineland.com

Marketing Strategy for B2B Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:38:00 -0800

Marketing Strategy for B2B Companies

Among B2B companies, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most popular of 7 identified online marketing strategies, though social media is close behind, find Demandbase and Ziff Davis in a new study. A leading 63% of respondents said that SEO is part of their online marketing mix, while 60% said the same about social media. The growth of content marketing makes inbound marketing the third-most used online marketing strategy, by 53% of the respondents.

Interestingly, SEO proves far more popular than pay-per-click (PPC), which is used by 41%. That result aligns with earlier survey findings from WebMarketing123, in which 59% of B2B marketers said SEO has the biggest impact on their lead generation goals, with PPC (20%) trailing distantly.

Still, the results differ from survey findings from Sagefrog Marketing Group. In that report, social media (68%) was more popular than SEO (58%) among B2B respondents, though email (76%) was most widespread. It’s unclear why email was not included as part of the online marketing mix in the Demandbase survey.

With content marketing becoming more widespread, the Demandbase study, “Account-Based Marketing in 2013,” drills into the factors that B2B marketers consider when creating new content. Interestingly, the top factors don’t align with marketers’ stated primary focuses for online marketing. Specifically, while a leading 29% of respondents said they were planning to increase their marketing attention on buyer personas, just 36% said their new content creation prioritized individual user profiles or buyer personas.

Instead, a much greater three-quarters consider specific business needs and solutions when creating content, and close to two-thirds factor in the industries or company types they are targeting. Thought leadership is less of a factor, playing into the equation for slightly less than half of the respondents.

Some of those content creation priorities may be related to a limited understanding of target markets. Just 31% of the respondents said they have a complete understanding of their target markets, including account types by industry or company size. Presumably, those respondents will be the ones most able to craft their content towards specific buyer personas.

Half of the marketers surveyed said that rather than have a complete understanding of their target market, they have a basic understanding, and are still evaluating their markets. That may be why general content factors (based on industries and company types) are more highly-prioritized.

About the Data: The Demandbase survey was conducted from August 7 to August 27, 2012 among the Ziff Davis network, receiving hundreds of responses from companies spanning a wide range of sizes and industries.

Is Agile Marketing the Future of Search in 2013?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:24:00 -0800

Is Agile Marketing the Future of Search in 2013?

Over the last few weeks, the one thing I'm hearing a lot more people starting to talk about is the need to be agile in marketing campaigns.

At BlueGlassX, Greg Boser went as far to predict that agile marketing is going to be the new buzzword of 2013:

As Kevin Gibbons said in my last post, it doesn't matter what you call your online strategy - and buzzword or not, that's not what's important - but there's a lot about agile marketing as a concept that makes perfect sense.

2012 Is the Year That Search Grew up!

Looking back over 2012, we've seen a huge volume of changes.

The problem we've had with SEO in the past is that there was a huge gap between what Googlesaid the algorithm did and what it actually did. Everyone knew all along we should be creating great content to build a brand online. But this year, more than any other, we've seen that gap close to the point that the only way to achieve sustainable results is to finally do what Google has been telling us all along!

This means we have to be nimble and able to think on our feet a lot more to naturally acquire relevant links as a by-product of high-quality content generation, not by traditional link building.

Andy Betts has written some excellent posts on the shifts we're seeing recently, and I spoke atSES London back in February about the measurement of ROI in search. During this time I definitely feel that we've seen a significant shift toward the industry evolving in this way, with not just search marketers realizing the value, but also social, PR, content, and branding teams being integrated into the bigger digital picture, too.

Having a Great Strategy Doesn't Mean You Forget About the Tactics

2012 has been a crazy year for seeing SEO evolve - how many years is an Internet year now? In 2012 I think we're looking at closer to seven years for every month!

And 12 months on, we now seem to be in a world where we realize having a solid, long-term strategy is a far more effective and sustainable way to get results.

But that doesn't mean we should completely forget about tactic-driven strategies. Tactics are still a key part of your strategy that gets you to the top - so as long as you apply tactics that complement your long-term strategy, as opposed to quick wins, you should still be trying out new tactics all of the time.

Everyone knows that the only constant in this game is change - even if you're staying on top of what's working now, you're still likely to be behind the curve.

To quote Greg Boser again, "Chaos is good, complacency is the kiss of death" - and there's no way you can stand still in this game; everything changes so quickly. You need to be looking ahead to where things are going; read the patents (for example, this one on Agent Rank gives some very clear signs) and make sure you're testing all of the time. That way when your competitors are chasing you, they're always one step behind.

Learn From Agile Project Management

There's a huge amount you can learn about marketing by reading about agile project management techniques and processes.

Image source: Tutorials Point

This might be a very new way of thinking for search marketers, but it's not a new concept or model. In fact, it follows a very simple process:

Build
Measure
Learn

Image source: HubSpot

If you're trying to prove a point to your boss or client, this is clearly the easiest route to getting that message across. This is exactly the same way you would create a prototype for showcasing a new product, or a pilot episode for a TV series.

For anyone who is experienced in SEO, I would suggest that rather than trying to develop new skills in search, perhaps you should buy a book on agile project management instead.

But with agile marketing there's no need to change your whole strategy, just make sure you're adaptable enough to learn what does and doesn't work - and be well prepared to take advantage of any opportunities that may come along.

I think the one thing I've learned, especially this year, is that it's not always a case of right or wrong. There's a good chance you're doing something that's working, but it doesn't mean it's your best option.

The great thing about this industry is that we're constantly surrounded by great opportunities - so the first step is often figuring out what you shouldn't be doing or how you can free up some time.

For example, where are you wasting your time? What don't you enjoy doing? What aren't you good at? Once you figure this out, everything else is much easier to fall into place. Whether it's reviewing a client fit, your career, or your online marketing strategy, it's exactly the same.

Agile Isn't Flexible, It's Intuitive

In order to make your marketing campaigns agile, you need to fully understand what this means - and just as importantly, what it doesn't.

