It seems everyone today is quick to offer advice on hot topics and deliver how-to insights on most anything. This infographic is no different and tackles the issue of coping with interrelationship quarreling. Starting from step 1 to the magic number 7, it details step by step how to stop a fight dead in its tracks and de-escalate the situation without causing any harm or additional strain on a relationship.

The end result is the inevitable conclusion that gives the satisfactory, “follow these steps and everything should be fine” outcome.

Infographic by A Center for Marriage Counseling and Measured SEM

Do you have insights on the benefit, or lack thereof, of these types of infographics? Post here!

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How the Mighty Have Fallen

My client ezdiquote provides online disability insurance quotes.  Our target keywords include long term disability insurance, disability insurance quotes, and income protection insurance.  The following table shows our spot-checked rankings taken at the end of each month.  Notice the precipitous drop at the end of April following the Penguin update.

I am sure many of you witnessed it, but the change was literally overnight.  April 23^rd we had solid rankings and steady high quality traffic.  April 24^th we were invisible for our target keywords and essentially cut off from organic traffic.

Why Google Struck Us Down

As the parameters behind the Penguin update become clearer, the reasons why ezdiquote lost its rankings begin to make sense:

1. Site-Wide Links

We used site-wide links with commercial anchor text from our microsites.  We have multiple microsites targeting specific occupations (e.g., itdiquote.com for IT professionals).  We use the microsites for LinkedIn and Facebook advertising where we demographically target by occupation.  On each of these sites, we included a link in the top navigation to ezdiquote.com using target keywords (e.g., disability insurance quote, long term disability insurance, etc.).

Figure 1: Site-Wide Commercial Anchor Text in Top Navigation

Admittedly, we chose to use exact match anchor text precisely because we could.  We controlled the sites; why not link with our target keywords?  Unfortunately, this is exactly what Google targeted with Penguin – site-wide links with exact match anchor text for competitive keywords.

2. We Used Private Blog Networks

Like many SEOs, I loved private blog networks.  Where else can you quickly and easily submit content and get it immediately picked up?  From my standpoint, we provided unique content (we never spun articles) that benefitted the web.  The content linked to us, but it was also (at least somewhat) informative.

3. Poor Anchor Text Distribution

With private blog networks, we intermixed our target keywords with our URL, brand, and full sentences to mimic a more natural link profile.  It simply wasn’t enough.  Coupled with our exact match links from our microsites, our anchor text was heavily skewed to our target keywords.  Natural link profiles typically have 20% commercial anchor text.  We had closer to 60%.  Again, we were easy pickings for Penguin.

The Road to Redemption

Our problem is clear.  Our anchor text is too densely skewed to our target keywords.  Pretty easy fix pre-Penguin, but I don’t think merely adding non-commercial anchor text links is going to salvage our rankings.  Our strategy needs to be multi-pronged:

1. PR is Back

While Penguin was detrimental for many SEO strategies, it was a godsend for PR agencies.  While anchor text used to be key, sharing and respectability now claim the throne.  SEOs need to get our clients’ stories out there – whatever story that may be – and we either need to rely on PR professionals or gain some PR chops ourselves.

For transparency sake, as you may have surmised, this blog post is a part of that first step.  In the SEO community, Penguin is newsworthy, and so I have a great opportunity to share my client’s story and gain some press.  To be truly effective, we need to do this 100 times over, changing our story to make it relevant to whatever audience we are pitching.

2. Learn from Competitors

I have repeated this step dozens of time for ezdiquote, but it is an especially important step after major algorithm updates.  We need to look at what sites benefitted from the update.  Their link profiles provide insight into what strategies continue to work.

The site that ranks best post-Penguin has a very similar link profile to ezdiquote.  The site has multiple inbound links from microsites it owns plus some low quality article and directory links.  The main difference is that the competitor did not use exact match anchor text from its microsites.  Rather than “disability insurance”, the competitor used “Guardian disability insurance” in its anchor text and alt image text – an incredibly subtle difference, but in Google’s eyes “Guardian disability insurance” is a low volume, non-commercial keyword, whereas, “disability insurance” is an incredibly competitive, high volume keyword.

Based on this insight, we have replaced our exact match anchor text on our microsites with image links with alt text: “ezdiquote disability insurance quotes”.

Figure 2: Updated Links on Microsites

3. Rebuild the Foundation

Lastly, we plan to focus on foundation links and citations such as relevant directories and partners.  These links include human-edited directories such as Business.com and Best of the Web.  Whereas, when we initially focused on building foundation links, we looked at including target keywords, going forward we are largely looking to diversify our keyword anchor text with low volume non-competitive search terms.

