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Showing posts with label SEO Practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO Practice. Show all posts
6:11 AM

Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 4

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

This content has been moved to Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1 on the Webbiquity blog.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 6:11 AM 0 comments
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5:15 AM

SEO Tool Review: SEMRush

Monday, December 21, 2009

SEMRush offers a powerful suite of SEO and search marketing tools, particularly for those who've already done the basic SEO work and perhaps have an AdWords program running, but want to take efforts to the next level.

The suite includes tools for:
  • Google Keywords (shows what terms a site shows up for on Google, along with search position, search volume, AdWords CPC cost for those terms and other stats)
  • AdWords Keywords (for sites already running SEM campaigns)
  • Competitors in Google (helpful for finding potential link partners and online advertising opportunities)
  • Competitors in AdWords
  • Potential Ad Buyers (for sites that sell advertising space)
  • Potential Ad Sellers
One particularly helpful report for SEO purposes is the Google Keywords report. In this example (with only identifying information removed), notice that this particular site is showing up on page two of Google for a number of key terms. It's great to be able to identify such terms; with a bit more onsite optimization and link-building, the site could be moved up to the first page on Google and get a significant traffic bump.


In another example of the same report, this site shows up very well for a number of key phrases, though again there are page two opportunities identified. Identifying all of the page one terms can also spark ideas for additional key words and phrases to target with SEO and SEM efforts.


The tool also provides a "related keyword report." So, if you have one particular key phrase that is central to your website, business service management in this case, SEMRush will supply data on similar terms to prioritize for targeting.


The companion SEOPivot tool identifies additional potential high-traffic keywords for a domain, along with the current Google position of the site, average search volume and expected traffic.


All reports can be exported to Excel for for further sorting and analysis.

The SEMRush tools provide value for almost any website that gets 1,000+ visits per month (lower-traffic sites may not be in the tool's database). For consultants or agencies managing multiple sites, the cost is easy to justify by spreading it over several clients.

The free version of the tool has extremely limited functionality, but at the very least it gives webmasters an idea of the depth of data the tool will be able to provide for their website(s). For the fee-based versions, pricing ranges from about $200 per year for the light (organic search data only) to $500 for the Pro (includes AdWords information) offering.

Bottom line: the SEMRush suite is a valuable toolkit to help SEOs and search marketers identify new keywords, advertising and optimization optimization opportunities they may not otherwise discover.

FTC Disclosure Notice: The SEMRush tools were provided free of charge for 60 days to facilitate this analysis and review. There was no other exchange of value.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 5:15 AM 0 comments
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5:21 AM

Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 3

Thursday, December 17, 2009

This content has been moved to Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1 on the Webbiquity blog.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 5:21 AM 0 comments
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4:51 AM

Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 2

Monday, November 16, 2009

This content has been moved to Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1 on the Webbiquity blog.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 4:51 AM 0 comments
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9:04 AM

SEO for Product Pages

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

It seems like so much of what is written about search engine optimization (SEO) assumes that you're writing a blog post, or a news story, or the next great "how to" article that's going to be syndicated far and wide on article marketing sites.

Sometimes that is what you're doing, but often writing for the web—and SEO—involves less glamorous pages like product or service descriptions. Of course, such pages are critical: no one will buy anything from you if they don't understand what you offer. It's just that, no matter how creatively written and carefully optimized, your "About Our Widgets" page is never going to make it to the first page of Digg. It simply can't compete with the latest Britney-Spears-abducted-by-a-three-armed-alien type story.

So how do you add life, and SEO value, to a product page? Here are four complementary techniques:

1) Use the words your prospects use. It doesn't matter if your product is technically more of a thingamabob than a whatchamacallit, if your prospects are searching for whatchamacallits, and that's the competitive set they place your product in, that had better be the term you're using. Use a keyword research tool to help identify which terms to use.

2) Tell a story. Incorporate the keywords you just identified into a compelling story that helps your prospective customers quickly understand how their life will be better once they buy your widgets. Be as specific as possible, and link to case studies to support specific claims.

3) Write detailed product descriptions, again incorporating keywords. The more detailed and vivid the description, the more appealing it will be to both human prospects and search engine bots.