While it may seem like a campaign that's flexible, that's not what it's about. Yes, it's sensible that rather than having a rigid 12-month editorial calendar, you add flexibility in order to adapt and change. For example, perhaps you'll set 25 percent of your plan aside for topical issues, which may come up and allow time to be adaptable (depending on your industry, it may be much higher).

But flexibility suggests making a compromise, which isn't the most effective way of getting results. An agile marketing campaign needs to be able to adapt and intuitively grow based on your key findings and strategy.

Run Controlled Experiments and Prove a Point

As Greg says, it shouldn't be a "throw stuff against the wall and hope that something sticks" model. Instead, you should be testing out new ideas and concepts by creating controlled experiments.

If you can closely measure the impact of a tactic on a small scale, and prove a point that if you do X, this Y happens, then you can make data-driven, strategic decisions on whether you'd like to roll this out more heavily across your campaign.

This makes you more agile in being able to move quickly . Plus, it means that by running small experiments in this way, you'll be able to prioritize decisions based on their likely success. And that's what it's all about - the building and prioritization of a clear marketing plan.

Marketers Need to Lose the Fear of Failure

By being agile, you also lose that fear of failure. It's not about making every single thing you do a success - that leads to taking safe bets and consistently getting average to good results.

You might be happy with that, but if instead you accept that you're going to make mistakes along the way, you're incrementally improving your processes and likely to achieve much better results in the long term. Matt Roberts from Linkdex made an excellent analogy recently, which was a comparison with the VC funding model.

"VC's will often back 10 companies, accepting that some will be complete failures, others will do ok - but if one is a big success that outweighs everything else they've backed. And this applies to search and content - it's much better to have one outstanding piece of content which outperforms everything else you've done, than it is to have 10 pieces [of] content which have had good results."

SocialTriggers.com by Derek Halpern is another good example of this. Derek would much rather have one great piece of content and then focus the rest of his time on promoting that content. His theory being "why create new content when there are still people who haven't seen your last post yet?"

It's a different way of looking at things, but again it makes a lot of sense - he's learned what resonates with his audience, to the point that every post he writes has over 100 comments. So now he gives his audience what they want to see - and follows up by promoting it as much as possible.

Your Team Must Be Integrated, Not Siloed

If you're going to have an agile strategy, the first thing you need to do is ditch the silos.

In order to get the best results, you need to make sure that everyone is on the same page. The days of doing SEO, social media, PR/branding, and even content marketing effectively in silos have gone - each of these benefit and help each other in different ways, so to get the best value you have to look at the bigger picture.

By using an integrated model, you can figure out your internal restraints and challenges - and then fix them. It's not always easy when everyone is fighting against each other for their own individual goals and budgets.

When's the Best Time to Publish a Story? When It's Most Relevant!

I was asked this question after my BlueGlassX presentation. My answer was to find out more about your audience and to learn what works best with them, in a similar way to how you would test an email marketing campaign.

However, for topical stories, timing is everything. If there's big news that's happening within your industry, you need to be prepared to drop everything and adapt, so that you can instantly switch your focus to what's most relevant.

For example, following Michael Jackson's death in the early hours of the morning, Amazon very quickly updated its Amazon Store to make a tribute to him and cater toward the huge demand of people looking to purchase his music. You don't wait for the optimal sharing time for topical stories like this.

Summary

For agile campaigns, you need to be on top of your game, and know what's going on around you. If you're prepared to adapt quickly when that topical story comes along, you're much more likely to reap the rewards.

Likewise, if you can ensure your campaigns are ready to adapt and you learn from both your successes and failures, then that makes you more likely to achieve that steady progress month-on-month, which is far more sustainable to long-term growth.

What do you think? Are your campaigns agile enough? And how important do you think this is going to be toward marketing success in 2013?

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com

A Simple Guide to Supporting multiple languages on websites

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:04:00 -0800

A Simple Guide to Using rel="alternate" hreflang="x"

The world is shrinking and with it the need to support content for more users means supporting more languages.

Supporting multiple languages on websites is nothing new, but with browser and search engine technology starting to rely on structured data, it has never been more important to make sure you are using the correct markup.

This is where rel="alternate" hreflang="x" comes in handy.

Simply put, when used correctly, this specification element helps Google index and serve the localized version of your content to users who require an alternate language version.

The best use of this tag is in instances where you have the same or regionally specific content in another language on the same website.

Google recommends use in the following three scenarios:

You have a completely alternate version of your site translated in a different language.

You translate only the navigational components of a page, like the navigation, sidebar, or footer, but the main content remains in only one language. This is commonly used on pages that include user-generated content.

Your pages have very similar content within a single language with regional variations, for example you have Spanish language content targeted at readers in Spain and also South America.

Multilingual vs. Multiregional

Multilingual: A website offering its content in more than one language. An example would include a Canadian business with separate websites on the same domain for both the English and French versions of its content.

Multiregional: Google defines multiregional content as a website that “explicitly targets users in different countries.” This gets a bit difficult to wrap your head around because websites can be both multilingual and multi-regional, for example you could have a soccer (futbol) site with different versions for the USA and for South America, and both Spanish and Portuguese versions of the South American content.

Managing Multilingual Versions of Your Site

The first rule of thumb is to make sure you present your pages so that the default language is clear, both to user’s and search engines. This is best achieved by maintaining a consistent base language throughout your website and declaring the default language in the header markup of each page.

Important note: You should never, ever use automated translation – but if you must due to the nature of your industry or the size of your website, then make sure you use your robots.txt file to block search engines from crawling any auto-translated pages, especially since auto-translated pages can be viewed as spam.

Also, consider the general user experience implications of your URLs. This is something you should always look at closely.

For localized URLs it best to utilize subdirectories whenever possible, and only use subdomains when there is no other option, as subdomains require significantly more configuration including DNS, Ip, etc.

Example of a localized subdirectory:

http://www.example.domain-extension/local-extension/

Example of a localized subdomains:

http://local-extension.example.domain-extension

Also, it’s fine to translate words in the URL to the local language, but make sure to use the UTF-8 encoding in the URL.

Escaping a URL

This is a critical component that really isn't talked about much in international SEO.