Part of building foundation links is building links to our backlinks.  If Google is unable to index our backlinks, the backlinks are useless.  We will submit content-focused backlinks to social media sites (e.g. Delicious and Reddit) or link to from Twitter and ping search engines with our back link URLs via services such as Ping-O-Matic.  This should help keep our backlinks in Google’s index.

Putting It All Together

The immediate goal of our post-Penguin refresh is to establish a more natural link profile without losing the benefits of our previous (and previously successful) link efforts.  New links from PR, ezdiquote microsites, links “borrowed” from competitor link profiles, and foundation links with anchor text focused on low search volume, non-competitive keywords combined with our existing exact match anchor text links will hopefully help us to return to our once dominant position and prepare us for the next algorithm change (puppy update?).

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However, regardless of how niche or varied, interesting or otherwise your area of business, there comes a time when you may lack the creativity needed to write a new post. If you sell light bulbs for example, how much can you really write week in week out on this topic, and still keep each post interesting, informative, unique and engaging?

While at first sight it may seem simple to set up a blog and put up a post every now and then, creating a blog that actually adds value to your online marketing campaign is a lot harder than it first appears. When your blog starts to flag and goes weeks or months without being updated, it can do more harm than good to both your business reputation and your search engine optimization efforts. There are tips you can use to stop your blog becoming stagnant, regardless of whether or not you introduce a new product every day or just once a year.

1. Schedule Posts

Every organization experiences peaks and troughs in customer activity. When you’re going through a slow period, you can easily write up a few new blog posts and schedule them to appear later in the month. This gives you breathing space when you anticipate you’ll be busy with orders or will be out of the office on vacation and means the blog won’t suffer just because you’re tied up with other things. Think of scheduling like you think of your Tivo box – just because you aren’t in to watch something, doesn’t mean you want to miss it. The same is true of blog posts – just because you’re busy with other things, it doesn’t make blog maintenance any less important.

Most of the popular blog platforms will allow you to set the day and time you would like the scheduled posts to appear. This means you can upload the content, create the links and tag the post then automate the publication so it doesn’t get overlooked when you’re busy with other concerns.

2.  Use Proven Content Ideas

At the beginning of this year we published a series of articles entitled ‘130 Plus Content Marketing Ideas for 2012’. Set over four parts, it contains dozens and dozens of compelling content ideas – all of which can easily be adapted to fit any style of blog. Suggestions include recruitment posts, questionnaires, lists, trends, question and answer sessions, guest blogs, ebooks, jargon busters, research and development, staff profiles and more.

3.  Set up Google Alerts

A quick and easy way to keep posts topical is to blog about news events. You can easily keep abreast of industry and competitor news by setting up Google Alerts. When a story is released based on your keywords, it will be sent directly to your inbox. You can then quickly write a post in response or use the story as the basis for your own report on the subject, saving time on background reading.

4.  Spread the Responsibility

Often a blog will be the domain of the marketing or online department but there is no law that says it has to be this way. Spread the responsibility for updating the blog by empowering a member of each department (for example sales and customer services) to write a weekly or monthly post. Quite often they’ll be in the best position to generate relevant and interesting ideas as they’re on the front line dealing with clients. The post can be sent to the marketing or online team to proof read and optimize before being posted to the blog if need be.

5.  Invite Guest Bloggers

If all else fails and you simply can’t think of enough ideas to keep your blog updated, a guest blogger can do the hard work for you. Inviting guest bloggers to post on your site is a great way to diversify the thoughts and opinions you present, allowing for much more of a well-rounded resource rather than simply creating a sales blog. It also allows you to connect with other industry insiders and can be useful for link building as the guest blogger will likely promote their involvement on their own blog.

Invitations for guest bloggers don’t have to be restricted to bloggers in your own industry. Compatible industries can also provide a fruitful pool of candidates as can your own client base and even local or regional figures.

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The Impact of SOPA on Affiliates

It is well-known that in the US affiliate marketing is a business model buffeted by regulatory burdens, most notably the Affiliate Nexus tax. But regulatory challenges come not only from the state-level. More recently, SOPA has shown that all sites can find themselves on the receiving end of regulatory pressures. While protecting copyright owners is the aim of these proposals, because any site which links to copyrighted content can be blocked publishers should be just as afraid as major online players like Google, Wikipedia and WordPress that ‘blacked out’ on January 18^th in protest.