4) Use pictures if at possible, and optimize the alt tags associated with the images, again using the keywords identified above. Photos and diagrams add interest and aid in understanding for your human prospects, while the alt tags communicate the value of the images to search engines. Also use keywords in the file names of your images.

As prospects work their way through the research process, from general how-is-this-problem-being-solved-today research to specific types of products or services, make sure that your content fits their needs—and that the search engines can find it.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 9:04 AM 0 comments
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4:39 AM

Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 1

Monday, October 19, 2009

This content has been moved to Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1 on the Webbiquity blog.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 4:39 AM 0 comments
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4:53 AM

SEO Rant: The Insidious Nofollow Tag

Thursday, October 15, 2009

This content has been moved to The Insidious Nofollow Tag: An SEO Rant on the Webbiquity blog.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 4:53 AM 0 comments
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5:05 AM

7 Techniques for Advanced SEO Link Building

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Basic link building involves getting your website listed on partner sites, quality online directories and do-follow social bookmarking / social networking sites. Depending upon your industry and the keywords you are trying to rank for, those efforts may be enough to get you a top spot on Google and the other major search engines.

But if you've taken care of the "low hanging fruit" with regard to links and your site still isn't ranking well, you may need to try some more advanced link building techniques. Here are a half-dozen+1 more tactics to generate high-quality external links to your site.

1. Link bait. Produce "linkable" content that others will be happy to link to. A page that's little more than an online marketing brochure is unlikely to attract many links independently. However, bloggers and other site owners will happily link to quality content such as helpful how-to articles, original research, resources such as useful lists, and cool online tools.

2. Interactive PR. Write compelling news releases with key terms linked back to corresponding pages on your site. Create a social media release through PitchEngine. Distribute your releases through online press release services to increase your exposure. Consider both free press release services and fee-based PR distribution sites.

3. Articles. Create your own external links to your site by writing helpful industry-related articles and linking these back to your site. Submit your articles to high-quality article directories.

The next four tactics involve generating links through blogs, in order from the easiest but lowest value to the most challenging but rewarding techniques.

4. Blog comments. Post comments on industry-related blogs. Make sure you comments are relevant to the post, add value (i.e. they aren't just about your company), and include no more than two links back to your site. One is better.

5. Blogger outreach. Take the direct route—send notes to carefully selected bloggers pointing them to original research, compelling content, a useful tool or (truly) interesting news. Use proper blogger relations techniques, and avoid these worst practices in blogger outreach.

6. Blogger relationships. Since bloggers who know you are more likely to link to you, try to establish relationships with some key bloggers in your industry space. Subscribe to their RSS feeds, follow them on Twitter, tweet their posts on occasion, write comments (see above), ask for advice, and, if possible, try to connect live at conferences where they are presenting or attending.

7. Guest posts. Most powerful of all, once you've established a relationship with an influential blogger, offer to write a guest post. Make sure it offers valuable information; is not self-promotional; and appeals to the blog's readers. It's generally acceptable to include 2-3 links back to your own site between the post and the "about the author," but don't overdo it, and ideally the post should link to other information sources as well.

They aren't quick or easy, but with patience and persistence, these techniques can create not only high-quality links for SEO purposes, but also new professional connections and even long-term friendships. Those personal connections are the most rewarding links of all.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 5:05 AM 0 comments
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5:09 AM

5 Painfully Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Monday, September 28, 2009

Every company wants their website to show up well in search engines, and their marketing teams understand the importance of search engine optimization. And after the thousands of articles and blog posts written about search engine optimization, SEO is no longer the black art it once was. It's still a blend of art and science, but the basics should be well understood at this point by web marketers and designers. To their credit, many have integrated this basic knowledge.

Yet there are still a surprising number of sites that violate some of the most basic principles of SEO, and pay a penalty in poor search position. Here are a few still-common mistakes that are easy to avoid.

Header Tag Abuse: Although header tags have declined somewhat in SEO importance, they still have somewhat of an impact on rankings—and they are an easy thing to get right. Sites that use words and phrases like "Overview," "About Us" and "Our Services" in their h1, h2 and h3 headers are wasting an opportunity. If you have a page describing your screaming blue thingamabobs, then "About Our Screaming Blue Thingamabobs" is a better header tag for SEO purposes.