Escaping a URL means to make sure you encode any illegal characters in your URL to their UTF-8 equivalent. This isn’t illegal in the sense that you’re going to get arrested, but more so in terms of proper accepted syntax.

For example, a non-breaking space (or ) is an illegal character in a URL, so if you tried entering a URL like http://somedomain.com/here-comes-a space, this would be encoded as either

http://somedomain.com/Here-Comes-a%20space or http://somedomain.com/Here-Comes-a+space where both %20 and ‘+’ are the UTF-8 supported encodings for the illegal syntax.

Targeting Specific Countries

This is perhaps one of the most overlooked areas of managing multilingual websites.

Google generally uses the following elements to help determine a website’s targeted country:

Server location (through IP address of server). Servers are most likely becoming a decreasingly important signal to search engines as more websites are beginning to move to distributed hosting solutions like virtual servers and cloud-based networks.

Top-Level Domains. Also referred to as ccTLDs or country-code specific top-level domains. These are representative of the specific countries they are targeted for, so .ca for Canada or .jp for Japan. This makes them a strong signaling property to both users and search engines that the content on your site is intended for users within that country.

Geotargeting. This is a setting in your Google webmaster tools that can be used to indicate that your site is targeted for a specific country.

Additional signals. Localization signals have been expanded to now include elements like addresses and phone numbers on pages, local language and currency, and even links from other websites.

Structuring Your URLs

It’s extremely important to carefully plan your site’s information architecture to maximize its benefits for SEO, and structuring your URLs accordingly.

So when it comes to structuring your URLs for localized content, you have a few options ranging from most ideal to least ideal:

Duplicate Content and Its Implications

Duplicate content is bad. This is simple to understand and relatively simple to avoid.

One specific scenario to watch out for is placing the same content on two different URLs, even if these URLs are targeted for the same local audience.

Having the same content on example.jp and example.com/jp/ will be treated as duplicate content and carry with it a negative SEO effect. If it is necessary that these pages both exist, make sure you take steps to not compete against yourself for organic rankings.

You have two options:

Use a 301 redirect
Use rel="canonical"

Using rel="alternate" hreflang="x"

Simply put, the best use of this specification element is in instances where you have the same content in another language on the same website.

So let’s say you have an English website at http://www.example.com

You also have a Japanese version of that webpage at http://www.example.com/ja/

Google has created three ways for you to indicate that the Japanese URL is the Japanese-language equivalent of the English page:

HTML Link Element

HTTP Header

If you have non-HTML content on your web pages, a good example is a PDF file, you can use rel=”canonical” HTTP headers to indicate the canonical URL for HTML documents.

Link: ; rel="alternate"; hreflang="es"

Sitemap

Instead of using markup, you can submit a language specific version via a sitemap.

xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

http://www.example.com/english/

rel="alternate"

hreflang="de"

href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"

rel="alternate"

hreflang="de-ch"

href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"

Each supported language must be set using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" to identify all the language versions including itself.

Coming back to regional specific content, this gets a bit tricky (but not too tricky) when specifying content for a specific language and a specific region.

For example: a website that serves the U.S., Germany, and Japan could very well have the following regional variations:

http://www.example.com/en/page (Generic English version of content - language specific; English)
http://www.example.com/en-gb/page (English language, displays prices in pounds, example of regional specific content)
http://www.example.com/en-us/page (English language displays prices in U.S. dollars, example of regional specific content)
http://www.example.com/ja/page (Japanese version of content)

Markup

This is what the actual tag markup should look like:

href="http://www.example.com/en/page" />

href="http://www.example.com/en-us/page" />

href="http://www.example.com/ja/page" />

You need to update the HTML for each URL in the set of alternates. The markup above tells Google to consider all of these pages as alternate versions of one another.

Supported Values

There are specific values for both languages and regions, which fall into the ISO 6391-1 format for languages and the ISO 3166-1 format for regions.

Make sure you use the proper syntax for both countries and regions to ensure proper functionality of your rel=“alternate” tags.

Summary

There are three scenarios where you should be using rel=“alternate” hreflang=“x”. You need to structure your data and specify tags for both the language and the region, when applicable.

Pay close attention to how you build your URL’s and use the recommended signaling factors to properly target the countries your content is meant to serve.

Source: searchenginewatch.com

Google Webmasters Central Launched Data Highlighter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 01:02:00 -0800

About Data Highlighter

Data Highlighter is a webmaster tool for teaching Google about the pattern of event-related data on your website. You simply use Data Highlighter to tag the data fields on your site with a mouse. Then Google can present your data more attractively -- and in new ways -- in search results and in other products such as the Google Knowledge Graph.

For example, if you use Data Highlighter to tag the name, location, date, and so on for the events on your site, the next time Google crawls your site the event data will be available for rich snippets on a Google search results page:

For more information about the data that you can tag, see Events. (Additional data types coming soon!)

Note that Data Highlighter can only access pages that have been crawled by Google recently. If Google hasn't crawled or can't crawl some of your pages, such as pages behind sign-in forms, you can't use Data Highlighter for those pages.

Organizing pages into page sets

Data Highlighter will only teach Google about the pages on your site that you specify by creating one or more page sets. A page set is a collection of pages on your site that display the data consistently (possibly generated from the same template) and are organized so that URLs follow a simple pattern.

Data Highlighter doesn't teach Google about pages that already contain HTML markup specifying the data structure. You can still use Data Highlighter if some of the pages on a site already contain HTML markup, but Data Highlighter will teach Google only about the pages without the markup.

If your site organizes data in different ways (such as using different templates for music and speaking events), you can create a page set for each organization.

For example, consider a site that contains information about music and speaking events in the following pages:

www.example.com/events/music/pop/pop-music.html
www.example.com/events/music/classical/classical-music.html
www.example.com/events-speaking/europe/europe-reviews.html
www.example.com/events-speaking/asia/asia-reviews.html

Pages one and two could be in one page set because they both describe music events and their URLs follow a simple pattern: www.example.com/events/music/*/* (where each * is a wildcard for a single URL component).