Were SOPA to pass into law, publishers would have an unmanageable task in monitoring the content of sites they do not own for copyrighted content, draining time and resources away from their efforts to drive sales. Conversely, changes made by larger sites like Facebook and YouTube that publishers use to link back to their own will have a knock-on effect on the publisher’s own traffic. But even more serious are the suffocating effects on the kinds of user-generated content and engagement that are so crucial in helping publishers establish themselves as destination sites and thus command advertisers’ attention.

The UK’s Experience in Confronting Regulatory Challenges

In the UK, legislation similar in its implications (if not in its aims) has recently come into effect. Enforced in the UK from this month, the EU’s ePrivacy Directive requires site owners to gain consent for information held by cookies to be stored. Like the SOPA proposals it cannot be ignored. But whereas here both the Affiliate Nexus tax and SOPA have been met with concerted opposition, in the UK the law is already on the statute books. The FTC’s ‘Do Not Track’ proposals bear a striking resemblance to the EU Directive. Whereas previously the FTC had only proposed  voluntary opt-outs to behavioral advertising, following the intervention of the White House for a ‘Bill of Rights’ for online privacy to replace the current range of voluntary commitments, this will likely serve as a blueprint for future legislation.

Lessons from how the UK has addressed this challenge are therefore apposite. Chief amongst these is that any kind of regulatory challenge requires a co-ordinated response on behalf of the industry as a whole. In the UK, the Affiliate Marketing Council of the IAB performs this function, although its remit goes beyond that of the Performance Marketing Association in the US in having additional powers to enforce compliance standards. Comprised of eight member networks, in addition to publishers, advertisers and agencies, it has broad support for this remit and is looked by government as the representative of the performance marketing industry.

The Role of Networks

Affiliate networks, on both sides of the Atlantic, have a key role to play in the industry’s response to regulation for three reasons. Firstly, they have a duty of care to their advertisers and publishers to ensure that they are well-advised and well-prepared for oncoming changes. Secondly, as the keystone uniting so many of the industry’s relationships they are looked to advocacy bodies like the PMA to provide co-ordination. Finally, their role extends beyond being merely a platform provider to being the public face for common industry challenges.

At the intersection between publishers, advertisers and OPMs, networks can help the industry walk the line between being both the conduit of information and advice on one hand, while not stoking unnecessary panic on the other. The experience of the UK shows that into a vacuum comes misunderstandings and those able to profit from panic. There, a small industry of advisory services has already sprung up in response to the ePrivacy Directive, feeding off (and to some extent unnecessarily exacerbating) understandable trepidation felt on the part of site owners.

Being Prepared

The experience of both markets demonstrates the necessity to take proactive steps to comply with regulation coming into force regardless. The US witnessed this recently when FTC guidelines mandated disclosure of commercial relationships where endorsements and testimonials were used by affiliates. Although advertisers assumed liability for the risk of their publishers failing to disclose this, what was important was that advertisers were seen to be taking (sometimes very simple) measures in advance. Similarly, in the UK, last year’s extension of the Advertising Standards Authority’s digital remit produced concern initially, but as with the FTC’s changes, when these regulations came into force the effect (to date) has been less cataclysmic than many predicted.

Count on Ignorance

What is common to the UK and US is that legislators and regulators often have little knowledge of the online industry – especially publishers – and unrealistic expectations. In the fight against the introduction of the affiliate tax in Colorado, campaigners argued that the tax would not raise the revenue legislators expected: when Colorado introduced the tax it collected just $20,000 despite being projected to raise $5 million. This only serves to highlight the need for a louder industry voice, whether to oppose new regulatory proposals or to help the affiliate industry comply with them.

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1.  Yahoo Axis: Will This Get People Searching With Yahoo Again? — Chris Crum of WebProNews has a thoughtful piece on Yahoo’s new Axis search, whose aim is to unify search and browsing, all while providing instant answers to frequent queries. The early reports on the type of returns one gets for a variety of different searches indicates that there may still be some bugs to work out.

2.  5 New Twitter Tools To Boost Your Marketing – Leon Widrich of Social Media Examiner collects info on 5 tools for Twitter that are definitely worth investigating, especially if you want to discover what time of day is the best to tweet or a great solution for analytics for your Twitter account.

3.  Facebook Stock Drags Down Other Social Media — Erik Sass of The Social Graf gathers up the details of the fallout from the Facebook IPO this week.

4.  iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations – Over at Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz reports on the breaking story of iAcquire being delisted by Google over alleged link buying.

5.  And, because it’s Friday and a long weekend to boot, here’s something amusing …. 10 Most Outrageous Pranks Played on Google – Search Engine People pulls together 10 ways people have tried to outwit Google in an amusing fashion.