Graphic Design > SEO: For the sake of design, many sites still use bland, generic labels for site navigation buttons (e.g., "Products," "Services," "Technology" etc.). One-word terms may let your designer create cute little buttons, but they don't tell you site visitors much and don't tell search engine bots anything. If your product is precision machining doohickies, then that's what your "Products" button should say. After all, your navigation buttons are internal links, and descriptive text labels for internal links are still important for SEO.

"Company" Words vs. "Customer" Words: This is particularly an issue in technology companies, but can happen in any situation where proper keyword research is skipped. Someone will say, "Our product isn't technically a thingamajib, it's actually a whatchamacall it." That may be true, but if the product competes in the thingamajib category, performs the same functions as a thingamajib, and most importantly, if prospective customers will search for it using thingamajib, then that's the term that had better be used on the website.

Sloppy Code: Search engine bots are lazy, so the best practice is to produce clean, minimalist code, for example by relying more on CSS and less on HTML tables. Another common error is to load pages up with lots of Javascript. Ugh! Javascript certainly has it's place, such as in creating drop-down menus, but the code should be stored in separate files and called as needed, minimizing the code on searchable pages.

Ugly URLs: A URL like company.com/screaming-blue-thingamabobs.html is much more meaningful to both search engines and humans than company.com/products, or even worse, something like company.com/default.asp?pageid=126.

Bonus sixth mistake to avoid: build links to your site carefully, using a mix of directory submission, social media, direct outreach, PR and link bait. Avoid link spamming (or hiring a "bargain" SEO firm that engages in this practice); having a bunch of irrelevant, spammy links somewhere on your site is great way to get ignored by the search engines.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 5:09 AM 0 comments
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6:23 AM

SEO Best Practices and All That

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

In SEO `Best Practices' Are Bunk, Adam Audette rants about the supposed uselessness of these tactics, and by extension the concept of best practices in any realm. Audette writes that "`Best practice' is a stale buzzphrase that offers zero competitive advantage...best practice in the enterprise? To me, that is nothing but useless marketing-speak. It doesn’t say anything about creating a competitive advantage."

The larger point of this article is spot on, namely that adherence to any set of static practices will, over time, erode the competitiveness of any enterprise. But, with no disrespect to Mr. Audette, who is a very smart guy, he sets up somewhat of a strawman definition of best practices when he writes:

By definition, a best practice:

  • is a static ruleset
  • is a standard to be followed
  • has worked in the past (read: is old)
  • has been popularized (read: is average)
  • limits judgement, evaluation, and strategy (cornerstones of quality search marketing)
That is, at best, a partial definition. First, once any practice is adopted by most of the firms in an industry, it is no longer a "best practice." Someone has already moved the needle. Second, mindful of this, great companies (and consultants) make constant tweaking and rethinking of current processes a part of their best practices.

In SEO, best practices would include but not be limited to:
  • Conducting keyword research to identify high-volume, low-competition search terms.
  • Producing clean code (e.g. CSS and HTML, minimal Flash, Javascript in separate files, descriptive navigation, minimal use of tables).
  • Optimizing title tags.
  • Crafting URLs with keywords included.
  • Including (but not over-doing) keywords in content and heading tags.
  • Incorporating keyword links in page text.
  • Basic link-building—social media sites, directories, business partners etc.
  • Advanced link-building—blogging, commenting, content marketing, guest posting, blogger outreach, interactive PR, etc.
Using all of those practices won't guarantee you a #1 rank for any term, but ignoring any of them will make achieving high rankings unnecessarily difficult. That's why virtually all successful SEO professionals use those practices, but don't constrain their activities to a static process. Search is constantly changing, and so are the techniques used to gain high ranking and organic search traffic.

In short, best practices are dynamic rather than static. In 1908, Henry Ford's assembly line (an idea inspired by the meat packing industry) established a new best practice in automotive manufacturing, but from work cells to TQM to lean manufacturing, production processes have continually evolved since then.

For the best companies, and SEO consultants, continuous innovation is the best best practice of all.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Posted by jame at 6:23 AM 0 comments
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