Likewise, pages three and four could be in another page set because they both describe speaking events and their URLs follow a simple pattern: www.example.com/events-speaking/*/*

Detecting changes in a page set

Each time Google crawls pages on your site, Data Highlighter extracts data and makes the data available for rich snippets. If you make significant changes to the way your pages display information or to the site's URLs, you should delete the original page sets and teach Data Highlighter about the new structure of your site.

Set up Mobile App Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 02:17:00 -0800

Best Practices for Mobile App Analytics set up

Follow these set up guidelines for a clean account.

Google Analytics is flexible and can support different account configurations, but these variations affect how data appears in your reports. Before you set up Mobile App Analytics, we recommend you consider your long term reporting goals and how they might affect your account structure.

When you’re ready to get started, following these guidelines to help you collect accurate data and maintain a well organized account. Some guidelines are not applicable in all circumstances:

Track different apps in separate properties.

Track every app in its own property with a distinct tracking ID to avoid combining data in unintentional ways. Limiting the number of apps tracked in the same property also helps avoid reaching your account limit and triggering data sampling.

Track different platforms of an app in the same property.

If you’ve developed the same app for different platforms (i.e., MyApp for Androidand MyApp for iOS), track them in the same property. You can then set up new profiles to organize and compare the performances in your Google Analytics reports.

Track app editions based on feature similarities.

Editions of your app (e.g. MyApp: The Original and MyApp: Special Edition) can be tracked either in the same or different properties. Base your decision on the similarity of the editions and your ultimate reporting goals:
- Track editions with significantly different features or behaviors in separate properties. This prevents any accidental comparison or conflation of unlike data.
- Track editions that are very similar to each other in the same property.This allows you to combine and directly compare data in your Analytics reports.

Track different app versions in the same property.

Google Analytics recognizes different versions of an app you’re already tracking, so you won’t need to create a new property each time you release a new version. For example, track MyApp: The Original v1 and MyApp: The Original v1.5 in the same property. Then use the App Version report to compare earlier versions of your app to the latest version in your reports.

Note: If you want to track both apps and websites using Google Analytics, you must use different tracking IDs and separate properties. App tracking data can only appear in designated app profiles, and web tracking data can only appear in designated web profiles. Alternative configurations are not supported and will result in corrupted or incomplete data.

How Sampling Works in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:24:00 -0800

How Sampling Works in Google Analytics

Background

Sampling in Google Analytics (GA) or in any web-analytics software refers to the practice of selecting a subset of data from your website traffic and reporting on the trends available in that sample set. Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to analyzing all of the data. In addition, sampling speeds up processing for reports when the volume of data is so large as to slow down report queries.

Session sampling

How standard reports work

Each web property within Google Analytics stores a copy of all the unfiltered data associated with the unique web property ID. Each profile associated with a web property creates a set of unsampled, pre-aggregated data tables, which are processed on a daily basis. The suite of standard Google Analytics reports relies on these pre-aggregated tables to deliver unsampled reports in a timely manner.

Apart from the standard reports, users may issue ad-hoc queries to Google Analytics. Common queries include applying advanced segments to standard reports, applying a secondary dimension, or running a custom report. When the front-end issues a query, GA inspects the set of pre-aggregated tables to determine whether the query can be wholly satisfied by existing aggregates. If not, GA goes back to the raw session data to process and compute aggregate data on-the-fly. If the resulting report is sampled, you will always see a yellow box at the top of the report which says: This report is based on N visits.

How ad-hoc reports work

As discussed, in cases where the report query cannot be satisfied by existing aggregates (i.e. pre-aggregated tables), GA goes back to the raw session data to compute the requested information. In order to reduce latency, GA may sample session data for such queries. Specifically, GA inspects the number of visits for the specified date range at the web property level. If the number of visits to the web property in the given date range exceeds 250K visits¹, GA will employ a sampling algorithm which uses a sample set of 250K visits, proportional to the distribution of visits by day for the selected date range. Thus, the session sampling rate varies for every query depending on the number of visits included in the selected date range for the given web property. Note that the sample size can configured to be anywhere from 1K to 500K visits; the default size is 250K.

Implications for filtered profiles and advanced segments

It is important to note that session sampling occurs at the web property level, not the profile level. For ad-hoc queries, the sample set of 250K visits² is determined at the web property level, and then the profile-level filters are applied. As such, profiles that are filtered may have fewer visits included in the sampled calculation. Similarly, advanced segments are applied after the 250K visits are sampled, so fewer visits may be included in the calculation.

In general, session sampling is a highly effective means of reducing query latency while maintaining a high level of accuracy. In particular, GA’s approach to sampling works very well for fast, top N queries and other queries that have a relatively broad, uniform distribution across visits. Session sampling can be less accurate for ‘needle in a haystack’ problems, such as single keyword analysis and longtail analysis, or cases with narrow dimension filtering, such as heavily filtered profiles or conversion analysis where conversions constitute a small fraction of visits. For those types of analysis, please refer to the section on accessing unsampled reports with GA Premium accounts.

Dimension value aggregates

How standard reports work

As discussed, the pre-aggregated tables per profile are processed on a daily basis. These tables report data on all sessions, though there is a limit to the number of rows/distinct values in the pre-aggregated tables³. GA aggregates data when there are more than 50,000 rows⁴ of data in a single table in a single day. In other words, when there are more than 50,000 values for a given table, GA will take the top N⁵ values and creates an aggregate entry for the remaining values labelled “(other).”

Implications for multi-day requests

It is important to note that the top N entries are determined on a per day basis. For example, if you select any single day in the Pages report, you will see at most 50,000 rows; all other pages are aggregated into the "(other)" category. Therefore, a page that is grouped in the "(other)" category one day, may not necessarily be grouped in the "(other)" category another day. So when running a report for a multi-day date range, you may run into inconsistencies as some pages (or other dimension value) in the longtail may be included in the “(other)” bucket or its own row across days.

Additionally, for multi-day requests, the maximum number of rows read per day is (1M/n), where n is the number of days in the query. Therefore, for any request with a date range including more than 20 days, GA will potentially truncate the number of rows read for the day, if there are a full 50K rows of data. For example:

A report for the past 30 days would read approximately 30,000 rows per day (e.g. 1,000,000/30).
A report for the past 60 days will read a maximum of 16,000 rows per day (e.g. 1,000,000/60).