Bonus: This week, HubSpot released its updated “120 AWESOME Marketing Stats, Charts, & Graphs,” a collection of stats that will provide plenty of fodder for thought. It’s available as a free download via the form at the bottom of “20 Revealing Stats, Charts, and Graphs Every Marketer Should Know.

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This infographic, courtesy of The SEO Company, details a look back at the state of social media so far this year. And it’s really been a breakout year for some social sites: Pinterest became the fastest growing social network of all time, Facebook just launched their IPO, and Google has once again joined the fray of social with Google Plus.

Even though Google + is trying its best to compete with Facebook and other popular social networking sites, it hasn’t done as well so far. With lax censorship and not as many users, Google Plus seems to be lagging behind. Maybe things will look up for them in 2013.

Kony 2012 blew up the YouTube community with a heart-string-pulling campaign video that has received over 87 million views. Impressive, yet not as impressive as the ever so popular, Charlie Bit my Finger with 450 million views.

The infographic leaves us off with a thought about the fictitious Mayanspace – the doomsayers will probably love this one No doubt someone will try to build a social network on such a topic.

The State of Social Media 2012 by The SEO Company

What’s been the most notable event in social media in your world so far? Please let us know in the comments.

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Search engine marketers are increasingly being called upon to offer specialist reputation management services as part of any SEO package, but it is something that you can tackle yourself with a little forethought. With the proliferation of social media and user-generated content along with the increasing importance of reviews from an SEO perspective, knowing how to deal with negative reviews quickly and professionally is a skill that should be in your online marketing arsenal.

1.  Keep SEO In Mind

Before composing a reply to a bad review, assess the opportunities to assist in your SEO work. That doesn’t mean your reply needs to be loaded with keywords and links as that can often make the situation worse by giving the impression you’re not at all interested in customer service but instead are chasing rankings at any opportunity. However, a well-thought-out response can legitimately include a link back to your website – perhaps invite the user to get in touch with you to discuss further and include a link to the contact us or about us page.

2.  Be Tactful and Understanding

Even if you consider the review to be incorrect and unfair, your reply must be polite, tactful and understanding. Even the angriest of reviewers will calm down given time, so don’t inflame the situation by retaliating in kind against them.

A calm, measured and professional response will not only help to salve the anger of the person leaving the review, it will also help you to instill a sense of confidence in readers of the review. If you’re professional, assured and courteous, you’re more likely to diffuse the negative than by going on the attack yourself. This can help to negate the impact of the review for future readers as they will see your commitment to customer service shining through.

3.  Address the Problem Honestly

Whatever subject matter the negative review in question focuses on, only respond when you are armed with the certain knowledge that the issue is being addressed or has been fixed. If you run a hotel for example, and a reviewer complains about broken air conditioning, a reply apologizing for the inconvenience but advising that as a result every AC unit in the hotel is being checked and repairs carried out where necessary will reassure those thinking of booking a stay with you. Likewise, if you run an online store and reviewers complain about high shipping costs, a response advising that an economical option is soon to be introduced as a result of their feedback will give peace of mind for future customers.

4.  Encourage the Reviewer to Contact You Directly

In some instances, a bad reviewer will refuse to be pacified and may want to respond to your own response. Don’t be drawn into a war of words online in an effort to prove that you are right. Invite the user to contact you directly in order to discuss the matter further. This gives you a forum to put forward your response and means you can offer a personal apology – it’s harder to stay mad at someone with a genuine desire to correct poor service face-to-face than it is arguing with a faceless brand online.

Speaking to the person directly also means you can offer a token gesture for their inconvenience such as a discount on future purchases, free shipping or a free upgrade without opening yourself up to a deluge of complaints from people simply wanting something for free.

A bad review doesn’t mean doom and gloom, but it does need to be handled appropriately quickly and completely before it has a chance to cause lasting damage to your online reputation. Keep these four tips in mind when you next come across some negativity about your products or services, and you’ll be well on the way to putting out the fire!

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Although times have now changed, the fact remains that press release writing still calls for a niche skill set. While many business owners are happy to put pen to paper and create a PR or put a budget in place to outsource the task simply because they know they should, the newness of the genre means that problems can crop up very easily and in many instances, not be noticed or put right.