Because dimension values (e.g. unique URLs and campaign keywords) often repeat across given days, this threshold typically only affects sites with a lot of unique content and/or keywords.

How ad-hoc reports work

In cases where the user query cannot be satisfied by existing aggregates (i.e. pre-aggregated tables), GA goes back to the raw session data to compute the requested information. In that situation, GA will return a maximum of 1M unique dimension values included in the sample set for the query.

Other reports

Sampling and multi-channel funnel reports

The multi-channel funnel reports are based on 1M conversions. If the number of conversions exceeds 1M for the given date range, then GA samples up to 1M conversions at the profile level. Note that sampling occurs at the profile, not web property, level for MCF reports.

Additionally, the maximum number of unique conversion paths is 200K per day. All other conversion paths are aggregated under “(other).”

Sampling and flow visualization reports

Flow visualization reports (including Visitors Flow and Goal Flow) are generated off a subset of 100K visits for a given date range. Similar to standard report session sampling, the 100K visits are sampled at the web property level. Therefore, applying profile filters or advanced segments can further reduce the sample set size.

For this reason, the flow visualization reports, including entrance, exit, and conversion rates may differ from the results in the standard content and conversion reports, which are based on a different sample set.

Data collection sampling

If your website has many millions of pageviews per month, you might consider configuring your tracking code to sample your data, using the _setSampleRate method. By sampling the hits for your site, you will get reliable report results while staying within the hit limits for your account. The limit on the number of hits for a standard GA account is 10M hits/month. For Premium accounts, the hit limit is 1B+ hits/month. When data collection sampling is implemented, hits are discarded on the client-side and are never collected nor processed by Google Analytics. Therefore, discarded hits cannot be recovered through Premium unsampled reports. Also, unlike session sampling, Google Analytics does not extrapolate the report results based on the data collection sample rate. That said, an added benefit of data collection sampling will be that report response times may be faster with less data in the account.

Data collection sampling occurs consistently across unique visitors. Therefore, once a user has been selected for data collection, all visits (including future visits) for the user will send data to GA. For mobile applications, this means that downloads of the application that have been selected for data collection will send all data to GA, while other instances of the application will not send any hits.

Note that even if the data for your site is not sampled when it is collected, certain types of reports will encounter other types of sampling, including session sampling and dimension value aggregation, based on the nature of the query. See How ad-hoc reports work for session sampling.

¹ See adjusting the sample size. Sample size is adjustable from 1K to 500K visits.
² See adjusting the sample size.
³ Tables may correspond to a single report or multiple reports. Tables may contain a single dimension (e.g. keyword) or multiple dimensions (e.g. ad group and campaign). At the most granular level, reports will contain at most 50K rows of data. Higher levels in the table hierarchy, such as ad group, may contain less than 50K rows.
⁴ 75,000 rows for GA Premium accounts.
⁵ As determined by the relevant metric for the report/table (e.g. # visits, # events, # page views, # transactions).

Sample Data: About Sample Data in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:56:00 -0800

About sampled data

Understand what sampling is, and why it's happening?

When a report is based on data from a large number of visits, or over 1 million conversions in the case of Multi-Channel Funnel reports, you may see the following notice at the top of the report: This report is based on N visits. This notice alerts you to the fact that the report is based on a sample of the data. Sampling occurs when data for the report is based on more than 500,000 visits, and allows Google Analytics to generate reports more quickly for those large data sets. Note that Flow Visualization reports are sampled after 100,000 visits.

When your report is based on sampled data, you have the option to adjust the sample size to increase accuracy or increase speed. Premium Google Analytics account users also have access to some Unsampled Reports.

More About Sampling

Sampling in Google Analytics or in any web analytics software refers to the practice of selecting a subset of data from your website traffic and reporting on the trends available in that sample set. Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to analyzing all of the data. In addition, sampling speeds up processing for reports when the volume of data is so large as to slow down report queries.

If your website has many millions of pageviews per month, you might consider configuring your tracking code to sample your data. By sampling the traffic data collection for your site, you will get good report results in a reasonable amount of time.

To learn more about sampling in Google Analytics, see the Sampling document in Google Code.

How to Handle (Not Provided) Data in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:31:00 -0800

It has been more than a year since Google announced its SSL enhancement. What follows are some thoughts and tips on how to handle the growing lack of data you receive from your organic visits.

A Little Background

Google announced on October 18, 2011 that it would be “enhancing [the] default search experience for signed-in users” by making SSL search the default search for signed-in users. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page and means that visits from organic search listings no longer include the information about each individual query. Instead, Google started passing the term “(not provided)” as the referring keyword for those organic search visits.

Google mitigated the issue by offering publishers to “…receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools.” Google didn't block paid search visit data “to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

What Changed

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, email, instant messaging, and other data transfers. When you search over SSL, your search queries and search traffic are encrypted so that intermediary parties that might have access to your network can't easily see your results and search terms.

Search terms are encrypted and are excluded from the referrer headers that are part of the request sent to the result site you visit.
The landing site still receives information that you're coming from Google, but not the query that was issued.
If you click on an ad on the results page, your browser will send an unencrypted referrer that includes your query to the advertiser’s site.
Google logs the same information about your search when you’re using SSL search as we do for unencrypted search. SSL search doesn't reduce the data that Google receives and logs when you search, or change the listing of the items in your web history.

The Current Status of (not provided)

A recent Optify study found that the term ”(not provided)” now accounts for almost 40 percent of referring traffic data from organic search and since the introduction of the SSL enhancement, recognized referring keywords have dropped by almost 50 percent.

This means that for 1 of every 2.5 visits from organic search, you're no longer able to see the referring keywords and that almost 50 percent of the keywords you were previously able to track and measure are no longer available to you.

What it Means

The study shows that the trend of “(not provided)” is only going to continue trending up until the majority of organic referrer data (search terms) will completely disappear. But what does this mean for you, the marketer? It means you will no longer be able to:

Truly measure the performance of your SEO efforts by connecting a search term with website metrics such as traffic, conversion rate, leads, engagement (page views and time on site), and revenue.
Use referrer data to customize and/or personalize your user experience. For example, if you used to offer related content based on referring keyword, or used referring keywords in your lead nurturing rules, you will no longer be able to do that.
Score visitors and leads based on their referring keyword. If you use a lead scoring system that uses referring keyword as one of the rules, this option will no longer be available to you.

But you will still be able to:

Measure your overall SEO performance and report on ROI since the visit source will still be organic search, but you won't be able to analyze what keywords contributed to that performance nor will you be able to report ROI on specific SEO initiatives.
Practice SEO and work on getting more traffic from organic search. This change doesn't prevent you from following any SEO best practices; it just means that it will be harder to measure their effectiveness.

5 Tips for Handling “(not provided)” Data

What can you do as (not provided) continues to eat away at your organic search data?

Make the most out of the data you have. With the “(not provided)” rate approaching 40 percent, it means that you still have more than 60 percent of organic visits with referring keywords data. Make the most out of that data since it won't be there for much longer.
Use Webmaster Tools. Google offers a lot of data about your website in Google Webmaster Tools. This includes the top 1,000 daily search queries and top 1,000 daily landing pages for the past 30 days, in addition to the impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position in search results for each query. You can compare this to the previous 30 day period as well as export to a CSV file to import to a different system or analyze it using Excel. For most small to mid-size B2B sites, this should be more than enough data to analyze in aggregate. See Linking Google Analytics to Webmaster Tools.
For personalization, use other data. If you're using keyword data to personalize the user experience you offer on your website (related content, targeted landing pages) and off your website (follow up emails, lead nurturing), you will need to start using other data instead. Form submissions, page viewed, and campaign tagging could be used to replace keyword data in your personalization efforts.
For SEO work, use proxies. The problem with the aggregate data is it doesn’t give you the ability to tie a referring keyword with the subsequent website behavior like page views and time on page. More importantly, actions like form submission (B2B) and clicks on page (B2C, e.g. shopping cart actions) can't be associated with a keyword making it impossible to report on ROI for specific keywords. This means that you will have to start using proxies such as keyword rank and ranked page to estimate single keyword performance.
Use PPC data to estimate keyword performance. Since Google is still passing referrer data to advertisers for clicks on their sponsored results, you can use PPC to estimate the performance of keywords you're targeting or considering.

Source: searchenginewatch.com

What's Impact your business faced after Google Panda Update 3.9

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:32:00 -0700

Google rolled out the latest update to its Panda content-ranking algorithm last night, and already Internet hucksters are quaking in their boots. Panda 3.9, the latest salvo in the ongoing battle between the good guys with high-quality websites and the bad guys who build content farms and other low-quality sites of that ilk, will affect around 1 percent of all searches, Google said in a Twitter post.

The Panda algorithm, which is one of many algorithms that Google uses to rank Web content in its search results, debuted in 2011. Its release was part of Google's determination to improve the quality of its search results and improve user experience by eliminating websites that contain low-quality content.

Almost immediately, content farms and other websites with poorly written, keyword-stuffed information lost rank or disappeared completely from Google search results. The change affected about 12 percent of all searches, Google said.

This is the ninth iteration of the Panda algorithm. The previous update, 3.8, occurred on June 25. The algorithm got its name from Navneet Panda, a Google engineer.

In its tweet, Google also included a link to its guide to building high-quality sites.

"The changes to the Panda algorithm can have a positive impact on a company's website ranking if taken into consideration," said Pete Goold, managing director of Punch Communications, a PR, social media and SEO agency. "However, the negatives of not adhering to the guidelines can be costly, ultimately leading to a lack of online visibility which can affect a business's bottom line."

The enemy, Google is quick to note, is not the practice of search engine optimization itself.

"Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive — and we're not the only ones," Matt Cutts, a Google distinguished engineer, wrote on the site's webmasters blog. "Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the 'good guys' making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end, we’ve launched Panda Changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results."

Source:BusinessNewsDaily

Google Updates Link Warnings To (Sort Of) Clarify They Can Be Ignored (Maybe)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:37:00 -0700

Dear Google. Please don’t send out any further link warnings to publishers. Your latest round yesterday, intended to clarify the confusion sparked by ones sent last week, is likely going to make things worse, not better. No more warnings, not until you get some fundamental clarity in place.

Dear Publishers. Here’s our latest news on the crazy link warnings that have gone out and our best attempt at figuring out whether you should be concerned or not.

How We Got Here
Earlier this year, Google began sending out warnings to some publishers, alerting them that they were involved with “artificial” or “unnatural” linking. Many publishers that received these messages saw ranking drops, especially after Google’s Penguin Update.

Google later said that one way to recover from Penguin was to get bad links removed. It also said that anyone who received a link warning should take action to remove bad links, if they received one of those notices.

Last Week’s Confusion
Last week, Google began sending out a new round of link warnings. These were exactly the same as link warnings that had gone out in prior months, warnings that meant — according to Google — that a site might see a ranking drop if it didn’t act to remove bad links or otherwise report them in some way to Google.

Cue panic.

Cue next the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts, who said not to panic, because the latest round of messages were different. These messages, Cutts explained, were meant to inform some publishers that there were links pointing at their sites that Google might now “distrust” but not something “you automatically need to worry about.”

Unfortunately, there was no way to tell if you got a link warning that you could safely ignore or not.

Cue confusion.

More Warnings, New Wording
Seeing the confusion, Google made a change over the weekend. Cutts commented on our original story, saying:

An engineer worked over the weekend and starting with the messages that we sent out on Sunday, the messages are now different so that you can tell which type of situation you’re in.
We also changed the UI in the webmaster console to remove the yellow caution sign for these newer messages. That reflects the fact that these newer notifications are much more targeted and don’t always require action by the site owner.

Now, if you’re getting what I’d call a “link advisory” from Google, rather than the traditional link warning, it says something like this:

We’ve detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. We don’t want to put any trust in links that are artificial or unnatural.
We recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links are outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole.