To help you craft front-page-worthy press releases, here are three common mistakes made by those writing press releases and what you can do to put them right…

1.  Keyword Stuffing

A common error with any press release writing task is to try and fit too many keywords into the body of the text. As with any form of online content, whether it be an article or a web page, keyword stuffing should be avoided at all costs. If the keyword density is too high and the PR is then published on site, it will have exactly the same impact as any other stuffed content would — it will appear to be too spammy to Google and to the reader.  It’s easy to spot a release that has been created as nothing more than a vehicle for keywords and more often than not, it will leave a poor impression of the brand concerned and possibly lead to difficulties with Google.

Avoiding keyword stuffing can be hard for those who are inexperienced in press release or more general online writing. Keyword density is a notoriously tricky thing to get right. Too few and there’s no point, too many and you do more harm than good. For those struggling, an easy rule of thumb to help you find your feet is to include one keyword in the title, one in the first paragraph, and one in the final paragraph.

2.  Sales Above News

A press release can be used as a sales tool in that it can paint a very positive impression of your business. A great release can set your brand apart, particularly if it focuses on a newsworthy event such as an award nomination, local charity work or the launch of a groundbreaking new product.

A press release should always prioritize the news angle – the main point of a PR after all is to tell the press about an achievement they should take note of. Those new to PR writing or lacking in inspiration for a regular release will often fall prey to the temptation to come on too strong with a sales pitch – this is an immediate turn-off for most editors and can mean that a genuinely interesting or newsworthy story is consigned to the trash folder.

Consigning the ‘salesy’ information to the boilerplate of the release is an easy way to avoid falling into this trap. The main body should focus on the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ – basically all of the facts that tell the reader why they should read on and why they should care.

3.  Spelling and Grammar

Spelling mistakes and grammar errors are rife online, and press release writing is no exception. These two factors are becoming increasingly important to Google as it searches for ways to recognize good quality, trustworthy content. Most (if not all) word processing packages offer both spelling and grammar checks – just make sure they are set to check as you type.

Even professional writers employ the services of editors. If there is no one else in the business you trust to read through and correct the release, set to one side for a few hours after writing and then come back to it and read through thoroughly once again. If you proofread your content immediately after you finish writing it, the eye tends to skip over mistakes such as “of” instead of “off” or the extremely common “you” instead of “your.”

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Penguin Impact Worldwide

SEOMoz, one of the trusted leaders in the SEO community, recently published a graph showing that Penguin has had an even bigger impact than Google’s past updates, including the controversial Panda, which shook the very foundation of the web in 2011. But it doesn’t stop there. In fact, it has been reported that the Penguin update has resulted in mass unemployment in the Indian cities of Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai. Apparently as much as 80% of the globe’s link building services are outsourced from India, and with the algorithm tweak focusing on eliminating this practice, many people are now out of work.

Crackdown on Black Hat SEO

What is so interesting about the Penguin update is that it has not really brought anything new to the table. By this we mean it is not focusing on anything SEO marketers don’t already know – that is, those who are already committed to the white hat practices Google approves of. For those who are on the black hat side of things, there are plenty of changes to take note of.

Google recently published a list of guidelines to let site owners know what it considers quality content. The company also shared a list of no-no’s to let everyone know what will no longer be tolerated. Here is a rundown of the practices you want to avoid in the wake of the Penguin update:

• Hidden links and text
• Sending automated queries
• Cloaking, doorway pages, and deceptive redirects
• Keyword stuffing
• Purposely creating duplicate content on pages, domains, or subdomains
• Creating pages that host phishing scams, or viruses, spyware, Trojans, and other malware
• Creating useless content that provides no real value to visitors

Avoiding these bad practices is what SEO experts have been preaching to content publishers and marketers for years. What’s different now with Penguin in effect is Google taking action against those it believes are committing the dreaded practice of web spam. In the past, this was something site owners could get away with. It looks like it will be extremely difficult to cheat the system moving forward.

Google has been making a lot of algorithm changes as of late, and surprisingly, more open than ever about what it is doing behind the scenes. With its openness regarding the Penguin update, the company not only gave the public a nice heads up, but the blueprint for avoiding the penalties. The SEO community couldn’t have asked for much more than this.

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Take the case of our sample infographic, which looks at the biggest diamond, bank, and art heists of all time. Making use of thorough research, the infographic’s author establishes what are generally believed to be the top heists in all three categories, and writes up notes showcasing just why each each is classed as “extreme.”

The infographic does a good job of incorporating a clean central theme, blending in the different heist scenarios into a single canvas. The recurring stylistic elements of the map background and the “outcome” section tie together the separate topics into the intended focus of the need for security.

© 2012 HomeSecuritySystem.com

Have you seen any other great examples of extreme infographics? Please let us know in the comments.

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