If you are able to remove any of the links, please submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took. If you have any questions, please visit our Webmaster Help Forum.

I’ll get back to interpreting this message in a moment. The new messages, the ones that you’re apparently safe to ignore (not that the message makes this clear), appear listed under the “All Messages” area when you log into Google Webmaster Central. They may look like this:

In the screenshot above, “Warning” points at an example of the message that went out last week. Notice the yellow warning sign next to it. Apparently, going forward from this past weekend, link warnings you need to act upon will always have this type of warning sign.

Marked as “Advisory” in the screenshot is an example of the advisory messages that began going out on Sunday. There’s no yellow warning sign, which is designed to reassure publishers that they don’t necessarily have to take action. Maybe.

Can You Ignore The New Advisories?

Maybe? Well, we’re trying to get more clarity from Google on the latest messages. Cutts had suggested that these types of messages were more to inform site owners about distrusted links pointing at them rather than require site owners to take any particular action. But the new advisories still have wording that may cause panic.

After all, the new supposedly-reassuring messages tell people that Google recommends “removing any unnatural links” or to submit a “reconsideration request.” Telling publishers to submit reconsideration requests by its very nature suggests they are getting penalized.

What’s a confused publisher to do? I think if you got one of the messages last week, don’t worry unless you also noticed a recent traffic drop from Google.

If you got one of the new advisories, you’re likely safe to ignore them. However — and now your head will really hurt — that might be a precursor to a future ranking drop that has nothing to do with your site being penalized.

When Links Don’t Get Counted

For years, Google has said that it might not count some of the links it finds on the web as “votes” in favor of a particular web site. The Penguin Update seems to have ramped that up. The messages that are going out also seemed to be tied to this, to better alert publishers that votes they thought they were getting might no longer count.

Think of it as an election, where bogus links are like bogus votes. The ballot box has been stuffed, and those bogus links aren’t being caught. Candidates getting those votes get elected. Then the elections people start looking more closely at the votes and tossing out the bogus ones. Now the candidates that were winning no longer get elected, or elected as often.

Those candidates weren’t penalized. They weren’t barred from being in the election. They just weren’t allowed to benefit from bad votes.

Penalty Or New Way Of Counting Votes?

This is why Google has begun saying that Penguin isn’t a penalty but rather just an algorithmic change, where the algorithm is detecting what it considered bogus votes and not counting them. If you were a site with a lot of bogus votes, then you’re going to be hit harder than sites that have only a few of them among all the legitimate ones.

That’s also why Google hasn’t advised people to do reconsideration requests, if they were hit by Penguin. There was no manual action that could be removed. In other words, Penguin didn’t ban them from being in the election. It just didn’t count bad votes.

Confusingly, however, Google did advise people to clean up bad links. That suggests that Penguin does more than just discount bad votes. It clearly must somehow penalize sites that seem to have a lot of bad links. Otherwise, there would be no reason to advise removing bad links.

So Why Send Messages?

That leads back to why the latest round of messages may be going out. If Google is automatically counting bad links as a way to penalize sites, rather than just discounting them, then any site is potentially vulnerable to “negative SEO,” where someone might point bad links at a competitor.

Google has continued to discount the threat of negative SEO. SEOmoz just covered how an overt negative SEO attack hasn’t impacted its traffic. But the new advisories might be a poorly-implemented way of reassuring publishers about not to worry about negative SEO. They seem designed to give a heads-up that a site might not benefit from some links in the way it did before, not because the site faces a penalty but because the links aren’t counted.

Potentially, that’s helpful. It’s good advice for a publisher to understand they might not be ranking well because the link counting methodology has changed, not because they’ve done something wrong or because of some negative SEO attempt.

However, it’s bad advice not to be clearer, to be suggesting that publishers should be trying to actively remove links pointing at their site, if these links supposedly aren’t trusted. It’s worse to be telling them to file reconsideration requests if they’ve done nothing warranting reconsideration.

If Google wants to keep discounting an increasing number of links out there, that’s Google’s right. But publishers have better things to do than being dragged in as part of that ballot box policing, if they’ve done nothing wrong.

Source:searchengineland.com

10 SEO Techniques All Startups Should Be Using

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:54:00 -0700

If you’re a startup entrepreneur, chances are good that search engine optimization (SEO) is the last thing on your mind. After all, why should you worry about things like keyword phrases and backlinks when there are a hundred other items on your “to do” list, all clamoring for your attention?

Unfortunately, this mindset is extremely shortsighted. It doesn’t matter how innovative your products or services are. If people can’t find you online, you’re going to have a seriously tough time sustaining the momentum you need to propel a growing business to success.

So instead of dismissing the tremendous potential involved with SEO, consider implementing any or all of the following techniques into your startup’s marketing plan:

Technique #1 – Identify Target Keywords

In my opinion, a startup’s #1 marketing goal should be to identify at least a handful of potential SEO keywords to target within the natural search results and then optimize the site accordingly. This list should include keyword phrases that your potential customers are actually entering into the engines (as determined by search volume figures found in keyword research tools) and that aren’t too competitive to rank for your site (based on the presence of established websites in Google’s Top 10 results).

Once identified, these keywords should be integrated into your site in key areas, including your page titles, your heading tags, and your body content. Don’t force it through excessive inclusions, but do take advantage of the SEO value these positions hold to inform the search engines about the subject of your web content.

Technique #2 – Implement Branding Efforts

However, while it’s important to identify and target SEO keywords for use in your startup marketing plan, it’s also vital that you begin the branding process as early as possible in your company’s tenure. There’s no arguing with the fact that Google loves brands. Considering that the search engine must rely on quantifiable metrics (rather than subjective assessments) in order to evaluate website quality for display in the natural search results, branded elements remain one reliable bellwether that can be used to indicate viewer valuation.

To get started capturing these benefits for your startup’s website, decide on a set logo, color scheme, tagline, and promotional phrasing as early as possible, and use these elements consistently across your web presence. Consider working with a graphic designer or marketing consultant if you don’t feel capable of coming up with a cohesive brand on your own.

Technique #3 – Focus on Content Creation

Running a company blog on which you post product updates, industry news reactions, or other personal interest pieces is a vital part of SEO for two reasons.

First, publishing content to your site regularly increases the number of different keywords present on your site. By improving keyword exposure, you may find yourself earning free SEO traffic via natural search phrases you never even targeted on your site!

Second, filling your site with valuable content is a great way to build up the relationships you share with your prospects and customers. Because bounce rate and time on site are both believed to be playing roles in search ranking algorithms, the quality of these relationships could actually improve how well you rank in the SERPs.

Technique #4 – Commit to Social Networking

Truth be told, for many startup entrepreneurs, participating on popular social networking sites can seem like yet another chore to be added to the “to do” list. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap!

Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals, including link shares and brand mentions on some social network status updates, are currently playing a role in natural SERPs rankings, which means that maintaining a presence on these sites is vitally important for your startup’s SEO. If at all possible, make it a priority to invest at least 10-20 minutes each day posting to social networking sites and interacting with the people who follow your company’s profiles on these sites.

Technique #5 – Connect with Social Networking Power Users

While you’re spending time on popular social media sites, it’s also a good idea to take the time to connect with the power users on these platforms. Not only is the relative authority of these social networking participants taken into account when weighting the social signals Google and the other search engines detect for your brand, a single link share from one of these “influencers” could result in a significant influx of traffic and customers to your website.

To do this effectively, identify the people you’d like to connect with based on their numbers of followers and their general authority within your industry, and then let your relationships with them build up naturally. Sharing their content or offering to help them in some way will go a long way towards ensuring the success of your eventual share request.

Technique #6 – Install Google Analytics

Another foundation to web success that all startups should consider is the ability to measure and test different metrics. For example, if you’ve recently added a new sign-up form to your startup’s website, you’ll want to be sure it’s as effective as possible, and you can’t know that if you aren’t measuring the results you achieve through A/B or multivariate split testing.

To gather the data needed to do this effectively, you’ll want to install a program like Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to use, and it provides an incredible wealth of information that can be used to improve your website’s conversion rates.

Technique #7 – Set up Google Analytics Goals

Speaking of conversion rates, once you’ve got Google Analytics installed, you’ll want to take the time to establish website goals and set up the necessary event tracking features to determine how well your website is performing. Because Google Analytics goals allow you to identify whether or not website visitors are engaging with your site the way you envisioned, they’re a vital part of making your site as effective as possible.

For complete details on how to use Google Analytics’s built-in features to start generating this data, take a look at any of the following articles:

About Google Analytics Goals
Setting up Google Analytics Goals
Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide

Technique #8 – Invest in Link Building Campaigns

While optimizing your website for your chosen SEO and branded keyword phrases is important, it’s only half of the optimization battle. The second primary SEO aim you’ll want to pay attention to is link building, as in the process of getting other websites to point links to your content.

The number, quality, and relevance of the links pointing at your website are all used as quality signals in the search engine ranking algorithms. Because your site’s link profile is estimated to account for as much as 50-80% of your overall “SEO Score,” you’ll find that it’s well worth your while to invest in link building campaigns as soon as your startup’s website is online.

The easiest way to carry out a link building campaign is to take a look at where your competitors are getting their backlinks by using tools like Majestic SEO or the Open Site Explorer. Although you won’t want to copy their link profiles link-for-link, you can use the data generated by these programs to identify potential linking sources and uncover missed link opportunities that could allow you to outrank your opponents in the SERPs.

Technique #9 – Try Guest Posting

One link building technique that deserves special mention here is guest posting. As a guest author, you connect with other websites in your industry to provide guest blog posts in exchange for a link back to your site. When done well (that is, by partnering with top influencers within your industry), you will receive a high-quality, highly-relevant backlink and you also stand to receive additional traffic due to the transfer of perceived “recommendation” of your content by the referring site’s author.

With just a few good guest post spots, it’s possible to substantially increase both your rankings in the natural search results and the amount of traffic flowing to your website.

Technique #10 – Launch Press Releases

Finally, one link building technique that’s especially effective for startup entrepreneurs is the use of press releases. Whenever your company has something newsworthy to report, write up a provocative press release and send it out through a distribution service like PRWeb. As you might expect by now, promoting your site in this way has the potential to both increase traffic and backlinks through the sites that eventually carry your release.

If you’re part of a current or former startup, have you made use of any of these techniques? Share your thoughts and recommendations for other new business owners in the comments section below!

Source:searchenginejournal

Google Is Considering Discounting Infographic Links

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:30:00 -0700

Matt Cutts spoke with Eric Enge at SMX Advanced, and Enge has now published the entire interview. In that interview, Cutts reveals that Google may start looking at discounting infographic links.

That doesn’t mean Google is doing this right now, or that they definitely will, but…come on.

“In principle, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of an infographic,” Cutts says in the interview. “What concerns me is the types of things that people are doing with them. They get far off topic, or the fact checking is really poor. The infographic may be neat, but if the information it’s based on is simply wrong, then it’s misleading people.”

“The other thing that happens is that people don’t always realize what they are linking to when they reprint these infographics,” he adds. “Often the link goes to a completely unrelated site, and one that they don’t mean to endorse. Conceptually, what happens is they really buy into publishing the infographic, and agree to include the link, but they don’t actually care about what it links to. From our perspective this is not what a link is meant to be.”

I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to a lot of people that Google would consider not counting these kinds of links. In fact, last month, we ran an article from David Leonhardt, who talked about this very thing.

There are certainly legitimate infographics, just as there are legitimate directories, but there is always that room for abuse, and it could represent something like what Google considers to be a linking scheme (which is against its quality guidelines).

“I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree,” Cutts told Enge. “The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site.”

I think that says it all. If you have a major infograhpic strategy that’s built for SEO purposes, I wouldn’t put too much stock into it moving forward. That doesn’t mean, however, that infographics can’t still provide value, and certainly spark some quality social traffic.

That’s only a small part of Enge’s interview with Cutts. Read the whole thing here.

Source:Webpronews